Introduction (start here)

Hi everybody and welcome to the horror (and fun!) of another installment of Arkham Series. I will be your guide to the unspeakable madness brought to us by the creators of Arkham Horror: The Card Game.

So how about starting with few words about me? I consider myself to be quite a veteran in regards to board gaming, especially the Arkham series, created by the almighty Fantasy Flight Games. My first and most beloved game will always be Twilight Struggle (which I even enjoy playing competitively (by the way, if you happen to be a TS fan, who wants to try their skill and luck against the best players from around the world, please consider joining probably the best organized TS league around -> http://yatsl.zimna-wojna.pl/)). However, I have spent countless hours playing different cooperative board games with my beloved wife and the vast majority of the games we’ve played were part of the Lovecraftian themed FFG series. I might consider describing my journey through the mysteries of Eldritch beings lurking just beyond the Threshold in a later entry. For now it should be enough for you to know, that I have extensively played Arkham Horror and Eldritch Horror, while also having a couple of plays of Elder Sign under my belt. No wonder then that when I found out about the Arkham Horror: The Card Game (which will just be called “AH:TCG” or simply “Arkham” later on, while all FFG games with Lovecraftian theme will be called “Arkham Files”) I was beyond excited. Even more so, as it seemed to deliver, what Lord of The Rings failed to – namely more of a story and less of a deckbuilding exercise (played it as well for a while, being a huge Tolkien fan I had extreme expectations and got somehow disappointed in the end, mostly due to reasons mentioned previously). So far it’s perfectly meeting my needs and expectations. I’ve been playing it as much as I can between work and managing my new family member.

This is where the Madness started

I play cooperative games almost exclusively in 2 player setup, with the other player being my wife. We have similar expectations from the games and our playing styles nicely match each other. Since this is my primary source of experience and also the main goal I have in mind, all of my opinions and judgments (unless explicitly stated otherwise) will be based on the assumption that one is playing 2 player variant. I will also assume that one is not limited by any card limitations (meaning - you have 2 copies of each card, since this is the limit of identical cards in your deck; and has all the current sets/expansions)¹. 

For some of my basic examples related to concepts of the game, or comparison between cards/characters I will allow myself to use story/gameplay information from the first campaign – Having at least one full play through the core set campaign under your belt is not an unreasonable assumption for me to make and it helps a lot when writing. If you haven’t completed your first campaign, I would strongly recommend you to stop reading (for now!) and go through it first. I will however not spoil other story elements (unless warned. No worries, I’m going to use all capitals and red font, I promise). 

My last assumption is – one is playing on standard difficulty level (I have a feeling that easy is not enough of a challenge, while hard seems to be too punishing and random in a way, just adding tokens, which negative value is too high to be considered worth taking into account while planning checks… maybe quite thematic strike of uncaring and brutal universe, but not very good for playing… )²

…which leads us to another point I was planning to put in this short introduction. Board games at their heart are a mix of gameplay and theme. One cannot exist without the another and ideally they should perfectly match and complement each other. I definitely prefer games with a strong theme, reflected nicely in the mechanics, and even though while playing some more competitive games (Twilight Struggle, for instance)³, I am much more focused on just playing the perfect move(s), in the Arkham Files. I am just as much interested in the slowly creeping madness infecting my mind and soul theme. Therefore I will also take into account the “theme” part while posting, though I will try to keep it separate from the purely mechanic part of things⁴ (I can’t promise I will always succeed, though). 

I very often feel tempted to share my own ideas about the execution of certain game elements – abilities, cards and scenarios, for example. I hope you will find it interesting to read them. I should, however, start with a disclaimer. I am not a game designer. You might consider my ideas bad. I also understand that some calls are to be made due to a bigger picture (the need for certain types of cards to exist in meta, sacrificing theme for gameplay etc) and that ultimately it’s FFG who call all the shots. Nevertheless, I hope, you’ll find my ideas interesting.

If you’ve been carefully reading so far (and I hope you have), you might have noticed that I put those tiny little numbers, called superscripts, every now and then. I decided to introduce them to put my inclination towards adding lots of digressions at bay – I strongly encourage you, my dear readers, to read them at any time you see fit, either after dealing with the main text or just at the time the number shows up . I just would like to keep the logical structure of the text intact, while also being able to share all my thoughts, related to the subject.

Where was I at? Eating cultists? Damn you, digressions!

I will try to post regularly. My current plan is twice per week – every Sunday and Wednesday. I will endeavor to keep my word, unless a mind-shattering experience wrecks my sanity and turns me into an empty-eyed madman, mumbling not understandable words (or maybe a regular every day event stops me).

Please note, many of the graphics I am using (the ones directly from AH:TCG, specifically) are the intellectual property of Fantasy Flight Games. 

Last (before the digressions make their appearance), but definitively not least – should you like my blog, please spread it among your fellow gamers. The audience is what really matters for me, so your help with building it up would be much appreciated. I hope you will find its content both interesting and useful in repelling the Eldritch Things. Regardless of your opinion, feel free to share it or any other Arkham related comments under my posts. I’m already looking forward to reading it.

¹As much as I adore FFG and understand they are here to make some bucks, not only for our entertainment, I really consider it a questionable to pretty much force everyone considering serious playing to buy lots of superfluous stuff just to get 2 copies of “Lucky!” or 4 copies of “Unexpected Courage”. More insight to the topic at https://whingewood.wordpress.com/2017/01/04/lcgs-is-needing-multiple-core-sets-bad-value/

²The luck matter is a quite heated debate among boardgamers. While I don’t want to go into the details, it’s worth to mention it in some broad strokes. First of all, we need to differentiate between 2 types of luck/randomness – first one is randomness, that just allows for more replayability – random order of cards in encounter deck, random layout of locations etc. Even though it can lead to easier or harder setups, it’s a very useful tool and with some basic design skills can easily be put to good use without affecting difficulty too much. The other kind of randomness is using dice/any other random number/symbol generators (Chaos Bag, I’m looking at you). Some amount of randomness does not impact playing too badly, in my opinion (it’s matter of taste, obviously and I’m rather on the non-random side of the debate, though more liberal on coop’s than on classic competitive games). However it’s important that players can adjust their decisions based on the possible spectrum of outcomes and make meaningful decisions based on it (more about decisions in Lovecraftian world in another digression). So adding possible “-5”s and “-6”s (which is more or less what harder difficulty does), basically equals adding more auto failures, since you won’t really take into account drawing them - it will ultimately just be bad luck outside of any control. I would much rather fill bag with more “-3”s, for instance, so you can consider assigning extra icons for extra important skill checks. I might write an entire post about Chaos Bag, so consider it just a brief explanation of my standpoint.

Dice - ultimate symbol of luck

³I actually happen to consider TS a very thematic game – not only because of the cards, depicting the real-life events. It incorporates some of the very ideas/concepts behind Cold War (Domino Theory, Brinkmanship, Crisis Management), elegantly translating them into rules. It also creates exact kind of tension one would feel when leading a Cold War Superpower (or at least that’s my assumption, since I have never led one).

⁴Games are always some sort of abstract representations of the depicted events and as such necessarily must simplify some aspects of them and sometimes sacrifice the theme or even “realism” for the sake of simplicity or gameplay experience. It’s obvious it’s happening in every game, also in AH:TCG. How would we otherwise imagine an ally appearing in the middle of a mission – was he around the entire time, but just decided not to bother, until we played the card? How comes, moving between Attic and Hallway in the 1^st mission takes same amount of time as moving between Arkham’s districts does in the 2^nd mission? Resources and cards themselves are just very abstract concepts, baring very little resemblance to any real life objects/ideas. This also means there are times, when theme and gameplay sort of contradict each other, oppose each other – more thematic choice might lead to much worse game experience. Good example was mentioned above – it would be much more thematic to just fail skill checks for no reason (drawing “-6”s or “autofailures” from Chaos Bag), since this is Lovecraftian world – we’re all doomed to die and we have no control over our fate. However, it won’t be a game anymore, since a good game by definition assumes making meaningful choices. And (almost) always when the two contradict, I side with gameplay. Blasphemy? For some maybe, but isn’t >>blasphemous<< a most thematic word of Lovecraft anyway?