We’ve enjoyed the games that are themed with Lovecraft in mind but we generally shy away from the longer games like Arkham and Eldritch Horror. Little bit too much complication and time commitment for us personally. But then we heard that they were coming out with a card game based in the Arkham Horror universe and were super excited! We were hoping to get the same type of adventure and mystery in a smaller more compact game.
It didn’t disappoint! We still have only played a few missions but the way they have manipulated cards into doing many different tasks is rather impressive. They obviously learned some lessons from one of the other games on our list; Lord of the Rings the card game. As the same company created both games. Sometimes the environment cards can represent different rooms in a house and then on a later adventure mimic a train with the cars moving around.
On your turn you are using the cards in your hand and resources you’ve collected to do various abilities and skill checks to try to investigate the current mystery. Sometimes there will be traps that make your way more difficult or even worse some evil monsters could come out of the darkness and threaten your life! You can choose to fight them off or run as you try to outlast them and seal away evil.
Where some of the other cooperative games from the company were definitely one off adventures this game is designed to play as a campaign which adds even more depth to the system. Depending on what and how you did in an adventure you get a certain number of XP that you can use to improve the cards in your deck to better versions. Also story wise things can definitely be different each time you play through depending on the story choices you make. This creates choices that can be difficult to make as you know they might have lasting effects as you try to solve the greater mystery!
Overall Arkham Horror the Card Game is a grand adventure. Probably one of its few issues is it is mostly a one or possibly two player game. So it won’t really be able to encapsulate a large group like some of the other games from this mythos but if you want to have a grand adventure yourself or with a friend you should really give it a shot. There is quite a lot of enjoyment in just the base box alone with lots of expansions out there if you find yourself loving it. We keep looking forward to playing more so it had to be on the list!