Good evening from the UK
I've just taken the plunge following some gift tokens for my 48th birthday and ordered Arkham Horror and also Eldritch Horror (both should be arriving tomorrow).
I'm noticing that there's no reference section for Eldritch...is that because Arkham is generally accepted as the better / more popular game?
Anything you experts can recommend is welcome - looking forward to dipping my toes into a new experience.
Thanks
Welcome to a truly FANTASTIC boardgame its excellent.
Its also brutal
be prepared to lose a lot at first
After a few plays, read about the community to see opinions on how many investigators to play, which ones and against which bad guys. This all affects game balance from eadier to harder.
Great game.
I dont pkay Eldritch but it does have its own forum here: https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/forum/335-general-discussion/
Welcome! And congrats on your purchases, I wish you many happy hours of lovecraftian madness!
Welcome to the Carnival!!!
You are in for an exciting adventure.
Guard your sanity, keep yourself healthy, and protect your wallet, as there are many great expansions!
Cheers,
Joe
protect your wallet, as there are many great expansions!
Cheers,
Joe
No buy em.. buy em all!!!! Let the wallet be free!
Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Ftagn!
...Err.. I mean: welcome!
protect your wallet, as there are many great expansions!
Cheers,
Joe
No buy em.. buy em all!!!! Let the wallet be free!
Ill be doing that, with 40k conquest gone, I'll have some LCG money lying around
Yes don't forget to buy 2 expansions right away: Dunwich for AH, and Forsaken Lore for EH. It's been said many times by people who play more than I do, but both those expansions complete the base game of each, IMO.
have fun!
I'd never suggest getting Forsaken Lore to start the EH experience. Forsaken Lore is incredibly hard, it introduces a lot of randomness (where EH core is more deterministic, i.e. you can plan to go to place X and have a good chance of triggering result Y) and it's rather bad designed, both in terms of balance of single cards and in terms of requirement to meet to get [result]. It's possibly the worst EH expansion we've gotten until Under the Pyramids, and players starting with Forsaken Lore in the mix will have to face quite the difficulties before they master the game.
The big advantage of Forsaken Lore is that it adds enough research encounters for the initial four AOs, so that you aren't repeating the same encounter over and over again. Put simply, there aren't enough encounters for the four main AOs in the initial box.
As for my advice, start with Eldritch Horror. It's a streamlined version of Arkham Horror and will introduce to many of the concepts in Arkham. Once you've got that down, play Arkham. It's a better game IMO, but there's more bells-and-whistles, and EH will give you a firmer grip.
Finally, if/when you start collecting expansions - get Dunwich Horror first, it fixes a couple of issues with the game and makes it a better play experience. And don't be afraid to go off-piste and check out some of the fantastic custom work that many of the fans have put out there.
As for my advice, start with Eldritch Horror. It's a streamlined version of Arkham Horror
For the same reason, I would advise the opposite. Try Arkham Horror first, see if you like it.
If you do, try to get some plays before you check out the Eldritch Horror.
From the few examples I have seen, Eldritch can ruin the Arkham Horror experience.
Arkham Horror was amazing for me, until I learned the ways of Eldritch. Now I'm unable to go back, Arkham is no longer appealing enough for me, and I'm glad I've had some fun with it earlier.
For the same reason, I would advise the opposite. Try Arkham Horror first, see if you like it.As for my advice, start with Eldritch Horror. It's a streamlined version of Arkham Horror
If you do, try to get some plays before you check out the Eldritch Horror.
From the few examples I have seen, Eldritch can ruin the Arkham Horror experience.
Arkham Horror was amazing for me, until I learned the ways of Eldritch. Now I'm unable to go back, Arkham is no longer appealing enough for me, and I'm glad I've had some fun with it earlier.
Quoted for truth. I love(d) Arkham, I'm highly proud of my collection and plan on never getting rid of it. However, especially since Eldritch is now starting to rival Arkham in terms of expansions, I find it hard to bust Arkham out. I still do on occasion for old time's sake but after an hour goes by I always wish I hadn't bother and had set up Eldritch instead. In essence, mechanically the two games are very similar but with Eldritch I personally feel you get far more story for less tedium. Even my wife who kept supporting Arkham for longer than I did has now come to the same conclusion. Thematically, one thing that Arkham does better is the feel of going around a town as opposed to traversing the globe. However when I want that sense of a smaller scale, I much rather play the excellent second edition of Mansions of Madness (it's night and day different from first) and perhaps, in the future, the Arkham Horror card game as well. I used to recommend people get both games as the themes were different enough but having the opportunity to play both side by side for a while now, I generally recommend people just skip Arkham Horror and go with Eldritch.
Having said all that, as you have both, play both but do Arkham first. It is a wonderful game that you can get plenty of mileage from. Counter to Julia's otherwise excellent opinions, I thoroughly recommend adding Forsaken Lore to Eldritch after a game or two.
Having said all that, as you have both, play both but do Arkham first. It is a wonderful game that you can get plenty of mileage from. Counter to Julia's otherwise excellent opinions, I thoroughly recommend adding Forsaken Lore to Eldritch after a game or two.
Beware that what I said on Forsaken Lore it's not an opinion: it's a fact. I posted a complete math analysis of core EH + Forsaken Lore on BGG and it proves exactly what I said: Forsaken Lore adds a lot of random elements upon which you have no control at all, and calls out for tests that plot on average at a higher difficulty than tests from the core set. So, it's not an opinion saying that adding Forsaken Lore from start will make the game a lot harder. The only opinion is if it's a good idea or not making the game harder. In my opinion, it's not a good idea, because Forsaken Lore cards obscure the very precise patterns of the core game making a lot more difficult finding a good strategies or learning properly the game. Then, if you don't care about how hard the game can be, it's also a fact that Forsaken Lore adds variety to encounter and cards, so, if you want theme and variability over strategical approach and control, adding FL from start is certainly the way to go. But it's very important to keep in mind all what is related to adding the expansion: there are benefits, and detriments, like for most things in the world.
Ah I should have clarified what I've meant.
What you said is entirely correct, it is harder but one of the reasons Forsaken Lore was looked upon so fondly upon release however was that it added much needed variety to the slim number of encounter cards etc you get in the base game. However, with the slew of other expansions that are out now, you can of course replace Foresaken Lore with another one. Having said that, the extra difficulty was appreciated by my group and we're very fond of the snakey themed, Yig games. Your mileage may vary of course.
On this I fully agree, Gregor. Sorry that I didn't get it in the first place
I'm brand new to the game myself. Bought it yesterday, opened it up, and my head spun. I've never seen anything like it as far as gaming goes. I'm used to Scrabble, Clue, Monopoly, ect...lol. I got interested in this due to just getting into Magic the Gathering in the last year so I've hung out at LGS and seen these on the shelves and became interested. My venture into board gaming past the basics so far is Ticket to Ride and Desparados of Dicetown...lol. Both fun games but I was looking for a bit more. As a horror fan and having some knowledge of Lovecraft (through the music of Cradle of Filth and some of his books I've read) I decided to bite the bullet and buy this.
Looks fantastic but man, any newbie pointers would be great. I've read the forum all day and some of you are real pros, especially Julia. Should I hold off on expansions? I saw one post above talking about getting Dunwich right away? Any advice will be helpful...my kids and I kind of just stared at the board last night and went to bed......
Play the base game for a bit first. The only problem is that once you've figured out the optimal strategy it becomes quite a lot easier.
That's when you know it's time to start adding expansions.
You could add one, or more, expansions earlier and just use the content that requires the base game board.
I bought it earlier this year and still quite happy going through the base game against each different Ancient One. So many combinations of investigator/AncientOne.
It can be very hard without knowing optimal strategies (which I don't know yet) so be prepared for defeats. It truly is a wonderful wonderful deep game.
The community steered me to the fact the main game has the best middle-ground balance with 3 investigators playing (I play solo so control all 3) and if/when you add an expansion board, the balance adds another investigator for each of those boards.
Argh I don't think I have time this week's and I really want to play now I've written this :Deal
Well done in buying an amazing game and good luck!
Some people here have played literally hundreds of games and are still being surprised by it.
Abaath,
welcome to the Carnival
Sit down, shuffle the cards, and no worries for the tentacle lingering on your shoulder.
Mullet and Alex gave you good advice. Play with the core first, until you're able to defeat all the core set's AOs by sealing gates. 3 investigators or 4 investigators work for this purpose (with 3 investigators being slightly harder).
Then, if you want to expand, get Dunwich Horror, for a ton of reasons, the most important of which is that it adds the Injuries and Madnesses decks to the game. These decks fix the insanity / unconscious issue the core game has and should have been included in the main game - actually, if you have a few bucks to invest, it'd be a wise move getting DH immediately and play a complete rotation of AOs from the core set only with the core set only AND the Injuries and Madnesses from Dunwich. In this way you have a way to discover the optimal strategy, keeping the complexity of the game to an initial stage, but you are not over penalized for going unconscious / insane
In any case, enjoy the game! And if you have questions about the rules (Arkham seems to be your most evoluted game so far, and the rulebook sometimes is written in daemotic Egyptian), we're here to help
Some people here have played literally hundreds of games and are still being surprised by it.
Absolutely true (at 353 plays, I'm still discovering new encounters and new combos)
Some people here have played literally hundreds of games and are still being surprised by it.
Absolutely true (at 353 plays, I'm still discovering new encounters and new combos)
I wish I had that much free time.
Thank you for all the advice everyone! I have a MTG tournament this afternoon and then I think I'm going to try and get my first game of AH in tonight and see how it goes. I'll try and give an update when I'm done.
Looks fantastic but man, any newbie pointers would be great. I've read the forum all day and some of you are real pros, especially Julia. Should I hold off on expansions? I saw one post above talking about getting Dunwich right away? Any advice will be helpful...my kids and I kind of just stared at the board last night and went to bed......
When you eventually get round to buying an expansion Dunwich is probably the first one to consider. But in the mean time the base game is probably enough on it's own. Just getting used to the core rules is hard enough without complicating matters further with expansions. The core set has enough variety to keep you busy for quite a while.
Some people here have played literally hundreds of games and are still being surprised by it.
Absolutely true (at 353 plays, I'm still discovering new encounters and new combos)
Ha! Yes I did mean you
Julia's advice on buying Dunwich and then just playing the base game but with the madness/injury cards is particularly sound. Whilst the innsmouth expansion is my favourite of the big box expansions and personally I found that the theme is a lot more interesting, Dunwich's madness/injury cards make the game considerably better.