Arkham Horror is a cooperative card game set in the world of the <PERSON> mythos in which each player (1-2 with one core set, 2-4 with two core sets) plays as a single Investigator (from the 5 available in the core set) against a scenario where their enemies are controlled by the game itself. And while standalone scenarios can be played, the beauty of the game is that it provides a series of linked scenarios that create a complete narrative campaign.
The whole concept is really quite different than any other card game I've ever played. As in a role playing game, each player plays just one investigator . Each scenario is its own story, but all of them fit together into a larger narrative in a developing campaign. And each scenario has multiple endings which make every choice important to the overall campaign and makes the game highly replayable.
The deck you build at the start of a campaign continues to be used for the entire campaign. Between scenarios your Investigator spends experience points, gained during play based on events during the game, which can be used to upgrade cards in your deck or swap out old cards for new within character defined limitations. This gives AHLCG the feeling of almost a true RPG, where your character stays much the same through slowly developing and creating a unique experience.
This is one of the most interesting and engaging games I’ve ever played!
Investigators and Deck Building
Once you select your Investigator, you build a 30 card deck that includes a unique helpful card and a unique weakness, a random weakness, and a mixture of cards from two specific classes out of the five class decks.
For example, <PERSON>, the Librarian, starts with her Tote Bag, the Necronomicon, 1 random weakness, Seeker class cards levels 0-5, Mystic cards levels 0-2, and Neutral cards level 0-5.
The core set comes with starter deck lists for all 5 Investigators to help you get right into the game, so you don’t have to make any deck building decisions for your first game (or any games if you don’t want!)
With only a single copy of the 10 different level 0 cards for each class (and 4 higher level cards which require experience to add) and 10 different neutral cards (with multiple copies of each), deck building is very limited with just one core set. Two core copies allows you the maximum of 2 copies of any given player card, and allows the game to be played with 3-4 players. But even with two sets the available choices are very narrow given the small card base and class limitations. No doubt future expansions will expand the potential starting card base for deck building.
The Scenarios
The Learn to Play book guides you immediately into building the listed Investigator decks and setting up the first scenario (The Gathering). 728
The Campaign Guide (Night of the Zealot), provides the story narrative and campaign setup information.
Your enemy consists of a Encounter deck, made up of specific, thematic encounter sets for each scenario (much like LotR LCG) and an Agenda deck. The Agenda deck represents what the enemy is trying to achieve and advances most turns as time steadily runs out, though various other effects might speed or delay its progress.
The Act deck represents what you, the Investigators, are trying to achieve and requires clues or other actions to advance. If the Investigators can complete their Acts before the Agenda completes, the outcome is usually much better for the Investigators!
Locations are really unique in AH:LCG. When these cards are put into play they form almost a game board of linked locations between which Investigators and enemies move. Each location may provide clues with varying difficulty to gain as well as unique effects building a thematic experience. The location cards can vary from rooms in a single house to many locations around a city!
The difficulty level can be adjusted by the token mix in the "Chaos Bag". To resolve tests, a token is drawn from the chaos bag, so the mix used can increase or decrease your chance of success. Also, each Scenario has a reference card that defines the meaning of particular chaos bag tokens differently depending on the difficulty level chosen.
Once you've built your Investigator decks and setup the scenario (Encounter cards, chaos bag, Agenda and Act decks built) and at least one Location is in play, you’re ready to draw starting hands, take 5 resources, and place investigators’ mini-cards (which track where investigators are located and whether or not they have acted yet this turn) on a location.
You start by reading the narrative, which is critical since it gives clues as to what you're trying to achieve and what you're facing. Then you read the Agenda card to see what the enemy are going to do to you if they gain enough Doom tokens to trigger it. Then read the Act card to see what you're trying to achieve and how many Clues it's going to take to advance. 728