Review Arkham Horror

Arkham Horror

First, there are a lot of components in the box. Stacks of small cards,
stacks of big cards, six different types of counters, character sheets,
Ancient One sheets, gate tokens, character tokens, monster tokens. The first
thing you're going to do is split them out into snack-sized baggies, because
if you don't set-up is going to take even longer than normal.

The flavor text and feel of the game evokes 1920's Lovecraft horror very
effectively - you are investigators, trying to prevent some big bad menace
from coming to Arkham. This game has style. Between the cards and dice
rolls, there's enough randomness to make things interesting, but there's a
lot of odds calculations and choices to make it more than a "roll and move"
type of game.

The game is cooperative, where everyone is trying to meet a common goal.
There are rules to find out a winner/MVP, but those seem tacked on and not
in the spirit of the game. Some people really hate this, but our group isn't
among them. In that sense, it has the feel of a roleplaying game more than a
board game. You play characters with stats and equipment, each with
particular strengths and weaknesses. This works well. You may rock when it
comes to casting spells, but if a monster has magical resistance, you can
yell for your fellow players to come rescue you.

The rules are detailed and give you lots of options, but are laid out very
poorly. It will take a reading through to figure out how to play (or better
yet, get someone to teach you, or download a cheatsheet from
boardgamegeek.com). There are mythos cards that change the rules, tweaking
each game temporarily. Between the variations of the characters, the
big-bad, and the mythos cards, each game is different. Replayability is
high.

There are two expansions, which aren't needed but are nice. Without the
expansions, the location encounters are a bit repetitive. The game says it
is 3-8 players, but it best between 4-6 (again, the Dunwich Horror expansion
probably makes the 7-8 player game more playable). Plan on spending an
afternoon playing because a game can take a long time to play, especially
the first few times as you look up "how does that rule work again."

In short, this game gets suggested when we have the time and people to play.
This game isn't for everyone, but it is one of our favorites.

Review by Bryan Jonker