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!