Welcome to our review of Fantasy Flight Games‘ Arkham Horror Third Edition – Board Game. We will be discussing what makes the board game so much fun. The board game is one of 6 games in the Arkham Horror Files series. If you want to know more about the entire series, check out our Arkham Horror page. 

We will be publishing our overview next week, which goes into detail on how to play.

Game Overview

In Arkham Horror: The Board Game, you play an investigator. You and your fellow players are trying to unravel a specific arcane mystery and stop one of the Ancient Ones from entering the world. The core game takes place in Arkham, Massachusetts, a fictional town near Boston in the 1920s. The game has you traveling between neighborhoods in the town, collecting clues that you then use to complete specific story tasks. Meanwhile, the game will throw enemies at you for you to fight. Doom tokens get added to the board, and the more you have, the closer you are to having the Ancient One appear. (Try not to let that happen!)

Arkham Horror: The Board Game is a fully cooperative game for 1-4 players. It takes 90-120minutes to complete and is recommended for ages 14 and up due to its subject matter.

Game Components

The game comes with plenty of components. When you first open the game box, be prepared to be popping punchboard for a while! This game has tokens galore. The board is neat too. It consists of circular neighborhood tiles that are configurable based on the specific scenario you are playing. Each Scenario card has a diagram of the board on the bac. It shows you which neighborhoods tiles to use and which street connectors to use. Each neighborhood has three locations on it which come into play during the game. As well as the board, there are many cards all used for different purposes. We learned very quickly that we need to have a large table to play this game as everything is necessary for each scenario at some point.

The game components are all of high quality and highly themed to the Arkham Horror Series. 

We like the look of the Investigator’s Stats card as it provides the stats you need and a nice backstory to the character. If you’ve read any of our other articles in this series, you’ll know that we love the artwork style of this game. It does give off a handpainted vibe. The quality of the board and illustrations are also quite impressive. One of the things we like about the modular board is that the scenarios all use a different board. Still, when combined with the game’s expansions, this creates whole new opportunities for the board layout.

Game Setup

Besides the initial popping out of all the tokens and board pieces, there is a fair amount of setup before you begin each game. Each scenario has its monster deck of cards that you need to pull together. Each investigator has their starting asset cards that need to be collected. Place the tokens within reach of all players. Finally, the neighborhood, event, newspaper, and archive cards must be assembled for the scenario and placed within reach.

All of this setup does take some time. You should plan for 10-15 minutes at the beginning of the game to get set up. Once you’re setup, though, the game will go pretty smoothly. We wish there were a way to have everything ready to go ahead of time. There are game organizers that will help with this, and if you enjoy this game, we’d recommend investing in one.

Game Play

So the big question… how does this game play? The main goal of this game is to collect clue tokens in the various neighborhoods and then “Research” those clues to move them to the Scenario sheet. Once you have enough clues on the sheet to advance the scenario, you will add archive cards to the codex, where your goal changes. Each scenario has approximately three goals each. Once you complete the final goal, you’ve won the scenario. At the same time, if you collect doom tokens on the scenario sheet, you will cause the monster’s archive cards to get added to the codex, making the game harder. There are also approximately three triggers for this to happen, so you have some time before the Ancient one appears.

The three main actions you do in the game are to Ward, Fight, Research. Warding is how you get rid of doom on the board. Fighting is how you defeat monsters. Research is how you take clues you’ve gathered and move them to the scenario sheet.

Collecting Clues?

So I did say that you need to collect clues to achieve goals in the scenario. Collecting clues is where this game is a bit odd. There isn’t an action you can take to collect a clue on your turn actively. Instead, you need to be in a neighborhood containing clues – with no monsters attacking you at the end of the Enemy phase. Then when the game moves to the encounter phase, there is a “chance” you might be able to collect a clue. I say a chance because it depends on whether the neighborhood encounter card is an “event” card and not a standard neighborhood card.

Being in a specific neighborhood at the end of the enemy phase is one of the aspects of the game I’m not a massive fan of. It feels more passive, almost like you are “hanging around” for the opportunity to gain a clue. The worst part is if you’ve got yourself set up to get a clue, and then an enemy moves to you and attacks. Getting attacked by a monster hurts your investigator and means you will not get a neighborhood encounter card until you defeat or evade the monster. This action of waiting around makes the game more challenging but doesn’t feel like you have an active say when you search for clues.

Testing

Almost everything in the game involves each investigator testing their skills. Each skill has a number next to them. The skill number is the number of dice you roll when testing. For every 5 or 6 you roll, you gain one success. Some asset cards let you reroll one or more die or let you roll more dice than is on your character sheet. I particularly like Michael McGlen’s Chicago Typewriter — he’s a gangster, and no, that’s not a typewriter — which ends up letting me roll eight dice when fighting. I gravitate towards the fighter investigators. I think that’s because it’s more active and something I can control in the game. 

Mythos Phase

One other thing we find interesting is the Mythos Phase. This phase is the last phase of each round, and it’s when predominately bad things happen. Sure, clues get added to the board for you to pick up, but primarily monsters are added to the board or a gate bursts, and doom gets spread to the scenario sheet. What we like about this is the variety of things that can happen here. In Arkham Horror: The Card Game, this stage was always bad. One small thing is that it would be nice if there were specific newspaper headlines per scenario. After having played a few scenarios, the newspaper headlines become repetitive. They are usually not entirely positive and feel a bit distant from the story of the scenario. 

Overall Impressions

We had an enjoyable time playing this game. This game is an excellent introduction to the Arkham Horror Files Series. The combination of warding off doom, fighting monsters, and performing neighborhood encounters was entertaining. We like that in this game if your investigator is defeated, you pick a new investigator and continue to play. In other Arkham games, as soon as an investigator is defeated, the game ends. We like the fact we can continue to play with a new investigator.

The game does have a few drawbacks. As mentioned before, collecting clues is not an active task you perform during your turn. Several other Arkham Horror Files games make collecting clues an active task, and we wish that were something we could do here. That said, the encounters are entertaining, especially the clue encounters that are specific to the scenario. They are dripping with theme, and we love that sometimes, you get a clue, and other times you have to test for a clue. We took the developer’s recommendation, and we didn’t read our own encounter cards. We have someone else read them. It helps keep the level of suspense going. 

The other thing you need to know going into this is that there are a lot of rules. Rule density is true with all the Arkham Horror Games. A 25-page complete reference guide to the board game details everything you need to know about the game in addition to the Learn to Play guide. The rules reference are future-proof to an extent so that future expansions can seamlessly fit into the game system.

We do high recommend this game, even with its few drawbacks!If you think you will enjoy this game check it out in our store today! Also, for October, for any purchase of Arkham Products of $50 or more, you’ll receive a free copy of The Investigators of Arkham Horror coffee table book. This full-color book has fantastic illustrations and stories about many of the Arkham Horror Files Series investigators! Finally check out all our Arkham Games on our World of Arkham Horror page.