A few weeks ago I decided we need something a little new in the GFUK circle so I went out and purchased the highly recommended Fantasty Flight board game of “Arkham Horror”
I am a massive HP Lovecraft fan so the though of a multilayer co-operative board game sounded really appealing. It doesn’t come cheap (around £40-50) for the starter however it’s got a lot of pieces and it’s very high quality build.
How Does Arkham Horror Work?
Essentially Arkham Horror is a scaled down version of a tabletop roleplay game, there are preset characters and equipment, events, monsters and locations all represented either on the board or by tokens, you make skill checks with D6 and different effects come out of passing or failing them.
When the game starts an “Ancient One” is selected, these monsters are typical Lovecraftien gods or Great Old Ones such as Cuthhullu and Azathoth. Each Ancient One has different on going effects, monster modifiers and combat powers so the Ancient One chosen at the start can massively change how the game plays out offering large variety.
Each Ancient One has a Doom track which fill up as the game goes on, if it fills up the monster awakens and you have to face it in (a usually very difficult) combat session so your usually aiming to win the game before this happens. Winning the game is done by closing and/or sealing gates to other dimensions which open each turn, essentially it’s a race to shut the gates as they’re opening. (more…)
