Greetings Readers!
As it was Games Workshop’s iconic Warhammer 40,000 which first drew me into miniature wargaming a good 25+ years ago, I had intended for my first ‘hobby’ related post to be about the changes already afoot in the setting as part of the triumvirate of Gathering Storm campaign books currently causing a stir in the gaming community. HOWEVER I have been completely side-tracked by being fortunate enough to receive a copy of both Arkham Horror (The Card Game) and its main expansion The Dunwich Legacy as part of my birthday haul a fortnight or so ago, and could not suppress the urge to wax lyrical about them.
I have long been a fan of the works of Lovecraft, and am fortunate enough to own (and have chewed my way through), the three-part omnibus edition of his collected works, The Call of Cthulu, The Thing on the Doorstep, and The Dreams in the Witch House, published by Penguin in the early 2000’s. Quite apart from Lovecraft’s excellent, gothic prose, the stories weave together to form a comprehensive mythos and environment, which has provided fertile ground for successive authors following in Lovecraft’s horrific footsteps. Call of Cthulu alone has threaded its way into a whole host of other mediums, stories and derivative works, and its influence on popular culture cannot be overstated…
Arkham Horror is Fantasy Flight’s treatment of the mythos, and I suppose is the logical evolution of their republishing of the boardgame of the same name, originally published by Chaosium in the late 80’s. However, what this new iteration provides is a superb blend of ‘Living Card Game’ with distinctly ‘RPG’ type elements, rather than a traditional board game experience. If you’ve ever wanted to run an RPG campaign, but lack the creative skills necessary to really get to grips the role of a GM, or like the idea of participating in a traditional pen ‘n’ paper RPG but not sure about managing the paperwork involved, then this is ideal: Through the cunning exploitation of the flexibility of a card-based system, Arkham Horror provides everything you need.
The system is spectacularly ingenious: Players can quickly take on the role of investigators, and use (recommended) pre-made decks to manage things like assets, skills and events, rather than having to consult a lengthy rulebook to generate a character. Although the system does allow you to alter the existing characters, or essentially create new ones, by changing the composition of Investigators’ decks. Things like strengths and weaknesses, inventory items, etc., are all managed via this one, relatively simple process. In much the same way, the actual campaign, story-telling and NPC elements are all card-based, allowing you to quickly put together different combinations of cards to create pre-made scenarios and the use of an ‘Encounters’ deck, means that even playing through the same scenario or campaign again, will provide a slightly different experience each time.
There’s also a clever use of counters to work in Lovecraft’s themes of slowly eroding sanity, and creeping doom, as well as a counter-driven process to plot advancement that balances the players’ efforts to ‘uncover’ what is happening, with the increasing danger they place themselves in by doing so. I cannot begin to overstate how marvellous the game is, at weaving in so many varied elements from Lovecraft’s mythos, from the small and lesser known, to the more overt and obvious, and as with most FFG titles, the game also comes with the standard combination of ‘Learn to play’ and ‘Rules reference’ booklet, that makes actually getting into the game and getting to grips the process of playing, really straightforward.
It’s also a beautiful game.
The decorative artwork on the cards is redolent with 1920’s Art Deco overtones, mingled with the iconic imagery of tentacles and quasi-mystical symbology long associated with Lovecraft’s work. The cards themselves are on good stock and have a wonderful silver edging that reeks of quality. The featured artwork is also beautifully detailed and macabre, and one of the things I have always loved about FFG is that every piece, on every card, is always credited. Returning briefly to my opening paragraph, it’s interesting to note how at odds this is with GW at present, who no longer credit the authors or artists in their publications: The Gathering Storm books which I will be talking about in another post, are very noticeable for their absence of any mention of who provided the written or artistic content. Returning however to Arkham horror, the other elements are all of a similar quality; the counters have a gloriously 1930’s feel to them, and the optional campaign logs feel like something straight out of a 1930’s detective agency’s filing cabinet – Fantasy Flight have really excelled themselves.
The final thing worth mentioning is that, as with most of FFG’s games, you can download all the ‘Learn to play’, ‘Rules reference’ and campaign materials, FOR FREE, from the products main webpage – The company really do a great job of supporting the people that buy their products and making them accessible to a wider audience. Suffice it to say, I am really looking forward to sitting down and having a proper play-through of this, and can see it becoming a firm favourite if I manage to get a regular games evening up-and-running amongst friends and family in Germany.
