Got sold after 10 minutes when I played Arkham Horror for the first time a couple of days ago. I'm currently plotting my strategy on obtaining some expansions together with the game as fast as possible. I'm going to buy in bulk with some friends to save money.

Any suggestions about which expansions to get that doesn't crave all the attention when in use, like The King in Yellow does? I want to make one big game with as much variation as possible. I basically want to add expansions like in Munchkin.

So far it looks like I'll end up with all the big expansions. Does the game get drastically harder with the bigger board? And would it ruin the possibilities for variation in the number of players?

How much time any expansion will demand in the game is very much down to how much of it you wish to add. Even the King in Yellow can be added piecemeal if you feel it stands in the way of your enjoyment. That said, I fully understand why you would want to get as much out of your expansions as possible. But what would you prefer?

Personally, I always liked the Black Goat of the Woods, and that is certainly an expansion that gets a bit swamped by the others as you add more. Among the bigger boxes, I think Dunwich is the most popular. It is certainly the one best balanced with the main board.

The game can get drastically harder with a bigger board. Partly, this has to do with having nearly twice as many unstable locations to deal with and the added unpredictability. Partly, you will find that of all the new monsters you get with the expansions, very few are easy.

The amount of players isn't necessarily affected. The number of investigators might be. You'll have an awful time trying to tackle all four boards with one lonely investigator. On the other hand, you could always play a full team yourself and with all of the boards out, the game suddenly supports ten players (but don't play with ten players unless everyone is already very familiar with the game because that way lies madness). So versatility only increases with more expansions!

Looks like I'll start with Dunwich. Turns out that's the only expansion available at the cheapest store. Seems like a safe bet anyways. Question is, which expansion should be next?

Get the big boxes in order. The difficulty increases step by step, and the variety with them. Then add Miskatonic Horror as last expansion: it counters the dilution of the Mythos deck and definitely makes the game harder. A lot harder.

In any case, be ready, the game has quite a steep learning curve, and adding everything since the beginning could be quite complex, in terms of elaborating a proper strategy to victory and of keeping track of all the components. Not to discourage you, just to warn you, a complete Arkham experience is rather huge

As one who now, after six years, plays only "all-in" games, I strongly echo Julia's words. Take the time to really understand the base game before attempting to pursue any of the expansions. I understand the attraction, but enjoy each of the expansions in due course.

Cheers,

Joe

I don't really have a problem understanding the base game. It just sat right with me.

Keeping track is a challenge though.

There is a obvious delay in obtaining the expansions due to the price though. I admit I was a bit exited until I was shopping at the online store. I've set the course for the order of the expansions as follows: Staring with the base game and Dunwich, then Innsmouth to get the personal stories, Kingsport (the least important one as far as I can tell), and finally Miskatonic.

In between I'll play the base game due to friends having it without getting any expansions as fast as me as they want more of other board games as well.

I expect the game increases in playtime when adding more expansions. Is it still bearable with the board doubled in size? And is it easy to filter out cards belonging to a board if I were to remove a board or two?

I don't really have a problem understanding the base game. It just sat right with me.

Keeping track is a challenge though.

There is a obvious delay in obtaining the expansions due to the price though. I admit I was a bit exited until I was shopping at the online store. I've set the course for the order of the expansions as follows: Staring with the base game and Dunwich, then Innsmouth to get the personal stories, Kingsport (the least important one as far as I can tell), and finally Miskatonic.

In between I'll play the base game due to friends having it without getting any expansions as fast as me as they want more of other board games as well.

I expect the game increases in playtime when adding more expansions. Is it still bearable with the board doubled in size? And is it easy to filter out cards belonging to a board if I were to remove a board or two?

Dunwich is a good first choice because it adds a lot. New locations and encounters, new investigators, new Ancient Ones. And the injury and madness cards are FANTASTIC. No more having to run to the hospital and asylum to get healing every time.

Expansion boards do add a little extra to play time, but not a lot. There will be some extra time needed to work on strategy, and each expansion requires a couple of extra things to keep track of on each turn. I'd grab one of the many Turn Summary/Turn Flowchart aids and use that at first, so that you don't miss anything. After a while, you can do it from memory.

Filtering out cards: Really, the only cards you need to filter out are the mythos cards and gates. The items, spells, monsters, locations, and skills can be mixed in and left in, if you prefer.

And when you do want to filter the Mythos and OW cards, you can either just check the expansion symbols and discard until you get the ones you're playing, or a nifty little trick someone linked to the forums a few days ago:

Instead of shuffling all the cards from all expansions together, keep each expansion's Mythos and OW cards separate. Shuffle the cards from each expansion separately. Whenever you are instructed to draw a Mythos or OW card, begin by rolling a D100 and consult a chart of probabilities to find out which expansion you should draw from.

"What chart?" I hear you wondering. The one you find at 7:28 . You could watch the entire video of course, but he takes an agonizing seven and a half minutes to get to the point.

Yeah, I've seen the video on the separation method, but it seems too artificial to me. Having the cards out on the table displays the artwork and makes the game feel more alive.

I'm a bit unsure about the kingsport expansion though. Are there more than 3 expansions adding a board?

The dice method is a decent approximation but it doesn't account for the fact that the probabilities change as you draw cards. For example, using the actual cards, if you are playing base + Dunwich, then drawing several Dunwich cards in a row decreases the probability of drawing another Dunwich card slightly (because there are now fewer Dunwich cards left in the deck).

Still though, not having to separate out your mythos cards is definitely a plus. Over the course of many games though, this does average out so it's not a huge deal. I prefer to separate mine.

Only Dunwich, Innsmouth, and Kingsport (the first three big box expansions) have a side (expansion) board. The four small box expansions (Curse of the Dark Pharoah, King in Yellow, Black Goat of the Woods, and Lurker at the Threshold) and the final big box expansion (Miskatonic Horror) do not come with boards.

The dice method is a decent approximation but it doesn't account for the fact that the probabilities change as you draw cards. For example, using the actual cards, if you are playing base + Dunwich, then drawing several Dunwich cards in a row decreases the probability of drawing another Dunwich card slightly (because there are now fewer Dunwich cards left in the deck).

You can easily proxy this with a mod. Set two columns, the first one with the max number of cards in the deck, the second one with the cards remaining in the deck, update the counter every time a card from that expansion is drawn, and then use a random function to determine the deck based on the modified odd. It's three minutes to program it and it works smoothly (but agreed, a laptop or a tablet while playing Arkham are mood-killers. Just sayin' it's possible to actually have accurate odds without becoming crazy)

I have actually found that adding boards decreases playtime as you draw fewer mythos cards where nothing happens (more unstable locations.)