There are so many playable games out on the market. This game catches my attention visually, but Im a minis gamer more than a board gamer. I want to know what this game is because i visually like it.

Psykostevo said:

Arkham Horror is probably best described as a cooperative Adventure game with RPG elements. The theme is the Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft and associates - you will be facing off against Cthulhu, Shoggoths, the Mi-Go and all other sorts of horrors.

The general idea is that you will take control of an Investigator who is exploring the Town of Arkham as weird things happen around you (caused by the game engine). You'll be taking quick jaunts into Other Worlds in an effort to close the Gates to these worlds to prevent the Great Old One (Cthulhu and Others) from awakening. The Gates will be spitting out Horrible Creatures that will wander the board and kill you if you can't kill them - or, worse, drive you insane.

It's a cooperative adventure with up to 8 players going against the cold, emotionless board who hates you with every atom of its existence. You will be making dice checks for combat and random encounters as in a D&D game. And if you love miniatures, Fantasy Flight Games has put out an entire optional line of miniatures to use with it.

Here what the base game will look like:

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Everyone here rather enjoys it. I'd call it my favorite game!

Somebody could possibly reply that Arkham Horror is a strategic game with a lovecraftian setting; the truth lies in between (and this makes the game a hit): you can see it both as a stragic game AND a game with strong roleplaying elements. The game's structure is so flexible that allows you to play in either way, according to your needs. Hence, you can merge in the theme of the encounters, and the story of your adventures, or you can focus on the vital spots of the "enemy" and hit as strong (and fast) as you can.

The game offers a *huge* replayability: the combos of Ancient Ones, Heralds, different boards in play, investigators and so on offers you the chance to play countless games (well, actually, they can be counted, but even if you play a game / day for the rest of your life you won't play the same game twice, so...). Plus, it's a coop game. This means that all win or lose the game as a group, so no hard feelings, no teeth grinding, no chairs flying across the room. It's a plus, in my opinion.

Buuuut. It cannot be seen as a mini game. If you're interested in minis game, you could probably be more interested in games like Descent, the (now dead) Doom, or Gears of War. Or, if you still want a lovecraftian flavour, you should try Mansions of Madness, a game sharing the Arkham setting but with actual minis on the board

I concur with Julia. If minis are an important aspect of gaming for you, then you should probably look at Mansions of Madness rather than Arkham Horror. There ARE minis available for AH, but they're sold separately and they can get pretty pricey (and, among other things, they don't fit on the board very well.) Mansions of Madness actually uses the exact same minis, except it was designed to use them from the get-go so they fit better, and you get a selection of them in the base game.

Both games deal with archaic horrors from beyond mortal understanding of reality, raising all manner of terror in the 1920s era. Arkham Horror is a larger scope (covering the whole town of Arkham and a few neighbouring towns as well (with expansions), whereas Mansions is more focused on one particularly creepy house. Arkham is also co-op (all players work together to defeat an automated enemy) while Mansions pit one player as the evil mastermind against the rest of the heroic investigators.

Also keep in mind that, in terms of strategy, you're pretty much doing the same thing each game. Some people will collect Clue tokens from unstable locations. Once they have enough, they will drop them off at locations with open gates (aka, sealing gates). Other people will move around the street areas, fighting monsters. At some point, players will switch from one role to another. There's also a variety of minor support roles, but the basic structure of the game doesn't vary too much.

It's not really a game for grand strategic decisions. It's more about tactics. Should you try the easy gate or the hard gate? Fight the easy monster or the hard monster? Etc.

You guys gave mE awesome answers. I will check out Mansions of Madness. I have seen that box at the stores too. Still might be interested in AH.

Psykostevo said:

I have a feeling you're into strategy... If you are... Arkham Horror has plenty (and the better you get at the game the tougher stuff we can throw at you).

I always like to say that AH is a game where you have an investigator that eventually learns something that he/she should not know about (arcane knowledge) and subsequently, madness or even death ensues.

I like to see it as a co-op turn-based adventure horror game with RPG elements. The game is highly randomized and extremly vicious since survivability is low, but it does provide a lot of fun and unexpected moments.

As a side note the game is pretty epic in it's vanilla format however it gets beyond that as soon as you start using the expansions.

OttomanJester said:

Ehh... The game is less randomized than most people think. There are significant patterns in it, that if understood can be manipulated as semi-predictable randomness (allowing for a much more strategic play of the game).

Avi_dreader said:

At some point we're going to have to have a good old fashioned strategy-versus-tactics debate.

Avi_dreader said:

I think Ottomanjester just meant it uses a lot of random elements, which is true.

If you are unfamiliar with the game's components, it can be quite a random game, i.e. you will have fun but it will be hard to have a coherent strategy. In one sense, this makes Arkham Horror a "lightweight" strategy game because you are always subject to the random whims of chance.

On the other hand this gives the game the potential to be pretty hardcore: the only way to anticipate what will happen is to have played it a hell of a lot and know what sorts of cards are likely to come up.

avec said:

In my view tactics are properly understood as a subcategory of strategy, so, not with me we're not ;'D

Avi_dreader said:

I believe that you are a current or former library student, so you probably know that subcategories are typically based on the generic, instantive, or (rarely) partitive relationships. Tactics are not types of strategy, nor are they instances or parts of strategy. Hence, tactics are not a subcategory of strategy. Tactics and strategy are separate but related concepts. The conceptual boundary between the two is blurry. In some situations, a plan could be viewed as tactics while in other situations it could be viewed as a strategy. However, the two concepts are not normally considered equivalent to each other. My understanding comes from a Department of Defense manual that I no longer have access to and is also supported by good ol' wikipedia . You can also Google the question, "what is the difference between strategy and tactics?"

avec said:

Okay, I have a policy against getting into semantic debates, so I'm not going there ;'D just as I said I wouldn't before. But yes, I'm aware of the formal distinction between the two words. I was very careful to preface that sentence with "In my view."

Instead I will refer you to Ambrose Bierce :') If his name sounds vaguely familiar to anyone, it's because Hastur was first mentioned in one of his short stories, or for some completely unrelated reason I can not surmise.

http://grammar.about.com/od/words/a/Ambrose-Bierce-On-Lexicographers.htm

At a passing glance I would say that tactics is to strategy as values is to morals .

Tibs said:

Hmm, yeah, I could see that.

The reason I bring it up is that every once in a while someone on BGG will post a negative review of Arkham Horror where they say that the game has no strategy. Fans of the game will respond by saying that it has lots of strategy. The part that gives me a headache is that both groups are right, but they mean different things by "strategy."

In Agricola, there are multiple paths to victory. You can bake bread, or raise sheep, or try to generalize, or maybe do something involving occupations. In Arkham Horror, there is one path to victory: sealing gates. (You can also prepare to fight the Ancient One, but that strategy is lame and doesn't count.) When you try to win by sealing gates, you pretty much have one or two people collecting Clues and sealing gates while the other people collect monster trophies. At some point the players switch roles. In terms of strategy, that's pretty much it.

So I sympathize when people say that there's not much strategy to the game. However, what these people are missing is that how you accomplish these goals really depends on your knowledge, cunning, and nerve. So, yeah, there's not much strategy per se, but the game is no dice fest either. To me, the word "tactics" seems to encapsulate that distinction.

Arkham Horror is an exercise in risk management, supplemented by interesting anecdotes and thick atmosphere.