[Originally posted on www.therewillbe.games]
Arkham Horror the Card Game by Fantasy Flight Games is the best deck construction/deck building game I have played; no small feat because I find most of the biggest card games in the genre to be completely impenetrable and intimidating. It is also probably the most difficult game to get into that I have, nevertheless, grown to like, presenting a wholly deceptive façade as a light “experience” adventure game when it is actually an exceptionally hardcore product. Arkham Horror LCG a bit like a jewel locked behind multiple layers of elaborate security: security guards, electronic locks, heat sensors, the whole bit. If you can get through the tall walls standing in your way, it has an enormous amount to offer. But getting there is not easy and is, in practice, also staggeringly expensive.
By way of setup, Arkham Horror LCG is more of a game engine than a set game. Each scenario asks you to manipulate the basic engine in different ways, but boils down to characters traveling between locations, taking skill checks, fighting, and gathering clues. You handle these challenges using the combination of an investigator of your choice paired with a (usually) thirty card deck composed of the assets, tricks, and skills your investigator will bring to the table. Scenarios are ordered in campaigns, and as campaigns go on you will be adding new cards from whatever sideboard of cards you happen to have.
The Wall
Before I get to the aspects Arkham Horror LCG excels at, let me talk about the barriers to enjoyment it presents, because from my perspective they are varied and pretty brutal. The game expects you learn a game on the fly, losing feels like shit, the beginner product line is terrible, enjoyment requires huge buy-in, and prospective players should engage community tools to get the most out of the game. All of these criticisms come together into one baseline fact: it is extremely unfun to lose in Arkham Horror LCG with a badly tuned deck, especially on first play of a scenario. Everything else flows from this.
On a purely mechanical level, I found Arkham Horror LCG intimidating to play initially because of its structure. Scenarios are all different, and their rules are presented to you across a variety of different kinds of components that describe interlocking mechanisms---act, agenda, encounter, monster, and other special cards all come together to form a lattice that operates the mechanical gimmick of that scenario. But because of this, it is very hard to get a holistic picture of what is actually going to happen and how to execute those instructions on the fly while you play without breaking the rules (or the pace) horribly. My thesis about this game is that it can be a game about learning how to play a new game, which can make it choppy and bewildering on first play. After 40+ plays I still have scenarios that I get one rule on a single card wrong and it ruins the whole scenario. 728
This makes Arkham Horror LCG intimidating except for very experienced gamers.
In play, Arkham Horror LCG is a game of ruthless action efficiency. The sort of action efficiency one usually associates with a Knizia or a Pax series entry. Players need to handle the encounter card “bad” they receive every turn---could be an enemy to fight, something restricting your play options, a damaging skill test, or something worse---and also make progress against whatever the scenario goal is, all in the span of three actions. In practice, most of the opposition thrown at you serves to drown your action efficiency. Enemies tie you up in engagements, preventing you from making progress against the goal until they’re dealt with. Clue retrieval is an action sink. Scenario boss enemies often have many turns worth of health, to be confronted while challenges keep piling up from encounter cards. Most importantly, if you are behind the action curve in Arkham Horror LCG, even at its easiest setting, losing feels like having all of your options stolen from you and being slowly strangled while you fall farther and farther behind. In my view, this makes it a terrible adventure game. I am told people especially enjoy no-spoiler first plays of scenarios. I cannot imagine how or why, as coming to grips with challenges you cannot prepare for does not create exciting, dynamic, adventure gambits but rather stifling losses that could not be prepared for. Against the grain, I enjoy Arkham Horror almost exclusively on a mechanical level and consider it a strategy game first and foremost with little appreciation for its narrative or adventure qualities.
Dovetailing with losing sucking is that the core set of Arkham Horror LCG is bad. Getting to a fun product requires immense investment. I quarrel much less with the thin scenario offerings in the core (just three) than the investigator deck possibilities. The player decks provided are poor, unfocused, and they do not feel very empowering to play. 728