This review is the third article on our 30 Days of Arkham Horror Files series of articles. Today we focus on Arkham Horror: The Card Game published by Fantasy Flight Games. If you haven’t already, check out our World of Arkham Horror page to find out more about all the games in the series. This game is one of 6 games in the Arkham Horror Files series and probably the most variable of them all in types of scenarios. So let’s dive in and tell you more about this fascinating game!

LCG vs. CCG?

One of the first questions we get asked about this game, Do I need to buy a ton of card packs to get a chance at getting a great card? No! This game is not a Collectible Card Game (CCG) like Magic: The Gathering or Pokemon. Instead, it is a Living Card Game (LCG). An LCG means all cards in the core game box, and subsequent expansions are specific to the game and expansions, respectively. The “living” aspect means that you will know which cards you will get with every mythos pack or deluxe expansion. Knowing what you will get allows you to change your character’s player deck easily. This structure makes each expansion more focused on the story and less on collecting cards to win.

Game Components

In this article, we will be reviewing the Core game of Arkham Horror: The Card Game. In the box, you get two main types of cards, Player Cards and Encounter Cards. You also get tokens to represent Doom, Clues, Resources, Health, and Sanity. There are also Character Cards with your character stats. Every character has a different amount of Willpower, Combat, Intellect, Agility, and varying amounts of Health and Sanity.

The game also comes with Chaos modifier tokens which you place in an opaque cup or bag and draw throughout the game.

Overall the quality of the cards is excellent. The artwork draws you into the theme of a 1920’s Gothic Horror novel. The tokens, too, are lovely, but there are a lot of tokens, and some can be pretty small, such as the doom/clue tokens. The size of the chaos tokens is just right, and we wish all the tokens were about that size. It’s not a deal-breaker, but it would be nice to see larger tokens.

Game Setup

Fair warning, Arkham Horror: The Card Game does take a bit of time to set up. After each player chooses a character to play, they need to set up their player deck. Each character has a Primary Class and a Secondary Class to which they belong. They also have many different cards they are allowed in their deck. Each player is free to pick any card in their classes or neutral (gray) cards without a little white dot under the number in the upper left up to their card limit. The dot represents an upgraded card. There is usually a beginner card of the same type in the game you can take instead. 

All players need to work together to decide who gets what cards in their deck. Fantasy Flight has made it easy by offering starter decks for characters you can buy separately and PDFs that detail what cards and character combinations work best for each character. The starter deck was beneficial for us as we just needed to pull the specific cards for the characters we played. This process does take about 10-15 minutes, but well worth it as you can keep that deck setup for multiple scenarios across each campaign.

After you setup, the player decks, separate the tokens into different piles for each type. Now it’s time to read the intro to the story for your scenario. The campaign setup guide gives you a good background on what is to come in the story. Some scenarios offer a choice at this point where you only read a specific passage based on your characters’ decisions. The scenario story ends with you setting up the encounter deck, the agenda deck, the act deck. Finally, adding tokens to the chaos token bag.

Then you need to layout the starting location cards. These are cards with a symbol for the current scenario. The scenario intro will show you what cards to layout at the beginning of the scenario. Finally, each player takes five resource tokens and five cards from their player deck, and you’re ready to begin!

Overall, the setup is relatively smooth. The longest part is pulling the correct enemies, encounter locations, and setting up the player decks. At least the player deck is only set up once per campaign. The enemies and encounter locations are specific to the scenario. I do like that if you don’t want your initial player hand, you can discard them all and draw five more. Fantasy Flight Games is making this process easier going forward. The new revised Arkham Horror: The Card Game already has everything you need in the correct order. Some enemies appear in multiple scenarios, those you will need to pull each time. We think this will make the setup much smoother.

Gameplay

The game’s object is to get through the entire Act deck before the enemies can get through the Agenda deck. To advance the Act deck, you will need to discover clues, defeat enemies, or even do something completely different. The beauty of Arkham Horror: The Card Game is that the trigger can be completely variable and not rigid as a traditional board game because it’s a card game. Depending on the Scenario, locations can hold clues that you can gather. At the end of each round, you can move the clues to the Act deck. You need a certain number of clues to advance each act.

In amongst searching locations for clues, enemies will appear in the game world, either at a specific area or attacking a particular investigator. Your job is to fight them off with whatever you have. Fighting is where your player deck comes in handy. There you will have weapons, spells, and other items that investigators can use to attack or evade the monsters. The one caveat is if there are monsters in your space at the end of the round, they will “engage.” Monsters restrict you only to fight or evade the monster. If you choose to do anything else, you will get hurt the default amount of damage and sanity that the monster deals out.

Round Structure

Each round consists of 4 phases: the Mythos phase (skipped the first round), The Investigator Phase, The Enemy Phase, and the Upkeep Phase. The investigator phase is where each Investigator can take up to 3 actions, and there are a lot of actions you can take. The enemy Phase is when the enemies move and attack, the upkeep phase is when you reset the game cards and prepare for the next round. The Mythos Phase is where each Investigator draws an encounter card. Then resolves it either by bringing an enemy into play or having other game effects happen to them. This stage is when you typically add one doom token to the Agenda deck, causing the enemies to move closer to their goal.

Skill tests

These are the meat of the game. There are different types of skill tests. Let’s talk about a few of them to explain how they work.

Investigate a Location to get clues: This type of skill test requires clues in your current location. On the location card is a number inside a black circle. This number is the shroud value of the location.

What the heck is a “shroud value”? The shroud is the number of successes you need to have when you test Intellect. To test, you take the following steps:

• First, you take the number on the investigator card next to the book. 
•  Then look at any cards you have in play to see if the card’s description gives you a positive or negative benefit for Intellect. 
• Then adjust your base number by that. 
• Finally, reach into the chaos bag, pull out a token, and adjust your intellect number by that amount. 

If your number is now equal to or higher than the shroud value, you gain a clue at your location. If it’s less than the shroud value, you don’t earn a clue.

Fighting an enemy: This Works the same way as investigating. The only difference is the stat you use. In this case, Combat and what value you compare it to on the monster card. In this case, the monster’s attack value. If you are successful, you deal one damage. 

Evading an Enemy: We get it, you want to run away… this is the action for you. Same thing as before, but this time using the agility number on your card, adjusting your number by other agility points, and drawing a chaos token. If you are equal to or higher than the enemy’s evade number, you have successfully disengaged this enemy, and they become “exhausted” for most enemies. Exhausted enemies are turned a quarter turn and placed back on the Investigator’s location. These enemies will not attack or move this round on their turn.

Encounter Card Tests: During the Mythos phase of the game, each player takes an encounter card. Sometimes these are enemies that attack (see fighting and Evading above) others cause mental trauma. If this happens, you might have to test your willpower. Encounters work the same way as the other test types, and if the card says revelation, it gets discarded at the end of the round.

Our thoughts on Testing:

Overall the way you test your skills in Arkham Horror: The Card Game is pretty standard. The one complaint we have is that it’s a lot to keep track of for each player. Between finding your base value, seeing if any of your cards modify the value, good or bad, and then pulling a random token can sometimes do our heads in a bit. It does take a fair bit of concentration to keep track of everything and not forget something.

One helpful thing is that some cards have skill icons on the left side instead of using your skills. These are automatic +1 for that skill per icon if you are willing to discard the card. That’s cool because maybe you don’t want to use the card you pulled from your player deck. You can instead use the card for its skill icons.

What else can I do on my turn?

There are few things you can do besides Testing on your turn. Other actions include:

• Draw a player Card
• Gain 1 resource token
• If any card you have has an arrow on it, you may Activate that action
• Engage an enemy – pull an enemy to you
• Move – move from your location to any connecting location
• Play – players can play any card in your hand for its resource cost in the upper left. Cards in your hand are not active until played.

Our thoughts on your other actions

One of the most underrated actions is the “Engage” action. Like, why would I engage an enemy if I can fight it when it’s engaged with another investigator. Good question. Well, if you fight an enemy and you fail the fight test, you do that damage to the other Investigator and not the enemy. Also, suppose you have high agility. In that case, you could engage the enemy and then evade it as your second action. Evading would exhaust the enemy, making it inactive for the rest of the round. If you are not engaged, you can not evade an enemy.

We also like the fact you can take a resource token during your turn. Imagine this scenario. You’ve just started an upkeep phase. There’s a giant enemy in a location next to you. You’ve drawn a card, and its dynamite costs 4 resources to play, and you only have two currently. Well, with upkeep, you get one more resource, so you are up to 3 resources, still 1 shy of what you need. So on your Investigator’s turn, you take one more resource token. Then spend all 4 resources playing dynamite and immediately activating it by throwing it to the next location. You’ve killed the enemy this round because you used the gain resource action.

Enemy Phase

In the enemy phase, the enemies will try and move, and if they reach an investigator, they attack. By default, an enemy deals damage and horror to an investigator equal to the number of hearts (Damage) and Brains(Horror) on their enemy card. Then the enemy becomes exhausted, so it can’t attack again this round.

Our thoughts on the Enemy Phase

We wish there were a bit more complexity to how an enemy attacks. One thought would be to utilize the chaos bag and adjust their attack by the modifier pulled from the bag. Otherwise, you fully know how much you are going to get hurt each time the enemy attacks. Knowing what will happen is suitable for developing strategy… like “I know I will get 1 Damage if I do this…” but it lacks a bit of variability.

Upkeep Phase

Upkeep is the reset phase, any enemies that have been exhausted in the previous phases reset. If they are in a location with an investigator, they immediately engage (unless the enemy doesn’t engage at all). Each player then takes 1 resource token and 1 player card from their deck into their hand. Remember, player cards in your hand are not in play and can not be used except for their skill icons when contributing them to another test. Upkeep is a reasonably straightforward step, and we don’t have any specific thoughts on it.

Mythos Phase

The mythos phase is the phase when bad things happen in the game. The first thing you do is add one doom token to the agenda deck. If the number of doom tokens equals the number of the card, the enemy’s story advances. When the agenda advances, it is usually is not good. Then each player takes a mythos card and resolves it.

Our thoughts on the Mythos Phase

Arkham Horror: The Card Game is no doubt challenging. The design of this phase is to make your game very hard and limit the decisions you can make during the next investigator phase. Some cards drawn have tests that you must immediately resolve, while others are new enemies. In either case, it’s not a great phase for the investigators. It is enjoyable to see all the different encounter cards come out as a player during the mythos phase. The encounter deck is specific to the scenario too, so it feels like you are dealing with new and exciting enemies in each scenario.

Overall Impressions

This game is exciting overall. It is a very tough game with loads of rules. They even include a learn to Play AND a Rules Reference guide because it’s so complex. We enjoy this game, although we know we have to play in the right headspace. Arkham Horror: The Card Game is not a game to play if you want a relaxing, stress-free night of gaming. There are a lot of other games, even some in the Arkham Files series, that are less intense than this. However, if you want to immerse yourself in a story of gothic horror, this is the game for you.

We love how the story comes to life through the scenario book and the Act and Agenda decks. We enjoy that we can fight some enemies, find some clues and advance our story. The best part is these games are part of a campaign, so win or lose, you move on to the following scenario. Either with some added benefit for the win or some deficit if you lost. The core game comes with three scenarios. If you like that, there are six different campaigns with the deluxe box for each containing two scenarios and then an additional 6-8 scenarios per campaign you can purchase separately. (Note: Fantasy Flight Games is currently changing this model of selling campaigns. They are presently rereleasing all the campaigns starting with the Dunwich Legacy as single boxed campaigns. You only need to buy one box to get the entire campaign.)

We wish a few things could be better. There are so many rules that it can become challenging to keep track of everything. Our rule is that if you miss something, don’t try to go back and fix it. Move on. It’s more fun that way. Fantasy Flight Games could improve the game by rethinking the enemy phase a bit, as mentioned before. Also, it would be nice to see premade starts decks included with the core game box so that it’s easier to get started.Overall, Arkham Horror: The Card Game is a great game, and if you think it would be something you’d enjoy, check it out in our store!

We are currently running a special offer for October when you buy $50 worth of Arkham Products and receive a FREE copy of the Investigators of Arkham Horror book (a $40 value). This book is a full-color coffee table-sized book with stories of many of the investigators. We are not selling this book in our store currently, and you can only get it as part of our Arkham Horror Files October promotion.