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Jason’s Board Game Collection — Arkham Horror

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I’ve only had a copy of Arkham Horror for a short time.  Our friend Dave (Morik) has brought his collection over several times, and I’ve joined in games varying anywhere from 4 to 8 players.

I’ve had a few opportunities to play this recently.  A few days after the birth of my daughter, I found I had a little bit of free time, but nobody to play a game with.  I broke out the base Arkham Horror (which is all that I own.  For now, that’s enough) and tried it single player.  I’m beginning to think I would have been better off controlling at least two heroes to play.

I selected my hero randomly, Harvey Walters, and the threat, Yig.  The game went well, and I had a lot of fun.  That’s not to say I survived.  In fact, I was slaughtered rather handily.  I’m using an app to track the encounter cards, as that speeds the game up a lot.  I survived a lot longer than I expected, as everything went wrong rather quickly.

A few days later, three of us got together and played.  Travis documented this play pretty well, and I’ll not repeat him.  We had fun, and we made a few mistakes, but we did triumph.

On Tabletop Day (March 30), Jamie and I got together with a few good friends of ours, and decided to give Arkham Horror a shot.  Our first mistake was trying to start the game so late in the evening.  We never got ahead of the curve, and 6 gates opened, awakening Ithaqua.  We were so tired, we conceded that we could not defeat the elder god, and called it a night.

Last night, however, I got together with Jeff, James, Travis and Robert, and we decided to tackle mighty Cthulhu.  It was a close battle, but a few random bits of luck were on our side, including an environment effect that kept the terror level from rising that stuck around for a while.  We sealed our sixth gate with 3 empty spaces left on Cthulhu’s doom track.

I enjoy this game a lot, but I think I’m ready for a short break from it.  Next week, I think we might stick with the theme, and play Mansions of Madness or Elder Sign, probably Mansions of Madness.

In an only peripherally related note, I haven’t mentioned the Call of Cthulhu LCG in this post.  I don’t own it, but learned it several months ago.  Shane Porter, a newcomer to Legends, brought a copy in and let us borrow it.  Jeff and I played it a handful of times while we had it.

Shane returned several times, and joined us for quick games, frequently before heading to work, and he became a regular friendly face.  We ran into him at GenCon, where he was attending with some (if not all) of his children.

Shane left home on February 8 2013, to go to work, and never arrived.  He has been missing ever since.  His car was found near the river, and I fear the worst.  His situation has been on my mind a lot for the last several days.  Our thoughts are with him and his family, and we hope he returns home safely.

1 Comment

  • A few thing sI like about the game, the fact I could play it with wife or a room full of people is nice. After long thought my only detractors are rather slight, I find the Arkham Horror board game a little too long and a touch too fiddly (in particular I find the character sheet adjusting attributes a wasted mechaqnic, there is nothing that gives you a hint what to adjust for, at best if you have ton of eq), been research and really curious about Victory Point Games Darkest Night and Mayfair Games Witches of Salem, it has got me thinking about other games to try.

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