Friday, November 23, 2012

Thanksgiving Day Horror

Disclaimer:  This post has nothing to do with 40k, really.  

My wife and I are fans of board games, and since we both were home alone with the little one, and both had off on Thanksgiving, we decided to take in a game at Arkham Horror again.

Some people really dislike this game, but we love it.  I think there are enough cool things to do to counteract the baddies in the game, and if you take the cooperative sense of the game in good stride you can have a good time.  Another thing we like is that the game is vastly different every time.  Probably most of this difference comes from the fact that we now own all three "big box" expansions and one "little box" expansion.  These include in addition to the main box, Dunwich Horror, Innsmouth Horror, Kingsport Horror, and the Lurker at the Threshold.


We had to add leaves to the kitchen table and extend both ends after moving it into the living room.  Here's the game in full swing, we've got two characters each.

Arkham Horror with four expansions in all its glory.  There are no bowls of treats on the table, those are all game pieces.


This was our first time playing with the Kingsport addition.  We decided to not use the Kingsport threat of Gate Rifts (or whatever they are- super-moving-monster-holes), and we never use the gates from the Lurker box (cause losing a health or sanity after going through an underworld or having a gate devour you is just too competitive).

We ended up losing rather quickly, I think by turn 8 or so, because the big baddie Ancient One would gain a doom token (how he "wins" the game) every time a Tome is drawn.  I had mixed in the newer cards from Kingsport into the tops of the decks, and didn't realize that the Curiosity Shop was chock-full of Tomes because of it.  Entirely my fault, like stacking the deck in the Ancient One's favor.   Two visits netted 5 doom tokens, which pretty much gave the Ancient One the leg up in the contest.  We only sealed one gate, and closed another.  Still, with some of the new items I started seeing some cool synergies that could go on.

I'm excited about Kingsport, because when compared to Innsmouth, it seems like a right-nice place to hang out.  All the locations are stable (so there won't be any gates, I think), and therefore the place will be relatively free from monsters from the cup (so we might have a few coming down from the streets).  I'm looking forward to playing again.