Arkham Horror The Card Game: the greatest deck construction introduction of all time… if you can get there.

By way of setup, Arkham Horror CG is more of...

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Good stuff, Steve.

While I've played the game several times (a friend's copy), we keep talking about committing to a campaign and it's yet to happen. I need to get over the hump.

A good review although your non-standard acronym of Arkham Horror CG weirded me out every time I saw it .

To your point on how it got to be this successful: I think this (and all LCGs) seem much more impenetrable as time goes on but if you got in close to the ground floor, picking up a core set is enough to show you the possibilities even if the prebuilt decks suck and the deckbuilding options are limited. As time went on a single deluxe box would add so many options to your card pool and then the steady drip feed of mythos packs would let you build up and learn the card pool gradually. It also helped that cycles are mechanically themed so by buying things in sequence you'd dive deep into suggested archetypes. It's only now with so many cycles completed that jumping in looks so daunting.

It may be worth mentioning FFG has since recognised how terrible their core sets are for beginners and the revised core should really address a significant complaint in your review. I wonder how your experience would've been different if you had been able to start with the new core from the get go.

Thanks charlest, means a lot to hear that from you. Based on what I know about it, I think your group is one of the few I know of I would recommend the game to. Your group seems like a pretty persistent group of capital G gamers.

I think we disagree on the core, sornars. I think the core is bad enough feeling that I would just never have played again if I only had the base investigators and lists as an option. It's why I had the core for like a year or two and played it once and thought about selling it multiple times. It's only because I'm an insane person and I had such positive feedback from people I trust like you that I dug in deeper instead.

I do think the coming new bigger core set is a good point and important context. It won't dispel all the problems I outline with a bad first impression but if they tuned and updated the base investigator lists with it in mind, ideally to add much needed 2nd copies of stuff that should now be available in the core, I think it will help to at least make the base investigators make better first games. You won't feel as powerless and your losses wouldn't feel like there was nothing you could do unless your deck was better.

Cool stuff. Can guarantee you that I will never get into it, despite my love for the AH CCG/LCG (previous edition), because of many of the things you cite here: Virtual demand to spend X 100s of dollars to get to a game that's fun; cooperative play; deep involvement with community (i.e. lifestyle game, like Magic or GW.) Can't do it anymore. Interesting to read about how it works and how it works for you all the same.

The cooperative part is what makes it accessible to me. For me, the rest of what you note is all correct and a good reason to hold back. But the community is really surprisingly good and not a turn off. They like to share ideas using arkhamdb posts so you don't need to get crazy with it.

I think the biggest success of Marvel Champions is that the base box is actually a fun and fairly replayable game that you could conceivably buy and stop with. AHLCG base box had enough there that you could maybe squint and see a real cool game down the road after you spend a couple hundred more dollars, which is a step up from the X-Wing core set I guess but it's still not great.

So after reading this review I sold my copy, a copy of Tikal and also Theseus: the Dark Mancala, and used the money to buy an air fryer at Costco. Unlike Arkham, the air fryer does not require any expansions or additional players, and I will use it almost daily. We should probably always ask, "Is this game better than a $50 air fryer?"



My wife pointed out that I'm running a complex money laundering scheme. Buy a handful of board games cheap from the family general fund, as opposed to my "fun money." Tikal cost $12. I sold Arkham for $20. It was a gift. I don't think I paid much for Theseus. So my argument that "I paid for this air fryer by selling board games so it cost us nothing!" is kind of hollow. However, we had roasted vegetables, asparagus with butter and lemon juice, and crispy chicken sausage last night while we watching the Olympics.

It took me far too long to figure out that "Gary Sax" games, because his writing is so compelling, always sound amazing, but are not always Cranberries games. The idea that the game is essentially a game about how to play a game that essentially costs $200 to play properly sealed the deal. Now I'm saving up for Sleeping Gods, based on Dan Thurot's review.

I think that is the right call.

I have also played this game about 15 times over the last week and a half so...

This is the second time now that everyone is saying to Steve: “Great review. Not buying it!”

I figure it means I did a good job in actually portraying it.

Played again this afternoon.

Cole Wehrle referenced this review in the monthly Leder stream and I swooned. He attributed it to Charle Theel but that's another compliment tbh.

Lovely work.

I do think the new core set is a real missed opportunity. I would have loved to have seen a new mini campaign alongside a rejigged set of cards that would ease you into the game better. It's good that it gives a full playset and the new way of releasing the campaigns will help with accessibility. The new core set just feels really lazy.

I guess I don't think the base campaign is that bad, but it certainly doesn't give you a full arkham experience or anything like that.

I still think, even with the big improvement of the expanded player card corpus they're putting in the new box, it's still not enough to get into the really engaging deckbuilding that keeps me with this game. I don't know if one product can realistically do it, even if this is admittedly better.

thegiantbrain wrote: Lovely work.

I do think the new core set is a real missed opportunity. I would have loved to have seen a new mini campaign alongside a rejigged set of cards that would ease you into the game better. It's good that it gives a full playset and the new way of releasing the campaigns will help with accessibility. The new core set just feels really lazy.

What would you do different for the campaign? The first two scenarios, at least, are pretty great for newbies. Gathering drips in new elements to not overwhelm you with options at the jump, and Midnight Masks is wide open that won’t punish you too hard for not playing optimally. Devourer, unfortunately, isn’t terribly interesting outside of seeing how earlier actions can impact you.