An Analysis of Arkham Horror

Me and my group have been playing the board game Arkham Horror this week, and this is my analysis of the game.

Arkham Horror is a co-op ameritrash board game for 1-8 players based on the Cthulhu mythos. Each player plays an investigator and will be walking around Arkham and other worlds searching for clues. The objective of the game is to defeat the Ancient One, or Great Old One, and this can be done in mainly three ways: ‘killing’ it in combat, sealing gates or closing all open gates.

It’s not supposed to be easy though as the Ancient One will fight back. Each Ancient One have their own unique passive and worshippers that makes the game harder for the investigators. Not only that, every turn a gates to other world opens throughout Arkham releasing monsters the investigators have to fight in order to walk arounf the streets. If the Ancient One awakens and the investigators are all devoured, they have lost the game.

Each player will be playing one investigator and if that investigator is devoured before the Ancient One has awakened, you may choose a new investigator to play as. Each investigator have a pool of Sanity and Stamina, if his sanity is reduced to 0 he is driven insane and is taken to the Arkham Asylum where he can regain his sanity. It’s the same thing with Stamina, he gets knocked unconscious and is taken to St. Mary’s Hospital where he can regain stamina.

Each investigator also have attributes: speed, sneak, fight, will, lore and luck. These are very important to keep track of and are essential for the planning part of the game. Each investigator have a max and min in each stat and you can adjust them each turn depending on what he is going to do, but you need to think carefully for increasing one skill will decrease another. They come in pair, skills: speed and sneak, fight and will, lore and luck. If you increase his speed you also decrease his sneak and so on.

Investigators also have their own uniqe abilities that make them feel even more different from all the other investigators.

And lastly all investigators start with some of these things: money, clues, common items, unique items, spells, skills, allies and a few other things.

All Ancient Ones have a doom track with room for 10-14 doom tokens, depending on the Ancient One, and it is basically the timer of the game. The doom track starts empty and each time a gate opens in Arkham, a doom token is added to the doom track. Once the track is filled, the Ancient One awakens and the investigators must immediatly fight it.

The Ancient One also have worshippers, making some monsters stronger or adding stronger monsters to the game.

It also has a power that makes it harder for the investigators to win the game.

And lastly, if it awakens, it has a combat rating and an attack.

The game board mainly represent Arkham with all it’s important locations and streets. On the side of the board are the other worlds.

Each time a new gate opens, or a monster surge occurs, monsters are drawn from the cup and placed in Arkham where the investigators then have to defeat them. If there are more monsters in Arkham than a certain number, depending on how many players there are, the terror level increases. If the terror level hits 10 there is no longer a monster limit in Arkham and the board can be overrun and the Ancient One awakens.

When a gate opens it’s placed on a specified location in Arkham, if an investigator enters that location he is sucked into the gate and places his marker in the specified other world on the side of the board. He then spends two, can me more or less depending on what happens, turns in there before he returns to Arkham through the gate he entered. When he has returned he may close the gate, if he succeeds he may spend 5 clue tokens to seal it as well. The good thing with seals is that gates cannot open on them.

These are the game playing against the players. The start of every turn begin with the Mythos phase. A mythos card is drawn and a gate opens at the specified location and a monster is placed on the gate. If there already is a gate on the specified location, then it’s a monster surge instead and a monster is placed on each open gate.

Then it’s the monster movement. Each monster have a symbol and if that symbol is shown on the mythos card the monster moves.

After that, the event of the card is read out loud. These events can be both harmful or helpfum (more often harmful) and they can also stay in play for several turn.

Mythos cards are the core mechanic since they are the one that opens the gates, hence adding doom tokens to the doom track hence making the time tick forcing the players to act fast. They also make sure that the monsters do just stand there but move around in a unforeseeable pattern making it harder to plan for the future.

Here’s the most interesting system; The phases of the game.

At the start of each turn is the Mythos phase and the players can’t do much if anything at all in that phase. After that is the Upkeep phase, what I call the planning phase. Here the players may adjust the skill sliders, untap exhausted items and use upkeep or any phase actions. Untapping exhausted items and using upkeep actions is trivial, but the real interesting part is the adjustment of the skill sliders.

Every turn is new and there is something different in Arkham, more often than not you’ll have to adjust the skills in order to have a successful turn. You’ll have to disscuss with your team mates what you want to do, what they want to do, what needs to be done, which monsters needs to be killed, which gate needs to be closed and so on. When you all have a plan you need to see which skills are needed for the action you are going to take later, you cannot change the skill sliders after the upkeep phase.

This is pretty simple, the players move. If they encounter a monster they have to fight it.

Depending on where the player stands, different things happen.

Generally nothing happens on streets.

If the player is standing on a location he may then either draw a location card or use the locations special encounter (if the location doesn’t have a special encounter the player must draw a location card). On the location card several thing can happen: gates can open, monsters can attack the investigator, the investigator can gain or lose items, money, sanity, stamina and other stuff.

If the player is standing in another world he has an encounter there drawing a card from the other world deck. These can be both harmful and helpful, but like always they are more often harmful.

After the encounter phase is over a new turn begin with the Mythos phase.

Enough with explaining the game, now;

One of the great thing about Arkham Horror is that it’s a team based game where everyone work for the same main goal, which allows for a lot of communication and team strategy. At the start of the game each player gets a few random items, and even if you are unlucky and do not get what you want you can always exchange items with your friends.

Another great thing is there is little down time. Everyone are often active all the time and thanks to the flavor on all the cards players feel engaged from beginning to end.

The way the game fight the players is also great. It constantly pops up more stuff to take care of and if the players doesn’t handle it in time it can get out of control telling the player: “You need to deal with this”. It is also semi random, there are locations that gates open more often in and when you have played a while you know of these locations without counting the cards. Also the monsters move from time to time which makes it hard to plan to far ahead because you do not know where the monsters will be.

Arkham Horror, with out any expansions and following the rules, is way too easy. It’s more like Arkham Faceroll which is not as cool of a name and it is very sad to be honest. You can make it harder for yourself, choosing harder Ancient Ones and investigators, but it’s still easy with 4 or more players.

There are a few not so bad things, like; it takes a long time to set up and play, and it take huge amount of space of the table. But who cares?

First of all; anyone who knows of Cthulhu mythos. There is so much flavor in Arkham Horror and so many references to the mythos so anyone who have read the works of H.P Lovecraft will instantly feel at home.

Secondly poeple who likes big and complicated board games so they can learn everything there is to know and build and test different strategies.

Lastly those who want to have game evenings with a few friends and just have a good time playing together.

Arkham Horror is an awesome game and just gets so much better with expansions. It is fun to play alone and even more fun with others and there’s enough depth to delve into for countless hours.

That was Arkham Horror, thanks for reading and stay awesome!

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