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!
Hey everybody, The weather is definitely getting colder, and Autumn is definitely here at last. We’re here at the end of September, and I am quite shocked really at just how quickly this month has gone! I know I say this every month, but it really doesn’t seem like five minutes since I was writing my August retrospective blog! And after a very productive August, things seem to have just dwindled for me now, and I’m languishing a bit in a bit of a hobby … not slump, per se, but I’m certainly a bit all over the place when it comes to what projects I’m working on!
To start with, then, I have finished repainting the original group of 10 wyches from my Drukhari army. Back in 2017, I had painted ten to some level, but it wasn’t great. I also wasn’t entirely sure how I wanted them to look, so it wasn’t exactly what I’d call a good unit, and was probably why I have never really been that keen on the Wych Cult side of the army. Well, after getting ten of them done in August, I’ve got these other ten finished, plus the Succubus. I haven’t yet finished the third group (heck, they’re still bare plastic!) but I am kinda excited by the fact that I have been painting Drukhari miniatures again!
Especially because I’ve also been working on painting this Raider! It isn’t finished yet, of course, though somehow it seems to have been pretty quick to paint up to this level, which is nice! Painting it really took me right back to those early days with my Dark Eldar, and I have really enjoyed recapturing that feel. It makes me hopeful that I will, in fact, be able to make some decent progress with getting the army up to a better standard, as for the most part they were all just done to a tabletop standard.
I really want to try to pace myself on this front, though, because I don’t want to miss out on getting any other miniatures painted because I’m spending my time going over old ground – I mean, I still have a massive backlong, regardless of the amount of stuff I’ve got through over the summer!
Now, this came a little bit out of left field, as I think I’d made an offhand comment about having two carnifexes that needed painting, and then promptly dug them out and finished them off! Even though one of them had been mostly done, and it was just a matter of finishing touches and stuff, I feel really pleased at having got these big chunky boys done. The carnifex model is horrible to put together, and the back carapace in particular looks gross when you look at how mis-aligned the pieces are, but I can’t deny the overall effect of them is brilliant, even if I say so myself! It’s very rare that I look at something I’ve painted and think, “this is awesome!” but with my Tyranids (and, oddly, with my Dark Eldar) I really get that feeling.
Tyranids have been on the back burner for what feels like centuries now, of course, and I’m sure at some point I will burst forth with a bug infestation, but not quite yet… I still don’t even have the codex for the army, but it’s so far from finished that I suppose the codex is the least of my worries! I love the look of the army so much though, and even stuff as daft as the feel of some of those big bugs in the hand, it’s just a tremendous force!
I had a week away this month, and so had a week off from hobby stuff (which itself could be contributing to my hobby slump) but did take some Necromunda books with me. The end result is that I’ve spent the last week basically obsessed once again with the best skirmish game out there! I’ve really been fired up with a lot of inspiration for the game, but with the result that I feel a little bit like I have that sort of scattergun approach to the hobby, and I don’t know where I want to turn my attention first. I have some Delaque gangers that I want to paint, I want to paint more Van Saar, and I want to paint my Orlocks. I also want to paint more terrain, and I want to start an Outcasts gang. I have also – finally! – begun to look into the Goliath gang, mainly because I was looking at the new Goliath bikes and think they’re utterly hilarious! I’ve built up two gangers for the time being, and they are quite nice models – although the one who has a cigar in his mouth is just ridiculous. I mean, the cigar is a separate bit!!
So I’m trying to take it a bit slower, and I’m trying to just plan things a little bit, and work out what exactly I want to do here. I still want to get more Necrons and Sisters painted by the end of the year, but the Necromunda resurgence cannot be denied, so I think I need to focus on just the Delaque, as I try to get my sneaky boys finished off. James has started to work on some Enforcers that he is pretty excited for, so with a bit of luck we’ll get more games in there soon enough!
My big Necromunda news, though, is that I have finally decided to go for the Ash Wastes, after all! I am hoping to pick it up sometime soon, and have sold off my Nighthaunt army to finance the whole thing, as there is a lot of stuff that I haven’t yet got hold of. That was a bit of a shame, really, as I do love the models, and even though I hadn’t done anything with them in years, getting them all out again in order to work out what I have etc did make me wonder if I should keep them! But I’m trying not to go too crazy, I haven’t played with Nighthaunt in years, I haven’t thought about them or anything in so long, so it makes sense to just off-load them and turn it into something I will use.
The Nighthaunt may be beautiful, but my goodness me, they’re also fiddly as hell! I was almost having palpitations trying to get them untangled from each other! It’s the last complete army that I have wanted to dispose of, really, after selling off the Blood Angels, the Dark Angels, and others, and it is a bit sad to see them go as they are such good models! But it’s just not meant to be, I think. I have the Bonereapers for AoS, of course, although the main thrust of my hobby life is Necromunda and 40k, without a doubt, so it just makes sense to clear out the clutter. I haven’t really bought any models for a long while now, so I don’t feel quite so bad for adding the Ash Wastes box to the pile of shame. Plus, I’ve off-loaded 21 units of Nighthaunt (93 models, including the Black Coach which is much bigger than I remember!) so I suppose I’m making room!
On the whole, though, it feels very much like Warhammer has taken a back seat in September, and I have been focused on my Star Wars prequel re-read. I got through three novels and a half-dozen graphic novels, as well as the final movie in the prequel trilogy, so it was all very much about the galaxy far, far away! It’s nice to have finally made it through all of that, especially as it was meant to be a summer of Star Wars that just started to drag on a bit!!
Interestingly, it has left me feeling a little bit Star Wars-ed out now, though, and I have yet to start watching the new Andor show, despite having been stoked for that to come out! I also picked up a couple of the latest canon hardbacks, but haven’t got the inclination to make a start with those, either!
For the time being, I have started to read Deathfire, book 32 in the Horus Heresy series. I have been neglecting this of late, reading barely any novels in the series the last few years. There’s a definite feeling of lethargy about it now – 32 novels in, and I’m over halfway, but it still feels like I’m a long way from the end! Looking at my recent reading of these books, I finished Scars in June 2020, then Vengeful Spirit in April 2021, and The Damnation of Pythos in June 2021. I made an effort to finish a couple of the anthologies in June as well, which wasn’t too bad as I could cope with short stories while on new baby duty, but that was that! I find the anthologies are a struggle though at times, because there are so many throwaway stories, or tangential stories, and I begin to question just why on earth I’m reading this stuff. I still have 22 books to go before I get to the end of the Heresy series, around 15 of which are novels I believe, so that should help there. With a bit of luck, the storyline will resume somewhat and we’ll have more of a focus as the narrative begins to hone in to the march on Terra.
Deathfire is quite a good book though. I have zero interest in the Salamanders legion, it has to be said – I think it’s along similar lines to the Space Wolves, everything is fire this and pyro that, like the Wolves have wolf this and wolf the other. It’s all a bit blandly boring, really. I know the Salamanders have the reputation for being the good guys, as well, and their whole “caring about the little folk” thing, but that has never been something that appeals to me. I like the Ultramarines, as is well chronicled on this blog, and I always find it interesting how people like the Salamanders for the reasons they dislike the Ultramarines, and it’s almost like it comes down to preferring green over blue, or something! However, in the same way that I ended up liking Vulkan Lives despite kinda dreading having to read that, I am also enjoying Deathfire, so it’s all good for now!
It’s also weirdly nice to get back to the Heresy, as I think I do miss it, despite just how long and drawn-out it has become! It’s been almost seven years since I started reading the series, and while some of the earlier books have stuck with me as being really enjoyable, I really am at the point now where the fatigue has set in. It’s an epic story, and I get that, but some of the stuff that we have in this series does feel incredibly like filler, it’s hard to keep the level of enthusiasm for it! Maybe I should consider a “personal canon” for the Heresy, and start a re-read of just those books that I actually enjoyed…!
In other news, I managed to play a couple of games with the new edition of Arkham Horror, which really is a lot of fun! It’s a surprise to me, because I did enjoy the second edition of the game, but this new one really is great! I think having a story mechanic is a real plus, and adds to the overall feel of the game. I have now bought the Dead of Night expansion, which gives us more of the same stuff, but haven’t had a chance to play with it yet. I want to try and get more big games played in October, so hopefully I can play at least once a week with games like Arkham Horror, Eldritch Horror, and A Touch of Evil. Whether my long-suffering wife will join me, who knows! Though she does like Eldritch Horror, and I think I can persuade her to try A Touch of Evil. We’ll see. I have so many favourites though, and I haven’t played these things in years, so it would be nice to try and get more games in with them!
More board games, more painting, potentially more Necromunda… I don’t know when I’m planning to sleep during the next month…
Arkham was swarming with robed cultists, trying to bring down the end of the world. They were using the newspaper building to distract me with their depraved rituals, but I was able to foil their plans and ward the city against the blind idiot god coming down and destroying the world. Of course it was at the black cave, the nexus of their foul sorceries, where it all went down. The city was mad with anomalies erupting across neighbourhoods, but in the end it didn’t matter, because we live to fight anew. Azathoth has not claimed this world. For now.
Well folks, I had my second ever game of Arkham Horror (third edition) last night, and I somehow managed to win! I think it was almost entirely by accident, but I’m still claiming it as a success!
Arkham Horror is still a long game, I think it took me close to 3 hours to play it, but that did include roughly 40 minutes of set-up time. I was really surprised, I think, by just how quickly I seemed to grasp the rules this time around – considering my only other game was in January 2021, I can hardly say I’m an expert but somehow things just seemed to flow better. The rhythm of what I can do as an investigator, for example, was quite easy to get into, and the structure of each round quickly became ingrained so that I was just able to play the game, rather than continually looking things up.
I think my investigator choice helped here, though. I was playing as Jenny Barnes and Dexter Drake, and both of them had ways to take an additional action very early on in the game. Jenny, with her pistols, was a combat beast, and Dexter was able to keep doom in check for as long as possible. I can’t say enough how much it helped to have those additional actions though, and I think that was probably how I was able to play it fairly quickly.
Learning Point #1: You cannot take the same action twice in each round! At least once I had Jenny move twice, or move, kill, move, which probably explains why it felt a lot easier this time around!
Dexter was quite the beast at removing doom, as well, and I found it quite useful to send him into Anomalies to try to close those gates etc. Even when monsters found their way to him, he is able to evade them using his will attribute, making him quite impressive, I have to say! He’s a spellcaster, of course, but I found that spells just didn’t really come up for this game. He did pretty well as my clue gatherer, although I found that I had to focus his observation attribute to ensure he was able to spend the clues.
Learning Point #2: Focus tokens are only “spent” to re-roll dice, and not when you use that attribute! I was discarding the token when I took a Research action, but that doesn’t seem to be how it works!
As I’ve said, the structure of the game really seemed to flow this time around. It was useful having Jenny out hunting monsters, of course, because once the Action phase was done, there were often no monsters on the board to worry about. True, sometimes I was putting my investigators into a specific neighbourhood to get them to have an encounter there, in the hope of gathering clues – as such, once they had moved I found I was at a loss for the second (or third) action to take, and would just randomly focus an attribute, or get $1. Money is something I wasn’t really finding myself concerned with, as only a couple of encounters seemed to want me to have any, or didn’t really have any bad things happen if I didn’t spend any money.
Now, I did wonder if I was playing it wrong at first, when I was using Jenny to attack monsters. If she is going on the hunt and actively engaging them, it seemed quite easy to kill them by having her roll 6 dice. Maybe I got lucky, of course, but nothing really seemed to be a problem for her – of course, by the mid-point in the game she was taking an additional action, re-rolling one of the dice, +1 to a dice, and so on, so her attack suite was quite formidable! Even the monsters with four health she was able to pretty much one-shot, so it wasn’t much trouble. It’s only in the monster phase that they attack the investigators, though, so the fact that nothing survived to get there worked really well.
Ultimately, though, there are only five pages of rules, which set things out really well and enable you to work out exactly what you’re supposed to be doing and when. While the game might look complicated, especially in terms of its table presence, but also the fact I said it takes 40 minutes to set up, it plays really well, and I’m actually surprised that I haven’t played this more since I originally got it out last year. There’s a reputation, though, for Arkham games to be quite sprawling, and stuff like second edition, or Eldritch Horror, even the LCG, come with that feel of “this is going to take all day!” when you play them.
In comparison to second edition, I find third edition to be a real delight. The older game is one of the greats, don’t get me wrong, and you can really lose yourself in the mythos as you spend the whole evening playing. Games lasting 5 hours or more were quite common, and sometimes I quite enjoyed the fact that I could plan to play this thing all night. However, it does suffer from essentially being the same game each time, just with a different Ancient One and different investigators. The monsters are all the same, the encounters are all (mostly) the same, and so on. Adding in expansions does give you more monsters, more encounters, and more Ancient Ones, but you’re mostly doing the same thing each time. Later expansions tried to have different stuff going on as well, of course, but overall it’s very much the same premise.
Third Edition Arkham Horror is scenario-based, so whereas it could be said you’re playing the same scenario in the older game, here you’re tweaking almost everything to suit. The board layout is different, the monsters are different, the “mythos deck” / Codex is different, and so forth. You’re doing the same things, mechanically, but thematically you’re trying to accomplish different goals. I think having the scenario event deck is a great way to give more variety right out of the box, as otherwise you do only have 8 cards per neighbourhood, and we all know how stale that situation got for Second Edition. Having additional cards which get shuffled into the encounter deck when you’re investigating clues, which change given each scenario, is a great way to mix things up.
I think this game is a great addition to the shelf, and in many respects it has improved on the last one. I sold all of my second edition stuff a few years ago, so no longer have it to play with regardless, but I remember it well enough that I can positively say this is a real step up. It makes the game a story, which was definitely missing from the last game – it could be really quite random and becomes really abstract by comparison. Sure, this game is still representative of battling the eldritch mysteries of the cosmos, but it isn’t quite so random. The monsters feel right for what you’re doing, for instance, and everything pulls together really well to tell a good story of what you’re trying to do. Having that narrative backdrop is really key, I think, and it’s probably a good portion of the success of the LCG, which is supreme at giving that kind of narrative.
I’m going to make a real effort to play more of this going forward, and I think before the end of the year I’m going to want to pick up at least the first expansion, which adds more of the same. I’m not entirely sure, of course, but I think there are more encounter cards as well as more investigators and so on, which is always a welcome bonus. After the Silver Twilight expansion that came out last year, I think there’s a feeling that the game might be finished already, which wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing as sometimes Arkham Files games can go on quite a bit! While I always love to have more game to play and enjoy, there is that danger of just repeating the old game’s line of expansions, so we can look forward to the Dunwich expansion, the Innsmouth expansion, etc. As much as I like the idea of getting more game to play, expansions for the sake of it aren’t the way to do this. I think that having stuff that adds more to the game, without necessarily cluttering the experience, is the way to go, and from my limited knowledge of the expansions for this game, it seems that’s what we have here. Arkham Horror third edition is a traditional FFG board game, where we have the base game and one expansion per year. As I’m getting older, with far less time for these sorts of things, that is exactly the kind of schedule that I think the company should keep to!
Something interesting has been going on, over on Fantasy Flight’s twitter account. A series of posts, detailing a group of people who all have the colour red in common, presented in the Eldritch Horror style – it’s verrrrry interesting, and I need to know more!
Comm. #26-G-2
H, A: They were looking for information on 11-B. S, D: What did you give them? H, A: Name. S, D: Seems unnecessary. H, A: No. Not that name. pic.twitter.com/4FXnSlgabn
It all started with Amaranth, here, who was featured way back in the Call of Cthulhu LCG as a Conspirator character type. Well, there’s a whole cast of these guys now, as FFG has slowly fed them to us over the past week!
Comm. #16-D-15, inc.
T, Q: Have you spoken with the asset? A, V: He wants the subject for himself. T, Q: That is an absolute no. A, V: He will not like that. T, Q: Do I look like I care? pic.twitter.com/CDLEVsRoSW
T, Q: Surely you understand why we cannot trust you. Ş, E: I understand that better than you do. T, Q: So, then. Tell me how you would like to proceeed. Ş, E: Come to me first. Then we will talk. pic.twitter.com/LxPTML7LCO
H, E: Approach attempt #28. Seeking [REDACTED]. T, Q: Do not engage any wearing red. H, E: Bit of an oilcan, then. T, Q: No luck? H, E: Not without authorization. pic.twitter.com/YSmi2DwYfc
S, D: It fell through. T, Q: You were conned. S, D: It was not a con, it was a deal. T, Q: No matter. Any knowledge of your work with 33-K is hereby disavowed. You are bound under threat of execution to never share this account with another soul: living or dead. pic.twitter.com/MS5TdG55t6
H, A: Are you certain? A, Q: Yes. The cuneiform lines up perfectly. H, A: It is Sumerian. That is, what; 3000 BC? A, Q: Older. H, A: Impossible… A, Q: How long have you been with us? pic.twitter.com/PQb3ENcptv
T, Q: Still awaiting confirmation on A, Q’s whereabouts. H, A: Same. A, V: No reports. T, Q: Has she been in contact with [REDACTED]? H, A: Yes, Commissioner. T, Q: Nevermind. Cease any and all contact with A, Q. Assume asset is compromised. pic.twitter.com/5mhfXn009O
Comm. #38-N2-4, inc S, H: 38-N2 and 38-N are still at large. Seeking [REDACTED]. T, Q: Agent, you are off-mission. Reassess your priorities. S, H: With all due respect, Commissioner, I do not believe I am. T, Q: The Key is the target, Sirry. S, H: More than one way to skin a cat. pic.twitter.com/u1LkFueHa9
T, Q: You are not authorized to go after 46-Q. F, L: Look, you are the one who roped me into this. T, Q: It is too dangerous. F, L: I assume the risk. T, Q: …Very well. Watch your back. F, L: I am watching you, too. pic.twitter.com/P5cYtoBH3B
Comm. #16-D2-25, supp. H, A: He was in the crowd. Saw me. Took the glasses off. A, V: And? H, A: You do not want to know. A, V: It is for the file, Archie. H, A: Very well. The implement is…unrelated to his moniker. A, V: They do not affect eyesight, you mean. H, A: In a way. pic.twitter.com/KtrwBUN1Yy
H, A: Subject spotted. North on Tower Bridge. A, V: Third party in pursuit. T, Q: Names. A, V: Unsure, Commissioner. H, A: Entering Coterie sanctum now. T, Q: They leave us no choice. Engage with subject. pic.twitter.com/yWZkuspcjE
The consensus seems to be that this is all linked to the next campaign for Arkham Horror LCG, supposedly titled The Scarlet Keys, based on a leaked product list from December last year. That’s interesting, because it lines up with this card from the older LCG, which came out in the globe-trotting Ancient Relics cycle. Those six packs took us all over the world, including China, Greece and Antarctica. Now, I know that currently the sense of place in Arkham Horror LCG has been confined pretty narrowly to a small area per campaign – even Path to Carcosa didn’t stray far from northern France once it had crossed the Atlantic.
I hope that we have some kind of global adventure where we have to choose which members of the Congress of the Keys to pursue, which could tailor the campaign in a certain way. Of course, that might lead to some unused content in the box, if we choose to not go to Havana for example, but I suppose it might be much more advantageous to explore them all. But this method of campaign is much easier to do in the new style, rather than creating optional mythos packs, so could well be on the cards (pun intended) for future big box stuff!
The possibility of getting a truly globe-trotting campaign, where each scenario takes place in another country, is particularly intriguing. However, if we don’t quite end up with the card game version of Eldritch Horror, I would like to cast my vote right now for it being China-centric. There is so much to get excited for in that realm, I think, and it would really capture my imagination for sure. Given that the new big-box format is said to allow for greater storytelling opportunities, I’m positively quivering with the prospect of what this could all mean!!
But, of course, this could be for something entirely different, maybe a completely new Arkham Files game? Maybe Eldritch Horror 2.0?
Hey everybody, Today’s game day blog has been a long time coming, let me tell you! Today, I’m finally getting round to talking about the third edition of Arkham Horror! I first played this game in January, and have been meaning to do a first impressions blog pretty much ever since! Having recently returned to board games to some extent, though, I thought now would be a good time to feature this game here. So, without further ado, let’s dive in!
The third edition of Arkham Horror came out in 2018, so I’m already late to the party. It’s had a pretty huge makeover since the second edition, as well, no longer having the traditional board that represents the city of Arkham, but rather a series of tiles that are interconnected to form the map for each scenario. This is now most definitely a scenario-driven game, as opposed to the classic “just try to survive” of the earlier version, which I suppose could be boiled down to the same game each time you play it, just with various tweaks and so forth.
Third edition is built to give you a new experience each time, through the use of scenarios tied to the Great Old Ones, rather than simply going up against them that we’re used to. The game was redesigned by Nikki Valens, who was also heavily involved (if not responsible for) the ongoing development of Eldritch Horror after the core set, and so there are a number of classic Arkham Files beats coming through loud and clear.
Each scenario has got its own win condition, and you don’t always know what you need to do to win. This was a little bit disconcerting to me at first, because I had a bit of AP as I tried to decide what to do with my actions. But then I just embraced it all and it’s actually an incredibly effective and thematic way to go about this type of game! The game uses this idea of the “codex”, a collection of cards placed next to the scenario sheet, which represents the changing objectives throughout the game. So you’re not simply trying to gather clues to throw at the monster, or whatever, and there are both success and failure paths to follow as the story unfolds. It takes some getting used to, but it’s actually really nice and very flavourful when you get into it.
The game is played across 4 Phases. To start with, there’s the action phase, where the investigators get to do their thing. The monster phase comes next, with monsters moving and attacking the investigators. The AI for monsters is somehow slicker than 2nd edition, which was itself quite nicely done. Here, they either move to a specific investigator, or to a specific location, or they just cause chaos by adding doom. Monsters are represented with cards in this edition though, which is a little more tricky to manage on the board than the tokens of 2nd edition or other Arkham games.
The encounter phase is next, and this is similar to other iterations where you draw a card and have a short adventure, usually involving a skill test of some sort. Some encounters have been seeded into the deck by the scenario, and will allow you to further the investigation with clues. The last phase is the mythos phase, where players draw a token from the mythos cup, and resolve its effect. These can spawn clues to spawn monsters, resolve the reckoning effects of cards in play, or resolving a headline – a new type of card that kind of acts a little like mythos cards of old. The tokens are interesting because there are also blank ones, which add an element of surprise, but you also don’t throw them back into the bag after drawing them until all have been drawn, so you can get an idea for how good or bad a mythos phase is going to be, based on what has already come out.
At its core, third edition is very much a blend of second edition and Eldritch Horror, with some new or streamlined elements that make it feel very much like a new game. While I’ve been happy to play and replay second edition many times, I think third edition has an increased replayability simply from the scenario aspect. The Codex is a very interesting idea as well, as it contains a bunch of numbered cards that are added in as determined by how the game is going, but are used in varying ways across the scenarios, allowing for some interesting gameplay as time goes on.
Gates don’t really exist in this edition – instead we have Anomalies, which don’t appear in every scenario, but are functionally the same as Gates of old. You can enter an Anomaly and have an encounter, which might help to seal it, or you can attempt to Ward Doom to prevent one opening in the first place. An interesting addition is the Remnant token, which some monsters leave behind when you defeat them, or from removing multiple Doom tokens with a Ward Doom action. They can later be spent for profit or to help with casting spells, which I find super thematic!
Third edition is a very different, very interesting game that I think definitely needs a lot more exploration to see what it has to offer. I find it a very interesting amalgamation, between Eldritch Horror and Arkham Horror second edition. There are also elements from the card game present, in terms of how the game is strongly tied towards the scenario, and being a big fan of that game it is very nice to see.
I do like second edition, and the opportunity that it has for telling your own stories. I do love Eldritch Horror, and the global scale of adventure and exploration that it gives us. I also love the card game, as has been well-chronicled here on this blog over the last twelve months! This third edition doesn’t have anything that I could say really detracts from it, in my view. It’s a solid addition to the game line, pulling elements from across several other games to make something very thematic from the previous version.
So far, we’ve had two small box expansions, and one big-box, coming at a rate of one per year. So we’re seeing a fairly steady stream, but nothing that seems to be difficult to keep up with. In a new move for me, I’ve not bought into any of these yet, although I have been eyeing up the most recent one, Secrets of the Order, as I love anything to do with the Order of the Silver Twilight! It will be interesting to see how these expansions integrate into the base game, in the fullness of time of course! For now, I definitely need to try and play the core set some more, even if I just play each of the four scenarios once!
Hope you’re all having a splendid Yuletide – and if you don’t go in for all that, hope it’s been a tremendous Friday!
I’ve had a pretty decent haul this year, mainly focusing on the recent upsurge in Arkham Horror that I’ve had! In addition to getting fully up to date with the card game, I’m quite pleased to have the new edition of the board game, which is a curious beast that I hope to find the time to explore soon!
In addition, I’ve kept a few of my recent purchases back for the festive season, as a bit of a present to myself! Looking forward to getting round to these soon!
In a pretty surprising move, GW has announced some new models coming out soon, starting with Drukhari vs Sisters of Battle, which will serve as a vehicle to show off two new plastic character models, Lelith Hesperax, and the new Lieutenant model for the Sisters, the Palatine:
I think that’s a great looking box and, depending on the price, I’m probably going to get it. I’m feeling a distinct need to get back to my beloved Dark Eldar, so it’s the perfect product! However, some of these things have been priced quite… ambitiously, and I’m not going to go too crazy for it…
We’ve also seen more for the new Slaanesh release, and I’m bowled over at the attention being lavished upon the Prince of Pleasure! New mortal archers, ranged and melee Seeker-riding mortals… and Slaangors!! My goodness, I need a lie down…
Hey everybody, Today is once again game day here at spalanz.com, as I was lucky enough to get some time to myself yesterday where I could actually play some games! I know, it was quite spooky really! My daughter is now thirteen months old, and is certainly in more of a routine where I can plan stuff like this, so it was definitely time to grab that while I could!
I managed two games, along a similar theme, and it was just glorious.
First up, we have Eldritch Horror. This is one of my all-time favourite games of globetrotting mystery and supernatural dread, although it suffers somewhat for being such a juggernaut to set up! This time around, it took some time for me to get back into the swing of things, although I think it was literally just one round for each of the investigators – Mark Harrigan and Diana Stanley – before it all came flooding back, and I was off! I chose these investigators because I had finally actually read that little introductory blurb at the start of the rulebook, where it seems to be the pair of them looking into the weird occult mysteries of the world…
I followed this up with Arkham Horror LCG, a game that I have been trying to get back into for a couple of weeks now. I have built two new decks since I last played back in the summer of 2019 (when I actually ran through the entire Dunwich Legacy campaign). Roland Banks is the first investigator that I ever used, and even though I’ve not exactly played this game a lot, I have something of a soft spot for him all the same. Akachi Onyele is usually a very powerful investigator in the other Arkham games, though I’ve played two games with this duo now and it’s clear already that she really needs the right spells out to be any good. That’s probably a bit harsh, but in the game yesterday, I noticed particularly how she just couldn’t really do anything before I had Wither out, whereupon she became more of a tank than the Guardian investigator!
I’ve really gotten back into the whole Cthulhu mythos and Arkham Files games lately, and part of me is now really annoyed with myself for having sold off my Arkham Horror 2nd edition collection last year. I got a good price for it, don’t get me wrong, but it was such a good game, and I never got round to featuring each one of the expansions on the blog before it went.
However, I’ve found myself looking into getting the 3rd edition for Christmas, so that will be quite nice when the festive season is finally here! Definitely need stuff to look forward to as we’re on the cusp of a new lockdown, as well!
Eldritch Horror was just lovely to get back on the table, I must say. I’ve still got a couple of expansions for that game to feature up here, so I’m thinking that I’ll get back into the tradition of looking at those roundabout Christmas time! Indeed, playing yesterday’s game was mostly about getting back into the game so that I could look at playing the expansions – seems like I’ve only played some of them once or twice, but The Dreamlands box is still in the shrinkwrap! I’m really behind with the times here.
I kinda fell away from the Arkham Horror LCG last year, thinking that I was barely playing it anyway, so didn’t buy any of the Dream-Eaters cycle as I had three full campaigns still to play through. However, I’m now thinking that I need to catch up with it all! I’d spent a few days recently looking into it all as if from scratch, and have sleeved all of my cards and bought the ‘Return to’ boxes to make sure everything is stored up properly, so I’m really finding myself quite hungry for more now!
Having taken that time to get to know the game again, though, I can definitely see myself playing this one for a long time yet. It seems as though the Dunwich Legacy campaign is fairly tame in comparison to some of the later ones, and a lot of people seem to favour the Path to Carcosa set, so I’m thinking that my next proper foray will be there – everything is ready for me, anyway!
Interestingly, now that Lord of the Rings has finished, I’m finding myself almost moving away from that game in favour of this one. For sure, I’m not going to be sacking off my collection of the older game, as I’ve had far too much fun with it over the years to want to be without it, but I think that game did seem to suffer a little for the designers’ efforts in making it more challenging. Mirkwood and Dwarrowdelf are still the high watermark for me, although I’ve not played so many cycles from the game I could be selling it short. However, with Arkham, it seems to have been designed as fairly tough from the outset, but the variable difficulty of the Chaos Bag allows for it to still be enjoyable. In fact, as I think I’ve talked about before, the game really benefits from not being a simple kill-the-monsters sort of thing that Lord of the Rings can sometimes become – the encounter deck for Arkham is very often full of treachery cards, with just a couple of enemies to keep things interesting. There are so many different moving parts in the game that keep things moving, so that the formula allows for much greater variety on the whole.
Like I say, I’m not getting rid of Lord of the Rings, but I do feel that Arkham Horror has overtaken it in my affections lately!
Having somehow missed my annual blog roundup last year, I’m back with a look at the hot new stuff coming out of GenCon 2019 – spoiler alert: some of this stuff is really hot!
There they all go! It’s almost a tradition or something these days to see the geek swarm as the doors open on a Thursday! Wonderful stuff.
I want to start with what was, for me, the biggest, most awe-inspiring, and most shocking reveal of the event so far: FFG have got the Marvel license. Well, maybe. I’ve not been able to find any further details on precisely what they can do – I mean, crikey, this announcement just came entirely out of nowhere and I’m still not entirely sure what it means for games. Where does it leave Upper Deck and Marvel Legendary? Hm.
A co-op living card game, to go alongside Lord of the Rings and Arkham Horror, is definitely an interesting move. The cards look similar to the heroes in Lord of the Rings, with their attributes running down the left hand side, and abilities down the bottom etc. The villain AI side of things appears a little more like Arkham Horror and the act/agenda mechanic, with a deck that can either attack your hero or work to advance their schemes.
I am particularly impressed with the news that the core set of Marvel Champions actually includes full playsets of all the cards, going against the grain of all previous LCGs. It’s a complaint that I’ve seen since the dawn of time, though, so I suppose it’s good to see the company work out that niggle!
However. I just don’t feel like I’m in the market for another LCG right now, and given that it does feel like an amalgamation of two other games that I already own, play and enjoy does make me think that I’ll likely pass this one over. I enjoy Marvel superheroes for sure, though not nearly as much as I used to enjoy them, and the theme is therefore just not strong enough for me to want to get this for the experience of playing a game in a specific universe.
On the subject of Arkham Horror, though, we’ve got another game set in the Lovecraft universe – Arkham Horror: Final Hour! This seems to be designed as a quicker game than the others in Fantasy Flight’s stable of Arkham Files games, and focused much more on combat than any of their previous games.
I’m not sure about this one, if I’m perfectly honest! There is still the element of investigation and discovery, as we attempt to find the clues to stop the ritual while beating back a tide of endless monsters and gribblies, and there seems to be a lot of interesting stuff going on from the image of the board up there, but there’s just something holding me back. Previous games have almost been built around the narrative and storytelling of the lore, and bringing that to the fore, while this just seems to be a little more on the punch-and-run style. I’ve definitely got my eye on it, and I think I’ll aim to get in a demo at my local store (as well as finding some videos on youtube in the fullness of time!) before making a final decision…
What else have we seen from FFG?
I gave up with Armada almost as quickly as I picked it up, but I saw these being delivered at the local store and had to chuckle to myself. £165 for a “miniature”?! Blimey. Apparently the base is bigger than the deployment zone, which I find silly, but I’m sure for narrative play it is a lot of fun.
Fantasy Flight Games used to be my all-time favourite games company, with amazing games that I used to enjoy playing again and again. I suppose my own life has evolved and I don’t really have the time for huge afternoons with intricate games anymore, though I’ve also noticed that there is a marked reliance on licensed games rather than sticking with their own stuff. I suppose that’s where the mega-bucks lie, and names like Marvel and Star Wars will certainly bring in the $$$. While there is a small part of me that is sorry to see things like Terrinoth go by the wayside, it’s still cool to see the company have a presence on the scene, and they are still producing amazing products, which has always been a hallmark.
However, I just don’t seem to feel the love for these things anymore. I suppose that’s probably because Games Workshop has sort of replaced them in my heart as favourite games company – so let’s take a look at what they’ve got to offer us from GenCon 2019!
Having recently announced my intention to get into Blood Bowl, I’m really impressed with the timing of this! Lizardmen are perhaps my all-time favourite Warhammer Fantasy faction, and I had been hoping I could pick some up to start my fantasy football journey with them, but alas it was not meant to be! I’ll definitely be picking these up though, as I just love them all!
Some of these skinks do look a little bit silly, though I love that dude prancing across the centre with the sun headdress on! What’s not to love!
So the Mirrored City has been shattered by the necroquake, or something, and the various bands of adventurers have made it out to find themselves trapped within a mountain range known as the Beastgrave. Well, something like that… I’ve still never played this game, of course, but I’m not sure that I like the Beastmen warband, as cool as some of the Gor models are, and the updated Wardancers are really quite divisive, aren’t they?!
I can’t decide, so I think I might wait this one out for now.
The manager at my local store is really excited for this one, though I’m not really feeling the love, either! My first thought was, oh it’s X-Wing in the 41st millennium, but I’ve no real idea what to expect here. Much like Adeptus Titanicus, I suppose I just don’t have the pedigree behind me to want this sort of game when it is so out of whack with the rest of Games Workshop’s products. Necromunda, Blood Bowl, and all the others are at least infantry-based miniatures games, and I can get behind them in a way that titan legions or airplane squadrons just don’t excite me as much.
So far, then, I’m not doing so well out of this year’s Gen Con, am I?! Stay tuned as I update this blog over the weekend with more news and opinions – who knows, maybe I’ll find a game that I actually like the look of!!
Hey everybody!
After talking more about the general boardgames in recent weeks, rather than bombarding you all with news of my hobby progress etc, I thought I’d come here and ramble for a bit about how it went with my Arkham Horror LCG core set campaign!
It’s been ages since I had originally started this, of course, and I had actually had to re-start so that I could once again get into the game and its various mechanics.
So I took Daisy and Skids off on an adventure to save the world from a diabolical cult, and it actually went fairly well – my initial thought about two investigators causing more problems didn’t really pose that much of an issue, as there were also more clues being spawned and we got through the encounter deck a lot quicker, etc.
I must say, I’m quite surprised at the differences between this game and Lord of the Rings, which I’d recently gotten back into of course, and my approaches to them. Skids had pretty much been tooled-up to be the heavy hitter, while Daisy was scampering off investigating clues etc, but there is a distinct lack of enemies that require beating up for the Skids deck as I’d been building it to really work.
While there are plenty of monsters here, and that’s also true of the board game antecedent also, the game is less about combat than it is about, well, everything else! I quite like that about it, as I’m not really looking for a beat-’em-up style experience all the time.
For now, anyway, I’ve made my way through the core set campaign, Night of the Zealot, and while I’m sure at some point I’ll be investing in the campaign box they recently brought out, for now my attention has been firmly fixed on Dunwich. I’ve been putting this off for an age now, of course, but I really want to actually make it to the first cycle of expansions and just see what they’re all about!
My initial investigations have shown that it has no real link to the core set, so I have retired my Daisy and Skids decks, and instead have been looking to build decks with the new investigators from the deluxe expansion. This sort of thing does bring with it an interesting situation, as the investigators here have a completely different sort of limitation upon their deckbuilding, which involves a lot more thought than the core investigators, and just mashing together two factions into a single deck! Of course, I still haven’t made the leap for a second core box, so my deckbuilding options are a little slim as far as that goes, so I’m thinking I may well be buying that second box before Christmas gets here.
I’m very much looking forward to getting back into the whole card gaming world of LCGs this autumn/winter season, so stay tuned for more exciting updates!!
Hey everybody!
I feel like it’s been a while since I really thought about playing board games and the like, though my recent foray into Middle Earth has gotten me thinking a lot more about the breadth of other games out there in the wild, so it was with no small amount of excitement that I read the news of the next deluxe expansion for the Arkham Horror LCG, The Circle Undone!
I haven’t played nearly as much of this game as I’d have liked by now – indeed, despite buying the expansions as they have come out, I’ve never yet made it beyond playing the core set! Since that time, of course, the deluxe expansions for this game have taken us all over the world, currently alighting in Mesoamerica, but it feels quite exciting to me that with this deluxe box the game will be returning to the city where it all began.
The box comes with a prologue scenario, where you play as specific characters and try to find out some clues that presumably help with the main scenarios of the box. This does sound pretty awesome, as I’m always a huge fan of alternative ways to play like this. Having a sort of prescriptive introduction sounds like it’s a narrative player’s dream, so I’m all for it!
I’m definitely feeling excited by this, and I’m thinking about breaking back into the game with a couple of the decks that I’ve had built for well over a year at this point. I mean, it would be a victory for me to just get to the Dunwich expansion, and see something new for the game!
Arkham Horror is one of my all-time favourite games, for sure, and I really do love the board game version like an old friend. The card game has a completely different feel, for sure, but it’s not something that I don’t like – the reason why I’ve not gotten round to playing the game nearly as much as I feel I should is simply one of time. I’ve devoted so much of my time to Warhammer 40k over the past year, in addition to all of the real-life stuff that’s been going on, that I just haven’t had the time to sit down and enjoy a game as I once did.
It’s certainly a difficult game when playing solo (I tried to get my wife into it a few weeks back, but even though it’s a co-op game, it didn’t go down as well as Lord of the Rings or Elder Sign). I think this might be another reason why I’ve neglected it somewhat, but the fact that I was moving house and getting everything packed up during the first cycle has sort of put me back a little bit on getting into the game. I did recently take a look through all of the material that I have for the game, more in an attempt to try and organise it all, but I’ve still not yet played with any of the expansions – something that I really think it’s time that I changed!
You just know that any blog that I write cannot go without mention of Games Workshop! When Warhammer Underworlds first came out last autumn with Shadespire, I wasn’t particularly interested in it, as I was trying to focus more on 40k and wasn’t paying any attention to the fantasy stuff. As time went on, I did like seeing some of the models for these warbands, and I did go so far as to buy the Fyreslayers because I love the scenic bases in that kit, though I have since sold that on and stuff. However, the new season of the game, Nightvault, has brought out another slew of amazing-looking miniatures, particularly for the Nighthaunt range, and I’m now considering buying into it. One of my regular gaming buddies does actually have a set of Shadespire, so I’m thinking about giving it a go before I dive on in, but I have been particularly taken by the sculpts of these flying ghost-people, especially their leader, the Briar Queen.
The Nighthaunt range does look amazing, but I had been trying to resist the fantasy stuff during AoS2, and so hadn’t got anything for it. Now, however, I’m already building a Beasts of Chaos army, so I can see the slippery slope of getting back into fantasy is occurring, and I have been considering getting a few ghosts to try my hand at painting…
For now, I’m trying to keep my slide into AoS a slow one, so as not to overwhelm myself with too many models. I don’t really know what I’m doing with the game overall, yet, either – though that’ll be the subject for another blog, I think…
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