Title says it all. I've never bought into a LCG before, so this is unclear for me. I understand that up to two players will be able to build decks from a single box. Is the 1 player listing just included to indicate that you can build a playable deck for multiplayer games?

Yep, solo is supported!

Is the 1 player listing just included to indicate that you can build a playable deck for multiplayer games?

You can build a deck for multiplayer games AND you can actually play the entire campaign, all scenarios, etc. solo with just 1 investigator deck!

Also game scales the gameplay - you need to gather number of clues multiplied by number of investigators to advance to next stage of scenario. Also bosses have health dependent of number of investigators in play.

Thanks for the replies. Good to know it is actually designed for solo play too. I'm still on the fence about buying in though. I'm not sure if a deckbuilding game is going to scratch the Mythos itch for me.

Thanks for the replies. Good to know it is actually designed for solo play too. I'm still on the fence about buying in though. I'm not sure if a deckbuilding game is going to scratch the Mythos itch for me.

Try it... You may be pleasently surprised...

I'll note that while it's designed for solo play, no single investigator does all possible Skill tests well, so depending on your deck style and play technique, you might find some types of investigator impossible to "win" with if you're going solo (of course, "win" doesn't mean much in a campaign where just failing to defeat the end boss doesn't lock you out of the rest of the adventures; the purpose in Arkham Horror LCG is to play the story and see what happens, not "win").

I'll note that while it's designed for solo play, no single investigator does all possible Skill tests well, so depending on your deck style and play technique, you might find some types of investigator impossible to "win" with if you're going solo (of course, "win" doesn't mean much in a campaign where just failing to defeat the end boss doesn't lock you out of the rest of the adventures; the purpose in Arkham Horror LCG is to play the story and see what happens, not "win").

Or, knowing your investigator's weak point, you build your deck to compensate by including neutral cards that will boost those tests (or avoiding those tests when possible).

Certain investigators are definitely harder to complete the campaign alone with, but I was pretty much within one bad Chaos token pull to be able to win with Agnes (actually, because of an upgrade, I just needed 1 of 2 pulls to be no worse than -3. I had bad luck and got two that were worse than that because of the scenario specific effects. There were only 3 tokens that could do that out of 16 and I got 2 of them).

This was on Standard difficulty with just one base set.

So, it's possible.

I'll note that while it's designed for solo play, no single investigator does all possible Skill tests well, so depending on your deck style and play technique, you might find some types of investigator impossible to "win" with if you're going solo (of course, "win" doesn't mean much in a campaign where just failing to defeat the end boss doesn't lock you out of the rest of the adventures; the purpose in Arkham Horror LCG is to play the story and see what happens, not "win").

Have you actually played the game?

I'll note that while it's designed for solo play, no single investigator does all possible Skill tests well, so depending on your deck style and play technique, you might find some types of investigator impossible to "win" with if you're going solo (of course, "win" doesn't mean much in a campaign where just failing to defeat the end boss doesn't lock you out of the rest of the adventures; the purpose in Arkham Horror LCG is to play the story and see what happens, not "win").

Have you actually played the game?

Why do you ask?

Yes, I have actually played the game, and I actually own it. Arkham Nights was a lot of fun.

I'll note that while it's designed for solo play, no single investigator does all possible Skill tests well, so depending on your deck style and play technique, you might find some types of investigator impossible to "win" with if you're going solo (of course, "win" doesn't mean much in a campaign where just failing to defeat the end boss doesn't lock you out of the rest of the adventures; the purpose in Arkham Horror LCG is to play the story and see what happens, not "win").

Have you actually played the game?

Why do you ask?

Yes, I have actually played the game, and I actually own it. Arkham Nights was a lot of fun.

Oh simple. I ask because I kinda' bought into the idea that you can play it completely solo so when you said that may be problematic and you may have to use two decks (like LoTR) I was bummed if that was true so I wanted to know if you spoke from experience or just reading the rules or watching the exposition as I did, which gave me the impression that the designers really DID intend (one way or another ) to make a truly great solo game. As I've said before, there are so few of those in most cases you have to at the very least play two characters which for me, would dull the experience a bit.

Of course no investigator would be able to do everything well. If there is then there will be no need of any other investigators. Some investigator like Roland solo better since he can fight (necessary skill to survive) and get clues (necessary to clear the scenario favorably) while others like Daisy is better when there is someone else to fight her battles. If you wanted to solo the game with 1 investigator, you just have to accept that your chosen investigator will not be passing on certain checks unless you got lucky and build your deck accordingly.

I'll note that while it's designed for solo play, no single investigator does all possible Skill tests well, so depending on your deck style and play technique, you might find some types of investigator impossible to "win" with if you're going solo (of course, "win" doesn't mean much in a campaign where just failing to defeat the end boss doesn't lock you out of the rest of the adventures; the purpose in Arkham Horror LCG is to play the story and see what happens, not "win").

Have you actually played the game?

Why do you ask?

Yes, I have actually played the game, and I actually own it. Arkham Nights was a lot of fun.

Oh simple. I ask because I kinda' bought into the idea that you can play it completely solo so when you said that may be problematic and you may have to use two decks (like LoTR) I was bummed if that was true so I wanted to know if you spoke from experience or just reading the rules or watching the exposition as I did, which gave me the impression that the designers really DID intend (one way or another ) to make a truly great solo game. As I've said before, there are so few of those in most cases you have to at the very least play two characters which for me, would dull the experience a bit.

Thanks for the response!

The game is fully playable solo (you'll probably need two boxes to get a full playset to make your investigators as good as you can, though). The thing is, no investigator does everything perfectly, so depending on your playstyle, you might find one or another of them tough to win with.

My example with Tactics in the base LotR box is that many people tried playing through the adventures in that box with just the sample (mono-Sphere) decks, and Tactics was basically unplayable solo in base LotR. It was a *great* sphere which worked fine in multiplayer, or as a support/main sphere in single player, but mono-Tactics in the base box just had too little Willpower to successfully quest to win anything. Depending on how you make your deck in Arkham Horror, you might find yourself struggling with the "Tactics" problem from the old LotR depending on your preferred playstyle. But you should be able to finish a campaign by yourself, no problem. In fact, losing an adventure, even "dying" during it, doesn't actually end the campaign for you in most cases; you just take Trauma and perhaps other penalties, and continue the campaign in the next adventure, beat up but ready to go!

I'll note that while it's designed for solo play, no single investigator does all possible Skill tests well, so depending on your deck style and play technique, you might find some types of investigator impossible to "win" with if you're going solo (of course, "win" doesn't mean much in a campaign where just failing to defeat the end boss doesn't lock you out of the rest of the adventures; the purpose in Arkham Horror LCG is to play the story and see what happens, not "win").

Have you actually played the game?

Why do you ask?

Yes, I have actually played the game, and I actually own it. Arkham Nights was a lot of fun.

Oh simple. I ask because I kinda' bought into the idea that you can play it completely solo so when you said that may be problematic and you may have to use two decks (like LoTR) I was bummed if that was true so I wanted to know if you spoke from experience or just reading the rules or watching the exposition as I did, which gave me the impression that the designers really DID intend (one way or another ) to make a truly great solo game. As I've said before, there are so few of those in most cases you have to at the very least play two characters which for me, would dull the experience a bit.

Thanks for the response!

The game is fully playable solo (you'll probably need two boxes to get a full playset to make your investigators as good as you can, though). The thing is, no investigator does everything perfectly, so depending on your playstyle, you might find one or another of them tough to win with.

My example with Tactics in the base LotR box is that many people tried playing through the adventures in that box with just the sample (mono-Sphere) decks, and Tactics was basically unplayable solo in base LotR. It was a *great* sphere which worked fine in multiplayer, or as a support/main sphere in single player, but mono-Tactics in the base box just had too little Willpower to successfully quest to win anything. Depending on how you make your deck in Arkham Horror, you might find yourself struggling with the "Tactics" problem from the old LotR depending on your preferred playstyle. But you should be able to finish a campaign by yourself, no problem. In fact, losing an adventure, even "dying" during it, doesn't actually end the campaign for you in most cases; you just take Trauma and perhaps other penalties, and continue the campaign in the next adventure, beat up but ready to go!

Waitasec. Dying isn't the end of your adventure you just take trauma?? I don't think I understand that.... Usually in Arkham games if you die, that's it. You lose. This game let's you continue? Confused now....

I've heard what you're saying about Tactics decks in LoTR now from a LOT of people, that's why I'm going to be running two decks. You suggest 2 cores for Arkham as well? Not to min/max (which to me is really close to cheating) but just to survive for solo? So you would definitely recommend two cores for two players then? Thanks for the help! : )

Your characters don't die permanently in most Arkham Horror campaigns; they just take Trauma and are forced to play the next couple of adventures on an even worse starting situation. It *IS* possible to die if you get a certain resolution on certain adventures, but that's up to your choices and how poorly you do. But instead of giving you a game that you can't play, Arkham Horror wisely says "OK, you failed at stage 1 of this adventure. You now continue on to stage 2, but since you failed, you suffer the following additional penalties...".

So, yes, having a character eliminated from an adventure due to damage or horror doesn't necessarily kill them. If no characters are left in an adventure, you check the adventure booklet (every campaign will have one), and find the resolution to the adventure you use when nobody is left conscious. In most cases, you continue on the campaign, but have much less XP to spend, plus you suffer Trauma, and you might start future adventures from worse starting conditions, or add worse tokens to the Chaos Bag, and so on. Or maybe on a long campaign you might have a chance to gain some allies to help you out (since you did so poorly), or perhaps a future adventure where you do well will give you a chance to heal some Trauma.

The first campaign in the base box is three adventures long. In one playthrough, I watched one couple play the whole thing (as Daisy and Roland, I believe). They both "died" in the first adventure, which meant they missed out on XP after that adventure, and had permanent Trauma (which meant they started all future adventures with damage to their HP or sanity). But despite how badly they did adventure one, they CRUSHED adventure two. Just slapped it around silly, finishing it with gold star results in record time. The results for that from the adventure book? Since they were obviously doing so well, they started adventure three with a ton of Doom on the Agenda, effectively starting many turns behind the clock. And they got crushed again. They loved it.

Basically taking critical Health or Sanity damage in a scenario doesn't mean you're dead, it means you're "defeated" in that scenario. As Gaffa mentions, that means you get Trauma - if you were defeated because of physical damage, you start every future scenario in the campaign with one damage already on your character (this stacks if defeated multiple times). Similarly for Horror and Sanity.

If you ever have Trauma equal to your maximum Health or Sanity, THEN you are dead (or insane) and must retire your character.

And even if that character is eliminated, it says to continue the adventure by making a new character from scratch, and starting from the next scenario. In the core set it even has a point that ties new characters in if you fail that badly. In fact, you only lose early in most cases if you run out of investigators to switch to.

Your characters don't die permanently in most Arkham Horror campaigns; they just take Trauma and are forced to play the next couple of adventures on an even worse starting situation. It *IS* possible to die if you get a certain resolution on certain adventures, but that's up to your choices and how poorly you do. But instead of giving you a game that you can't play, Arkham Horror wisely says "OK, you failed at stage 1 of this adventure. You now continue on to stage 2, but since you failed, you suffer the following additional penalties...".

So, yes, having a character eliminated from an adventure due to damage or horror doesn't necessarily kill them. If no characters are left in an adventure, you check the adventure booklet (every campaign will have one), and find the resolution to the adventure you use when nobody is left conscious. In most cases, you continue on the campaign, but have much less XP to spend, plus you suffer Trauma, and you might start future adventures from worse starting conditions, or add worse tokens to the Chaos Bag, and so on. Or maybe on a long campaign you might have a chance to gain some allies to help you out (since you did so poorly), or perhaps a future adventure where you do well will give you a chance to heal some Trauma.

The first campaign in the base box is three adventures long. In one playthrough, I watched one couple play the whole thing (as Daisy and Roland, I believe). They both "died" in the first adventure, which meant they missed out on XP after that adventure, and had permanent Trauma (which meant they started all future adventures with damage to their HP or sanity). But despite how badly they did adventure one, they CRUSHED adventure two. Just slapped it around silly, finishing it with gold star results in record time. The results for that from the adventure book? Since they were obviously doing so well, they started adventure three with a ton of Doom on the Agenda, effectively starting many turns behind the clock. And they got crushed again. They loved it.

Thanks for the first hand info! Wow, okay that sounds really different but I think I get it now. They made it so that you can play as far into it as you want / dare to. If you don't do so well, you get penalized, if you do outstanding you REALLY get penalized. Heh. Welcome to Arkham! (Can't wait, by the way it sounds like a blast!)

Trust Ghuthlu. Ghuthlu for the president!

Has this game changed player amount wise? On the website it says 1-4 and on the box it says 1-2.

Has this game changed player amount wise? On the website it says 1-4 and on the box it says 1-2.

With two (or more) core sets you can play 1-4. The game supports 1-4, but a single box only supports 2.