Arkham Horror – The Card Game – 1 Player Review: The Miskatonic University

I managed to pick up my copy of the 1^st scenario pack of the Dunwich Legacy campaign a couple of weeks ago and as with the Dunwich Legacy expansion box itself, I couldn’t wait to give this a try. Since I was playing this as a standalone game, I built the chaos bag as instructed by the scenarios set up guide and once again opted to pilot Aschan Pete for this outing, I have found from playing him in the other Dunwich Legacy scenarios that he can handle most situations with a relative level of competiveness on his own, making him my go to deck for testing these scenarios.

With the game set up and ready to go, I started my journey to locate the Necronomicon within the exhibits of the Miskatonic University museum.

Act 1a: Finding a Way Inside

I opted to swiftly move through this act and discovered the clues required to gain entrance to the museum instead of trying to break down the door.

Act 2a: Night in the Museum

This was the act which my resolution of Act 1a directed me to, had I broken down the door a different act would have been selected instead.  In order to resolve this act I needed to gain access to the Restricted Hall, to do that I needed to spend 6 clues as actions to draw the top card of the Exhibit Hall deck and then try to discover which one was the Restricted Hall. However I ended up advancing the Agenda deck and had to fight off an annoying recurring enemy for the remainder of the game. Eventually I managed to locate the Restricted Hall to advance in the scenario.

Act 3a: Searching for the Tome

Now I was in the Restricted Hall, I could continue my search for the Necronomicon in peace and it did not take long to trigger the resolution of the act and in turn the scenario.

I quite enjoyed this scenario and it really didn’t take too long to play, I would imagine with more players this would change dramatically especially with the pesky hunting bad guy chasing us down! I really don’t want to note too many spoilers for the scenario but I was lucky and his forced ability never actually hit, this aided me in keeping him at bay. The standalone chaos bag also threw a spanner into the works for me with having more negative tokens in than the campaign chaos bag would have.

The negatives for me would be the ease of getting through part 1 and 3 of the scenario, however act 2 will be more challenging with more players, so I am imagining that won’t be such an issue during a multiple player game.

I am looking at starting the campaign soon and kicking that off with a campaign day to play through the original core campaign along with the two stand alone expansions to bulk it up. Will be writing a report on how well that day goes too and as soon as we start the campaign off again I will be writing the reports for that also. Really excited about getting started and seeing what the Dunwich Legacy holds for the 4 man play through.

You can pick up your Arkham Horror core set and expansions from your friendly local gaming store. If you are in the Crewe area then please check out Watchtower Games on Nantwich Road in Crewe.

You can follow me on twitter @bigboss010 or Instagram @bigbosstp010.

I’m Big Boss.... I’m out.... Peace.

Arkham Horror: The Card Game: 1 Player Review – The House Always Wins

So having really enjoyed the Extra Curricular Activities scenario of the Dunwich Legacy, I decided to not wait for my cohorts before trying the second scenario from the deluxe expansion and gave this a quick go. I again took the reins of “Ashcan” Pete to play this scenario, as before simply because the deck has more flexibility than my Zoey build which is almost solely focused on combat.

Act 1 – Beginners Luck

The Clover Club is the venue for this scenario, throwing a curveball straight into the mix is the enemy the game has starting in the Lounge, who has Hunter, so will follow the investigators around. The Aloof keyword starts on all villains at this point, so he wouldn’t automatically engage me, so hoping I played it correctly, I simply ignored him and explored the area obtaining clues away from him so he didn’t attack me. I utilised the locations abilities to get enough clues to proceed in the act and as a side note I “Cheated” here to get the Elder Symbol from the chaos bag, don’t worry though, I remembered this for later.

Act 2 – Skin Game

Ok now I had to deal with another bad guy the encounter deck threw at me and some new hidden locations. The Agenda act advanced by this point also meaning the bad guys would now automatically engage me and attack. I wasn’t too worried about this yet as I was a couple of turns away from the bad guys getting me. I built up on those turns and waited so I could take down the Pit Boss away from the other bad guy who had spawned out. I took a fair few hits to the face here but I managed to sacrifice my Leather Coat to take the blunt of the damage. After finishing the Pit Boss with the help of my trusty companion Duke, I moved to advance the Act deck once more.

Act 3 – All In

Professor Rice was found, the VIP Room of the Clover Club was obviously the place to be, however at the same time a new uber bad guy had materialised in the club to hunt us down. Again, luckily I was a few turns away and I had no intention of tackling the enemy all by myself. I instead opted to gather up the entranced professor, sneak out the back door, carrying cab fare and leaving a fake phone number in my wake to complete the scenario with all my faculties intact.

Again this was a real quick play through, and no doubt at some point I made a mistake during my game. One thing I did notice about this scenario was that I finished it with 4 experience points, where my play though of the Extra Curricular Activities scenario left me with 1 experience point, although I could have gotten 2 had I been smarter.  I feel like this is the scenario to work on, so you come out of it with a good number of experience moving forward in the campaign.

Based on my games I would be moving forward in the campaign with 5 experience points, which certainly would give me some options moving forward regarding upgrading my deck. I am hoping that the 4 man game will reap some extra points, as the team can make sure we hit those targets to obtain those extra points I missed during my solo play through. One thing the game required me to note was that I had “Cheated” during Act 1, this would have resulted in a new token being thrown into the Chaos Bag for the remainder of the campaign had I been continuing.

A fun game and surprisingly nothing like the core campaign; enjoyed the fact there was a big bad guy present from the start and that dodging him for the first few turns was critical. I really enjoyed that the game added locations to the board as the act progressed; it gave the feeling of secrets being uncovered and definitely gave the feeling of an evolving storyline. This scenario has really set the tone for the Dunwich Legacy campaign and I am very excited to start the campaign properly with the rest of the team.

As usual thanks for reading, I would again highly recommend getting yourself down to Watchtower Games in Crewe or Even GTG Guys That Game in Hanley and get yourself a copy of the core set and give this game a try. You won’t regret it.

You can follow me on Twitter @bigboss010 and on Instagram @bigbosstp010. You can also follow my Tag Team partners at SOS on Twitter @SiteOfShite.

I’m Big Boss..... I’m Out..... Peace.

Arkham Horror: The Card Game – 1 Player Review – Extracurricular Activity

So I have had the latest Dunwich Legacy for little over a week now and I really wanted to give it a go, so while I had some time today, I opted to take the expansion for a spin. I built an “Ashcan” Pete deck to tackle this scenario, sadly the deck was built to be used in a team and not on solo operations, however the end result was fairly positive.

                                

This game also sees my first custom deck build too, I was tempted to use Zoey originally, however I felt that Pete would bring a level of flexibility to the game where Zoey would just bring attack ability.

Act 1a - After Hours

This act felt very much like an expanded version of the 1^st act in The Gathering, the objective was simply to get three clues in order to advance the act. The additional locations to discover mixed things up and also the 3 shroud on the two locations I did investigate certainly increased the difficulty. I managed to get the 3 clues after being bogged down for a few turns by enemies and moved forward in the act.

Act 2a – Rice’s Whereabouts

This was an interesting act, the objective was to take control of “Jazz” Mulligan, an asset who was shuffled into the encounter deck. For the cost of 1 clue, I could discard the top 10 cards of the encounter deck and luckily for me “Jazz” was in the first lot of ten discarded. I managed to parley him into joining my little team and advanced the act once more. This was a fairly speedy act to get through and without giving away too much about the contents of the encounter deck, I sure was grateful.

Act 3a – Campus Safety

This act was pretty cool as it provided multiple ways to advance. The game threw a monster called “The Experiment” towards me and with the “Beast Unleashed” agenda in play; the creature was advancing towards me. However I opted to not try to tackle the large bag guy moving towards me and I continued my search for the missing professor to obtain resolution number two.

I quite enjoyed this play through with “Ashcan” Pete; I wasn’t so sure I would enjoy playing as him when I first built the deck. My variation of the deck has a lot of drawing power to capitalise on Pete’s ability to ready an asset and this was really pivotal in completing this scenario without going mad. I am thinking about moving away from the Backstab card though as I thought his evasion was 4 basic and sadly it is 3 basic, although I am playing cards to increase his base evasion value, I never got much use out of Backstab when I drew it.

The main reason I built the deck was for my friend to use when we restart the campaign and I am really excited to see how the game plays out once we all jump in on the latest expansion. So far we have Zoey and Pete in the Team, we still haven’t confirmed the final two characters yet and im looking forward to seeing what mix of characters we can come up with.

I will be posting more detailed review once we have organised a time to sit and play. Sadly its a case of getting the time where my partners and I are all free to delve into the mythos. I will most likely give The House Always Wins scenario a go too prior to going in with a full team. I would highly recommend this game to anyone with an interest in the HP Lovecraft books or wants to delve into the living card game format. If you are in the Crewe area I would recommend dropping by Watchtower Games on Nantwich Road to pick up a copy of the core set.

As always thank you for reading, you can follow me on twitter @bigboss010 and Instagram @bigbosstp010.

I’m Big Boss.... I’m Out.... Peace.

Arkham Horror: The Card Game – 4 Player Review- The Devourer Below

So we finally got a time when we could all sit down to play the third and final chapter of the Night of the Zealot campaign contained within the Arkham Horror: The Card Game core set. I had been a bit naughty and caught a glimpse of the scenario on YouTube prior to us playing, but did not manage to get a proper look at the horrors to come.

To set the scene I took the role of Skids ‘O’ Toole, Josh took the role of Roland Banks, Shaun played as Wendy Adams and Stuart reprised his role as Daisy Walker. The game was considered to be “Past the Midnight Hour” so we all had to discard two random cards from our hands which crippled our chances of mass killing a load of bad guys later on in the game and in the previous scenario we allowed 5 of the 6 cultists to escape, which resulted in the agenda card starting with 3 doom tokens.

Act 1a – Investigating the Trail

This act took so much longer than it should have, we all moved into our hidden Arkham Woods locations only to find we had ventured into a location where out skills were wasted and this slowed our clue gathering down to a snail’s pace which resulted in the Agenda deck advancing to the next step. Eventually we managed to get the 12 clues required to advance the act deck and we crawled into the next part of the story.

Act 2a – Into the Darkness

Things went from bad to worse here when our awful showing in the Midnight Masks scenario came to back to haunt us. Our path was blocked by 5 cultists and a random monster which was lurking at the location. Sadly due to having to randomly discard two of my cards I lost my Dynamite Blast which would have made the world of difference here, leaving us with two bad guys to fight so we could get to the ritual site. Sadly though the doom counters were stacking quicker than we could get our acts together and we failed to stop the agenda from advancing yet again.

Agenda / Act – The Devourer Below

In the words of Michael Caine “I’ve got a great idea”, I drew Lita Chantler and had the brainwave of sacrificing her to the Umôrdhoth so we could survive the scenario. Like most plans, this did not go well and in fact it all came together like the start of an episode of Casualty.  Sadly Shaun moved into the middle area to try and clear some of the cultists out, he managed two but sadly once Umôrdhoth moved into the location, the team up was too much, with Shaun being the first eliminated. Next if fell over to Stuart who failed a check thrown at him by the encounter deck, resulting in him taking too many damage tokens, removing him from the game. I felt that all was not lost as Josh and I were still in the game, with Lita Chantler in tow, she would soon be thrown to the wolves so we could live. The start of the turn arrived and my encounter card forced me to take 3 horror, when sadly I only had 1 horror left. Our only shot of surviving was gone and Josh did not have the health remaining to best Umôrdhoth, who quickly defeated him.

Well as per the resolution we unlocked, with our defeat the summoned Umôrdhoth would be left to stalk the city of Arkham uncontested for now and all of our investigators were killed. Absolutely gutted about this result since we had been building this up, but it was a really fun experience and it was a run through using the basic decks from the Learn to Play guide, will build my own decks moving forward. Now that the Dunwich Legacy has been released, I am hoping to build a couple of tougher decks to play through the scenarios again and expand into the Dunwich Legacy campaign after that. I think the four of us are happy to play through it again and to try the Dunwich Legacy campaign also.

I have really enjoyed playing this game and I cannot wait to get my hands on the new packs when they are released. I have also pre-ordered the stand alone scenarios and I am quite interested to see what they will bring to the game when moving through the main scenarios. If you have any interest in this game you can check out the forums on CardGameDB.com or have a wander into Watchtower Games in Crewe to pick up your copy of the games core set or deluxe box.

Fingers crossed I will be able to write a report about the Dunwich Legacy campaign as I play through it and thank you for reading my report of the Night of the Zealot campaign. Check our adventures out on Twitter @bigboss010, Instagram @bigbosstp010 and my pals at SOS on Twitter @siteofshite.

I’m Big Boss.... I’m out.... Peace.

Arkham Horror: The Card Game – 4 Player Review – The Midnight Masks

Ok, so I mentioned in my last post that I would continue with the campaign with my friend Stuart, however my friends Josh and Shaun expressed an interest in jumping in to give the game a try. So Josh took the helm of my Roland deck and my mate Shaun opted to use Wendy. There was the temptation to go back and replay the 1^st scenario with them so they could get a feel for the game play, but we opted to just add them in as per the rules with a basic deck each.

So we set the scenario up as instructed in the campaign guide and made all needed changes to the board such as discarding the house as due to the result of the 1^st scenario, my house was sadly burned to the ground. I had played through the second scenario on my own before we sat down to play as a team, so I could at least be in an informed position. To recap, at this stage I am playing as Skids and Stuart is playing as Daisy.

Act 1 – Uncovering the Conspiracy

Straight away we are at the disadvantage here as we require 8 clues between us to get the top card of the cultist deck revealed, you may think this would be an easy feat with 4 of us being able to move around and investigate, however you would be mistaken for almost as soon as the encounter deck started to hinder our investigations, lock us down with enemies and generally make our lives difficult, our entire game plan fell to pieces. We soon found the first Agenda “Predator or Prey?” activating as the DOOM threshold was met and the second Agenda “Time is Running Short” activated. We found the DOOM tokens quickly piled up and we were unable to fulfil the objective on the Act card in time before the Agenda deck reached its goal.

Josh at one stage was trying to fight 3 bad guys on his own; I was attempting to kill off the cultists who were driving the DOOM counters, while Shaun and Stuart were trying to obtain as many clues as they could. The game gave a sense of separation here and a continued sense of impending doom, with so many obstacles being thrown at us.

The midnight hour arrived and we had finished the second scenario. Sadly 5 of the 6 cultists got away meaning our position moving into the next scenario is already looking bleak. I sadly drew Skids weakness, Hospital Debts, which I was unable to get rid of and this cost me two experience points at the end of the scenario, meaning I gained no experience from this run through. The others all gained two experience points to take into the next scenario “The Devourer Below”. The experience points came from the one defeated cultist and one location where all the clues had been discovered.

Points to note:

The 2 player run through certainly upped the difficulty of the game due to the encounter deck throwing out more cards per player, this really showed in the 4 player run through and we felt like there was no way we could complete the objective set out by the Act card.

I do feel there could be a balance here, with the optimum number of players being 2, this allows both players to pick up the slack of the other while fewer cards are being played from the encounter deck pushing the agenda forward.

With the second scenario being considerably shorter act wise than the first scenario, this report is considerably smaller than my previous reports and I must apologise for that.

We won’t be playing the third scenario in the campaign until after Christmas now, due to work commitments and time commitments over the holiday period. But as soon as we have managed to play the third scenario I will be able to post a full review of the scenario and the campaign on the whole. I will also get the views of the other chaps playing with me and see how they feel about the experience of Arkham Horror: The Card Game.

You can catch me on Twitter @bigboss010 and Instagram @bigbosstp010.

Thank you for reading, I’m Big Boss.... I’m out..... Peace.

Arkham Horror: The Card Game – Two player game – The Gathering

Ok, so following my single player attempt at playing through Arkham Horror: The Card Game, I managed to convince my friend Stuart to give the game a go with me. I allowed Stuart to select a character to play as; he opted to play as Daisy (Seeker class) and following that I then selected to play as Skids (Rogue class). Just as my single player experience, we set up the first scenario as described in the learn to play guide and set to work at discovering the mysteries of the mythos.

I will admit to having the edge this time having already played through the campaign in the single player game, however this was a great chance to see how adding an additional player to the game would impact the difficulty and the impact of the encounter deck.

Act 1: Study:

Of course this part of the game became harder with having two investigators in the room, however despite the encounter deck throwing out two bad guys to fight me managed to avoid them and escape the study within 2 turns. Both of us advancing to the next step in the scenario pretty much injury free.

Act 2: Hallway / Attic / Basement:

This part of the game was actually considerably easier than I thought it would be as both of us managed to secure a room each to uncover the clues there, also managing to set ourselves up for a bit of a fight as I knew what was coming up in the next part of the scenario. We then moved back into the hallway with our 6 clues to complete Act 2.

Act 3: Hallway / Attic / Basement / Parlor:

Thank god I had back up In this instance, Stu managed to move into the parlor to negotiate the inclusion of our mysterious red-headed ally in the fight against the “Ghoul Priest” and this move probably resulted in us finishing the scenario alive. It took our allies aid, a machete and a successful attack to finish off the “Ghoul Priest”, this allowed us to complete the scenario.

This played very differently than my single player experience, for multiple reasons too. The chaos bag always throws a spanner in the works, however this time I drew the Elder Symbol on two occasions allowing me to gain the resources I needed to use my ability, spend 2 resources to gain an action and boy did I use them to my advantage. Stuart’s character was really useful for the investigation elements of the scenario and I pretty much handled the fighting. I allowed Stuart to select our ending as I knew what would happen already. He opted for ending 1, which meant we burned our house down to stop the evil trying to break into our world from escaping.

After having a discussion about what to do next, Stuart and I opted to continue the campaign at a later date with the existing characters, experience and traumas we had accrued while playing this scenario. We both had gained 5 experience points to use with our characters, and this allowed us to make a couple of adjustments to our decks before packing away until we next get a chance to play. I am quite looking forward to moving forward in the campaign and how the game develops in the next step of the campaign story.

Don’t worry, I will be posting a report of the next phase of the campaign once it has been played out. If you are interested in giving this game a go, I recommend getting yourself to Watchtower Games in Crewe or to your local friendly gaming store and see if this is the type of game you can get into.

Thanks for reading.

I’m Big Boss..... I’m out..... Peace.

Arkham Horror: The Card Game - 1 player review - Chapter 1 - The Gathering.

Ok so following the huge level of excitement building up to the release of this game, I finally have a copy in my possession. I opted to build the Roland Banks starter deck recommended by the learn to play guide and decided to give the game a go in the 1 player format mainly to get a feel for the game and how it played, once I can confirm a set number of people interested in doing an actual campaign game I will actually start noting experience points. Please note I have not gone into too much detail about the story as I don't want to spoil the plot.

The Study:

So the game starts with your character locked in a study while investigating the strange goings on in Arkham, I figured I wanted to run through the game with a great deal of haste as to avoid the impending dangers of the Encounter deck. Sadly I did end up having an enemy in the study with me, but managed to escape the study before the bad guy managed to attack me, so all was good.

The Hallway / Attic / Basement:

Ok so I did my best to run through chapter 2 of this mission, however the encounter deck threw me a couple of big curveballs which really hindered me and I also forgot my characters ability which would have helped me to no end during my investigations in the basement. However with a bit of damage and some mental trauma I managed to get enough clues to move forward in the mission.

The Hallway / Attic / Basement / Parlor:

Ok so I hadn’t really thought too much about my health and mental trauma until this part of the game, but boy did it come crashing home that I needed to act fast to stop myself being killed! However luck actually sided with me and despite the encounter deck really throwing me some bad luck I managed to injure the “boss” of the game the Ghoul Priest with an attack, move to the adjacent location and blow up the room containing the Ghoul Priest which allowed me to finish the first part of the Night of the Zealot campaign.

I did have a quick peak of the results from the game, for example how much experience I would have had and the result of the game. Sadly my investigator ended up going insane, which was a bit sad. However I found the experience quite interesting and I am looking forward to playing it with another player to try and expand on the co-operative element of the game.

The Good:

1.       Really enjoyed how I was taking a beating, it felt like I was actually fighting against the mythos with a good chance of them actually beating me back and that was quite refreshing when compared to games like Warhammer 40,000 Conquest, where I could avoid taking damage.

2.       The chaos bag really brought a new level to my experience, even when I took on a test where I had little chance of failing, I still managed to pull the instant loss token.

3.       The guardian class, thank god they have an explosive that allows you to deal 3 points of damage to everything in the current room or adjacent room! That single card pretty much allowed me to survive the game.

The Bad:

1.       As my pal Chris pointed out when he wrote a bit about the game, the box is a little out of place, you would think Fantasy Flight would come up with a suitable box for a game like this. I would think something like the DC deck building game or the Resident Evil deck building game would make sense.

2.       Too many tokens, feels like I spent at least 20 minutes separating the tokens out and I still am unaware of what a couple of them are even for.

3.       I understand that the actions are limited to 3 for a reason; however I actually felt like I only really used the move and investigate actions during my investigation.

To conclude, just from the quick run through I played with Rowland Banks, I am now sure I want to play as Skids O’Toole moving forward, I like the combat element of the guardian and the fact it saved my skin at the end, however I really want to play as the rogue class too, so this fits in perfectly with Skids deck restrictions.

I am hoping to actually get a campaign together with a couple of mates and give this game a real spin and maybe even ramp up the difficulty once I have gotten a real feel for the game. Fingers crossed we wont fall victim to mythos in the process.

Thanks for reading, if you are interested in getting into Arkham Horror: The Card Game, then I would get yourself down to Watchtower Games in Crewe or to your friendly local gaming store to try the game for yourself.

I’m Big Boss.... I’m out... Peace