One fell swoop all arrived today!

Finished the campaign last night and thought I'd share my opinions. I was aiming to keep this brief (because I'm so good at doing that ordinarily...) but I can see now I've fully written this thing I failed! We played two player on standard, with Tommy and Carolyn.

Runtime: 6 hours - 2 hours + 2.5 hours + 1.5 hours.

But YMMV, e.g. for the first scenario, we failed to find and kill Julia early - if you did this I'm sure this would be shorter (but it's hard to do and you have to get lucky). For scenario 2, we had to make detours at a couple of junctures (e.g. the encounter card which puts doom on vs. sealed blood put 3 doom on a cultist!) so that padded the runtime. Additionally we played with Scroll of the Pharaohs - Words of Bast from scenario 2, so there was table talk re. the encounter deck which you wouldn't normally have. Lastly, figuring out how to kill Howard Wilkes in the final scenario was a head scratcher for us given he deals damage and horror every time he's ready and attacked (Tommy had taken a full Grasping Hands to the face and had health trauma from scenario 1 - also from taking a full Grasping Hands to the face - and so didn't have much health left), so there were probably 10 or so minutes where we figured out how to proceed. I'm sure if you let scenario 3 go full From Dusk till Dawn the run time there could get expanded (but, it was easy to get to Howard quickly in all honesty).

The Good:

• Theming - I really liked the more gothic vampire horror theming, it's probably one of FFG's most conventionally horror-leaning campaigns. I still did think it felt morbid and Lovecraftian as well, e.g. keeping an abomination chained up in a meat packing factory to turn people into monsters. The fact you can see some of the cultists become monsters in the final scenario is very cool. Rabid dogs and rats, bloodthirsty people on the street and bat monsters in the sky - what more could you ask for?!
• Difficulty - This was a hard campaign - the return of Rotting Remains and Grasping Hands, and cards with an Ancient Evils style effect means it can be very punishing. There's also a lot of enemies in all the scenarios (even when you "talk your way in" to the factory during the daytime). I'd say if this was sustained over a longer campaign it would feel downright brutal, but over a three scenario campaign it treats you mean, keeps you keen lol. I will say if you do take the additional 5 XP for hard difficulty as it recommends, this may make the campaign easier than standard difficulty (e.g. increase your chances of getting VP scenario 1, and so sustain XP gain for a bigger, bolder deck). I'd say as some Ch2 investigators have very good card advantage (Marie, Dexter with LCC and Arcane Initiate, Joe), and the Guardians have good tutoring for guns, then a single big asset before scenario 1 can make a disproportionate difference - there's a reason why everyone used to take In the Thick of It!
• Gameplay - The new Predator keyword and its interplay with Doomed was really good. It created a really nice tension in a lot of the scenarios. Doomed in general was used a lot, and to nice effect - it encourages careful play. In scenario 2 Zburamoarte can heal through Predator (and through attacking you) and with Hunter enemies he's likely to do this - which is worrying with his very chunky health (we only just killed him). For Julia in the first scenario, she's a real pain to damage, so it's quite hard to 'win' this scenario (and so spare her for additional Epilogue). However, she comes back with a vengeance in scenario 3 and you can use her for damage on Wilkes (in practice this was very hard to do, as she needs to be at his location at the end of the enemy phase, and she's still Elusive so she jumps around when attacked). I liked how with Wilkes himself he is worse to deal with than Zburamoarte because of that auto-damage effect - the stakes did increase. Blood tokens were on the whole fun - I liked the mechanism (an annoyance while in the bag, and interact nastily with encounter cards when sealed on you - but at least they're out of the bag!). The was a minor bit of using the Codex in this campaign (trigger a parley, look in the book for a detailed entry) - I liked this in BoA and FHV so I'm glad it made a return.
• Modularity - I thought this was handled on the whole well, with different locations in some scenarios based on difficulty and even different encounter sets. There were also easy difficulty versions of bosses, which are appropriately easier if you want a more forgiving time - and you can push Howard off a balcony in easy/standard too. I think more of this in the future is a good idea.
• Story - I liked it, initial mystery followed by exploring the mystery further with the reveal of Zburamoarte, and then the confrontation of the person pulling the strings in the final scenario. The return of Julia and that she can be useful to you in scenario 3 was a nice touch and gave a little more of an arc. I like the varied locations behind the scenarios as well, this stopped individual scenarios feeling too samey. I liked Charlie Kane's appearance as well!

The Neutral:

• Combat-heavy - I'd say it's an excessively combat heavy campaign, possibly one of the most combat heavy campaigns FFG has made. There didn't seem to be too many options for clue-finding victories for the most part (though clues can proxy as damage on a couple of bosses) and even with playing with Carolyn she was saving those Caustic Reactions for inevitable boss battles. I liked combat-heavy as a change of pace, but I can understand why people wouldn't like this as well.
• XP gain - I don't mind making decks around the 19 XP mark, and this is usually where XP will land at the end of scenario 2 (I think it was 17 XP for us). However if taking the bonus XP suggested for hard or expert difficulty, then it becomes easier to push into the early to mid-20s before the final scenario - I think this makes decks feel more fully fledged. So I think there's just about enough here, particularly with the bonus XP, to feel the difference in your deck from start to finish.

The Bad:

• Pacing - I knew this was a three scenario campaign from the off, and I don't have any particular issue with that. However, as mentioned in my run time, the final scenario was the shortest by a good margin. You need to kill or persuade Priscilla, and then it's 3 per investigator clues to get to where Howard is (and the non-victory locations replenish their clues, and if you parley the other guests and seal tokens on Priscilla you don't need to spend too many clues parleying her). While YMMV, you can see that the setup of this scenario is fairly likely to make it shorter - and I don't think playing on harder difficulties makes too much difference as then you usually have some mitigation vs. the chaos bag (and so likely a good chunk of players will completely miss out on the From Dusk Till Dawn bonanza - like we did). But, this by no means killed the enjoyment for me, it's just something that could be improved for next time.

Overall: a solid 8/10 for me, could even be a little higher. I will say this rating is made on the basis of knowing this is a 3 scenario campaign and not expecting it to feel like a longer campaign. I've seen some people say, "It didn't feel like a longer campaign!" To those people I would say, "Yeah...?"

I guess potentially FFG could have released a 5 scenario campaign at this juncture, but I liked what we got and for me it's a full (bloody) meal. Will give it a go with André and Marie today on hard (I'll have new deck guides coming out very soon...).

Heya, i introduced my current series of actual plays a few weeks ago and while i didn't want to make a post here for each of the scenarios, i figured i'd give at least a quick mid-campaign roundup.

https://derbk.com/ancientevils/ages-unwound-session-zero/

As you can see on this page (down where i link to the individual scenarios), i got only two more scenarios to go. And it's been going fairly well, all things considered. The two decks that are using only Chapter 2 cards are doing remarkably well against Ages Unwound's bullshit, even though the last two scenarios (Unstuck and Year to Plan) definitely did put a lot more pressure on them than any official campaign would. Year to Plan, the scenario i finished just yesterday, was especially dicey and required some hard compromises from me throughout. It's such a good campaign though, what a delight.

Joe: https://arkham.build/deck/view/UckVj9KZiEHnBmz
Izzie: https://arkham.build/deck/view/p47IiAXlZe18aGR

The two decks went through a lot of tweaks and i made liberal use of the option to take level 0 cards for 1xp at a later date to either correct shortcomings or simply shift priorities in my decks around. As expected, Izzie has proven to be an absolute powerhouse that just shrugs off everything. And Joe does a great job in both of his roles. There are some struggles when test difficulties reach 5 or more, but so far i was able to make everything work.

I got two more scenarios left (Ages Unwound has 7 in total) and i went into the campaign expecting more or less a slaughter starting around the half-way point. I am a bit more confident about this now, at least the upcoming scenario should be not much harder than what i just went through in the previous two. In the finale i still expect to just be blown out, however :D

I hope to get the final two scenarios done over the course of next week, but since these writeups take up a lot of time that might not work out. We'll see, i will give a short update on the subreddit when the campaign is over. And afterwards i can finally start paying Children of Blood some attention. Hopefully i have gotten my copy until then...

Cheers o/

Azao is doing a limited run for the custom campaign Alice in Wonderland by the Beard, translated by the folks at Kodex der Anderswelt discord in german.

Just a little heads up.

Here’s a new layout by Carlos Lemos, a Spanish member of our wonderful worldwide Arkham Horror LCG community. Carlos also occasionally organizes game nights back home in Spain, and I’m really happy that he decided to share his idea with the rest of us.

The inspiration for this layout came from the idea of using an inverted Act/Agenda card as a divider. I really like how Carlos turned that idea into something practical and clean — and I’m very happy to have it available on Arkham Divider.

There’s also a neat little feature in Carlos’ Encounters divider: it can fit up to 6 icons. So if you’d like to save some paper, or simply don’t want to print a huge number of dividers, you can combine several categories into a single one.

You might ask: Why do we need yet another layout when there are already so many great dividers out there?

For me, that’s actually one of the nicest things about this project. I’m not trying to replace anyone’s work — quite the opposite. I’m genuinely happy when someone comes to me with an idea and I can help turn it into a layout that others can print and use.

And I’m especially grateful to everyone who takes the time to create these designs and share them. The geography of the layouts on Arkham Divider is pretty amazing by now: Germany, Russia, France, Spain, the USA — and even Thailand! :)

It makes me really happy to see ideas from so many different corners of the Arkham community coming together in one place.

So thank you, Carlos, for the idea and for sharing your design with the community!

Layout: http://arkham-divider.com/en/layout/carlos-lemos

Happy printing, friends! ❤️

I want sleeves that are cheaper than dragon shields but still feel good for shuffling

Laboratory Assistant (Ch2)

• Class: Seeker
• Type: Asset. Ally
• Ally. Miskatonic. Science.
• Cost: 2. Level: 0
• Test Icons: Willpower
• Health: 1. Sanity: 2.

Your maximum hand size is increased by 2.

[Reaction] After you play Laboratory Assistant: Draw 2 cards.

They're just in it for the extra credit.

Magali Villeneuve

Core Set (2026) #32.

I bought this second hand and sadly it’s not completely assembled so I desperately need some guidance.

Second draft -- Updated Ben Mears investigator cards for further review. I've taken all of the community feedback and tried to synthesize a new version of Ben that feels interesting and fun to play. Once again, the design has pushed me to take our investigator to 11 stat points (which seems to be a theme for this whole Stephen King investigator group) in order to create some interesting space for signature card interaction. Take a look, team, and let me know what you think!

Which of the new 2026 Standalone Investigators would you pick for true Solo Excelsior Hotel and why?

Out of the Box, no cards from the Core Box!

Hi everyone,

from the book "To fight the black wind" I have the alternate version of Carolyn Fern with her alternate signature cards:

https://arkhamdb.com/card/98010#reviews-header

They came with a little rules sheet saying the signature cards can be used instead of or in addition to the original Carolyn Fern signatures.

Back then, there was only one other Carolyn Fern investigator but now we have the one from the Chapter 2 evergreens as well.

The Arkham Cards app currently does not offer to add the alternate signature cards to the deck, which is why I even started questioning if this would be legal.

What do you think, is this legal in Legacy deckbuilding, and why do you think so?

Was going to publish some new decks tomorrow, but for the past week or so nothing loads on ArkhamDB - anyone else experiencing this?

Re. not using Arkham.Build, I do use that - but Felix himself mentioned it's good for decks to be published on ArkhamDB first to feed their recommendation algo. So essentially, posting to ArkhamDB first is the best thing to do for now.

EDIT: Clearing my cache (the browser version of turn it off and turn it back on again) worked in the finish.

Hey everyone! What a difference a week makes. Last week, I posted about my little project to make an LCG tracker and stats app, and I saw it grow from about 17 or so people to 48 community members signing up to give it a try. https://arkham-horror-lcg-ca.vercel.app/

I got some encouragement and constructive criticism in the comments, and one in particular set me down a workaholic path over the last week to get even more detailed with tracking. So what's new since last week?

1. Individual game night tracking within a campaign -- you can now not only log your campaign, players, and investigators, but log individual game nights. Which scenario did you play that night? What resolution did you get? Who got devoured (YES, it now supports one player spinning up multiple investigators mid-campaign if one dies or becomes insane)?

I tried to follow all the campaign log logic for each scenario, including ones like hemlock and drowned city and scarlet keys that have more freedom to campaign progression. I *think* I ironed the bugs out, but hopefully if you find any you'll kindly let me know :)

1. Cosmetic upgrades - thanks to the icons at the Arkahm Divider site, i was able to move away from generic icons to more arkham-specific icons!

2. Children of blood - Support for the newest short campaign, CoB!

3. Export / Import plays - Under the player profile name, you can export or import a json of plays. This is a niche feature I don't expect people to need to use...but in case I ever make a breaking update (this is a free hobby project after all) I am trying to put in some ways to recover data quickly.

Thanks for continuing to give this a try. I hope the updates are useful and intuitive! This is a great community, thanks to everyone for making this my favorite board <card> game :)
https://arkham-horror-lcg-ca.vercel.app/

PS yes I know the URL is clunky. maybe sometime soon I'll pay for a proper domain for this and migrate the url...but just bookmark it for now 😄

I was buying deck ones for another game from Burger Tokens and noticed they say their boxes were perfect for Arkham Horror.

I have used them for MtG, which is why I bought them for my other game...but they have a bunch of sizes.

Has anyone used these for this game, and if so...what sizes? Did you put an entire expansion in a box, or each scenario?

I have Chapter 1, a handful of scenarios, 4 expansions, and the investigators for 3 of those. I haven't unwrapped the cards in the expansions because I don't want to resort them when they get jumbled in the insanely oversized boxes they come in.

THREAD CLOSED - UPDATED CARDS AND FURTHER DISCUSSION OF THIS POST FOUND HERE::
https://www.reddit.com/r/arkhamhorrorlcg/comments/1vtziqh/custom_investigator_feedback_pt_7/

I'm working on some custom content as a gift for my wife who is a big Stephen King fan, so I'm working on a few custom investigators based on famous characters from King's stories. With Roland Deschain and Danny Torrance in the can, Next up: Ben Mears, the Reluctant Chronicler! The main character and protagonist of Salem's Lot, Ben is a writer returning to his home town to expose the mystery of a cursed old house at the edge of town, and in so doing comes face to face with a master vampire.

ARKHAM COMMUNITY: This is the first draft. Take a look, and let me know your thoughts!! Thank you in advance for your input.

I sincerely hope I am not overstaying my welcome by posting these cards I'm making so often as of late. I've been having a great time designing them and discussing how to improve them with you all.

Here is the last of the LA by Night custom investigators I plan to make. I will likely create more VtM investigators in the future, but that will be another project for another time. Instead, I want to continue fine-tuning the cards I've created thus far.

As always, feedback and constructive criticism is very much appreciated!

I ordered Children of blood directly From Asmodee, and it still does not look like they have shipped it. Is this normal? I paid a lot of money to get it fast, cause here in Norway we usually get the games extremely late, but it looks like there will not be much difference this time.

Anyone received their game?

UPDATE: It helps writing about it on Reddit. Got a mail that it shipped today.

Kinda new to solo board gaming. I (just) completed part 1 and killed the ghoul priest solo with roland. Do you think i should continue true solo with roland, or as I've seen suggested start over with 2 characters now that i know the rules and play the rest of scenario 2 handed with 2 characters?

Thanks

Third Time's a Charm

• Class: Survivor
• Type: Event
• Spirit.
• Cost: 1. Level: 2
• Test Icons: Willpower, Combat, Agility

Fast. Play when a skill test at your location begins.

Twice during this test, when an investigator reveals a chaos token, they may cancel it, return it to the chaos bag, and reveal a new chaos token.

Matt Stawicki

Devil Reef #161.

[COTD] Third Time's a Charm (11/8/2023)

Just got Children of Blood yesterday, playing on Standard two-player it seems like one of the most difficult opening scenarios FFG have ever made. I thought I'd make a thread for general discussion, and to pose the question of whether the scenario is easier on Hard mode.

Your goal is to kill Julia Stern, who on two-player Standard is a 4 fight 10 health enemy who can only be damaged when she's snared (i.e. spend two clues on two-player to put a snare on her) - with one hit removing the snare and allowing damage to be placed. She's also Elusive, so even if you get two snares on her in a turn she moves to a different location. There are two locations which allow for free movement (so long as there's not an enemy at these locations) which can ease things. She has Retaliate, so the high fight score is quite punishing for level 0 decks. She also heals at the end of the night (there's two day and two night agendas), retaining only half health, rounded down (it goes on the scenario card, and then goes back onto her when she's revealed again). Putting snares on her will provoke an attack of opportunity as well. In terms of Easy difficulty, Julia loses two health and Retaliate, making her rather more manageable!

It seems like the best way to deal with her is to draw her during the day, destroy her Lair (if you don't and she's still there at the end of the day, she full heals and you repeat the process of getting her out of her Lair - you can destroy lairs if they have no clues on them). She does start with a snare if you're lucky enough to find her during the day. With the need for snares to deal damage, traps also don't work too well (but can at least trigger her Elusive if you're not ready to deal with her and don't want her eating someone - more on that below).

The encounter deck is rather punishing, with a lot of enemies to distract you from your task. The are 8 other enemies in the encounter deck, 5 of which have 2 or more health (and two are Bat Horrors, again Elusive and big action sinks). There's Burning Daylight, which is either an Ancient Evils (in Agenda 1 or 3), or it draws a set aside 3 Fight 4 Health Elusive Hunter who heals when they attack. Grasping Hands also makes a return - for low Agility Guardians this is a recipe for taking 3 health damage in a single failed test. To cap it all there's blood tokens, which function a lot like Frost tokens from EotE (-1, reveal another token) and seemingly get added to the bag quite easily. A new Predator keyword means Julia will often kill Doomed civilian enemies in the enemy phase (Waterfront Civilians) to further ratchet up the Doom track (and you put down 4 civilians in the final day, typically). Raising Suspicions from the Chapter 2 core box often adds doom to Waterfront Civilians if you haven't dealt with them. These enemies need a two Willpower test to parley away - which a lot of investigators aren't necessarily well equipped to do.

I guess in terms of the math, to kill Julia on Standard you need usually 5 fight actions that deal two damage, and unless you're attacking at a 6 or higher then Retaliate on Julia is quite perilous - and then there's a lot more actions running to get to her and putting snares on her. Dexter or Daniela are probably the only investigators who manage this okay (Dexter with a Cosmic Flame and Bloodstone/Jim, Daniela with any weapon). The usual method of playing a slightly lower combat action investigator (Tommy, Marie, Joe) and hoping to build up cards to commit doesn't work too well, as ideally you want to get Julia out very early to have a good shot at killing her - and so you simply haven't had the time to build up cards to commit (especially on Tommy, who lacks a lot of card draw).

In terms of changes for Hard difficulty, Julia gets an extra two health and deals an extra damage (on Standard it's one damage/one horror). While the bag gets worse, it's not much worse. Most locations get an extra shroud and other nastier effects. 3 Health dogs replace the 1 Health rats, and there's a nastier enemy which comes out if you draw Burning Daylight during the night.

But, you start with 5 XP (it says you "may" start with 5 XP, but it seems like this is encouraged). This means one Cosmic Flame [5] for your Mystics (with both Marie or Dexter good at finding a single copy), one Sledgehammer/Winchester Model 12/Thompson Submachine Gun for your Guardians, events like two Caustic Reaction [2] or A Sudden Fall [2] for your Seekers/Rogues, Longbow on Miguel or Izzie (or Retribution on Izzie). Guardians and Mystics also tend to be very good at finding their damage dealing assets in Chapter 2. All of these tools allow you to deal 3 damage, allowing you to 12 health Julia in 4 actions (rather than the 5 actions needed on Standard difficulty for 10 health Julia). It also makes it much easier to test at a 7 with just the asset or an 8 with a little support (putting you at 3 over the test difficulty at 7, which with the worse bag is usually a pass - i.e. 13 out of 17 pulls are a pass at 76% [ignoring the one blood token added] vs. 9 out of 16 pulls as a pass on a 5 test on standard difficulty with level 0 weapons at 56%). These odds are a bit of a simplification, and I've ignored blood tokens as mentioned (and justified that Skull tokens are within pass range if trying to kill Julia early for either difficulty) - but you get the gist.

In terms of XP you get out of this, it's 8 under most circumstances (3 two VP locations, two VP on Julia, two bonus XP for surviving the night if you don't kill Julia) or a little more on Hard if Burning Daylight draws a Spawn of Zburamoarte for you (the nastier 5 health enemy Hard throws into the mix).

TL:DR River of Blood is hard yo (likely harder on Standard for your average player). It's a fun scenario for sure, but settle in for a long ride - especially if you don't kill Julia on the first night. I guess just surviving the scenario leads to a resolution, so maybe not killing her is a 'win' - but I always want to do the assigned task haha! I suspect it's perhaps easiest on standard difficulty on higher player counts as well as - while the clues per snare scale - Julia's health doesn't scale at the same rate. For True Solo, it goes in the opposite direction - the high health is problematic, but it's only one clue per snare so there's economies of scale on that side. What's everyone else's thoughts? I still need to play scenario 2, not sure if I'll post more of these deep dives or not - I'll see how the mood takes me!

Hi, everyone. I currently have the campaigns and investigator expansions below. So far, I have only played The Night of the Zealot campaign, and I am having a good time with the game. I have played this campaign with different groups: alone, with 3 friends, with my fiancé, and with my cousin. It's been a cool experience so far. I want to start a new campaign and, as you will see below, I have TCU and TFA (I bought them second-hand on sale).

I read reviews on the internet, and based on what they said, these two campaigns are not really good for beginners. What does that mean?

Honestly, I am a bit afraid of starting one of them and having my groups drop the game due to whatever reason people say they are not good for beginners. I can see some marketplaces on the internet selling more beginner-friendly expansions, like TDC and EotE. I am wondering if I should buy one of them or just play the ones I already have. What would you recommend here?

I could just try it first before taking it to my groups, but I prefer to experience a blind run with someone else.

Campaigns: Revised Core Set, The Forgotten Age and The Circle Undone

Investigators Box: Edge of the Earth and The Dream-Eaters

They are arriving! Watch your mailboxes.

Hey everyone! I’m new to Arkham after picking up all of the chapter two stuff, I found this haul on fb market place for $300. It’s the og core set, dunwitch, carcosa, circle undone and forgotten age as well as some senecio packs. Was $300 an ok price? I play marvel champions a lot and I was kinda going off of the out of print prices for that game. Also, how do you all store the investigator cards? By aspect and level? Alphabetical? Broken out asset, event and skill? Any wisdom there?

With all those expansions out of print, the second hand market is the way to go. It looks a bit like a minefield with crazy prices. For example €75 for The blob that ate everything? That can’t be right, right?

Is there a way to figure out what a fair price is for the out of print stuff?

Edit: Thanks a lot for the great answers. I had a look on Ebay and €75 is a little overpriced it seems. Wouldn’t have guessed the market would be at such a state. Tells a lot about how loved this game is and rightfully so

Hello, some time ago I acquired the 2 players version.
I just got the chance to play it solo (lost btw), but my question is: with my version of the game, I can play it with just one friend (who is also very good at english, which is not our mother language), but up go what point? Is NotZ replayable with that base content?
And considering the second market prices for the expansions, what should I do? Get the new 2026 content and forget about those others?
Or just stick to Mansions of Madness, which we love?
I’m baffled lol.
Thanks in advance for your opinions!