Okay so I absolutely love the base Arkham Horror game and am looking at buying an expansion but I am not sure which one to go with. I was hoping that the kind community here would be willing to chime in and let me know their thoughts and experiences on each of the expansions and which is the best to expand into.

VTGrizzly,

as you could imagine, this question was asked literally at least one thousand times over the not so many years of existance of these boards. So, first of all, the easiest thing you can do, is simply start searching / reading some old threads asking the same question (in this way you will have a much more extended view of all our answers that certainly cannot be repeated here); I can sum up the "general" consensum of the forum:

- first big box epansion to get: Dunwhich Horror. It should really be considered a complement to the core game, rather than a real "expansion"

- first little box expansion to get: The King in Yellow. The best Herald in town, Blights, tons of little cozy funky delirant stuff and the greatest theme ever, in encounters and Mythos

Then it depends on what you're searching for: variety (small boxes preferred) or complexity (big boxes preferred)

Hope this could help a little

JULIA

I would have tried to provide an analysis of all of the expansions, highlighting the pros and cons of each...of course, in the end I would have provided the same answer as my friend, Julia. Small Box: the King in Yellow ...Big Box: Dunwich Horror !

Heres a summary.

1) Dunwich (or King and/or Pharaoh if budget is limited)

2) Whatever takes your fancy. Innsmouth is brutal, Kingsport less so. So figure out how tough you want to go. On budget, add Black Goat for a really tough challenge, but you only need the herald for that. The rest you will not see much use out of. Add Lurker if you want to give yourself a bit of a sneaky break, (its herald is really a guardian in disguise). Lurker also provides a difficulty boost with new kinds of Gate markers. So it can make your task easier, harder or both at once.So, Lurker on a budget (assuming you already have King and Pharaoh).

3) Leave Miiskatonic til last. It changes everything by tightening it up, making it tougher and more brutal. Buy Black Goat before you do or at the same time. It is regrettably the least functionally present expansion but with MH it improves its show time.

Big box : Dunwich and Innsmouth expand the gaming area, giving you new unstable locations where gates can open / clues can appear and introducing vortex mechanism (they swallow monsters when you ignore them and raise terror / activate the nastiness of the particular board). Difference is that Innsmouth is a lot harder. Kingsport is the odd one, it won't expand your effective gaming area (the lack of unstable locations), but gives you the constant threat of dimensinal rifts, making sure you cannot ignore the town for long, like when no gate opens in IH/DH.

Small box : KiY and Pharaoh are amazing, first one has the best herald in the game, the other however, gives you a new 'location' and generally makes the streets more interesting. Plus it has some of the best encounters (both Arkham and OW) ever created, they're amazingly thematic. Lurker makes the game far easier, but if you're into the whole demonic atmosphere that dark pacts promise, go for it. It also gives you new gates and relationship cards for investigators. BGotW is one the most brutal heralds, the corruption mechanism is fun, but won't really appear unless you use some houserules for it, or play with the herald.

MH : expansion of the expansions. I'd recommend getting it after you have at least half of the expansions.

To sum it all up: definitely DH first, because it gives you plenty of good investigator cards and the much needed injury/madness system. Then the rest of the big box expansions imo, simply because they offer more than small box x-packs. All this coming from someone who left DH for last. It was a mistake. :-)

Thank you all for responding. I do realize that I can probably find a lot more answers by reding through the threads and plan to do just that.

It looks like so far the general consensus is either Dunwich or King in Yellow depending on how much money I want to spend. I do evnetually plan to collect every one of them, this game is awesome.

I do evnetually plan to collect every one of them, this game is awesome.

And these are wise words