Hi all,

My name is Kevin and I had the opportunity to attend Arkham Nights 2013 in Toronto (graciously hosted by Lion Rampant Import) for a weekend of Lovecraftian fun and horror! I was so excited to be there

At this event, they were running no less than 4 tables of Eldritch Horror (amongst other things) over the span of two days and, of course, I rushed immediately to try out the game.

Eldritch Horror was so "hot off the press" for us in Canada that our GM had only a few sessions with his copy before he sufficiently became a 'demo expert' himself!

Below is a list of my thoughts while I was playing the game for the first time.

- The game is beautiful. It looks great and meets all of the expectations you'd have from Fantasy Flight. Although Arkham Horror and Mansions of Madness are suitably choked with dark and creepy art, Eldritch is decidely uncluttered and inviting in its graphic design. You can actually breathe when you look at the board.

- Speaking of the board, I LOVE the globe-trotting aspect of this game. It's very 'Pandemic'-esque and the feeling of travelling to some of your favourite cities to fight off Shoggoths and Cultists and stave off imminent doom with the help of your team is so satisfying. You also run into helpful allies and shady characters during your travels. Very cool.

- The game is elegant and svelte. The rulebook is trim and accessible which makes flipping through the pages to clarify rules much easier.

- All of the elements of what you'd expect from Lovecraft and Arkham Horror are jammed into this game. There's lots to do and many mysteries to solve. If you think the story and narrative elements have been sacrificed, fear not fiction lovers - the same bold and interesting prose from FFG is very much intact.

- Turns are fast. I played with 4 other people and never felt as if I was waiting forever for my turn to come. As such, both sessions we had were very well paced.

- The character roster is awesome as usual. Some of them have really kick-ass powers. This is par for the course with other games in the Arkham Horror universe.

- Combat and skill checks like 'Influence', 'Lore', 'Willpower', etc... are (generally) all successfully resolved by rolling 5 or 6 on the dice. Nice, simple, straight to the point. Nothing overly complicated.

- There are a lot of asset and item cards available for purchase in the 'The Reserve' to help arm your investigators and give you an edge in the fight. You'll get cool stuff like shotguns and knives as well as personal chartered flights to help you travel to other cities faster.

- I LOVE LOVE the mechanic of 'Reckoning' (perhaps it already exists in some of the other Arkham Horror expansions?). Basically, 'Reckoning' is an event dictated by Mythos cards (iirc) where all the cards and tokens that are marked with a Reckoning symbol (a red lightning bolt thingy) must be flipped over where new instructions await you. This is ALWAYS a bad thing and nasty things happen to you like losing health or sanity or even being devoured. So why is this cool? Well, if you're drawing too many monsters or if you're being too greedy taking beneficial cards, you as a player will start sweating and becoming a bit paranoid before the next Mythos arrives. Should I kill this monster now? Am I taking in too much debt? How do I get rid of these **** Reckoning things...? etc..

All right enough of that. So the first game I played on Saturday, we started out simply enough. We had a sailor (Silas), a spy (Trish), a soldier (Mark Harrigan), a martial artist (Lilly Chen), and me, a psychic (Jacqueline Fine - one of my faves). Today we would be up against Azathoth.

We were doing well, going around collecting clues and solving mysteries until this massive Spider demon came out of nowhere and stopped our collective adventure short. It wiped us all out because we severely underestimated it as a legitimate threat (whomp whomp). But even though we were devoured, we had fun and didn't feel let down. We'd try again.

On Sunday, we hurried back to the table and one of the players in our group formed a brilliant strategy. She played as the politician (Charlie) and went around buying and distributing resources for us. We appointed ourselves to be her foot soldiers and go around fighting monsters and closing gates so, in essence, we became a well-oiled machine to beat the game. This session was much more enjoyable as we figured out a way to stay two steps ahead of the game while having the adequate resources to fund our adventure. Suffice to say, Azathoth didn't stand a chance and we kicked him back to the Stone Age. Our average playtime was about 2 to 2 and a half hours. A solid way to spend the afternoon.

I know what you're thinking: any cons with the game?

To be honest, I'm racking my brain to remember the things I didn't like but they are so niggling or so general that I'm not sure if it's worth mentioning. But I'll try.

- As much as the players are working together to beat the game, I never really felt like we were traveling together. Sure, we meet up in citiies to exchange clues and items but other than that, we are essentially 5 people traveling independently. But that's just a narrative thing.

- Picking up your airplane or train tickets is so mundane. While you are in a city, you just use up an action to get one. You don't pay anything. There is an interesting opportunity here to make a mechanic out of financial decisions of paying for travel but the designers decided to skirt around this issue. Oh well.

- Maybe the Mythos deck was just being nice to us but I would have liked to see the monsters move around the board more. In our sessions, they just stay put guarding the gates. This is where the comparison between Eldritch Horror and Pandemic stops: the "plague" is always localized and waiting for you to neutralize it - you don't get the feeling that it's spreading and dominating the globe from one or multiple sources. The game designers could have built an interesting mechanic around this to help raise the level of tension.

- Lastly, I don't know how well this game scales when there are 8 people playing. I feel that the sweet spot of this game is probably with 4 or 5 people but no more. Any more than that and you'll really be waiting a long time for your turn to come and perhaps the game becomes too easy? I dunno. Anyways, this is nitpicky because I'm aware this is an issue for other board games like Elder Sign (which I love) as well.

~*~

Let's get serious for a moment: some of you out there are thinking, "What is the point of this game's existence?" Let me offer my opinion: This game is perfect for me, someone who only plays Arkham Horror twice a year AT MOST. As an initiate who has just been inducted into the Cthulhu line of board games, I feel much better about my investment picking up Eldritch Horror rather than Arkham Horror at this point. Why? 1): My game group will actually understand what the goal is and how to win 2) More time spent playing rather than rules lawyering, 3) I don't have 9 pricey expansions to chase after, and 4) Eldritch will hit the table more often than Arkham, hands down.

So there you have it! I'm so looking forward to this and I want to get a copy for Christmas. FFG, if you're listening, don't take too long with expansions! This was a successful weekend of boardgaming and making new friends. I'll definitely contact my teammates again next month when the game hits stores: who knows when we'll be called upon again to save the world?

Dun dun duunuuuun.

Feel free to ask me questions if you have any!

Very interesting review thank you, may look again at this

I know this isn't the MoM forum but did you see anything for MoM while you were there? Anything mentioned?

This is all exactly what I was hoping for! Thanks for posting, I'm gonna go see if I can pre-register.

You're welcome, guys.

I did not see anything new for MoM unfortunately. I also played that game for the first time this weekend.

Had a similar experience at Arkham Nights in Minnesota! Played three games, winning the first two and losing the third while fighting Cthulhu.

I really loved how nearly EVERYTHING is essentially an encounter to one extent or another. To gain a clue you have to draw from a research encounter deck that is specific to the Ancient One you are facing.

I agree with most of Saint7's points. However I do disagree with purchasing travel tickets being mundane. Spending an action is a fairly major payment.

Also one thing that I LOVE is how much a different Ancient one changes the tone of the game. It swaps out two decks, causes Cultist monsters to be diffferent, and causes the Mythos deck to be stacked differently.

One problem I had that Saint7 didn't mention was lack of Ancient Ones' diversity. There are only 4. And although each have 4 mystey cards which you select 3 of each game and ordering is important... So although there are a lot of unique combinations you still are seeing the same components frequently.

And some of the encounters were becoming familiar after just 3 games. Both of these are things that will probably be fixed by piling on the expansions.

Totally agree, Fenyx. Thanks!

Kevin,

Thanks very much for your Eldritch Horror review and account! It was very interesting and entertaining. My only questions pertain to your comparison of Eldritch Horror with Arkham Horror....

First, I should mention that AH is probably my second favorite game. Definitely in the top 5. But how is it any harder to understand what the goal of AH is, or how to win? Secondly, it seems to me like rules lawyers will be rules lawyers, whatever the game. And I kind of had to chuckle when you asked FFG not to take too long to come out with an expansion after listing expansions as one of the problems/issues with Arkham (bearing in mind that purchasing and/or using expansions is an optional thing, not mandatory).

Maybe you were simply feeling obligated to mention weaknesses in EH when you didn't really see any, and "dissing" Arkham on those grounds was more in the category of collateral damage.

I got a chance to play EH over the weekend too, and agree with your points. (Other than the ones pertaining to AH..). I think that Eldritch Horror is to Arkham Horror what Descent Second Edition is to Descent First Edition. Most, if not all, of the good stuff is retained in both equations. But a streamlining process has been applied that makes playing more manageable, in both cases, for those players looking for something a bit less epic in scale.

Hi Schmiegel,

Thanks so much for your reply. Honestly, if I can help someone decide whether they want to purchse EH or not, then I feel I've helped the community. Now to your questions:

1) I've only played AH seriously three times in my life (I've played it more than that but those sessions weren't very serious and we gave up half an hour through because we were fooling around and didn't make any progress). It shot to the top of my list of favourite boardgames. But the first time I played it, I was lost. I knew what the ultimate goal was but I couldn't plan a viable strategy to get the elder signs, to close the gates, battle monsters, etc... because a lot of the rules were obfuscated by exceptions to certain situations that only our host (or GM, if that really exists) knew from his tome of a rulebook - which I didn't have the time to flip through AND play the game at the same time. I really relied on the host to help guide me (and the other participants at the time) come up with a strategy. In this sense, I didn't feel I had ALL of the necessary knowledge to be in control.

Subsequent games however, I started getting the hang of it and things became easier. But, Schmiegel, see it from the point of view of someone like myself introducing AH to my friends for the first time. It's a nightmare, plain and simple. The amount of rules, the size of the board, the number of tokens, etc.... it's ovewhelming and turns off most people (the casual market).

I'd like to talk about what makes for a GOOD, satisfying game of AH. I feel the answer to that is having some of your veteran AH friends stand by your side during a session. If you want a prayer's chance of fighting off the AO, it's best to take people who have a lot of experience in this game so that you can work together synergistically in closing gates efficiently (and perhaps before 2am creeps up on you).

Taking newbies with you offers you less of a chance of victory. They may even prove to be a liability.

But in EH's case? I'm sure I could take four newbies with me and they'd all get the game after 1 or 2 turns and it's possible that we could have a victory despite the fact none of the people have ever played the game, save for me.

There is a higher likelihood that new people will understand EH faster than AH. I'm willing to bet on this.

2) Was I dissing AH? Maybe a bit, yes. But it wasn't out of hate - it was out of love because I'm a designer and can see room for improvement in that game. There are areas of the game design that can be simplified or amalgamated so that it doesn't have to be so complex but still get the same feeling of tension and horror. And you know what? ES could be that game.

3) Lawyers will be lawyers. You're right about that.

4) Let's talk about spending money and making an "investment" in your games for a bit. Yes, it is contradictory that I asked FFG not to take too long with expansions. It was a throwaway joke on my part (cuz we know FFG is ALL about the expansions), my bad.

But if we examine this notion for a bit, at this moment, AH has 9 expansions at about $35 to $40 CAN each. That's a hefty price if you want to get the FULL experience (and I did get that experience at Arkham Nights 2013).

Let's be liberal and say that FFG is releasing at least one expansion for EH within the next 6 months. I asked the distributor how much that expansion would cost. He estimated that it would be cheaper than AH expansions because FFG is appealing to a slightly less hardcore crowd - the type of crowd that is only willing to cough up $20 - $30 CAN per expansion and have less time to play (work, kids, paying bills, etc).

Plus, we don't even know if EH will be a hit. If it's not a hit (and I'm fine with that) perhaps I will only have two expansions to pick up and then I'm done. *brushes hands* Now we have the complete EH game, a more trim and streamlined Arkham-Cthulhu experience for less money.

Are expansions mandatory? No, of course not. But in the case of EH? It might as well be. For the scant amount of AOs and cards you get (as someone in this thread mentioned), the REAL experience that the designers envisioned us having will probably come with the expansions.

It should be said that I do not own AH at this time. Now I have the choice between AH and EH and I feel more comfortable wading into the pool that is EH rather than AH at this time (for the points I mentioned above).

Sorry for the long-winded post. I sense that you are an intelligent person and so you deserve a full, well-rounded response. Thanks for reading and listening to my point of view.

Hi Kevin,

Wow, didn't see that coming, as the saying goes.. Not that I should be surprised. Your previous post was brilliant as well. Thanks for calling me intelligent.. I don't think anyone has ever done that before, except possibly my mother. (I think most thought she was lying.)

What I'm trying to say is I really appreciate your well considered response, and no need to apologize for a long winded response. I actually could have easily listened to more..

I completely agree with all your points, not that I was trying to argue before. Perhaps I did get a bit defensive about Arkham Horror, it's true, and I do know what you mean about it having a difficult learning curve. Someone has posted a well-organized listing of all the rules on Board Game Geek, in the files section, as I recall. I should probably just find that and place the link in this post. If you're interested, let me know, and I can get back to you. But I have found that helpful.

The thing about Arkham Horror is that it's such a spectacular game. It's worth investing the effort into learning it. What I did was just play it solo at first, to learn the rules. Actually I've done that since that time, just for the fun and/or challenge of it. I play with four investigators in those instances.

I do agree that trying to use all the expansions can make it next to impossible to manage. There may be some who do that, but I would recommend distilling it down to the base game plus one board expansion and one card expansion each time you play. Since all the expansion cards have their unique icons printed on them, this isn't so hard, or you could just leave all the cards together in one mega-set and discard any card drawn that has an icon of an expansion not in use for that game.

However I would include all the Ancient Ones, Investigators, items and things of that nature. Essentially, just don't use the expansion board, mythos cards, location cards, other world location cards and certain expansion-specific material from the expansions you're not using that game. Then it becomes more manageable.

It would be tragic not to stick with your attempt to learn AH long enough to give it a chance. While I do think Eldritch Horror holds great promise, it's not going to be able to provide the same magnitude of an in-depth experience as Arkham, for those who value that.

Again, you are absolutely correct that Eldritch Horror is going to be WAY easier for newbies to understand and master, if that is the goal. And the game will play much more quickly, for those who don't want to "make a career" of playing a board game.

And yes, I also agree that EH screams out for an expansion and the sooner the better, as you say. I think we can count on that happening. I don't see why FFG couldn't keep expanding it until all the Ancient Ones are accounted for, for example. Four AO's is obviously not enough, in the long term, more of everything is "required", much like with the release progression of Descent Second Edition (in which you'd come up woefully short at the outset if you didn't own Descent First Edition and purchase the conversion kit..).

At the end of the day, I put tremendous value in the way EH's designers have streamlined this game while leaving so much of the feel of the original (FFG version, that is) intact. Everything you've said is true, but my point is to recommend Arkham Horror even if it does take some time to learn and to play the game itself, because it's so well worth it.

One more thing, I don't think you really need to own all the AH expansions to get the "full" experience. Looking back, I think you can attain that just by playing the base game alone. It would have been perfectly fine if they had never released a single expansion. Being the consumers we are, it's always easy to be manipulated into purchasing more (and I really don't mind and it allows the game company to make a decent living), but it really isn't necessary. There are great features in most (if not necessarily all) of the expansions, don't get me wrong. But you don't need them and I don't think people should feel they have to own them or use them, they should be considered completely optional.

I really appreciate your response.

All that remains is for Eldritch Horror to hit the retail stores. It's not here in Milwaukee yet. I see that Tibs has already gotten a copy....wonder where he lives?

Some copies were available after the demo weekend. I've got some friends in Europe being fortunate enough to have some copies as well. Not my case, clearly. I do hope my copy will arrive next week / in ten days

Yeah, Tibs, how did you get your copy ? So jealous that you get to play it ahead of us blokes in Canada. Yes, Schmiegel, if you can dig up that post in BBG about how to introduce AH properly, by all means, please share. I'm not saying that I'll NEVER get back to AH, I will. It just doesn't seem like it'll be sometime soon as most of my hardcore Arkham friends (those who take it seriously and can explain rules and discrepancies) are over 40 and barely have any time to play board games anymore.

I figure AH is a lot like that video game 'Dark Souls'......the amount of enjoyment you get out of it is proportional to the time you put into it.

Julia, thanks for the info.

Hi Kevin,

Here is the link to the BGG file with rules better organized:

I hope the link works correctly.

http://files.boardgamegeek.com/geekfile_download.php?fileid=47463&filetype=application%2Fpdf&filename=ArkhamHorrorRulesReference.pdf&filecode=4b8dap7jh2&validationcode=f0c9f8983fcde40d8850af114a94cf88

Here's a good post about explaining the rules for Arkham Horror;

http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/29254/board-games/introducing-new-players-theme-rich-boardgames

Thanks Fenyx!

Sorry, Schmiegel, it looks like the link doesn't work for me.

Kevin,

Sorry it took so long to get back to this... I'll try inserting the link again but if it doesn't work, you can "manually" go to the Board Game Geek web site - Arkham Horror - files - and find it on page 34 of the files (Arkham Horror rules reference). It's a useful document, so I'd recommend taking a look at it.

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/15987/arkham-horror#files