I'm wondering if anyone can offer any advise.

My friends enjoy board games including Arkham Horror. One of the main reasons we don't play Arkham Horror as often as we'd like is because of the the length of game. When deciding what to play, it'll often lose out to something that takes up to a couple of hours to play.

Obviously I have played Arkham Horror a few times, but I don't feel I've exausted the game play which is why I haven't bought the expansions.

Now to the point of this post! Does anyone have a suggestions of how to make for a shorter game? I don't know if anything in any of the expansions would help with that. Obviously we still want a challenge from the game.

Any thoughts greatly appreciated.

flossy,

First, Welcome to the Carnival!

Arkham Horror delivers one of the best immersive experiences in a game, which any attempts to shorten will significantly and negatively impact that experience. While games are generally more fun with your mates, have you played Arkham as a solo experience with several Investigators ? There's much to do in the game, and your friends may simply not have the stamina (no pun intended) for this type of game. I work a lot with contracts and the truism is, the product can be good, cheap, or fast...pick any two. I would say with board games, you can either have short and fun or immersive (longer) and fun, but I've found no short and immersive game on the market.

Cheers,

Joe

Well... the only real suggestion I can give you is: play more. Play often, play hard, play until you master the game. My longest plays last 90 minutes (not counting setup / teardown), so that actually playing two in a row in the same evening should be possible.

Then: one of the main problems with the core set is that it bloats incredibly the game: too many gate openings bouncing on seals. Hence: get Dunwich. I know it's now what you asked for. But it's a good fix. First of all, you gain Madnesses and Injuries so that you don't have to lose clues when becoming unconsciout / driven insane. Then you have more unstable locations, so that the rythm of the game is faster paced.

Finally: how many people are in your group? The ideal size for Arkham is a max of three human beings (regardless of the number of investigators) OR an exceptionally strong playing group that understand there's a common well-being and not individual voices to be listened to in the choir.

Julia's certainly right about mastering the game to make it smoother. She's right about everything actually, but I'm going to pretend I'm offering new advice by saying that expansions can make the game shorter because it's harder.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AliZyklaTCWzcGFQTWdvZW5jc1JwcHEzUEVZV1htUVE&hl=en#gid=57

I'm not sure why Black Goat is at the bottom of the list, but King in Yellow is down there probably because the Three Acts mechanic causes an instant game-over. Innsmouth Horror shortens the game probably because it's so **** hard all round.

Thanks for the replies. It is as our group suspected. A little bit of a catch 22, game takes a long time to play as not as familiar with the rules as could be, don't practice because of the time it takes. Shall consider the impact getting Dunwich would have. I need to go though the rules a bit to think about it's impact.

Generally our group role plays, it's when we don't have quorum that we play board/card/dice games so that makes it between three and five people.

Yes, I can see what you mean. 3-5 can be a ot for Arkham, plus, if you don't play consistently, you'll have to check often rules, FAQs and stuff. It'd be a pity quitting, since the game is really a good game. I wish you to find a good solution, and for anything you may need, just ask, there's always someone here ready to help

Oh I shall still play. Just trying to work out how to play more often :-)

After reading your mail and some of he feedback, my initial response was going to be, 'play with yourself', but this would be taken way out of context on this forum, so, I suggest more solo games with yourself. Strengthen your knowledge of the rules and game play. By having at least one good/knowledgable person playing regarding rules, the game speeds up quickly.

We have a group of four to five AH players, I am the only regular, and have taken it upon myself to know the rules to the best of my ability. Don't get me wrong, I still get them wrong from time to time, but I have noticed the game is a lot faster as we do not have to keep looking up rules, and flows nicely......

My suggestion would be to do everything to quicken setup. If you are debating what to play, I'm guessing you also prepare the game together. Arkham Horror can take a pretty long time to get ready. I usually make sure all decks are shuffled ahead of time and store them in lidded boxes that go on the table next to the board. This means it's just a matter of putting all the boxes around the board and removing the lids, et voila! Well, not quite since there are a billion other things to put in the right place, but it certainly cut half an hour off setup.

Other than that, I guess I have less advice and more bafflement. I mean, what's the rush? A lot of great games take 4+ hours to finish and it would be a shame if your friends would consistently deny themselves the chance to play them. However, there is always a distinct possibility that any game can fail to be much fun, so it tends to help if you make everyone real comfortable. Hook your friends on Game Night and perhaps they won't mind how time flies quite so much. You know what works best with your friends. Over here, we tend to have large dinners together with plenty of wine to get everyone in the right spirit. By now, after having treated my friends like this for years, I'd be able to suggest Monopoly and they'd come. Friends can be so malleable! Mwahaha!! Ahem.

Practice and preset up are sounding all important.

I was going to put a link in here but FFG use the worst forum software know to man or Cthulhu, so you'll have to go google and type "Juk Shabb" and "Arkham Horror"

Oh, I shall read that, it looks interesting!

Also just as a tiny tip, playing against Yig makes for a shorter game.