Hello Arkham fans,

I bought the base set to Arkham over the holidays and have played it a few times. To my complete astonishment, my wife loves this game. She doesn't care for many board games, so I'd like to encourage her interest with this one. Which expansion would you recommend picking up first? Is there an order that I should go in? Thanks much

This gets asked a lot . So, let's try something more interesting:

What are you most looking for in an expansion?

What would you like to avoid?

How does price of the expansion factor in?

And to add:

What are your favorite parts of the game?

Your least Favorite?

Have you played enough to consider the game too difficult or too easy?

Also, there's at least a 75% chance that you should start with Dunwich Horror.

avec said:

::Laughter:: and there's the real answer, but the preliminary reference questions were good too.

Dunwich, the injury and madness decks are a much.

We ALMOST always draw from those rather than lose half you clues and junk. Although one of us got devoured last weekend trying that one too many times.

LordZon said:

Clearly you're fighting too much or doing something wrong, you only get an Injury/Madness if you fail at something .

Dam said:

I hate to agree with Dam on anything, including which direction the sun rises from, but yeah, that sounds about right ;')

Avi_dreader said:

Someone has the game for two months, and here you guys go again. Sheesh.

Welcome to the Carnival, LordZon!

Hey, if you don't put them in their place right away, they might get all uppity and stuff. Best curb those n00bs right away . Some, like Julia, get past us through flirting .

Dam said:

::Eyeroll::

;'D

Does anyone know where Mark Harrigan is right now? I need to borrow his flamethrower.

He's busy not being delayed.

Oh! But I usually draw a lot of Madnesses if something like Nightmare Pool comes up. Ugh, Harvey had 3 or so by the time that rumor was finally conquered...Poor guy. And there's a Stamina one, too, for Riots, but I failed that one once and didn't mind it.

Dam said:

me? ::sidestepping wearing sunglasses::

Avi_dreader said:

Have you checked the Asylum?

avec said:

You mean the forum?

EcnoTheNeato said:

I have played 10-12 basic games (all solo), won 4 of them, so I guess I m still a noob, right? I m getting the feeling though that if I play with 4 investigators on the basic game, there is no way to lose. The curving point, the crucial game mechanic to understand, is gate location frequency. Once I realized Ind.Sqr, Woods, WH and Unv. Isle are waaaay more frequent and you start sealing 1-2 of them, it is almost impossible to lose. Am I right on this one? It seems to me that the only way to raise difficulty on the basic game is to play with just 2 investigators. So, the question is which expansion raises difficulty? On the other hand, another question might be "am I too much of a noob to need an expansion-have an opinion"?

Yep, once you understand the gate frequency issue, base game isn't any more challenging. If you need a difficulty boost, go with Dunwich first. It's an interesting expansion, for many and different reasons. It adds some new mechanics, increases the number of unstable locations and has gate bursts able to crush the seals you put on the board after a nice journey through OWs. It's the best additional board to start with, probably

Julia said:

On that note, does anyone know of a good place to get Dunwich? I found it on Amazon...for $200. O_O I like Arkham Horror, but not in that "$200 for one expansion" kind of way.

I got Lurker, though, and am loving it so far. We may not use the Herald all the time, but the gate bursts are a fun way to add tension (we keep the new cards for all the existing stacks in play all the time, which I imagine is how most people do it), the new gates are interesting and challenging, and I really like the investigator relationship cards concept.

Advosan said:

Well... You're right about figuring out the base game, it's flawed in design. You can play it with only two investigators to increase the challenge. It's not a bad idea to do that until you've mastered it. It shouldn't take too long. Once you understand timing issues and item types and encounter frequencies, winning with two investigators on the base game becomes fairly simple also. And those things are actually good to know for when the game becomes larger and more complex.