After a year of work, I've finally finished Lovecraft Country Version 2.0. Imagine, if you will, that Fantasy Flight Games created another big box expansion, set in some of the minor parts of Lovecraft County and that they made it FREE to download. Lovecraft Country Horror is that expansion.

Lovecraft Country includes the following:

• Lovecraft Country Board
• 16 Investigators and their corresponding Personal Stories
• 4 Ancient Ones and their corresponding Sinister Plots.
• 10 Generic Plots.
• 16 Skills
• 32 Common Items
• 24 Unique Items
• 10 Spells
• 10 Cults, Guardians, Heralds and Institutions
• 16 Music of Erich Zann cards
• 76 Leads
• 4 Allies
• 32 Monsters
• Miscellaneous Cards
• 24 New Injuries and Madnesses
• 84 Tokens
• 54 Mythos Cards
• 41 Outer World Encounters
• more then 50 Location Encounters for each Neighbourhood

Let's have a look at a few of the contents….

So here's the board. As you can see, every location has special rules associated with it. All of the unstable locations can be breached via specific triggers, such as failing a rumour or letting the Terror Level get too high. This should hopefully stop the board going quiet, as can sometimes be the problem with expansion boards.

Those tokens below Martin's Beach track the Martin's Beach Horror. Whilst not quite as imposing as the Dunwich Horror, the Martin's Beach Horror is one tough beastie who causes the Terror Level to rise if left unchecked.

It wouldn't be much of a board without some encounters and Mythos cards. There are over 50 location cards for each neighbourhood, so the game should stay fresh for a long time.

Arkahm is a modular game, so you can download or completely ignore the small cards that come with this set, as you see fit. Here is a sample Skill, Unique Item and Common Item.

One of the design principles in Lovecraft Country was to supply locations which allowed players to gain specific card types. (For instance Common and Unique Items can be gotten from Dean's Corner. If you are concerned about using custom material in your games because it is easily identifiable, be concerned no longer, Lovecraft Country will resolve many of these issues.

The set includes 4 new Ancient Ones (and their Sinister Plots). Here's a sample one:

With monsters moving black every turn, those green monsters can become a real headache. But it's far more subtle than that. If you look at the board, the black arrows will lead to the vortex next to Peck Valley. Monsters which enter this vortex can cause a gate to open in Witches Hollow. And with one of the overspill monsters leaving the Outskirts or Heralds like Lilith adding monsters to the board, the players might find themselves mopping up to stop Magnum's insidious plans.

Like any big box set, this expansion includes new investigators. Here's one which represents a pulp archetype that was never covered in the original game: the damsel-in-distress. Note how she plays to type, getting rewarded for putting herself in danger. Every Investigator has their own personal story to follow too!

New expansions often include new rules to freshen up the game. I'm afraid the FFG forum software has given up the ghost on me, but above you can see some of the new effects.

The Music of Erich Zann allows you to gain clues by listening to the maestro's music - sometimes you'll get them straight away (as seen above), on other occasions you'll have to visit another location to pick up the clues. The mechanic is fully designed to work with or without other FFG expansions.

Leads are awarded to (non-arcane) players at the start of the game instead of clues. They represent strange-goings that the Investigators have to… er… investigate . To get around the slight tempo hit, leads at stable locations have a chance of seeding further leads (just like any good pulp detective novel) and the players now start the game in the Upkeep Phase.

Because the forum software has given up the ghost, you'll have to use the links below to see samples for the integrated terror track

http://i1113.photobucket.com/albums/k506/jabie1/Lovecraft%20Country%20Other%20Material/Quiet-Contemplation-Front-Face.png

http://i1113.photobucket.com/albums/k506/jabie1/Lovecraft%20Country%20Other%20Material/Crisis-of-Faith-Front-Face.png

This new rule makes the Terror track more interesting by giving investigators new minor abilities at certain locations (generally the ones that never got much love in the first place). The downside is, that, as the Terror Level rises, the cards flip over and the investigators get an ongoing penalty, such as a malus towards the upkeep of Retainers or Blessings.

If you want to know how the game plays, a friend of mine published a session report on boardgamegeek about a month. you can read it here:

www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/814739/new-custom-expansion-lovecraft-country-horror-

Hoepfully, by now I've piqued your interest. If you want to download the full expansion, you can find the rules (and links to the .eon files on my dropbox account) here: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/65090/lovecraft-country-horror-rules-and-board

Finally, I'd just like to publicly extend my thanks to Julia and Ctol on this forum, without whose input this expansion wouldn't have been half as good.

Wow… I miss that smiley, whose mouth is dropping wide open… I mean, I just read quickly your presentation, and I had throw a quick eye on only the images of the topic… But… wow !

Looks like you did something really amazing ! I really miss the word in english to describe how I feel about your work…

Did you send a copy of your work to FFG ? So I won't have to print everything, I'll just have to buy it

I just realized that I got a copy of your early work. Mid-june last year. You added a lot of stuff around what you got at that time.

Hugues said:

Go with "I'm speechless" ::rofling::

Yeah, the heat wave is cooking my brain, and my sense of humour too

Hugues said:

Did you send a copy of your work to FFG ? So I won't have to print everything, I'll just have to buy it

Lovecraft Country include a quick start file which contains the cards that come up in encounters. Additionally, all of the encounters / OW encounters / Mythos cards have been linked to playing cards, so if you want to dive right in with a quick game that involves with the minimum of printing, glue and fuss, you need only construct the board and the cards in the "bare minimum" document, then use a standard deck of playing cards to resolve everything else. Indeed, if you are prepared to improvise the dozen or so encounter which refer to a specific ally or item, you can get away with just printing out the board and the Martin's Beach Horror. Heck, you might even already have some of the Allies already, e.g. Oliver Grayson, Calvin Wright.

In terms of benefit to work ratio, once you've printed the bare minimum, you'll probably get the biggest bang for your buck out of the Ancient Ones, Heralds and Investigators, especially if you're willing to (temporarily) forgo periforals like the Personal Stories and Ancient One plots.

The Common Items, Unique Items, Skills and Monsters will take a little longer to put together, but are worth it, especially if you've added in other custom cards such as those found in the Cult of the Golden Scarab or Dark Corners of this Earth expansions.

I'm all in. Go big or go home. I, sir, will be printing it all…and showing it off in the journal (PLEASE GOD let me get the first edition together soon PLEASE).

Now if we can just get the rest of the big fan expansions sorted everything will be…well…better!

Yeah…heat…ugh…

I need that smiley face that's melting…ya know…into a puddle

Looks like a lot of work went into this. Good job!

Am I right in saying that if Martins Beach is sealed and the track reaches zero, nothing happens, right? No gate can appear, no monster can appear?

The short answer is that the gate does not appear but the Martin's Beach Horror does.

The gate and the appearance of the Martin's Beach Horror are separate events. Any effect which prevents one happening does not preclude the other from occurring. Note that the Martin's Beach Horror will cause the Terror Level to rise, Terror Level rises can cause Billington's Estate to open, monsters spewed from the Billington's Estate gate can enter the vortex at Peck Valley and cause the seal at Martin's Beach to be removed, which means it will then be subject to opening a gate if the track is still at zero and you need to remove a clue token.

Jake yet again said:

"Unfortunately, we do not have any information regarding .EON files in our database. Our program will not be able to assist you with opening these files.You may want to contact whoever sent you these files & ask them what software they use to manage that execution".

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

An .eon file can be opened via the Strange Eons program, which is availabe for free download here .

Esto said:

Julia is correct. Although the photobucket images can be used with almost any graphical software, the .eon files will require Strange Eons in order to read them. Sadly I can't update the first post of this forum to stop anyone else making the same mistake, but I will update the file download page on boardgamegeek.

Welcome to the carnival, Esto. I hope you enjoy the expansion.

Jake yet again said:

Esto said:

Bit surprised that you can't open the .eon files, they should be compliant. Maybe Thelric can explain.

As you have noted, I have put all the images up on photobucket, though I apologise in behalf for that site's tendency to leak memory and run annoyingly unnecessary flash adverts instead of low-tech html.

For Word you don't need Microsoft Word, you can download a viewer from Microsoft:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=4

Word Viewer does exactly what it says on the tin, it'll let you look at and print off word documents, but won't let you edit them.

Thanks Jake for your excellent suggestion. It worked like a charm. I now have 100% of everything I need to play the Lovecraft Country Expansion. It is obvious that this was a monumental labour of love for you. Even before playing it, I can tell that this is a superior product. I'm usually very picky with the fan-based material I incorporate into my AH Universe (especially with items & spells & Investigators) but I took most of what you produced without further editing or modification. All of the locations in Lovecraft Country look like fun & I like the mix of the Rolls Royces/Bentleys/Purdeys with the more mundane/utilitarian items for a buck or two such as the Cast Iron Skillet/Old Newspaper & Library Card. The Rules were great but I was especially impressed with the 105 pages that constitute the Encounters Index. It is a superb piece of work that is extremely functional for gameplay. Thanks again for your help.