Hi:

I am a Lovecraft and board game fan, first off.

However, I originally liked Arkham and had a great time the first time I played, however I no longer enjoy it after 4-5 plays and find it a waste of time, BUT I want to understand why I should enjoy it. I'll post the reasons I don't like it so that those who regularly play it can address my concerns (if you would be so kind). I really would like to learn to enjoy this game, but I'm having an awfully hard time of it. I've even considered altering the rules to address some of my concerns, but am not quite sure how I would go about it yet.

1) My biggest concern is that there does not appear to be much strategy to the game (lack of gameplay depth?). Other than crossing my fingers and *trying* to seal gates, there appears to be no real strategy to beating the scenarios. Each location the players go to often has something bad happen, but it's necessary to go to the locations in order to get clue tokens or elder signs. Yes, I understand the game is "difficult". I like difficult games, but games with only pure chance as to whether I beat the game? I might as well sit at home flipping a coin, right?

P.S. This sentiment seems echoed by a couple of posts I've seen talking about game sessions. Victory or defeat appear to mainly be blind luck. Why spend 3-4 hours for that? Also, I've played with some of the expansions and those made the game almost no fun and in fact turned off 3 people who had never played it before.

2) The setup is complicated (small complaint), and combined with the long play time (3-4 hours) the almost-certainty of getting pummeled doesn't make me want to spend the time on the game. I don't have a huge amount of time to play games, why should I waste it getting reamed by Lovecraftian horrors esp. if I have no control over the outcome?

I played the game a number of times, and the more I played it the less I liked it. I really love how much depth there is to the characters and the story and the art, but the depth of actual gameplay (the reason I would buy it) does not seem to be there. Has anyone addressed this with house rules?

The whole game just seemed like an exercise in futility. Has anyone come up with house rules that adds more to the game allowing the players to have slightly more control over what happens?

So what's the hitch? Why do people like playing this game? Is it just the ambience it provides? I've run into a number of other people now who simply won't play the game for the same reasons I've given, but I'd *really* like to learn to love this game. Any suggestions? Please no flames, I'm really trying to have a constructive discussion here, and really enjoy the fact that Fantasy Flight has done so much to revive the board game genre.

Sorry if this has been posted some time in the past.

I enjoy the games beacuae there is some strategy in it like "do I attempt seals or go for a closing win ot fight the AO?" , plus the difficulty makes you actually feel like you accomplish something when (if) you do win a game. Most of the AOs change each games and the extra maps as well. Setup does take a bit but I seem to be getting faster at it (try setting everything you are going to use "together" in 1 box for instance then add as you go) , plus games can run a while but as you get more players thats expected. Anyway I hope you can enjoy the game again but all in all other peoples oppinions cant make you like or dislike something any more than you already do

"I am a Lovecraft and board game fan, first off.

However, I originally liked Arkham and had a great time the first time I played, however I no longer enjoy it after 4-5 plays and find it a waste of time, BUT I want to understand why I should enjoy it. I'll post the reasons I don't like it so that those who regularly play it can address my concerns (if you would be so kind). I really would like to learn to enjoy this game, but I'm having an awfully hard time of it. I've even considered altering the rules to address some of my concerns, but am not quite sure how I would go about it yet.

1) My biggest concern is that there does not appear to be much strategy to the game (lack of gameplay depth?). Other than crossing my fingers and *trying* to seal gates, there appears to be no real strategy to beating the scenarios. Each location the players go to often has something bad happen, but it's necessary to go to the locations in order to get clue tokens or elder signs. Yes, I understand the game is "difficult". I like difficult games, but games with only pure chance as to whether I beat the game? I might as well sit at home flipping a coin, right? "

It's not pure chance. Each location has a different percentage of good and bad. It's not like flipping a coin, but more like rolling a die with different numbers causing good things to happen. My worst location is Brook's Bridge but others have a good time there.

P.S. This sentiment seems echoed by a couple of posts I've seen talking about game sessions. Victory or defeat appear to mainly be blind luck. Why spend 3-4 hours for that? Also, I've played with some of the expansions and those made the game almost no fun and in fact turned off 3 people who had never played it before.

Blind luck is way too strong. But on the other hand no strategy guarantees agreement. I wouldn't want it any other way.

2) The setup is complicated (small complaint), and combined with the long play time (3-4 hours) the almost-certainty of getting pummeled doesn't make me want to spend the time on the game. I don't have a huge amount of time to play games, why should I waste it getting reamed by Lovecraftian horrors esp. if I have no control over the outcome?

So far almost all your complaints really come down to "I have no control." What expansions are you playing? The base game offers lots of control is usually won by veteran players. I'd say well over 90% of the time. My group was forced to play six games of basic Arkham a few weeks ago and we won them all.

I played the game a number of times, and the more I played it the less I liked it. I really love how much depth there is to the characters and the story and the art, but the depth of actual gameplay (the reason I would buy it) does not seem to be there. Has anyone addressed this with house rules?

Unclear by what you mean by depth? There are things in this game that have never happened and I have played over 300 games.

The whole game just seemed like an exercise in futility. Has anyone come up with house rules that adds more to the game allowing the players to have slightly more control over what happens?

We mulligan skills! One of the things that fooled me for a while is that I assumed all gates appear equally. They do not. Once you know where the hot gates are, control over the outcome shoots up dramatically.

So what's the hitch? Why do people like playing this game? Is it just the ambience it provides? I've run into a number of other people now who simply won't play the game for the same reasons I've given, but I'd *really* like to learn to love this game. Any suggestions? Please no flames, I'm really trying to have a constructive discussion here, and really enjoy the fact that Fantasy Flight has done so much to revive the board game genre.

I am a serial gamer. I play one game for months, sometimes years until I've figured out every nuance of the game or a better one comes along. Along the way I add and subtract things to increase enjoyment for me. I am lucky enough to have enough friends who are willing to go along with this. My games require some complication and lots of parts. (My previous game was Warhammer. I owned 10 armies.)

Arkham Horror is nearly a niche game, a game unique to the boardgaming world (though common in the computer gaming world). It's fully cooperative. Other similar games require a gamemaster or a single player against the rest.

I see loads of strategy in the game. For me, it's a puzzle: You take your group of investigators, see how they (their rules) interact with the Ancient One and with the expansion I'm using. Then, if you're lucky, add in actual human personalities. Then save the world. What's not to love?

Dripdry said:

Depends on the number and types of people of course, but 3-4h seems crazy long for Arkham. I solo 4 investigators in 1.5h (sometimes less, sometimes but more) and 2+2 investigators with my friend in about 2h. By now (96 games done) I have the setup down, you'd freak out seeing how robotic I am with my setting up, each deck is taken out of the box in the same order each game, placed in the same spot, the order of things in everything is always the same.

There has been 1 game that was decided during setup, namely Kate Winthrop + Arcane Insight, should've just counted it as a win after seeing those two come up. Very few have been decided early, mostly through to luck in setup or Mythos. Majority, I'd say 90+% go down to the wire. Sometimes you pull of a hail mary, sometimes the GOO eats Mary . But to get that far, you have done a lot of choices, most of them right ones, if you're in a position to win. I love that even if you've done everything right, you're not guaranteed a win until the game actually ends (gate bursts FTW ).

Major strategic decisions:

1) When should I close a gate without sealing it?

With an expansion board, I find that I'm a lot more likely to lose from too many open gates than from a full doom track. With Innsmouth, I juggle the number of open gates with the Deep Ones Rising track. Is it worth it to send an investigator all the way to an open gate on Devil Reef, especially if he can't seal it? It really depends on what else is going on in the game.

2) When should an investigator switch from gate jumping to monster killing (or vice versa)?

At a certain point, a monster killer has enough trophies that he can think about cashing them in at the Science Building, Police Station or Ma's Boarding House. But while's he's doing that, he can't be killing monsters. If you can position your investigators so they can meet and trade off equipment, it helps other investigators take over monster-killing duties.

3) Which gates do I seal?

For example, say I'm near a hot spot upon which a gate has not yet opened, and a cool spot with an open gate. Do I close the "cool spot" gate without sealing it, saving the clues for when the hot spot gate opens (if it ever does)? Or do I just seal the cool spot and move on?

4) Do I have enough time to go to the Hospital/Asylum/Curiositie Shop before jumping into a gate?

For example, I could jump through an unguarded gate right now and seal it when I come out. On the other hand, my sanity is 2 and my best weapon is a .45. If I meet a halfway powerful monster, I'm screwed. Still, this might be my best chance to try for the seal.

I'm sure there are others, but that's what comes to mind right away. There's also exploits, like the Kate+Arcane Insight that Dam mentioned. I remember Avi_Dreader once used Wendy to corral a horde of monsters on a street location. You can often find creative uses for your character's abilities.

The most important thing, strategy-wise, is that the situation on the board is always changing. You have to constantly revise your strategy. You're always gettting dealt unexpected setbacks. You don't just go from Plan A to Plan B, but to Plans C, D, E and F. The trick is to find a way to muddle through - to be able to stay alive long enough to at least partially implement one or more of your plans.

For me, it's not about "winning". I come from Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu RPG, and, when it's played properly, your character NEVER survived. Not without his brains dribbling out his ears. And this board game feeds directly into that. I get my friends together for a night of hopelessness and insanity. With a whole of commentary and socializing.

I don't believe that that fits in with a lot of players' "gameviews": The object of a game is to win, or to beat all the other players. I don't really like playing with those gamers, because it never seems to be about the PLAYING, just the end result. For me, experiencing the Encounters, surviving a monster, voyaging to somewhere else, it's a story in our collective heads. Playing in the same adventure, like an RPG. (Very chatty.)

You seem to be filtering the gameplay down to Skill Checks and die rolls. In the final mechanical analysis, that's all any RPG is, regardless of whether you have a bonus in Strength or a magic staff: rolling dice. But every Investigator has a nuance to them, and every card they possess adds to or changes that nuance. Against a different Ancient One or in a different Location or Other World, more changes. But if you're only seeing the numbers and the die results, then you're missing the "Die Hard" for the "action movie".

I can't tell you to enjoy the flavor, or read along with the cards, because that's too "amateur acting coach", and that may not be your (or your friends') thing. I only know that it works for me and my cult. We "perform" the game and enjoy the nihilistic ride as we lose horribly. We get out of the game what we put into it.

It usually takes us all night. If I'm playing alone, maybe 3-4 hours. I can't speed-game Arkham like others here, but I don't want to. And the beauty of Arkham Horror is it works either way.

Once I played a varient where you could ignore monsters on a gate before jumping in, but not after coming back out. I was Gloria. I had a Derringer, a Bullwhip, and Find Gate and had just entered the first area of Celeano. Waiting for me was a Warlock and a Dark Young. I had to decide whether to use Find Gate to skip the second area of the other world. I realized that both monsters were stationary, so they wouldn't leave before I got back. A monster surge would add more monsters. On the other hand, my character was weak at combat, but good at other world encounters. And I was in a relatively safe other world.

So... do I cast Find Gate? I did, even though the other players thought I was crazy. I had just enough Sanity to fail both Horror tests and cast Find Gate, so I maxed out Fight. I fought the Warlock first and used the two clue tokens you get for defeating Warlocks to kill the Dark Young.

That game used a varient of the rules, so that type of situation won't occur when playing the rules as written. But it's a good illustration of the factors that go into the decisions that you make when playing the game. The game's outcome is not arbitrary. Not totally arbitrary anyway.

ETA: I partly agree with jgt7771. I try to win, but the main point is to experience terror. If you want a game that's essentially a puzzle, get a non-dice based game like Pandemic.

If you want to learn a lot about what can happen I suggest you see the spreadsheet I posted on BGG:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/43768

Its a spreadsheet giving all sorts of information regarding what you can encounter in both locations on Earth and Other Worlds. For instance, what % of the encounters are "Good", "Bad", or "Mixed"; what's the chance that you may end up losing sanity; etc.

Warning: This can be considered to be a MAJOR cheat sheet - if you are new to the game you will lose the thrill (agony?) of learning where the high frequency gates are located at. None the less, I find it useful since it reminds me, for example, that if I'm going to R'lyeh that I might want to make sure that my investigators Speed is at max, since no matter what expansions are used, the most common skill check is for speed.

Dam said:

This is an excellent summary of the appeal of the game in both long-term strategy and short-term risk management.

It sounds to me like the root of your complaint is just that the game is entirely random. As others here have pointed out the game is far from random. They have pointed that out with what probably amounts to too many details. Bottom line, though, I wouldn't be in this game either if I thought I couldn't affect what was going on.

There is a statistics page stickied at the top of this forum. It lists various statistics about the game. There you can find information like which investigators tend to help the most, which Ancient ones are the hardest, and how often people win their games. The win percentage of those who submit their games to the site is somewhere between 60 and 70%. Solidly in the realm of difficult, but not random. That includes all of the expansions as well, so not all of that difficulty is the base game itself.

The game is very difficult, no doubt, but I recommend that the best thing you can do to appreciate it more is to play it a bit. Perhaps you'll begin to see some of the strategies you can take to increase your chances of picking up clues and getting through gates. No plan is perfect, but any character can survive a few bad encounters. You'll get some games where the Mythos will conspire against you, but not every game is like that. You can learn what sorts of actions, items or abilities are effective, which monsters to avoid, and how to make the best of your choices. It's very much a game of choice.

Definitely don't try the expansions yet, as those make the game incrementally harder. It sounds like you need to understand how to win the game before you progress to that step.

Also, make sure you're playing the game right. By this, I don't mean to imply anything about you. One of the most common things we hear about is someone that finds the game way too hard or way too easy. Often, it turns out that they are playing it wrong. Some of the people on here could give a very good tutorial of the common mistakes people make.

Finally, don't force it. If the game is not for you, it's not for you. Maybe it will only be the kind of thing that you break out once a month for the group (if you get them to like it). Or maybe you won't pick it up again. It sounds to me like you can appreciate this game, however, so I suggest you give it a chance.

Good luck!

Big appeal for me is that no 2 games are the same so you avoid the absolute hell that is trying to wringe variety out of more popular games like Axis & Allies.

I feel you on the difficulty. Just stick with the base game. The expansions usually serve to make the game harder (*cough* Black Goat herald) since most of the hardcore players come on here always saying it's too easy.

As others have already said, I think the primary strategic elements are deciding when and where to use seals to keep gates closed and deciding who should go monster hunting to keep the streets clear for the gate jumpers. There is a whole lot of random chance involved, I'm not denying that, but I don't think it's fair to say it's ALL luck. Also, the sheer number of possible random events makes it a lot more exiciting than flipping a coin, imho.

To be honest though, the main source of entertainment when I play this game is not so much in the game itself as it is in laughing about what happens with my friends. When someone gets totally schooled by a monster and sent to the hospital or when an encounter blindsides someone and sends them off to a different board space they weren't expecting. We also play with the interpretation that if a card says "you may pick up the book" then the investigator has a choice not to. We typically pause during the reading of an encounter card at such points and let the player decide. (Hand in hand with that is that no one reads their own encounters.) Any illusion of strategy derived from this practice is simply that - an illusion - but it keeps us happy and that's really the point of playing a board game.

Socializing with my friends, making up stories for how or why the investigators do certain things (as determined by random dice/cards) and the general mindless terror of trying to navigate a small town overrun by monstrosities are the big reasons why I enjoy playing Arkham Horror. Of course, we also don't play it all the time, I suspect it might get boring if we did it regularly...

If I want to play a game where strategy controls the outcome much more significantly, I'll play Puerto Rico or Agricola. If I want a game where a story unfolds, and that everybody works toward a common goal, where at best you can control your chances of success or failure, I'll play Arkham.

I should also note that unfair occurrences (positive or negative) are much, much easier to swallow in a cooperative game than in a competetive game.

Ever played Settlers of Catan? Ever started on almost exclusively on the high-yield 5s, 6s, 8s, and 9s? Ever roll 2s and 11s as half your rolls? Ever wanted to choke your fellow gamer for his unwarranted sense of self-importance because he won a game where luck overshadowed his poor planning?

Not that I have or would play with friends like that, but the more someone's success is determined by luck in a competitive game, the more rage I harbor. Conversely, the more we defy the odds in Arkham and fail all of our checks that should be sure things, or the more that monsters appear and move to block our effors at just the worst possible time, the more that we pretend that the game is sentient and calculating, and that exponentially improves both the story aspect and the overall game experience.

Thanks for all the replies and good ideas. If anyone looks this over one more time and could point me in the right direction of a beginner's guide to common gameplay mistakes that would be great!

It sounds like I should give it a try solo or 2 + 2. Frankly, my girlfriend has been reading more Lovecraft lately so I'll bet she would like the game some more now that she gets what Lovecraft is all about.

Anyway, I'm surprised at how helpful you all have been (it's the internet after all). I really appreciate each of you taking time out to reply, and I'm going to give this game another look. I *do* enjoy the more experiential games (like Battlestar) so why shouldn't Arkham be a great time too?

Looking forward to creepy nights fighting Nameless Horrors,

David

Glad I could help (assuming I did). There's a pdf flowchart for Arkham Horror that you can download on boardgamegeek. To quote ColtsFan from the reference materials thread:

"I highly recommend Mr. Skeletor's Flow charts. This is what I used to teach myself the game and get it squared away in my head. It only took 2 or 3 games of me following this flow chart until I had the rules 99.44% down pat.

There are two versions. One is just the basic game and I recommend that if you are really just learning the basic game; there is too much out there to confuse you if you grab the other one. The second one has all the expansion included in it (with the exception of BGotW).

Basic Game: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/file/info/23313

All Expansions: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/file/info/23314

Oh, and the fact that you expressed opinions that differ from my own makes you a bed wetting doody head.

avec said:

I picture your icon saying that, so it's funny hearing it from a worldy, learned proper English gentleman, spoken with a cockey, matter-of-fact tone.

Really? I always thought of him more as a Poe-esque vampire.

Dripdry said:

Believe it or not, I created a user ID just to contribute my (very helpful) two cents here. Now that you've been directed to some handy rules summaries and the like, I'll point you to a fantastic list of optional rules that I've found absolutely indispensable when playing:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/Arkham_Horror/House%20Rules%20RL.pdf

Before coming across this list of 'serving suggestions,' I was a bit lukewarm on the by-the-book Arkham experience, and quickly began my own rules-tweaking to add some atmosphere and depth. Ever since, I've adopted several of them on a permanent basis-- and I was pleased to see that some ideas that I'd come up with on my own, such as hidden gate destinations and choosing not to travel through gates, were on the list. And it was nice to feel justified after having already said "Screw the rules-- THIS would be a cool twist!"

In the case of a game like AH, you have to avoid confusing 'The Rules' with 'The Laws.' There's obviously not much room for house rules with something like Connect Four, but AH practically invites it. ("Fast zombies? Why the hell not?! Double their movement in this game!") There's so much going on that you can make some changes here and there without wrecking the game, while adding some great moments of panic/relief that really lend a lot to the overall experience.

You can easily find other compilations of suggested house rules and other tweaks (e.g., searching boardgamegeek.com), and mix 'n match to your heart's content.

avec said:

The mustache/goatee is what did it for me.

The forums and files section for AH on BGG have several lists of probabilities for each encounter location, other world, gate frequency, hot spots, etc which may be of use to help understand the risks/strategies and avoid the 'stumbling blindly around the board' gameplay that can occur. 'Fore-warned is fore-armed', and all that.

Here is a link to just one, but search the site and you will find several more:

www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/43768