Only a handful of investigators stand against the Arkham Horror. Will they prevail?
Arkham Horror. It seems like it’s always been with us, but when the second edition (there was a ‘low budget’ first edition by Richard Launius published by Chaosium in 1987) hit the game scene back in 2005 there was nothing quite like it. And the flood of expansions that followed, turning the game into the hoggiest of table hogs if you had the courage and time to play them all at once, was unprecedented too.
I spent many, many hours perfecting and adding to my original Arkham Horror rules & reference. Recently I dragged the old game off the shelf and gave it a go, and it was as long-winded, fiddly, clunky, and time-consuming as I vaguely remembered it being. Which got me to thinking, “what’s this new edition like then?”
Well I took a punt and bought the new edition, and to my great relief it has dragged Arkham Horror kicking and screaming into the modern board gaming age. It’s still a long game, but it’s more streamlined, smarter, and more story focussed. In fact, it pretty much fixed everything that was wrong with the older game, unless of course you enjoy very, very long sandbox adventures games with thousands of cards that can just as easily degenerate into tedium as throw up fun stories (and many people still do).
The only strange thing is that Fantasy Flight have only released three expansions, and this is one of those rare instances where I’d like to see more content. Not the kind of bloat that was added onto second edition mind you, but more adventures, locations, and clever additions. Or perhaps it’s nice just to keep this edition relatively simple. One thing’s for sure, I won’t be bothering to get second edition down from the shelf again.
Of course you’ll also find this rules summary in my rules app Tabletop Codex, so be sure to download it and and try it out!
