Arkham Horror and the Axe Wielding Psychologist: part 1

Monday night saw our gaming group playing a game of Arkham Horror. I had to wipe the dust off the box due to how long it takes to play. It hardy ever sees the light of day, or night. Or perhaps my gaming group is normally too frightened to play. Luckily we had a plan, play in the games room and leave the game set up to finish off the following week.

For those who don’t know, Arkham Horror is an epic co-operative game where you all take the role of investigators of H. P. Lovecraft alien terrors such as Cthulhu. The investigators traverse the town of Arkham and other dimensions closing portals to other worlds to try and stop the alien terror / old one. In our case, the old one was the abominable snowman Ithaqua. I will share the first half of the game from my experience as Carolyn Fern, an axe wielding psychologist, what could possibly go wrong…

Axe Wielding Psychologist...

What could possibly go wrong indeed! My first turn involved me going to a creaky old house in Arkham called “The Unnameable” on the way to Ye Ol’ Majik Shoppee to get myself some magic! We joked that the game designers had ran out of Lovecraft locations so ended up calling this location the Unnameable. Yet, old creaky houses are never a good idea. During the encounter phase, first turn, my encounter sounded something like this… "You hear rats in the walls, when is too late you realise they are moving to surround you! Roll some kind of skill check and if you fail get lost in time and space." COME ON! Getting lost in time and space due to some silly rats in the walls of a house with no name. In the end it wasn’t so bad as getting lost in space and time only involves missing a turn then going to any location you choose in Arkham, nice!

Things were back on track for my investigator, although the once quiet streets of Arkham were getting crowded with monsters and gates to other worlds were popping up all over the place. I spent $5 out of my $7 to get myself a spell - little did I know this was to be my undoing.  It was getting high time to try and close some gates so I thought rather than pissing around as I had been doing I would join my fellow investigators and go on a journey to some alternate realities. One other world adventure particularly of note was Chris Kirby AKA the magician Drake (who also had a carnival in the North side streets as the result of a mythos card). While in the Dream lands he had a skill check which he needed to pass, Chris only had three dice... What do you know he passes, all 5+ which is what you need to pass a skill check! Unfortunately for Chris once he got out and closed the gate another gate opened right on top of him so he got sucked into the Abyss.

Chris' successes

On my way to a gate I stopped into the Silver twilight lounge. At the top of my game, full health, an axe, I drew an encounter which read: Join our pretty neat club for $3 or we will beat you up and put you on the street or something like that. Unfortunately as you recall I only had $2! I failed passed my check to sneak away so as a result lost 3 of my 4 stamina and then was subject to Ithaqua’s special ability which makes you loose a stamina if you are on the streets at the end of a round due to icy winds. Brrr.

Gaarh! My investigator was frozen stiff and while recovering in Arkham emergency department the hospital staff stole half my precious equipment including my gorram (wrong game, thinking of Firefly there) axe! Bastards. They did a bad job of healing me only returning me to 1 stamina and after loosing 3 stamina and I was hardly going to spend my last $2 to return to full health. (When you get KOed in Arkham you have to discard half you items) Big mistake, the next round I got in an arm wrestle with some punk at the university costing me my single unit of stamina knocking me unconscious again, other half of my positions gone although this time I paid to restore my health. No longer an axe wielding psychologist, I was Mrs "Not-a-dime" to her name psychologist Fern. It was at this time we called it quits for the night to return next week to finish the game.

No money to her name psychologist Fern

I guess its worth mentioning how the game was going for the rest of the team while I was, err, wasting time. People were out killing monsters left right and centre, some were braving the other worlds closing gates. However were we completing our ultimate aim of closing all the gates. Hard to say, there were 2 or 3 open gates on the board by the time we called it quits, but we only had four gate tokens out of 6 needed if we closed all the gates (one of the three ways to win). We had only one elder sign on the board out of 6 needed to stop Ithaqua from general destruction and the end of the world (another way to win). Unfortunately Ithaqua's doom track only had 4 more tokens to go before his awakening. Anyhow Monday will see if we stop Ithaqua from awakening and if he does we will see if we manage to kill him in battle (the last way to victory, but the most unlikely).

A blurry shot of the between game

My thoughts on this game are mixed. I find I enjoy a game less if I am attempting (badly) to teach people how to play. Also its not great when the game seems to stop your character from achieving anything useful. However the theme really stands out and certainly makes for a fun night of gaming. I decided that I would get the expansion Dunwich Horror for the game. After researching some of the expansion this one seemed to fix one of the key problems, going insane or getting KOed in Arkham by nifty injury cards. Instead of loosing half your hard earned stuff you can take a permanent injury. Not ideal however it certainly beats the alternative. It also adds a bunch of cool stuff to stop the mid game slow down namely the Dunwich Horror. Anyhow I am sure after a few more games I will be able to give some more concrete thoughts on this game.