Ok, finished my first couple of Eldritch games, so some comments.

The good:

Superior interaction between elements on the board / investigators possessions / Mythos card. This is something Arkham had a glimpse of (rift mechanic in Kingsport + activation of Corruptions due to monster movement + specific triggers for moving gates and stuff), but never truly implemented, and Eldritch hits the spot, doing this perfectly (I think this would appeal also people playing mostly light Euros, in a sort of cross-over between genres)

Greater versatility in all conditions: some bad elements, such as Madnesses and Injuries which were a constant in Arkham (only a few encounters in certain locations allowed you to get rid of those nefarious cards) can now be removed during a Rest action (1/3 odds to remove the bad condition). Important to notice is that you don't lose the Rest action to roll a die: you recover as per normal Rest action AND you're allowed to roll. Kudos to that.

Great theme appearing from most of the encounters I read so far. The setting is marvellous: they transformed the whole 1920s into a huge scenario for the Mythos, so that you can feel the smoky tentacles of the chinese mafia strangling you slowly while drinking in nifty venues in Shanghai or you can dig into the mysteries of Rome, with both a taste of real hystory and the shiver of the supernatural.

Every Ancient One has a specific encounter deck so that actually every game plays differently (and I do hope possible future expansions will add "thickness" to all the already existing decks) and all encounters are linked to the cult of that specific AO.

Characters have brilliant abilities; in addition skills, even though having a fix value, can be permanently improved through encounters.

The board with three different paths allows you to trigger different combinations of movement, so that actually you have the lovely sensation of being in a hunt for the greater Evil throughout the world. A little Indiana Jones style, maybe, but it's a lot of fun. Also the map presents different crossroads, so that you finally exit from the "double ring formation" (id est, streets in the internal part of the board and locations in the external so that you cannot enter a location but from the street in front of it) of Arkham's boards.

The difficulty of the game can be adjusted : this option allows you to weight the Mythos deck by removing certain cards, so that you could have an easier or a heavier game, depending on your experitise / desire for sufference. Which is a big plus, also for replayability or for when you have to introduce new people to the game: you don't have to skew anything, nor restrict the characters, but simply remove during the setup a subset of Mythos and voilà, the magic is done.

The bad:

Luck, luck, luck, oh, Lord, send me some luck : luck IS a major factor in Eldritch. It's much more relevant than in Arkham. Not only because you need to pass certain skill check in order to trigger an effect, but also because a certain effect is not always granted. Let me make you an example so that it's easier to get. In order to solve several cards of the game, you need clues. In order to get a clue, you need to reach a space containing one (and this is ok since you can strategically plan several turns ahead the movement of all your investigators) and then, during Encounters, you need to "encounter the clue". This implies you draw & resolve a card from the AO research deck (the deck thematically connected to the specific AO I mentioned earlier). This encounter is a "complex encounter": there is an introduction explaining what's going on, and then you're asked to make a check. Point is that it's not automatic that passing the check allows you to get the clue : in order for this to happen, it needs to be specified on the text. So you can waste two or three turns waiting for the proper encounter and then failing the check. This is horribly frustrating because it's twice luck dependant: you need the proper encounter and you need to pass the skill test. If I'm ok with the latter, I'm not with the former: you cannot pretend to have a sound game where getting the most vital resource depends on if you draw the right card or not. In the same way, for an Azathoth mystery you have to spend a clue after sealing a gate whose symbol matched the symbol on the omen track at the moment the gate was sealed. This implies a) waiting for the omen track to be on the proper place and b) passing the OW encounter and c) hoping that the pass condition for the OW exploration allows to close the **** gate. If any of these three conditions wasn't met, then it's all to do over again, and this could mean a minimum of 4 Mythos to wait. Considering you have a limited time to win the game (the size of the Mythos deck is constant and as soon as you have to draw one more Mythos and there are none in the deck, the AO awakens), this can be extremely frustrating. And has nothing to do with the game being difficult: it's something related to the luck you have at drawing encounters.

Arkham was a lot better under this point of view: luck was involved in the terms of risk management. Clues were granted, and you were aware of difficulties of checks and the dangers linked to the colours of Other Worlds so that you could work out a proper strategy and decide who was going to be sent where. This can't simply happen any longer in Eldritch: you don't only need to pass checks, but you also need to draw the right cards, which is something you simply cannot control. So, for me, this is an example of bad design. It could be realistic (you investigate a city and don't find what you're searching for) but in a time-management game this could also be a major issue.

So, you must be prepared for this. This is the major flaw of the game, and sadly it's not something that could be fixed anyway (and I can imagine many people being put off by this point).

Tons of small decks : in the end, you keep on searching assets and items throughout the decks, and it's pretty boring. Just imagine the small decks for spells in Mansions of Madness and multiply the amount by 5. You can keep everything into a unique deck you'll have to search countless times, or you need quite a big table (and patience)

And the Munchkin:

So, our first game was a 4p game against Azathoth (second one is Cthulhu and still running, but still, first game impressions were confirmed); we won. Are we happy? Yes, the game had some interesting points even though I can't say it was *so exciting* all the time.

In the end, the real question: would I buy this game? Yes, if I'm a big fan of Mythos / wanna have a medium weight coop game / I can pay 30-35 EUR for it instead of the regular 60 AND I'm ok with getting at least one expansion to add cards to the mix (core game is desperately low on cards on some of the decks, so I do really hope this issue will be soonish fixed by something being released. After all, the coded message in the sulebook was translated). In all other cases the answer is: nope. There are better games around.

Auto-question: Julia, you happy with it? Answer: I miss Arkham so much.

Hope this helps. If you have any further questions about anything (from the setup to the teardown) just ask

JULIA

**** Julia!!!!!!!!!!! Your "The Bad" chapter bummed me down so much I now want to sell my new freshly unpunched game

Great review btw, very constructive and informative. It's gonna be a great read for people on the fence.

And i'm glad that the code was cracked and that the rumors seem to be true. A "more of everything" is the best first expansion EH can get at the moment...but it's making me think FFG is starting to follow the "DLC" road: release a "semi-completed" game and throw DLCs to make it complete...

Hope it's not what they have in mind but it looks like it with EH...

Thanks Sorry I bummed you down It wasn't the intention, really. But I see how people wanting something deeply strategic could be turned off totally by some elements of Eldritch.

As for the expansions... I think that it's a good way to go. Costs / prices increased drastically (one year ago I tried to sum up the components of Descent 2nd edition + Labyrinth of Ruin + Lair of the Wyrm, and the total of minis and tokens and maybe cards - don't remember exactly - was not as high as 1st edition core set), so, probably going for a huge box will result in a lot less people getting the game. In this way, you have a solid base to play to reach a bigger audience and then you can add tons of stuff. It was done for Descent 2nd ed, the Star Wars LCG and some other games, so, I won't be that surprised if EH could go the same way.

Good review, Julia. I agree, it's way too luck-based, and you didn't even mention the "oh well, too bad" cards like the one that makes you lose a mystery, or the one I got in my last game (which will probably be my LAST game) that removed all damage from all monsters on the board... after I had painstakingly warn down two epic monsters. Yuk.

It's really just so watered down from everything I love about Arkham Horror, with few decisions that seem to matter. I suppose I wasn't the audience for this game, though, as I can still fully appreciate the brilliance and wonder of AH, bloat and all.

As long as they don't go down the DLC route of "Buy Investigator Y. He's 5 times as effective as other investigators and costs as much as the base set all by himself!"

Your bad certainly hit a cord with me. My brother and I were talking about the luck aspect after a game on Wednesday. OW encounters are particularly bad since you typically have to pass two checks and, by the luck of the draw, we kept getting ones that always had a skill check that we were bad at.

Familiarity with the game will help to some extent but you simply can't know what skill checks you'll get in the OW encounters.

Thanks Julia, I was waiting for your review!

I pre-ordered my copy anyway; knowing that I'm going to be shelling C$350 on this game for the next 5 years doesn't thrill me, but unfortunately I'm double-hooked on Lovecraft and boardgames:)

I don't think its luck based anymore than Arkham was when you lay out the statistics. While you can no longer just scoop clues up, most of the research encounters that end in success grant a clue and an additional clue . So often time you are getting a two for one deal. Also London generates clues as a board text for the location and is almost gaurenteed to happen.

I don't think this takes any longer an opperation than making your way to an open gate around monsters, 2-3 turns in Other Worlds and then back out to close the gate or seal if you have 5 clues (which take consideratble time to gather in AH). All of this is assuming you're not Lost in Time & Space or delayed. Or lose some of your 5 clues in the process.

Also clue generation in Arkham was scatter shot as well because clue could be generated where there were alrady gates or quickly be lost when gates spawn on locations with 2+ clues.

Thanks Julia for your review.

I wanted to buy this game, but I was unsure. I was actually waiting for someone "trustworthy" like you to review it. Now I see I am going to pass for the moment since the flaw you mention is also a big one for me. I guess I will wait until a expansion comes that might address the problem or even make the game better (like it happened with Elder sign expansion).

Anyway I still have lots of Arkham Horror games ahead :-).

I just picked up my copy today. I have never played AH, but at least what you are describing is more of a probability calculation rather than luck as the decks is finite and you know what you are looking for as well as what has already been played. You can therefore mitigate and influence the probability by going after clues you are more likely to succeed on at any given moment in time. This in turn reduces the cards and ups the probability for other clues -- seems on first glance that its similar to upping your stats for various checks until you feel the risk is acceptable.

Admittedly I haven't played a game yet so dunno if what im saying is "reasonable" to do in the allotted turn amount.

I haven't played too many games yet, but I'm fairly certain that the Luck issue can be mitigated in a lot of cases in much the same way it is in Arkham: by learning the meta-game. As a previous poster said with regards to Clues at least, there's a fixed encounter space that generates them and many of them give 2-for-1 when you get them. Also, it seemed to me that most Clue encounters asked for Observation or Lore tests, so sending the right people after them would probably prevent any waiting around (it certainly did in my last game).

Consider this comparison of Arkham to your issue with Azathoth's Omen/Gate mystery fiasco. Up against Hastur, you'd probably have a similar complaint of "So I need an assload of Clue tokens on me when I get through the Gate AND have to live through multiple encounters in the Otherworld AND THEN possibly just sit on my thumbs failing checks for closing? And the same thing that brings Clue tokens onto the board is the thing that gives me doom tokens, which is what makes me lose?" Not exactly the same situation as waiting for the Omen track to come around while you retry gates over and over, but you see the similarities.

Of course, after learning Arkham more, you discover that Hastur's not so tough in a fight and you're better off just stocking up and shooting straight for the final encounter. I suspect that there's similar workarounds for EH that we just haven't found yet because the game's 2 weeks old (though I think Azathoth, or maybe the game in general, actually has multiple encounters that let you move the Omen track around, so perhaps that's a thing)

Basically I don't think the luck issue is as big a one as you say, but only time will tell.

Just finished my first game. We made a few errors, most notably that if you kill all the monsters in a city you also get an (optional) encounter, but I think we've got the better part of it down pat now.

Like everyone else who has commented, we found that there just aren't enough research encounters. At least another four per Ancient One would be appreciated. This problem is exacerbated with the ratio of cities / wilderness / sea. Unless you're playing an AO that moves the clue encounters to the Sea or the Wilderness, you're more likely to go through the city research encounters than the others. We had one encounter three times in the same game!

A secondary issue is the lack of versatility amongst the encounters for named cities. For instance Rome prinicipally bumps up Will. You're unlikely to get an encounter that does anything else. Likewise Istanbul with Influence, etc. Whilst the decks should be skewed towards gaining the relevant stat upgrade, it would have been nice to get some encounters that had nothing to do with the stat upgrade, such as gaining clues, rail and shipping tickets, gettting rid of conditions, letting the players peek at the top of the 3 cards of the Mythos deck and put them back in any order, restore Sanity or Stamina... Whilst some of these effects reside in the generic city deck, putting the occasional one or two in the named city deck would help a lot in keeping the game less predictable.

Another observation: We never went on an expedition. It's possible that all sorts of cool goodies could have been gained from doing so, but it seemed like a distraction from the task(s) in hand, especially as the expedition was Antarctica, which really was in the middle of nowhere.

There's a decent Arkham-lite game in here, but an expansion pack may be necessary to prevent repetion and increase the variety.

Whilst the decks should be skewed towards gaining the relevant stat upgrade, it would have been nice to get some encounters that had nothing to do with the stat upgrade

You know that you are not forced to do the specific city encounter and have the option to do a generic one?

But I can't tell you for sure what you might face there.

Considering the not enough encounter cards issue:

In AH you are forced to shuffle the encounter deck every time.

Even with expansions and 20-30 cards in the deck, I had games where I got the same encounter two or three times while digging for a good one. (Hello Newspaper )

Nevertheless I understand the main point and I can see the potential problem that the game might loose some replay value.

But that should be fixed with expansions I guess.

My wife and I love AH. I recently bought EH and we've played a half-dozen games since then, mostly 2p but one 3p with a friend.

Really, the only 'complaint' we have, which is echoed above, is the small number of cards in the various encounter decks and the Mystery deck.

It would be nice, for example, to have a random draw of 3 Mysteries to solve out of, say, 10 cards, rather than 3 out of 4.

I'd like to see a few more cards for each named city too, although I disagree with Jake that there should be different outcomes. EH is unlike AH, in that there is a time limit. You cannot spend too many turns trying to improve a stat in a city, and movement is exceptionally slow (unless you've got someone with Plumb the Void). So, I don't think diluting the named city encounters with results that don't provided the "most likely" bonus will adversely affect the game.

I would disagree that EH is more "luck based" than AH. AH also had a lot of "luck" on which cards were drawn for encounters. If it is crucial to close a gate, etc, have multiple investigators go to that location as backup. That way, if one fails or draws a bad card, a second investigator gets a chance to complete it.

@Jake: You do know that clue tokens are put into a discard pile, and not back in the general draw bag/pile, right? As city clue tokens get used, they will go out of circulation, meaning more/new clues will spawn in wilderness and sea zones.

@Grudunza - There are some bad cards. Bad luck happens, even in AH, where the worst possible rumor comes up at the wrong time. Some of them are avoidable. The "lose a completed mystery" simply requires the group to discard some clue tokens to prevent it, for example. It sucks if you don't have enough clue tokens ... but it is potentially preventable.

Honestly, we're enjoying EH, and it plays (and sets up) much faster than AH. While it doesn't have the depth that AH has, and won't replace AH, EH is an enjoyable quick game that has a similar feel to AH.

The point about double luck seems to be a mix of lack of agency, and adding luck to an already luck based event. With the roll you at least have something to do except hope you get a chance at what you need. And I'm not talking about going to a location and hoping you get a good encounter like in Arkham, I'm talking about pulling an encounter you NEED.

Might just be unlucky draws though?

Expanding on the luck thing:

In both AH and EH, you generally know which skill checks you need to be good at EXCEPT for encounters.

The difference is that in AH you don't need to succeed at encounters in order to win the game (and, in fact, you should generally be AVOIDING encounters). In EH you absolutely have to succeed at encounters.

And this distinction is HUGE in terms of the role luck plays in both games. In AH, the key game-winning activities all revolve around known skill checks, which means you can prep characters and use the characters best-suited for a particular check (thus mitigating the role luck plays in those checks).

In EH, OTOH, the game-winning activities almost universally revolve around the blind skill checks in encounters.

For example, in the last game I played we needed to close two gates in order to win the game vs. Azathoth. We had two characters trying to close gates: One with a high Lore and a low Strength; the other with a low Lore and a high Strength. And for three turns in a row we watched the low-Lore character get Lore skill checks and the low-Strength character gets Strength skill checks. If the order of those cards had been inverted we would have easily closed those gates and handily won the game. But the luck of the draw (which is virtually never an issue in AH) screwed us and we ended up losing.

Conversely, we've had EH games where we cake-walked the entire thing. And the key distinction seemed to be entirely in the luck of the draw.

After playing the game 8 times (and initially being very impressed by it), my gut is beginning to say that Julia is right about this: The radical swings in "difficulty" resulting from the random card draw make the game unsatisfying and, ultimately, much less rewarding than AH.

Which is unfortunate, because in all other respects the designers did a really fantastic job of designing a game thematically similar to AH in both setting and mechanics while simultaneously creating something that's utterly unique in its play and strategy.

I don't agree that luck is bad issue with this game. I seem that some people want the game to be like a big puzzle that you can solve and win every time. The game is better for having situations where "master planning" can still go horribly wrong because life (or dice rolls & card draws) are just not always on your side. It is just as much fun to lose as to win.

Here where we play i'm the only one who know english. Thus, i need to manage the game ALL time long (even when i'm not the lead investigator). I have to translate the mystery cards and EVERY card in the game (research encounters, asset cards on the reserve and etc...), sometimes i even need to explain why the strategy of a player isn't the right thing to do. EH is much better than AH in this aspect. Give me less headaches, so i stay with EH (though both games are really really awesome). With AH i already had a table with 6 investigators (including me). It was too much work for me.

I saw a topic here on this same forum of a guy who says AH is a lifestyle and EH is just one more game, i disagree with him. AH is much more complex and i like that because the game becomes rich in details. But EH looks like a revised AH game, more dynamic. Luck is a strong trait in EH (much more obvious than AH). If you start to fail the tests too much, you don't do anything and the doom track doesn't wait, it'll reach zero.

This game is ruthless, a bad luck streak is fatal, even if you are a master strategist.

And yeah, this game needs more cards desperately. But i think the same about AH if you play just with its core.

There's definitely a lot of luck involved, but I would argue less than Arkham Horror. This is because, as someone above pointed out, the encounters in Arkham Horror are extremely random in terms of which skills they'll ask you to check. In Eldritch Horror the skills are heavily tied into what you're doing specifically. You may get some bad rolls to get clues, for example, but if you have a low observation skill you probably shouldn't be looking for clues in the first place.

I would agree with your point about the research cards, but I have to admit, I've never drawn a research card that didn't give me a chance to get the clue, nor have I drawn an Other World encounter that didn't give me a chance to close the gate. I honestly didn't even know they existed, and this is after three games. I guess I just didn't draw the same ones you did. Also, research encounters aren't "Complex Encounters"; those are Other World and Expedition encounters. Are you mixing them up?

You're correct, I was imprecise in the original post saying Research are complex. I noticed this a long time ago, but then the thread somehow died, so, I thought it wouldn't have been necessary to fix this. My apologies if this created some confusion.

Luck factor: just to have (some of) the numbers down: the average % that a generic party member closes a gate is 24%. This means 3 out of 4 time you draw an OW encounter, you don't pass the check. Best sealers in party have around 50%, it's just like flipping a coin and see the result (and yes, before talking, I analyzed the cards). Hence, luck is involved. It's not an opinion, it's math. Period.

I never said the "game is bad because luck is involved". I said "there is a certain luck factor to consider". Some people can be ok with Luck being involved, some others not.

My review mostly verged on EH. Don't see why "more or less luck than AH" should be a point here. Nonetheless, you can easily have a (mathematic) proof that Arkham is less luck-dependant. Starting from the fact that you roll more dice (mathematically provable that the bigger the population of a sample, the easier is that the mean value and the variance of the sample align with the variable's expected values) passing through the fact that you have locations and OW that are coded on a specific kind of encounters (Red-coded OW have encounters attacking Stamina, for instance, hence you won't send a low Stamina character there) and ending with the fact you know the modifier for when you'll be trying to close a gate (while here you simply draw a random card and you have to be lucky with what's asked). Not to mention Upkeep allowing you to choose what stat to boost, giving strategy a deeper meaning. And if Arkham were really luck dependant, people playing Arkham at *high* levels won't win so often (just to be clear: my win-loss ratio at Arkham is about 93%; and I'm not the only one: Avi, Eagermind, Dj, The Professor - just to name a few among those I'm in contact with - they do all tend to win consistently)

As said, EH is a good game, and they did a great job with some of the mechanics, like Reckoning and other stuff. And I can see many people loving EH, and I'm more than happy that this happens because it's a game quite different from other things seen in the Arkham universe. But it's also important, while reviewing something, trying to give as much information as possible, so that people reading would ask themselves "is this the game for me or not?". So, yes, there is luck involved, and yes, sometimes it's not preventable (like cards forcing you to lose six stamina, or mysteries requiring you to pass a skill check when the omen track is on the green comet but you don't know which skill you'll have to test), to the point that it could happen that you play a good game but you lose. And this is an important factor to consider. Some will love the game nonetheless, some will ditch it knowing it's not their cup of tea, but they have the right to be informed

I apologize if the tone of my post seemed to be negative; it wasn't intended that way but I can easily see how it would read that way.You merely stated in a single sentence that you felt luck was more relevant in EH than it was in AH. Silly of me to latch on to that one statement in your review to put forth a minor disagreement.

My win ratio at AH is about the same as yours so I'm certainly not disagreeing with your statement that the aspects of luck in that game can be gotten around strategically. I just see EH being similar. It's true that a lower statted character would have trouble doing necessary things like grabbing clues and sealing gates, but the game gives you so many different ways to boost those stats that it becomes a matter of weighing what's more important. Do you run to close that gate before doom hits, or do you shop for that ally to boost your lore first? Do you stay in Sydney to gain strength, or do you try to take on that epic monster without it? And it's true that the encounters can throw you some curveballs, but they each have certain tests that come up significantly more than the others. A bad run of rolls can certainly hamper any strategy, but this is true of any game with dice.

Still, my success ratio of EH is only about 50% so far, so maybe I just need to play more to really come to a full conclusion on this.

I apologize if the tone of my post seemed to be negative; it wasn't intended that way but I can easily see how it would read that way.You merely stated in a single sentence that you felt luck was more relevant in EH than it was in AH. Silly of me to latch on to that one statement in your review to put forth a minor disagreement.

No need to apologize, really. I wasn't offended by your tone at all (sorry if my answer sounded rude or too direct). I guess my reply was more a general reply since I noticed my review had hurt feelings, and somehow flamed, and this wasn't clearly my intention. So, your post simply gave me a chance to specify some numbers and some points, clarifying that what I had written was not done to offend, but to inform, and specifying that luck incidence doesn't imply the game to be bad, but simply a factor to carefully consider.

My win ratio at AH is about the same as yours so I'm certainly not disagreeing with your statement that the aspects of luck in that game can be gotten around strategically. I just see EH being similar. It's true that a lower statted character would have trouble doing necessary things like grabbing clues and sealing gates, but the game gives you so many different ways to boost those stats that it becomes a matter of weighing what's more important.

That's certainly a fair point, in the same way some Allies can further help, and so on. I think luck becomes relevant because time is a resource (much more limited than in Arkham, where you have ways to control the doom advancement; here movement is much more complex, hence "keeping the pace" with the Mythos becomes a relevant problem), and so it could be difficult investing time to boost this or that skill. Lily and Norman clearly are advantaged in this.

Still, my success ratio of EH is only about 50% so far, so maybe I just need to play more to really come to a full conclusion on this.

That's another fair point. I don't think it has sense for now talking about win-loss ratio for EH, since I feel the game "uncomplete": I'd like to have thicker decks, with more options, more mysteries / AO, more choices for everything. At the moment, it's like we're playing a skinnier version of the game that EH will become. Not a bad version , but not a complete experience either. I'd say let's see what happens in the next 6 to 10 months, when hopefully at least one expansion will be released.

Still, my success ratio of EH is only about 50% so far, so maybe I just need to play more to really come to a full conclusion on this.

LOL, my win ratio is about 25%. 6 victories and 22 defeats so far (28 matches played).

Hi, you people should really try to play PANDEMY. Coop, world travel, character with powers, 45 min game, simple and tactical mechanics. It seems to me eldritch horror is similar but really less effective. Thème is about fighting 4 major diseases.

Having only really played this game 3 times since I got it at Xmas, I am already considering this to be high in my pantheon of games. Perhaps not as high yet as AH, but with a slew of expansions I'm sure it'll get there soon enough!

I was surprised you thought the ability to heal easier in EH to be a good thing, Julia, although I am something of a games masochist! There have been a couple of instances in my game against You Sothoth where the game just played so dramatically than anything I've had in AH, largely because of the brutal loss of four investigators.

I suppose there is an argument whereby any game that involves hurling around dice is too luck-based, and I know ES has had this criticism, but I still count that in my top ten. Like you say, though, it all comes down to what you want out of a game, and I would say that EH takes a very worthy position on the shelf!

No doubt the theme certainly feels stronger since its on a worldwide scale, as well as the saga aspect of the game. AH is a great game, but after enough plays, you begin to wonder how cursed is the town of Arkham to be the site where all of these ancient evils decide to awaken.