Arkham Horror

[WitchfinderGeneral]

Anybody played the Arkham Horror boardgame?
It got an OK rating at boardgamegeek.com. But of course the people here in this forum are far more experienced in travelling the fringe of sanity. So what do you think about the game? Are there any differences in the editions (besides a different layout)?

[Driscoles]

I have it and its fun to play.
The more people the better.
Its most fun if you mix your games with little roleplaying.
The game box is full with stuff. But no miniatures. The board is a beautiful map of Arkham. The rules are easy to learn.
Goal : Dimension Doors pop up in Arkham and you ( the players ) must close them. Therefore you travel into the dreamworld and back and fight monsters with artefacts. if you can not close all doors until the turn marker reaches the end mankind is doomed.

[supervike]

I have it too, but have yet to play it....

But, one of the cool features is that you can play it solo.  Great for those times when you cannot find any victims...er I mean gamers.

[driller]

Sorry about bumping this old topic, but I'm right in the middle of populating Arkham Horror with monster miniatures (mostly not with the official FFG ones), and when I'm finished, I'll show my horrible creation to the world

[Cherno]

I like it and me and my friends play it regularly. The rules may seem complicated at first but after a few turns you probably won't have to look into the rulebook any att. Having a cheat sheet helps. the game becomes really easy if you choose which investigators to play, if they are dran randomly it is way harder.

[gauntman]

It is a beautiful and well made game with rich artwork and background.  It is also incredibly complicated has hundreds of high quality cardboard pieces and counters.  A game can take 2-4 hours to play. 

You can honestly play a game of miniatures in far less time than you can complete a game of Arkham Horror.  Nevertheless, it's a wonderfully made game. The figures you see online for the game are eye candy.  Monsters appear in-game randomly.  You'd have to have a whole collection of monsters to be able to field them all.  I always found it irriatating to store the game.  The box isn't designed to hold all of the counters and board after it's been opened causing you to have multiple boxes to store and separate the game, not to mention the expansions.

[Anatoli]

Highly recommended, an excellent boardgame. It gets a lot better when you add an expansion to it as it adds more flavor. My choice would be AH+ Dunwich Horror as the first purchase. DH includes insanity and injury cards which add a lot to the game and can be used with all the other expansions later.

If you want, I wrote a bunch of reviews of the Arkham Horror boardgame and expansions that I have (lots of pictures and descriptions of the content and rules):

http://anatolisgameroom.blogspot.se/2010/09/arkham-horror-boardgame-review.html
http://anatolisgameroom.blogspot.se/2010/10/arkham-horror-dunwich-horror-boardgame.html
http://anatolisgameroom.blogspot.se/2010/11/arkham-horror-innsmouth-horror.html
http://anatolisgameroom.blogspot.se/2010/11/arkham-horror-lurker-at-treshold.html
http://anatolisgameroom.blogspot.se/2010/09/arkham-horror-king-in-yellow-boardgame.html

[Cherno]

With three investigators, we rarely need over 2 hours to win a vanilla game, but it can depend on the number of clues and portals that appear or don' appear.

A combination of investigators with which we win everytime is the female psychologist (best spellcaster), the businessman (for buying stuff) and the hobo with his dog (allrounder, also for scrounging in shops). It's much harder when you draw randomly.

[No Such Agency]

hobo with his dog

Who'd have thunk it?  This must be why I don't like people picking on the homeless

[Anatoli]

My group usually has each player picking 3 random investigators and then allowed to chose between those 3 (with 2 big expansions the total number of investigators is somewhere around 40). That way we allow for some choice but without building an A-Team for each game.

[Cherno]

My group usually has each player picking 3 random investigators and then allowed to chose between those 3 (with 2 big expansions the total number of investigators is somewhere around 40). That way we allow for some choice but without building an A-Team for each game.

Good idea. I might try that out in the future.

[thebinmann]

It's a great game, as is the original from the 1980s which I still have a massive soft spot for!!!!