Anyone have them both and have opinions?

I'll just copy-paste this over from the Elder Sign forum...

I haven't been playing Arkham Horror comparatively long, but I've been playing it quite a bit since I picked it up for the first time 6 months ago. I've already bought most of the expansions (I passed up the last remaining one, Kingsport in favor of Elder Sign, but I'll finish my collection soon!) and I've put a lot of time into Arkham Horror games. Granted I still get some of the rules wrong, but Arkham Horror delivers a unique half RPG/half board game experience that I just love to death.

Elder Sign does not deliver the same experience.

But the experience it *does* deliver is every bit as fun as Arkham Horror, but in different, but equally good ways.

Part of Arkham Horror's uniqueness is in just how difficult a game it is. The game hates you, wants you to suffer, and laughs at your pitiful efforts to thwart it. It makes for an intense gaming session where even just one game will take hours and usually leave you feeling exhausted afterwards. There's a certain beauty to that play style that makes Arkham Horror worth playing.

Elder Sign, in contrast, merely dislikes you. It's enough to make it not a guaranteed win, but you never feel like the game is somehow sentient and finding ways to specifically screw you over. While your victory chances in Arkham Horror get to around 50% (at best), judging by my first few games of Elder Sign, your chances of winning are more around 75%. The game won't do anything to make you glare at it with hate and loathing which can actually can be a plus. It won't make it boring either, as those darn die have a habit of not ever rolling what you're going for (I once got all spell Icons on the sole mission that had no spell's whatsoever. DOH).

Arkham Horror is unique in just how immersed you will feel in the setting. Elder Sign could not replicate that fully, but it does a good job of giving a sufficient feel for the theme. There's more lore on the missions and monsters, which doesn't quite make up for the Encounters, but does fine for its size. If you want a quick fix of Lovecraftian Horror, Elder Sign fits the niche perfectly.

But by far Elder Signs biggest advantage over Arkham is its size, speed, and accessibility. Arkham Horror is a MONSTER of a game. I've dedicated a LOT of time to getting Arkham Horror as concise and organized as possible, so that games can be set up and begun faster, but even with those considerations, Arkham takes, at best, 20 minutes to set up. And then Arkham takes over your entire table - truth be told, I do not have a table in my house that could hold Arkham and all its expansions. Even one expansion pushes the available table space in my home. At the place we hold our gaming group, it can still barely fit on the large table. And then, once you're done, you're in for the long haul, playing a massive game that takes a long time to teach, and a much longer time to play, with games averaging 2 hours and sometimes spiraling much longer. It's just a big friggen game.

Elder Sign you can set up in 5 (if you're slow), and fit a full game on one small table, and be done with first time players in under an hour. That advantage is HUGE. While it won't replace Arkham as my big epic game, the fact that I can sit down, set up, play, and tear down in an hour is such a big advantage that it seems likely to me that Elder Sign will be getting a lot more play t my house than Arkham Horror will, just due to size and time constraints alone!

So, in short, Elder Sign is no replacement for Arkham Horror, but it's a perfectly fine game in its own right, a lot of fun, and still dripping delightfully with the eldritch abominations we love so much. I'd highly recommend it.

Given what I know of you Avi, not sure you'd like it, most of the players seem to find ES way too easy.

Dam said:

Bleh :'r

Sigh... It's too bad, because I really thought a 1 hour Lovecraft game might be a fun way to introduce players to Arkham Horror, buuuut ;'D I can't in good conscience buy it if it's easy EASY EASYYYYYYYYYYYYY ! Arg.

Are there any mods to bump up the difficulty level?

Dam said:

::sigh:: i really hoped it could be much more challenging. Let's hope there is a way to twist the rules and increase the difficulty level

Avi_dreader said:

Off the literall top of my head.

10 EASY WAYS TO BUMP UP DIFFICULTY LEVEL IN ELDER SIGN:

1) Play Shub Niggurath.

2) Don't allow players to purchase Elder Signs at the Entrance.

3) Don't allow players to buy full life and stamina restorations at the Entrance.

4) Play Shub Niggurath.

5) Add a Doom Token *every* time the Clock Strikes Midnight in addition to the normal Mythos effects.

6) Allow fewer exhibits to be visited (put out 4 instead of 6 maybe?)

7) Play Shub Niggurath.

8) Draw 'The Curator' at any point in the game.

9) Remove some of the 'easy' Mythos cards and Exhibits from the game.

10) Play Shub Niggurath.

Did I mention Shub Niggurath mutilated us all the times we played? Them Black Goat be hard!

I also imagine the difficulty will be easily increased in future expansions. THe biggest thing that makes Elder Sign easy or hard really depends on your draw of the Exhibits and your draw of the mythos. Elder Sign has a lot of 'easy' Mythos cards (for example, some only give you a doom token if no Investigator has a common item... I mean, EASY), but removing the easier ones for a smaller mythos deck could also help. And if you get some of the easier exhibits, you can ignore the really hard ones and focus on the easy ones, which will bring you a victory.

As I said in my review, Elder Sign, when playing by the rules it gives you a 75% win rate. That's actually fine by me. But making it much harder shouldn't really be too difficult = actually, number 9 alone could increase the difficulty 10fold.

How much strategy is in the game? Is it mostly luck? Or?

Avi_dreader said:

Depends on what you define as strategy. I'd say it's equal parts intelligent decision making and luck. Selecting the Exhibit to visit requires a good amount of forethought (if your playing well, anyway) on what your chances of completing the exhibit are vs how necessary completing it is - and after that, it comes down to die rolls. It's less strategy than Arkham Horror, but the amount of luck takes different forms - for example, in AH, setting your lore skills low can completely screw you over in random encounters, but Elder Sign is more about resource management before the die roll.

The mythos is pure luck though. Unlike Arkham where even the "Nice" mythos cards can cause (at best) a monster surge or a doom token gate, some of the mythos cards do very little to nothing in ES.

It really just comes down to playing it. I am very happy with the way game turned out - it's not as hard as Arkham but it gives a fun mythos fix in a short amount of time so I think it's totally worth it.

Hmmm... I think I want to play it, but I don't think I want to buy it ;'D Thanks guys.

I pretty much second Master Fwiffo's opinion. It's quite fun in its own right, and I highly recommend it. The only major issue is that there's a number of issues with unclear rules and imbalanced characters, but no one here should be a stranger to that....

Walk said:

WHAT?! WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?! I CAN'T HEAR YOU!! ALL THE RULES FOR ARKHAM ARE PERFECTLY CLEAR, NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG!!

Yarg... I think I'm going to cave and buy it on second thought ;') consumerism and collectophilia wins against my better judgement.

I've only played three games of elder sign. But i really enjoy the simplicity of the game, its easy to set up and quick to play. And yes, its a fun game. Its also better than the other lovecraft/mythos games i have played to date (except for Mansions). What it lacks is theme, there are basically no descriptive text and the game boils down to just rolling the dice not really knowing why. In arkham horror you always have a reason to test your ability, here you just roll the dice. And thats kind of sad, if they would just have added some descriptive text to the tasks it would have made the game a whole lot better.

Would be nice to know your opinion once you have bought/played it!

Richard U. Pickman said:

Umm..... every Exhibit and every monster has descriptive text on it. There's even different descriptive text on every cultist! Usually quite a bit on the exhibits too...

Richard U. Pickman said:

Master Fwiffo said:

Yeah, you are right.

But something like

A secret gathering

Energy crackled along the walls and illuminated their faces, many of which were horrifyingly familiar.

Is a far cry from what you get in arkham horror where the flavor text actually says what you are doing and why you are rolling the dice.If you know what i mean. Dont get me wrong, i really like elder sign, i just think it lacks the flavor of arkham horror. But im crossing my fingers that an elder sign pod will be available soon...