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Feb 1st, 2017 at 22:32:22 - Arkham Horror (Other) |
Arkham Horror: 2 sessions, Friday Jan 27.
Arkham Horror is a multiplayer, cooperative card game for 1 to 4 players. The game is one campaign which covers three scenarios. Each scenario feeds into the next and provides a timeline over the course of an entire game. Each player chooses one of five investigators to play as. The investigators are trying to uncover the secrets of Arkham and defeat the eldritch horrors directly from H.P. Lovecraft's works.
-Players-
Each of the investigators has four stats: willpower, intellect, combat, and agility. They also belong to two of five classes, with one being a primary class. The classes are Guardian, Seeker, Survivor, Mystic, and Rogue.
Every class has a set of cards associated with them as well as a set of neutral cards. Each investigator can include cards from either class and the neutral set up to a maximum of 30 cards. There are two additional cards unique to each character included in the deck, for a maximum count of 32. These are a weakness card and one item card with unique effects.
Throughout the game players will need to make skill checks to accomplish things or avoid negative effects. Players may positively modify a skill before they draw a Chaos Token. Chaos Tokens are almost always negative, ranging from +1 to -4 in uneven amounts. This spread only accounts for normal mode, harder difficulties remove any chance for a positive draw. If a player matches or exceeds the required skill check number, they pass the check.
On their turn, a player may perform any 3 of the following actions: move, attack, engage, evade, draw a card or gain a resource, investigate, or play a card. Playing a card takes a certain number of resources depending on the card.
-Rooms-
Rooms are the different areas the players may move to during their turn. Each room is connected to another, and may be connected to multiple rooms.
Each room has two values, a Shroud value and a Clue value. To gather a clue, the investigator in the room checks their intellect against the shroud.
Some rooms may have negative or positive effects on those who enter.
-Enemies and Encounters-
At the beginning of the second turn and every turn after, each player draws an Encounter card. The Encounter could be a monster or negative effect.
Monsters spawn on the investigator who drew it unless otherwise specified. Each monster has health, combat, agility, physical damage, and mental damage attributes. In order to attack a monster, the investigator must pass a combat check against the monster's combat value. Unless otherwise modified, an investigator's attack will deal 1 damage.
-Objective-
The objective of each scenario is to complete the investigators' Acts before the mysterious eldritch Agenda is completed.
Investigators can advance the Act by completing certain objectives in the game, like gathering a certain number of clues.
The Agenda is advanced when the Doom Counter reaches its specific number. At the beginning of every turn after the first, one doom is added to the Doom counter. When the Agenda advances, bad things happen and the investigators are closer to losing the scenario.
Win or lose, the investigators advance to the next scenario and carry the ending of the previous scenario with them to the next.
-Game Play-
The first session I played, I played with one other person. I was Roland Banks, a Guardian Seeker who excelled at killing monsters. My accomplice was Wendy Adams, a Survivor Rogue who preferred to dodge monsters instead of fighting them. She also seemed to attract clues like a magnet. Neither of us had played before, so throughout the session both of us were checking the rule book multiple times per turn.
We began our adventure in the Study of a Haunted house. The door itself disappeared and we had to find our way out. After gathering enough clues, we found our way out to the rest of the house, which had been transformed and infested by ghouls. We began our search of the house to find more clues in the basement. While we were searching the basement, we spawned an elite ghoul. This ghoul was hard to hit and dealt a significant amount of damage, we managed to defeat it after several turns of punching it. We managed to escape and dodge a weaker ghoul after gathering all the clues in the basement. Now we managed to make our way to the attic a little battered. Of course, as is the nature of the game, if it can make life harder for you, it will. We managed to draw the only other elite ghoul in the encounter deck to help us enjoy our stay in the attic. After defeating the ghoul and grabbing all the clues we made our way to the parlor to release the spell that was barring our way.
Promptly after opening the barrier, we advanced the Agenda by drawing two Doom cards, which put the Agenda to its third and final stage. It was now a race against time to finish our last Act. After the barrier dropped, the Ghoul Priest, this scenario's boss enemy, spawned on top of us. We also had the opportunity to recruit an ally which would help us deal more damage on a successful attack.
We had three ghouls on our location. Luckily Wendy was exceptional at dodging the ghouls. I made my way to the parlor to recruit the special ally and Wendy dodged all ghouls and made her way into the parlor with me. I then lobbed a stick of dynamite into the hallway and killed two of the three ghouls. I equipped my revolver and began to shoot the Ghoul priest.
Unfortunately, we were not able to kill the priest before the Agenda advanced to its completion. The scenario ended with us running out of the house in fear.
-Second Session-
For my second session I replayed the first scenario with the same person as well as one additional person. I was Roland Banks, and we also had Wendy Adams and "Skids" O' Toole, a Guardian Rogue. The game progressed much more smoothly now that two of the three of us had a little experience with the game.
We managed to not draw the elite ghouls the entire time, but we did draw many more monster cards than the previous session. After gathering the clues from the basement and attic and mentally preparing for the boss fight, we made our way to the hallway to advance the Act and spawn the boss. While the boss now had 15 health instead of ten, due to the extra player, we also had a much easier time fighting it this time around. We successfully defeated the priest and escaped the house.
RNG is a good part of deciding whether or not you have an easy or difficult time progressing through the scenario. For the most part, the game is designed so that the investigators would not have too big of an advantage, should they ever have one at all.
-Overall-
Arkham Horror is a very fun card game that unfortunately requires a significant time sink to simply understanding the rules and interactions. Each scenario takes about 3 hours to complete. Everyone had a blast playing this game.
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Feb 1st, 2017 at 22:22:07 - Arkham Horror (Arcade) |
This entry has been edited 2 times. It was last edited on Feb 1st, 2017 at 22:33:31.
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