I just played my second game of Arkham Horror this weekend. It was the same group of three people as my first. It went pretty well, but the length of the game meant that that the location cards were already starting to repeat.

This caused me to look into the expansions, but I see two major issues with most of the descriptions I've read: table space and difficulty.

I'm not ready for the game to be any harder and I simply don't have room for any more maps or boards.

That being the case, what expansion would help with the location repetition the most? I love the idea of the individual player quests, but I'm not going to use most of the rest of that expansion, so I'm looking at all the others and wondering which adds the most location cards to the base game without requiring the use of another map.

Thanks for the help!

The quick answer is Dark Pharaoh or Dunwich. I recommend Dark Pharaoh for what you need.

I'll go into more detail:

Yes, only 7 different encounter cards per neighborhood will cause a lot of repetition. The most direct answer is the expansion that adds the most location cards:

Curse of the Dark Pharaoh: 5 per neighborhood
Dunwich Horror: 7 per neighborhood
Every other expansion*: 4 per neighborhood
*however, Black Goat adds the Cult Encounter deck. If you become a cult member you will draw from here.

Also, obviously, the big-board expansions add new locations of 14 cards each. However, this requires both table space and difficulty increase.

So the best two answers are that...
...You get Curse of the Dark Pharaoh: its location encounters are very thematic, and the expansion's difficulty increase is very small,

...or you get Dunwich Horror (you'll get Injury/Madness cards, and a slew of new investigators, monsters, and AOs) but you can play without the Dunwich board itself if you like. Of course if you leave out the Dunwich Board, you have to remove all Mythos cards that show gates opening in Dunwich locations, and be aware that all the gate cards have entries to Dunwich's new Other Worlds, so you'll be getting "Other" encounters more often. This isn't necessarily so bad though, since your sheer amount of OW encounters overall will have increased by quite a bit.

What Tibs said.

Curse definitely has the most entertaining encounters if you don't mind ambiguous wording.

I wouldn't recommend Black Goat.

I third that, based on what you said you want Curse of the Dark Pharaoh is for you, and when you think you're ready for a slight difficulty boost you can download the herald that goes with that expansion.

Since Space and Difficulty are you concern I also cast my vote for Curse of the DP. But any small boxes would be fine cause all they add is cards for the most part. Black Goat isn't everyones favorite because its herald is MEAN and NASTY and the cult aspect is broken but I enjoy it but it should be one of the last ones you get. The King in Yellow is probably my Favorite small box cause of the theme but It's herald and play aspect can be cruel the first time playing with them. Lurker is nice but you need either Dunwich or Kingsport to fully enjoy the new gates. Its herald can be exploited as well. So go get Curse.

Thanks all.

Curse and Dunwich are kind of getting rare at the moment, but I'll be on the lookout for Curse.

I think the base game probably should have come with more than 7 location cards per area, especially since nothing else really repeats after 2 plays (certainly not ancient ones, other world encounters, and even mythos cards).

Curse looks reasonably priced on Amazon

Dunwich doesn't take a lot of space, and it adds so much to the base game.

zealot12 said:

Every expansion board is 1/3 the size of the base board.

True, but it's not needed to enjoy the extra cards(save for the the encounters in Dunwich).

The table I have can barely fit the base game considering how much space outside the board a player needs to track their character.

It simply would be impossible for me to use any expansion board, except in the very rare cases someone else agreed to host (and had a bigger table, which I'm not sure anyone does). Otherwise I'd be all over Dunwich just to get the extra 7 location cards per area.

We play on the floor. (:

The extra card components are worth the investment,(and you get more than just new encounters), and the expansion board is not needed to enjoy them though I understand your concern: paying for a game component that you won't be able to include due to space limitations.

I dunno, you can always join tables, if you have more than one.

jscott991 said:

I'm gonna go the other way. Don't let the extra board stop you from getting Dunwich. There is more in that box to enjoy than inside the Dark Pharaoh box.

Granted, I'm thinking ahead here. You just played your SECOND game. You seem to be having a good time and do not appear to be rejecting the game; therefore there WILL come a time when the base game isn't "hard" anymore, and you will want to add the extra difficulty.

Before that happens, the things you can use straight out of Dunwich without using the expansion board are: all Arkham Encounters (but not Dunwich), all small Investigator Item cards, Madness and Injury (when you want more difficulty), all monsters, all Investigators, all Ancient Ones (when you want a LOT of difficulty). All of these work fine with just the base game in play. Of course, you won't be able to use the Dunwich Mythos cards...but then you only said you were lacking Encounter cards. So just leave those Dunwich cards in the box, and play with the sizable base game Mythos. There will hardly be any increase of difficulty. But when you finally want to add some difficulty without adding a new board, just add Madness/Injury and play with Glaaki or Tsathoggua.

As Tibs said, if you don't play with the Dunwich board, you won't have access to the Other Worlds, and thus most of the Dunwich Other World Encounters will end up being "Other"...........unless you, say, make a tiny color copy of each circular other world space and set it off to the side. Then you can use the new Gates and all the Encounters. Do you have enough space for two "drink coasters" of Other Worlds?

As for Dark Pharaoh...yes, there is a lot of theme. Probably the most theme in any AH Expansion. BUT...you will get a bunch of Spells that the majority of players don't like. You won't get any Common or Unique Items, but you will get an Exhibit Deck that doesn't really have the longevity of nifty-ness as most of the small cards in Dunwich. You will get Barred from Neighborhood, the most wretched game mechanic ever conceived in an expansion. (It WILL tick you off.) And I really hate to pick on Dark Pharaoh for this, but you will have more questions than any other expansion about several dozen cards merely due to confusing language and weird mechanics blending. It's unfortunate, but it's there.

If you are trying to save money, ignore me. Buy the cheaper Dark Pharaoh box and enjoy it. But if your only problem is "space", that's just not a good enough reason to deprive yourself of the wealth inside Dunwich.

By the way, on Amazon, Dark Pharaoh is selling for $19.95. Dunwich Horror is selling for a minimum of $147.50.

And on eBay, Dunwich can be found new for $40 (50-ish with shipping).

Huh. It's been a while since I've looked at eBay.

I definitely agree with zealot and jgt; as far as my group is concerned, the actual Dunwich board is the one extraneous part of that expansion. Either one will definitely meet your current needs, but Dunwich is more of a long-term investment, because of the scalable difficulty, the nonspecific theme, and the variety of investigators and ancient ones. On the other hand, you'll probably get quite a bit more mileage out of Pharaoh by getting it first. I was going to suggest that you might want to go with Pharaoh now and wait for the next Dunwich reprint, but it looks like, in addition to being available on ebay, it's still in stock at cardhaus and sci-fi-city and probably a fair number of brick-and-mortar stores.

Just do a google search for Dunwich and you'll find plenty for a decent price. I got mine from worldatplaygames.com for about 35 bucks.

I looked on amazon to call shenanigans on you, but it really is going for 147. That's ridiculous! I was literally just looking at Amazon a week ago and debating on getting Dunwich from there for 40 bucks with free shipping or one of the many other sites that was selling it for around 32 but charging 10 for shipping.

Ninian said:

I paid for that, too. I then made a topic about it, not realizing Avec actually ninja'ed me with that discussion. Though I tried buying it from other online stores, but I think most of them are out of stock, too :-x Now I know to always get it from Amazon with free shipping, first!

Amazon is shady on Curse of the Pharaoh as well. It has two listings for it and originally it was "fulfilled by Amazon" on both of them. Art's Game Store was one of the merchants selling through Amazon (but fulfilled by them, so eligible for free shipping), but he clearly had rolled his shipping charge into his price. From Amazon it was about $26 and directly from him it was $23 something + his shipping of $2.50. I emailed Amazon to complain and today Art's Game Store is gone, but I bet that is because it went out of stock.

The other merchant fulfilled by Amazon is charging $26 and lying about the list price (which is actually $24.95 and not the 27.99).

If I buy Dark Pharaoh, it will be from a local store. Amazon is not scrutinizing its affiliates in this case.

As for Dunwich, it's available at several places, but the shipping costs are outrageous (especially if you're used to dealing with Amazon as I am). I missed it on Amazon I guess. I wonder if it will be back there after Christmas, but that might be too late to take advantage of my group's current interest in this game.

As I had said, I ended up purchasing from worldatplaygames.com and the shipping is actually a flat 4.95, I think. I also purchased another set of dice so total, I ended up saving 3 bucks as opposed to ordering the two items from Amazon. Plus, world at play throws in a freebie with every purchase that you get to pick out. I highly recommend this site for any gaming purchase!

jscott991 said:

Here is a suggestion to help you avoid repeating the same encounters free of charge! (although I'm sure the Mythos will make you pay, one way or the other)

When the opportunity arises, take the time to have encounters at places that you visit very rarely or at places where you normally only go to use the location special ability.

An acounter at the Asylum or General store is very seldom 'necessary' but does add variety to your games.

Or go to a real life general store and look around for clues on how to fight the mythos. I'll bet something different would happen each time you went.

Yeah every time I start investigating at the store a different security guy follows me around too.

jgt7771 said:

Actually you can slip the dunwitch board under the original so that just the otherworlds stick out and they are suddenly in play without dunwitch. I do this with Kingsport all the time.

Yes, this is a great way to add the Dunwich other worlds without using up a huge amount of space. It would save you the hassle of sorting out Dunwich OW cards and will make better use of them.