Arkham Horror love

I am part of an Arkham Horror gaming group that meets up once a month. Arkham Horror is one of my uber-favorite games, but it’s hard to find people who are down to play it. Until I connected with these Arkham folks this past summer, I would play it about once a year. Yeah, pretty sad for a game I adore.

Arkham Horror is a cooperative adventure game set in the world of H.P. Lovecraft and his Cthulhu mythos. Who is H.P. Lovecraft, you ask? Lovecraft was an American horror fiction writer from the early 20th century. He didn’t see any success during his life, but his works later influenced many writers such as Stephen King and Neil Gainman, and various works of pop culture, such as Batman and HBO’s “True Detective.” In Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos, Great Old Ones exist, and humankind is unable to to comprehend their cosmic horrors should a Great Old One (also known as an Ancient One) awakens.

For the board game, investigators are moving through the fictional town of Arkham, Mass., collecting items to try to kill monsters and close or seal Gates. If enough gates open, the Ancient One awakens, and those guys, let me tell you, are brutal. There are two conditions in which investigators can win the game: 1) if investigators close all open gates and have gate trophies total ton at least the number of players, or 2) if six gates are sealed with an Elder Sign. If either of these conditions are met, investigators have saved the world. Hurrah!

Well, how investigators move through Arkham is where it gets complicated. Players have the opportunity to pick from 16 investigators. Each investigator has a special ability, a set list of items and/or money, and a modifier for six different skills. He or she also has a maximum Stamina and Stability rating. Hit zero on either one of these, your investigator goes insane or unconscious, and you lose half your items.

Let’s talk about the skills — Speed, Sneak, Fight, Will, Lore and Luck.

• Speed: How quickly you can move through Arkham.
• Sneak: How well you can evade monsters.
• Fight: How well you can fight monsters.
• Will: How well your characters reacts upon seeing a monster.
• Lore: How well you cast spells.
• Luck: How lucky your character is.

The modifiers determine how many dice you roll during an action, except for Speed, which is straightforward movement. When encountering or fighting a monster, casting a spell, or doing skill checks during encounters, you take the number of dice your character’s modifier allows and adjust for the monster, spell or encounter, and roll for necessary successes. A success is a roll of 5 or 6. If you’re blessed, a 4 counts as well; if you’re cursed, only 6 counts.

One round goes as follows: Upkeep (some characters require rolling at the start of a round to adjust or gain items), Movement, Arkham Encounters, Other World Encounters and Mythos. During Movement and Encounters, monsters can be evaded or fought. Investigators move around the board to have Arkham Encounters, fight monsters and collect items. Meanwhile, investigators also need to jump into a gate, have Other World Encounters, and use five clue tokens to seal a Gate. After killing monsters or sealing a Gate, you get the respective marker as a trophy.

At the end of each round, a new mythos card is revealed, which has a new set of conditions and/or opens a gate, moves monsters on the board, and add clue tokens, and then the first-player marker is passed to the left. Open Gates can’t total more than the number of players, and an excess of monsters can move the Terror Track up. As the Terror Track moves up, certain locations in Arkham will close. As Gates open, the Doom Track moves up. If the Ancient One’s Doom Track is filled, he awakens. Hopefully, investigators will be prepared to do one final battle in order to not get devoured and save the world.

So why is it so hard to find people to play this? Well, because a game takes about four hours. There are a lot of pieces, which are fantastic by the way, among them Encounter Cards for each neighborhood in Arkham and Other Worlds; Common and Unique Items; Spells; Allies and Weapons; hearts and brains for your Stamina and Sanity; Gate tokens; Doom and Terror tracks, and a bunch of monsters. A person who has never played the game before might be overwhelmed by the size of the board and all the moving pieces. Since the game is cooperative, discussing strategy among players can also increase game time. Also, some folks just straight up don’t like playing cooperative games where there no single winner. So that’s the quick and dirty on Arkham Horror.

What are some of your favorite games?