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Jonas Albrecht
Jun 7, 2012


What is Arkham Horror: The Card Game?
It's a co-op LCG from Fantasy Flight Games in which players create investigator decks and tackle mysteries.

Neat. Tell me more!
Each player chooses an investigator and then builds a deck according to that investigator's requirements. Each investigator belongs to one or more classes (Guardian, Seeker, Rogue, Mystic, and Survivor), and I'll talk more about them below. Each investigator also has both a beneficial card and weakness unique to them. Additionally, a player will either be making a deck for campaign or standalone mode.


Investigator Classes
The five classes determine what card pool an investigator can draw from, and thus determines their playstyle, strengths, and weaknesses. These are:

Guardians: The theme of Guardians is standing up to the unknown with the mundane. Guns, knives, and occasionally rolling a bundle of dynamite into a cultist gathering. Their main stat is Might.

Seekers: Nerds. Total nerds. They're the best at investigating, however, and that's how you win the game. Main stat is Intellect.

Mystics: They are magical people who cast spells at the darkness. Main stat is Willpower.

Rogues: Rogues get by with cards that mess around with the rules. Main stat is Agility.

Survivors: Survivors' are good at managing close calls and turning failures into successes. They don't have a main stat. Pity them.


Modes of Play
Campaign Mode: You start the game with 0 xp for your deck, and play through a series of scenarios that will affect your investigator, usually for the worse.

Standalone Mode: Build an deck with up to 50 xp and tackle a single scenario.


How to Play
Scenarios are usually tackled by gaining enough clues to advance the Act deck. Get to the end of it and you'll win the game. However, you're racing against the Agenda deck, a perpetually advancing series of cards that screw over the player.

Players find clues, fight enemies, dodge perils by Skill tests. You pull a token out of the Chaos Bag, add or subtract the modifier from your relevant stat, and if you meet or exceed the target number, you win!

Resources
Here's a deckbuilder: https://arkhamdb.com/

Campaigns
Please share yours here!

Jonas Albrecht fucked around with this message at 06:19 on Jan 22, 2017

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ChiTownEddie
Mar 26, 2010

Awesome beer, no pants.
Join the Legion.
Gotta say after my first scenario that included Zoey...
She just runs around murdering things. A+ char.

Jonas Albrecht
Jun 7, 2012


ChiTownEddie posted:

Gotta say after my first scenario that included Zoey...
She just runs around murdering things. A+ char.

Did she have a fire axe?

Zerf
Dec 17, 2004

I miss you, sandman

ChiTownEddie posted:

Gotta say after my first scenario that included Zoey...
She just runs around murdering things. A+ char.

Need to try Zoey next. Or Rex.

Also, do people enjoy playing survivors? I've built an "Ashcan" Pete deck, but I don't feel like it will be any good. I mean, Duke's good, but he's once per turn unless discarding cards. I splashed Pickpocketing to help card draw (and along with Rabbit's Foot that should help). But just as Wendy, Pete's got willpower 4, and the survivor class can't really do anything with it.

Hopefully we'll see some cards that can take advantage of it, right now it feels like a wasted stat.

ChiTownEddie
Mar 26, 2010

Awesome beer, no pants.
Join the Legion.

Zerf posted:

Need to try Zoey next. Or Rex.

Also, do people enjoy playing survivors? I've built an "Ashcan" Pete deck, but I don't feel like it will be any good. I mean, Duke's good, but he's once per turn unless discarding cards. I splashed Pickpocketing to help card draw (and along with Rabbit's Foot that should help). But just as Wendy, Pete's got willpower 4, and the survivor class can't really do anything with it.

Hopefully we'll see some cards that can take advantage of it, right now it feels like a wasted stat.

I honestly haven't even played one yet. I need to branch out from the 3-4 guys I've used :/
Ashcan Pete seems pretty interesting, but him locking up his ally spot so thoroughly may be tough...

Plavski
Feb 1, 2006

I could be a revolutionary

ChiTownEddie posted:

I honestly haven't even played one yet. I need to branch out from the 3-4 guys I've used :/
Ashcan Pete seems pretty interesting, but him locking up his ally spot so thoroughly may be tough...

It doesn't lock up his Ally slot. Duke has the keyword Ally, but has no ally slot indicator so you're free to go hog wild with whomever you want.

ChiTownEddie
Mar 26, 2010

Awesome beer, no pants.
Join the Legion.

Plavski posted:

It doesn't lock up his Ally slot. Duke has the keyword Ally, but has no ally slot indicator so you're free to go hog wild with whomever you want.

WELL THEN.
I shall be trying an Ashcan Pete solo deck soon...

Soothing Vapors
Mar 26, 2006

Associate Justice Lena "Kegels" Dunham: An uncool thought to have: 'is that guy walking in the dark behind me a rapist? Never mind, he's Asian.
Zoey is such a well-designed character. She's insanely powerful at her one job, which is murder, but when there's no monsters out she's more or less a liability. I had a Zoey/Jenny game end poorly because we kept drawing non-monster encounter cards, so Jenny was basically on her own.

Zerf posted:

Need to try Zoey next. Or Rex.

Also, do people enjoy playing survivors? I've built an "Ashcan" Pete deck, but I don't feel like it will be any good. I mean, Duke's good, but he's once per turn unless discarding cards. I splashed Pickpocketing to help card draw (and along with Rabbit's Foot that should help). But just as Wendy, Pete's got willpower 4, and the survivor class can't really do anything with it.

Hopefully we'll see some cards that can take advantage of it, right now it feels like a wasted stat.

I don['t really care for either survivor. I like most red cards and I use a couple reds whenever deckbuilding rules allow me to, but Wendy and Pete don't do much for me. Wendy is godawful on her own, though she's OK in a group as an evade tank. Her stat spread is so weird though and she really can;'t leverage her willpower for anything useful.

Pete can do more with Willpower 4 than Wendy. at least; he can splash into Shriveling to give him a non-Duke related combat option.

Kerro
Nov 3, 2002

Did you marry a man who married the sea? He looks right through you to the distant grey - calling, calling..
Interested to hear if anyone has good suggestions for a Skids deck. My wife and I have been duoing him with Agnes and he just seems kinda lackluster. His base fight and int make him not great at either fighting or investigating - the two main things that most scenarios require - and this is not particularly well boosted by the cards available to him. He can evade okay, but doesn't seem to be able to capitalise on this in a way that seems any more helpful than just killing the enemies.

His standout thing seems to be action economy - with two copies of upgraded Leo, Emergency Cache, Hot Streak and possibly burglary (though due to his low investigate score this seems more miss than hit) he can do a lot of stuff - just none of it very well. Is there a better way to build him?

Edit: Also to add his 2 willpower and 6 sanity makes him ridiculously easy to get knocked out of the game with bad treachery cards - more than one scenario has some sort of 'test X willpower, lose one sanity for each point you fail by' which can easily drive him half insane off a single card if you don't have suitable skill cards in hand.

Kerro fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Jan 24, 2017

Lichtenstein
May 31, 2012

It'll make sense, eventually.
Skids is good. Perhaps even a better fighter than Roland!

The thing is, he has access to Guardian's Machetes and Dynamites (that's actually playable with all the cash you'll have) and poo poo for decent monster slaying AND very good capabilities for evade stunlocking (making him a great tank for teammates). Also, Hard Knocks is a baller talent and with green economy will allow you to poo poo all over encounters that should have caught you with your pants down. What you lose by not having access to high-level Guardian gear is pretty much made up by Sneak Attack and Backstab. The deckbuilding secret with him is to never care about green weapons, unless you really want some spare ones to fill the gap while you draw for blue ones you really want to use. His Elder Sign ability is really, really good, if obviously unreliable, and Leo de Luca is an MVP card that wins games on its own.

His real weakness is that he has little answers to high-shroud investigations other than Flashlights and Perceptions - so use them judiciously.

Really, Skids is the most pure warrior class in the core set, with Roland actually being more of a ranger/rogue - a sort of glass cannon with fancy non-combat utility. Try pairing him with Daisy - one investigator rushes the objectives, while the other takes care of obstacles along the way.

Kerro posted:

He can evade okay, but doesn't seem to be able to capitalise on this in a way that seems any more helpful than just killing the enemies.

Apart from being able to hightail it when outmatched (hello weaponless Roland drawing a ghoul), it's super useful to engage + evade an enemy (or two, if you pay for an extra action) to effectively stun them and allow other players to run around unharassed. Also, I had pulled some sweet Benny Hill shenanigans running away from Hunter bosses with Pickpocketing on.

Lichtenstein
May 31, 2012

It'll make sense, eventually.

Kerro posted:

more than one scenario has some sort of 'test X willpower, lose one sanity for each point you fail by' which can easily drive him half insane off a single card if you don't have suitable skill cards in hand.

The lowest value a botched test can have is 0! It's a common mistake.

Fellis
Feb 14, 2012

Kid, don't threaten me. There are worse things than death, and uh, I can do all of them.
Is Daisy as broken in this as she is in Arkham horror?

Kerro
Nov 3, 2002

Did you marry a man who married the sea? He looks right through you to the distant grey - calling, calling..

Lichtenstein posted:

The lowest value a botched test can have is 0! It's a common mistake.

Yeah, I was thinking of a card that's 'test Willpower 3' - so with his base 2 willpower, drawing a -2 or worse loses you 3 sanity, or half his max.

I guess we've just found it hard to put the strengths you describe into practice given the pacing of scenarios. Agreed that Leo is good, Machete can be great and Sneak Attack/Backstab can make up for his low fight value - but they also cost a huge amount of resources (not to mention dynamite). Even in the best case scenario of drawing Leo and Machete in the opening hand, he can get them both into play if he does nothing else but at that point is at zero resources and still can't necessarily effectively fight (4 fight with Machete is only barely enough for some monsters and not enough for many) OR investigate for a few more turns until he has resources and/or skill cards in hand. In the games we've played he just feels too slow to get going - by the point he's fully online he's often taken enough sanity damage that he can't too well afford to go toe to toe with many enemies.

Soothing Vapors
Mar 26, 2006

Associate Justice Lena "Kegels" Dunham: An uncool thought to have: 'is that guy walking in the dark behind me a rapist? Never mind, he's Asian.

Fellis posted:

Is Daisy as broken in this as she is in Arkham horror?

she's insanely good at her niche, yeah

alg
Mar 14, 2007

A wolf was no less a wolf because a whim of chance caused him to run with the watch-dogs.

Kerro posted:

Yeah, I was thinking of a card that's 'test Willpower 3' - so with his base 2 willpower, drawing a -2 or worse loses you 3 sanity, or half his max.

I guess we've just found it hard to put the strengths you describe into practice given the pacing of scenarios. Agreed that Leo is good, Machete can be great and Sneak Attack/Backstab can make up for his low fight value - but they also cost a huge amount of resources (not to mention dynamite). Even in the best case scenario of drawing Leo and Machete in the opening hand, he can get them both into play if he does nothing else but at that point is at zero resources and still can't necessarily effectively fight (4 fight with Machete is only barely enough for some monsters and not enough for many) OR investigate for a few more turns until he has resources and/or skill cards in hand. In the games we've played he just feels too slow to get going - by the point he's fully online he's often taken enough sanity damage that he can't too well afford to go toe to toe with many enemies.

Emergency Cache and Hot Streak have both kept my Skids going just fine. Really I use stuff like Sneak Attack and Dynamite to make evading just as damaging as fighting.

jadarx
May 25, 2012
Thanks to FFG for messing up an order and then messing up the order correction, I now have 1 extra copy of both of the POD expansions (Curse of the Rougarou & Carnivale of Horrors). So if anyone wants them, you just need to pay shipping. Paypal required. Just PM or email (jadarx AT gmail DOT com) with enough info so I can get a shipping estimate. First come, first serve.

Chaotic Flame
Jun 1, 2009

So...


jadarx posted:

Thanks to FFG for messing up an order and then messing up the order correction, I now have 1 extra copy of both of the POD expansions (Curse of the Rougarou & Carnivale of Horrors). So if anyone wants them, you just need to pay shipping. Paypal required. Just PM or email (jadarx AT gmail DOT com) with enough info so I can get a shipping estimate. First come, first serve.

Emailed you

sexart
Jan 5, 2001

Damn...I know alotta big words
Zoey works really well with Mystic cards. I threw in 2x Drawn to the Flame, 2x Rite of Seeking just so she could do some decent clue hunting when there were no baddies around. The last off-class card I need to experiment more with, I had 1x Ward of Protection but with her low Sanity as it is I think Fearless or Clarity of Mind might be better.

Jonas Albrecht
Jun 7, 2012


I'd like to have better descriptions of the classes in my OP, so if someone has a good breakdown of one or more of them, I'd appreciate it. Like for instance, I didn't know Rogues were the econ faction. That's useful info!

Obama 2012
Mar 28, 2002

"I never knew what hope was until it ran out in a red gush over my lips, my hands!"

-Anne Rice, Interview with the President

sexart posted:

Zoey works really well with Mystic cards. I threw in 2x Drawn to the Flame, 2x Rite of Seeking just so she could do some decent clue hunting when there were no baddies around. The last off-class card I need to experiment more with, I had 1x Ward of Protection but with her low Sanity as it is I think Fearless or Clarity of Mind might be better.

My Zoey always packs Liquid Courage--nothing like a little bathtub gin to take the edge off...

Rad Valtar
May 31, 2011

Someday coach Im going to throw for 6 TDs in the Super Bowl.

Sit your ass down Steve.
So I just got the core set with the first two scenerio packs and plan on grabbing the first expansion. I need some advice on storage solutions. Is it worth it to get one from broken token or are there other ways that are better?

PJOmega
May 5, 2009

Rad Valtar posted:

So I just got the core set with the first two scenerio packs and plan on grabbing the first expansion. I need some advice on storage solutions. Is it worth it to get one from broken token or are there other ways that are better?

Standard cardboard boxes. Broken token dividers are insanely expensive and will run out of room.

Kerro
Nov 3, 2002

Did you marry a man who married the sea? He looks right through you to the distant grey - calling, calling..
I'd never done anything with foamcore before but had a go for this since I expect to get a large number of the expansions etc. This has room for everything, including two player decks and tons of the scenario/encounter cards. Player cards I've kept separately in a binder. It's also super-quick to setup and play since I can just grab all the tokens out at once and have them near the play area. So if you don't mind doing it yourself this is pretty quick and simple.



alg
Mar 14, 2007

A wolf was no less a wolf because a whim of chance caused him to run with the watch-dogs.

Why does everyone have to spend a boatload of money on cardboard dividers. Use a binder and ultra pro black pages and a card box from your flgs.

Kerro
Nov 3, 2002

Did you marry a man who married the sea? He looks right through you to the distant grey - calling, calling..
An A2 sheet of cardboard costs a couple of bucks? I dunno why you would consider that costly

Jonas Albrecht
Jun 7, 2012


Is it possible to spend a boatload of money on cardboard dividers?

Soothing Vapors
Mar 26, 2006

Associate Justice Lena "Kegels" Dunham: An uncool thought to have: 'is that guy walking in the dark behind me a rapist? Never mind, he's Asian.

Rad Valtar posted:

So I just got the core set with the first two scenerio packs and plan on grabbing the first expansion. I need some advice on storage solutions. Is it worth it to get one from broken token or are there other ways that are better?

I've got my player cards in a binder for easy shopping, my scenario/encounter cards in one of these. Dice kept in the back of the pendaflex and used instead of resource/health/sanity/doom tokens. setup is super fast and easy. I don't really see the point of the brokentoken poo poo

Soothing Vapors
Mar 26, 2006

Associate Justice Lena "Kegels" Dunham: An uncool thought to have: 'is that guy walking in the dark behind me a rapist? Never mind, he's Asian.

Jonas Albrecht posted:

Is it possible to spend a boatload of money on cardboard dividers?

I assume he meant the brokentoken, which is balsa not cardboard but yeah

bobvonunheil
Mar 18, 2007

Board games and tea
What's the timing on Fire Axe?

If I initiate a combat with 1 resource, spend it to increase Fire Axe's attack, then win the combat, do I do 1 damage or 2?

Likewise, if I initiate a combat with 1 resource, then play Lucky! to turn it into a success, do I do 1 damage or 2?

Jonas Albrecht
Jun 7, 2012


bobvonunheil posted:

What's the timing on Fire Axe?

If I initiate a combat with 1 resource, spend it to increase Fire Axe's attack, then win the combat, do I do 1 damage or 2?

Likewise, if I initiate a combat with 1 resource, then play Lucky! to turn it into a success, do I do 1 damage or 2?

Yes to both is how we've been playing it. The card checks for Resources during the damage step.

bobvonunheil
Mar 18, 2007

Board games and tea

Jonas Albrecht posted:

Yes to both is how we've been playing it. The card checks for Resources during the damage step.

Is there a ruling that says this is the case? My first instinct was to say that you are correct, but it makes more sense to my cardgaming instincts that the effect is checked upon initiating the action, not after success has been achieved.

Fat Samurai
Feb 16, 2011

To go quickly is foolish. To go slowly is prudent. Not to go; that is wisdom.
Going by page 26 of the rules, "Skill Test Timing", I think you'd do 2 damage in both cases. Pay for stuff/play cards in the player windows on ST.1-ST.3 and check whether you have resources or not in ST.7 Apply skill test results.

Lichtenstein
May 31, 2012

It'll make sense, eventually.
I remember the designer saying (in a Team Covenant interview) that thematically the whole resource thing was meant to convey taking a big, slow, powerful, exhausting swing.

Plavski
Feb 1, 2006

I could be a revolutionary

bobvonunheil posted:

What's the timing on Fire Axe?

If I initiate a combat with 1 resource, spend it to increase Fire Axe's attack, then win the combat, do I do 1 damage or 2?

Likewise, if I initiate a combat with 1 resource, then play Lucky! to turn it into a success, do I do 1 damage or 2?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOHQe_b01v8&t=2000s

Yup, that's what the designers intended. You can start the fight with 3 resources, spend them all and gain +1 damage when it hits.

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

Lichtenstein posted:

I remember the designer saying (in a Team Covenant interview) that thematically the whole resource thing was meant to convey taking a big, slow, powerful, exhausting swing.

It's best not to think too hard about what the resources or the spending thereof represent thematically because it really doesn't make a lot of sense for long. It's pretty much the only part where the game doesn't just breathe theme though so who cares.

Lichtenstein
May 31, 2012

It'll make sense, eventually.

Orange Devil posted:

It's best not to think too hard about what the resources or the spending thereof represent thematically because it really doesn't make a lot of sense for long. It's pretty much the only part where the game doesn't just breathe theme though so who cares.

Cigarettes. They're cigarettes.

Fat Samurai
Feb 16, 2011

To go quickly is foolish. To go slowly is prudent. Not to go; that is wisdom.
Why are you giving cigarettes to a kitty :ohdear:

Lichtenstein
May 31, 2012

It'll make sense, eventually.
So it keeps following me. Duh.

bobvonunheil
Mar 18, 2007

Board games and tea

Fat Samurai posted:

Why are you giving cigarettes to a kitty :ohdear:

Gotta keep those eyes lit up somehow

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Jonas Albrecht
Jun 7, 2012


https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2017/1/25/undimensioned-and-unseen/

4th Dunwich Legacy pack.

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