So the seventh Arkham Horror expansion was released recently; the fourth of the "small box" expansions. Having played with it a few times now, I believe it is the best of the small boxes, but I have to admit that's not necessarily saying much... Much as I love Arkham Horror and the system as a whole, I've never been a huge fan of the small box expansions. Sure, if you're a completist or AH addict you're gonna get 'em, anyway, and it's always nice to have some new items and Mythos cards and location cards to add to the pile, but I've usually been a little disappointed with the specific original content added with each small box expansion. And it's not a matter of being disappointed with the content itself... some of it is very clever and interesting... but more about the lack of involvement most of that new stuff will end up having in your typical games. I mean, when was the last time you had a Cult Encounter, or drew an Exhibit item, or were Barred from a neighborhood, or received a Blight? Sure, one of those things will pop up every once in a while, but unless you specifically feature a particular small box expansion in a game, you're not likely to come across those things very often. Heck, even when you do feature a small box expansion you may not happen to encounter any of those things. When you throw down $25 for an expansion, you kind of expect to see it come into play with at least some measure of importance. In that sense, Lurker at the Threshold seems to be more worthwhile than the others in that it includes a few things that are guaranteed to show up in your games. The value those things will add to your games may not necessarily be that high, but at least you'll get to experience them.
Here's what's new in the Lurker expansion...
THE NEW GATES
Lurker includes all new gate markers which are meant to replace your old gate markers. 558
Each gate has something unique about it; some have penalties of lost Sanity or monsters appearing if you fail to close the gate, some will devour investigators at the locations where they open or cause a doom token to be added if an investigator is at the location where they open, some are moving gates which are a pain because they can only be sealed on unstable locations (which they will no longer be on once they move), and some are split gates from which you can choose one of two Other Worlds to enter.
Now, I'm not sure there is any real benefit to choosing one Other World over another unless there's a preponderance of monsters on the board from one of the locations, and it's pretty rare that you'll fail to close a gate (hopefully), and it's a matter of random bad luck for a devouring gate to open on a location where you are, so those things don't really come into play all that often. In that sense I guess it's the small box syndrome yet again. But at least the danger is there... Whether the gates will have any active effect in a game is questionable, but at least you will see them and be wary of the effects they might cause, and you will always at least wonder if one of the nasty ones will open up and devour you while you're leisurely catching up with the Grand Poobah at the Silver Twilight Lodge.
RELATIONSHIP CARDS
This is my favorite new element for the game, though again, the actual impact is fairly minimal. Relationship cards are dealt out to each player during setup, and take effect for each player and the player to their left. So each player will end up with two "partnerships", through which the Relationship cards may be used. And there are some nice benefits to these and they add a little more interaction into the game, as the two players often have to decide which of them can make best use of that extra movement point on their turn, or whatever the bonus is. Continuing with the Personal Stories from Innsmouth Horror, the Relationships add a little more of an RPG feel to the game, though I would have liked to see things that are a little more positive/negative in nature... ya know, like actual relationships. (An example of a variant card I created in that vein is below.)
A nice rule that goes along with these cards is that when a player is devoured, both of their partnerships are dissolved, and new Relationship cards are not drawn with their replacement character. That gives more of a real penalty to a player being devoured, other than just the pain in the butt of having to discard everything and redraw all of your new character's items. A drawback of the Relationship cards is that they add yet another thing that you have to keep track of and remember that you have... In my games, more than one turn has gone by with players realizing long afterwards that they forgot to make use of their Relationship ability when they might have. 558