I tried to save the world from Yog-Sothoth, but I don’t think it went as planned…
I’ve been enjoying the Arkham universe once again lately, getting halfway through the Dream-Eaters campaign for the Arkham Horror LCG in fairly short order. I’ve not played the board game for a while, though, so decided to take the opportunity to try my hand at the third scenario from the core set, Veil of Twilight. This was a very interesting game, because I’m definitely starting to see how this game is less about picking an Ancient One to fight, and more about the unfolding narrative of the scenario, which may or may not culminate with a boss battle.
Very much as the rulebook says, we don’t really know what we’re trying to do at the start of the game. There are some bits and pieces, but we’re really trying to figure things out as we go. In this scenario, there are “scars” in the fabric of reality that, it seems, need to be mended. But you need to keep doom in check, of course, and there are lots of monsters in this one that interact with doom which, during the course of my game, meant I had something of a nexus of evil up at the top of the board!
I decided to use Agnes Baker and Minh Thi Phan as my investigators, as I am currently playing with them in the card game, so that was quite good. However, I hadn’t reckoned on their stats, so was left with two fairly fragile investigators going up against the denizens of hell. However, Minh constantly surprised me and was able to actually clear out that nexus of evil, while Agnes pretty much kept the rest of the board in check.
Partway through the scenario, more of these scars turn up on the board, and you need to spend clues from the scenario sheet to seal them up. Agnes became a powerhouse here, getting the clues and whacking them onto the sheet – I think Minh sealed two scars up, but it was mostly Agnes laying all of the groundwork. How surprising, then, when the time came, that I discovered that actually, I have paved the way for “the real work of the Silver Twilight Lodge” to begin! Minh had actually joined the secret fraternity, so I suppose technically she won, but jeez, I wasn’t expecting that!
It was a great game though, as I struggled to recall all of the rules. I was a bit distracted by my wife watching the new Cormoran Strike series in the next room, so probably took longer than normal to get going with it all, but impressively, the whole game only took about 2 hours – including set up and clean up. That’s a definite improvement on the 40 minutes of set up when I cracked open the box recently, I have to say!
The involvement of the Silver Twilight Lodge is very reminiscent of The Circle Undone, of course, and I seem to recall that I had the same result when I initially played that cycle, “winning” and allowing the Lodge to begin their “true work”. When will I learn that making a deal with the devil is not the best course of action?!
Still, it was a good game. There’s only one more scenario left from the core set now, and then I have the small expansion, Dead of Night, so I think it might be fun to crack open that box soon, and see what else is in store for me! I’m pretty sure it’s a “more of the same” situation, I think there are new investigators and two new scenarios? So that should keep me going for a while, though I am increasingly tempted by the other expansions, especially as (a) there are only two of them, and (b) the sky-is-falling attitude of the game potentially being dead meaning that supply might not always be there. It’s a great game, after all, and I think this year has shown that it is one that I keep coming back to, so don’t be surprised if I end up with more news on that before long!
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