System analysis of Arkham Horror

Week 3, and our second game to analyse, Arkham Horror. I was sceptic that I would like the game, as the only time I have heard “Arkham” have been in the Batman series, which I am not too fond of. I was gladly surprised to see they got no connection what-so-ever, and I actually enjoyed this game quite a lot (though the games could drag on for a very long time).

The game is a co-op turn-based PvE. I will go through the objects first and later their relation.

The game board consist of streets and locations as well as rifts, the streets are connected to other streets as well as locations, and you can reach the rifts by going to a location that has a rift marker on it. It also has terror level down in the corner.

There are several decks divided by colours that are called encounter cards, when you stop your movement on a location on the board or in a rift, you draw a card from the corresponding deck. There are 5 different inventory (sort of) cards, Spells, Common items, Unique items, Skills and Allies. The first 4 of them can be acquired by buying them, Allies are acquired from encounters.

Mythos cards are drawn each turn, and spawn a rift/gate most of the times, if it tries to spawn a gate on a place where there already are a rift, a monster surge happens instead, where there spawns a monster on each open rift.

The character cards are the players avatar, it has speed/sneak, will/fight, lore/luck sliders on it, increasing 1 lore will decrease 1 luck, you may move the sliders each turn, by the amount of focus the character has. It also have stamina and sanity (high sanity is good for closing gates and for spell casters, while high stamina is good for monster hunting).

Clue token, randomly appear on the board and can be picked up by the players. Five of them are needed to seal a rift, a rift can always be closed.

Seals, put on sealed rifts, rifts can not be opened there anymore.

The bank (basically just a pile) have money markers, stamina markers, clue tokens and sanity markers.

The last object is the mythos creature you are trying to prevent from spawning, it has a doom counter, once it reach max, you fight him (never happened to us). Each Mythos creature have different passive abilities as well as active abilities. Cthulu, for example reduce all players max sanity and stamina by 1.

The phases could also be considered an object, but they are more a dynamic, each turn, you start by drawing a mythos card to see what happens, after that is the upkeep phase, where all players move their skill sliders and/or use items/spells that can be used on any phase or the upkeep phase. Then is the movement phase, where you can move around the board, sneak past enemies and the like. Finally is the encounter phase where you draw an encounter card, if applicable.

There are 3 ways to win the game, sealing all the rifts, closing X amount of rifts, or beat the mythos creature.

The properties are the following:

Game board: locations and terror level. The locations have colours and names.

Player: Character card, which in turn have: money, clue tokens, items, skills and allies. Each character card also have Stamina, Sanity, speed/sneak, will/fight, lore/luck, focus and a unique ability.

Monster: have a horror check (ranging from -3 to +3) and sanity damage, health, combat check (same as horror check) and damage as well as a sneak modifier (same as the other two)

Item: descriptions, cost and type (common, magical, unique, spell).

Mythos creature: special rules and doom level, it never actually appeared so I do not know how to to fight it or what it have for stats when you do.

Encounter cards: colour and special events (or sometimes nothing happen)

The relationships are the following:

Mythos phase is related to the rifts on the board, as well as the monsters. The more monsters on the board, the more the terror level rises, making the game and some monsters harder.

Upkeep phase is related to the player’s character and their skills.

Movement phase is related to the board directly, and indirectly with the encounter phase. It is also in this phase you fight monster if you run into them and can not sneak past them.

Encounter phase is related to the encounter cards and rifts, nothing happens if you stand on a street, unless the Mythos phase says otherwise.

The encounters are related to your characters skill sliders, which is related to how many dices you get to throw to make a skill check, the more you get to throw, the better.

The mythos creature is related to the game board or the characters most of the time, but sometimes only to his/her own encounter, depends on the creature.

The player is related to their character which is related to the board, they also have an inventory, which makes them related to the inventory cards. The inventory in turn have different relationships depending on the cards, some give a bonus to skill checks, some give bonus utility (ability to jump out of any rift, even if the original one is gone), while some give you the ability to move further in the movement phase or can be used in any phase to affect the board or enemies in some way.

From those points, I can with little doubt say that the core system is the phase system, as it connects all the other systems. However, if it was not for the other systems, the phase system would fall apart, remove any of the other systems, and the game would be very lacklustre.

The mythos system changes the dynamic each turn, and provides with special events.

The upkeep system allows for changing the outcome for the upcoming phases on this turn by giving an advantage or disadvantage on some skill checks, for example, you used your 2 focus to decrease luck and increase lore, turns out you needed luck this encounter phase, you are at a disadvantage.

The movement system is related to the board and monsters, which in turn is related to the combat system.

The combat system is fairly simple, the player’s will against the enemy’s horror, the player’s sneak against their perception, the players fight against their fight, the player have to throw X amount of dices and score Y amount of 5 or 6 to defeat the opponent, where X is your fight – their modifier for fight, and Y is their health.

The skill check system is very simple, your skill + any modifiers – encounter modifiers, and you need at least one of the dices to be a 5 or 6.

The encounter system is related to the players positions on the board, to determine which cards should be picked, these cards usually contains a skill check, but not always. If you succeed a skill check, you are often rewarded (if you are given an option to roll for a certain skill) or saved (if you are forced to do a skill roll), or both.

One thing that works on most of these systems, are the clue tokens, they allow to re-roll a dice for skill checks, re-roll for damage on enemies and seal gates.

Well, I have 350 words left to meet the minimum, so guess I will go through a common turn.

The turn start with the mythos phase, where you draw a mythos card, sometimes it gives special events on the board, like giving the ability to get clue token, at the chance of being devoured (your character dies), other times it gives certain conditions, like increasing sneak or decreasing movement, other times enemies swoop down on players in the streets. Most of the times a rift spawn, or it starts a monster surge, spawning new monsters in the already open gates (if a rift is trying to open where there already are a rift), when a rift spawns, it always spawn one monster to defend it. enemies with a certain symbol will mov in a specific pattern.

Once mythos phase is done, the upkeep phase begins, here the players choose if they want to change their skill sliders, use items that are allowed to be used in this phase, if you don’t plan on moving from a place in a while, you might just as well decrease your speed and increase sneak, never know when it might come in handy.

Once the upkeep phase is done, the movement phase begins, in this phase, the player may move a distance equal to their speed (unless the have the deputy car which can travel to and from any place) + modifiers (like the motorcycle). If the player moves to a rift, they will enter it and be moved to the dimension it is connected to. If the player move to a location where there are enemies, they either have to make a sneak check to move past them, or fight them and end their movement (also applies if the monsters moves to the player in the mythos phase)

Once the movement phase is done, the encounter phase begin, each player that ended their movement on a location (or encounter square?) draw an encounter card during this phase, players in a rift draw a rift encounter. The encounter cards usually have a skill check, but not always, sometimes they are just events or choices (which may require a skill check). Most of the time when you don’t get an option to do a skill check, the bad result is losing health, clue tokens, sanity, all of the above or sometime be put in jail/lost in time and space. I think it is in this phase you seal or close a gate too, but I do not know if I caught on correctly on that.