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Badmovies.org Forum  |  Other Topics  |  Entertainment  |  Arkham Horror « previous next »
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Author Topic: Arkham Horror  (Read 17797 times)
ulthar
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« Reply #15 on: July 01, 2013, 09:45:04 PM »

I have never played a game like this.  I've gotta say...you dudes are making it sound mighty interesting.

We like to play Uno and Skipbo, occasionally Yahtzee.  Last night, we had a hysterical game of Apples to Apples.

The only big down side I see is the time commitment.  An hour to set up and another several to play?  Sounds pretty cool for a rainy weekend day, though.

I simply never dreamed there was a GAME based on Lovecraftian mythology!   Cheers
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« Reply #16 on: July 01, 2013, 10:28:54 PM »

Keep the cards organized and setup is about 10 minutes. We use a pair of extra hardware organizer bins that I had.  With people familiar with the game I am betting a full game could be 2-3 hours, and not feel rushed.
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Andrew Borntreger
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« Reply #17 on: July 02, 2013, 10:16:02 AM »

Keep the cards organized and setup is about 10 minutes. We use a pair of extra hardware organizer bins that I had.  With people familiar with the game I am betting a full game could be 2-3 hours, and not feel rushed.


Look at the custom organizer this guy built.  I'm impressed.





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« Reply #18 on: July 02, 2013, 10:37:48 AM »


Look at the custom organizer this guy built.  I'm impressed.





That thing is awesome, and would both help keep things organized and cut down on the space needed to play a game.  We have a big table in our dining room that we use, because all of the cards can quickly eat up table space.
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« Reply #19 on: July 02, 2013, 10:53:07 AM »

I also own a copy of Arkham Horror. I can't find anybody to play it with though. I've only gotten to do one game.  Bluesad
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Mofo Rising
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« Reply #20 on: July 03, 2013, 02:31:10 AM »

I have never played a game like this.  I've gotta say...you dudes are making it sound mighty interesting.

We like to play Uno and Skipbo, occasionally Yahtzee.  Last night, we had a hysterical game of Apples to Apples.

The only big down side I see is the time commitment.  An hour to set up and another several to play?  Sounds pretty cool for a rainy weekend day, though.

I simply never dreamed there was a GAME based on Lovecraftian mythology!   Cheers

Designer board games have been an under-the-radar thing for quite a while. They've experienced an explosion in the last few years, the market now is amazing. Unfortunately, they're pretty expensive.

If you guys are cool with board games in general, I whole-heartedly recommend Burgomaster's suggestion of Pandemic. It takes no time to set-up, and the basic rules are about as simple as you can get. But in the 40 minutes or so that it takes to play a game is fantastic. Trust me, if you're a fan of family board game night, this game will quickly become a favorite.

If you can trick your friends to moving on to stuff like Arkham Horror, great! But Pandemic is just a fantastic game.
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« Reply #21 on: July 04, 2013, 12:55:20 PM »

AH expansions (just my opinion):

These are in order of buy first to buy last.

Innsmouth:  worth buying the expo just for the personal story mechanic.  Basically each investigator gets a personal story card, which outlines conditions during which the character grows and realizes his destiny (sometimes not for the best!) or fails.  Winning or failing your personal story changes your stats, gives a bonus, or the like.   VERY fun mechanic.    The board is very good, and it's nightmarish (appropriately) to deal with -- dangerous, hard to keep clear of monsters, and pretty easy to get killed on.  You get an immense number of new investigators, and many of them are our favorite investigators to play (Hank the Farmhand, who is too stupid to be afraid of the unworldly, for example -- he does not do horror checks when he starts a fight, and Zoey Samaras the crazy cook, who can downgrade a monster's resistances).   Investigators and board and personal story mechanic make this our favorite.  The new ancient ones added are brutal (Uttaus, and Zhar, and others).  Uprising mechanic (the deep ones coming up out of the sea) is a generally fun mechanic, as I said hard to manage but a "good" kind of hard. 


Dunwich Horror:  Yeah!  You get injury and madness cards, which are a fun mechanic (to us).  You get the choice of drawing from one of these decks if you are unconscious or if you go insane.  The cards then allow you to avoid the asylum / hospital but you have a long-term disability that is potentially just amusing (and sometimes really crippling).   Useful skills, good items and spells.  5 allies, decent but not special.  Good spells.  The unique items are particularly good in this set.  New investigators, 8 of them and they are a pretty good group of investigators in general.  You get the new board which is moderately hard -- not as hard as Innsmouth, and not as easy as Kingsport, and the Horror itself, which is a nasty fight but a good reward if you can do it.  One of the best expansions, and one of the ones to consider first.

King in Yellow:  Adds a multiple Act mechanic, which is fun but can make a game brutally short.  Worth introducing after you've been playing AH for a while.  Blight mechanic represents prominent citizens in town going crazy and they introduce more adverse game effects.   Generally interesting common items and spells.    Some people really love the King in Yellow mechanics that are added -- I think they are okay, but not as fun to use every single time (for us).

Curse of the Dark Pharoah (revised):  Exhibit items are added, which are a type of unique item, some of them pretty strong.  There are also moving encounters in the streets, which add depth to the game (and more danger).  Generally interesting.  No new board.

Miskatonic Horror:  sort of a meta-expansion.  It is an expansion for all previous expansions.  It's least essential until you have quite a number of the other expansions, but it's of good quality.  No new board.

Kingsport:  The board itself is easy and feels like a bit of a thematic break.  There are more elements in this that are helpful to investigators, which is not exactly what I was looking for.  The blessings of Nodens cards, Changed cards, White Ship cards, Hypnos cards are all just out of place to me and I didn't like them, and we don't use them.  Others may disagree.  (Wussy AH players, that is!  :)  There is also a Rift Marker mechanic with this board, which is in general a headache to remember to do, and not very much fun to us either.  There are eleven allies, and unfortunately they are pretty good allies, which we did like.    Common items are so-so..   Spells were turkeys.   In general, not a great expansion.  Not bad (not as bad as Lurker) but not a great expansion.


Lurker at the Threshold:   Bleh.  The Lurker mechanic is something we were never interested in.  The Dark Pact and Relationship cards didn't add enough to the game, for us, that we really ever use them.  New spells added are so-so.  No new allies, no new investigators.  :(    So I would avoid this one.

Black Goat of the Woods:  do not own, haven't played.
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Zapranoth
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« Reply #22 on: July 04, 2013, 01:11:07 PM »

I will add that I have been a Talisman player since college, too, and have all of the 4th revised edition -- Talisman and Arkham Horror are my two favorite board games.  Talisman is more accessible than AH, not as complex in general.  But decidedly not cooperative.  :)
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The Fake Macoy
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« Reply #23 on: July 04, 2013, 06:05:22 PM »

Wow, that is a great summary of the AH expansions.  I'll have to pick up Innsmouth Horror when I get the chance.
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Zapranoth
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« Reply #24 on: July 05, 2013, 02:20:30 AM »

Thank you! 

A good friend tells me that the black goat expo is "awful."

The injury cards do not let you skip the hospital but you do get your health back and you do avoid losing stuff.
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« Reply #25 on: July 09, 2013, 06:55:35 AM »

Thank you for the information about the expansions!  We ended up adding both Innsmouth and Dunwich to the set, though so far we have only played with the Dunwich board added (and Innsmouth monsters, items).  I quite like the injury and madness cards for when an investigator ends up on the wrong side of a shoggoth.  We lost our 1st two games playing with the Dunwich board, but since then have managed to win twice. 

Oh, and we also had our 1st "devoured" result.  My poor rookie patrolman was devoured in R'lyeh, forcing me to draw a new investigator.  I have noticed that I usually end up with injury and madness cards, probably due to a tendency to be a bit risky.  However, the goal has to be to close those gates!  Remember, the enemy's gate is down (and the Outer Gods help you if it leads to R'lyeh)!

What investigators you play and the Great Old One you are up against can make a huge difference in a game.  The violinist is crazy good - my wife loves playing her.  The farmhand, once he has a decent weapon, is a fantastic monster killer.  The researcher is great.  Other very good investigators are the rookie patrolman, the grave digger, the scientist, and the gangster (the gangster especially against when playing against Ithaqua).

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Andrew Borntreger
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Zapranoth
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« Reply #26 on: July 09, 2013, 08:08:34 PM »

We typically play with one to two expansions -- often just one board.  Two boards can be a lot of ground to cover.
We tend to use all allies and items from all expansions, but I'm going to throttle the ally deck back to just base game + expansion for next I think.

King in Yellow really suffers if you have too many added mythos cards, so I'd keep that to just one of 1-2 expansions in play if you get and use it.

For investigators, my wife and I each play two (our kids are not old enough to play yet).  I typically deal eight investigators to each of us at random and we choose two each.  We choose the ancient one rather than drawing randomly, since choice of ancient one can greatly change the game length.

And by the way, Andrew, if you want to have a challenging game, play against this guy.  He is absolutely, totally horrid.

http://www.arkhamhorrorwiki.com/Quachil_Uttaus
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« Reply #27 on: July 10, 2013, 08:56:51 AM »

We typically play with one to two expansions -- often just one board.  Two boards can be a lot of ground to cover.
We tend to use all allies and items from all expansions, but I'm going to throttle the ally deck back to just base game + expansion for next I think.

King in Yellow really suffers if you have too many added mythos cards, so I'd keep that to just one of 1-2 expansions in play if you get and use it.

For investigators, my wife and I each play two (our kids are not old enough to play yet).  I typically deal eight investigators to each of us at random and we choose two each.  We choose the ancient one rather than drawing randomly, since choice of ancient one can greatly change the game length.

And by the way, Andrew, if you want to have a challenging game, play against this guy.  He is absolutely, totally horrid.

http://www.arkhamhorrorwiki.com/Quachil_Uttaus


That Great Old One looks absolutely horrible, even without going to the final battle.  The dust deck issue is either going to eat clue tokens or devour players.
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Andrew Borntreger
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« Reply #28 on: July 21, 2013, 10:19:58 PM »

We had a pretty good scrap with Tsathoggua today.  Four investigators, and we were never at any point particularly well moneyed nor armed.  No trancendently useful cards in terms of weapons/allies. 

He's a very tough AO to beat in final combat, so we focused completely on sealing gates, and did ultimately win by sealing.  Akachi the shaman was helpful for that.

We amassed 2 to 3 injury / madness cards apiece, though, for EACH investigator, which is a first for us.  We haven't been beaten down quite that badly before.   He's not the most fun AO, though, in that your strategy strips down to just sealing gates -- you really can't spend trophies in much of any way, which is disappointing.
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« Reply #29 on: July 22, 2013, 05:37:28 AM »

We had a pretty good scrap with Tsathoggua today.  Four investigators, and we were never at any point particularly well moneyed nor armed.  No trancendently useful cards in terms of weapons/allies. 

He's a very tough AO to beat in final combat, so we focused completely on sealing gates, and did ultimately win by sealing.  Akachi the shaman was helpful for that.

We amassed 2 to 3 injury / madness cards apiece, though, for EACH investigator, which is a first for us.  We haven't been beaten down quite that badly before.   He's not the most fun AO, though, in that your strategy strips down to just sealing gates -- you really can't spend trophies in much of any way, which is disappointing.

Weird coincidence:  we also played a game against Tsathoggua yesterday, and with four investigators.  We had a bit easier time of it than you did, mostly due to Andy and Garrett being monster destroying fiends.  They both ended up with stacks of monster trophies that looked like poker chip towers.  Garrett had one run against the "Terrible Experiment" mythos card that saw him wipe out five monsters in a row, finishing up with a Star Spawn. 

Part of the boys having such powerful weapons and items for taking on monsters was two of us looking for eldar signs at the curiousity shoppe for multiple turns, but not finding any.  We did find a horde of other useful items, so everybody was carrying at least one really good magic weapon and a host of support items.  We also solved another rumor that rewarded everyone with a unique item.  Meanwhile, Katie and myself each closed three gates (and I managed to take out a Hound, Hunting Horror, Chthonian, and a few lesser monsters thanks to a sword of glory that I drew with my starting items).

Nobody took any injury cards, though both Andy and Garrett were whittled down to one or two sanity and stamina each.  We won by sealing, which is our normal strategy.  Have to agree with you that Tsathoggua's special power takes some flavor out of the game.
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