During the 2 weeks of vacation that have passed quickly, I decided to take apart a game that I am periodically asked about by visitors to the blog and that has recently appeared in my collection. I already wanted to free up a few days for this game, during which I could understand all the rules and try to pass a couple of scenarios. Today I’m going to tell you about Arkham : The Card Game, which was released by Fantasy Flight Games.
Call of Cthulhu
As many of you know, FFG has long specialized in games dedicated to Howard Lovecraft’s mythos. Their most successful and well-known game is Arkham. Also in the publisher’s portfolio there is a dice version of this game – Elder Sign, an improved and modernized version of Arkham – a semi-cooperative version with overlord – Mansions of Madness, and a live card game – Call of Cthulhu. So it’s safe to say that FFG has eaten the dog on the Cthulhu theme.
LCD Call of Cthulhu was one of the first in the genre of live card games, and for many years the game managed to realize, perhaps, everything that was conceived by the authors. So when the publisher felt that the game was about to start eating itself, they made the decision to stop releasing it and come up with something different and equally epic.
I don’t know the sales figures for FFG games, but I suspect their LCG Lord of the Rings is very popular. It’s a cooperative card game where players have to complete a variety of interesting quests. The new Cthulhu card game is based on the principle of the Lord of the Rings LCG. In it, too, you have to go on quests (in this case, scenarios, broken down into acts) using detective decks. The name of the game is quite simply Arkham, only the card game is The Card Game. At first I thought that the authors of the game got lazy and didn’t want to come up with a new interesting name for the game. But then I decided that the new game quite fits the definition of Arkham card game.
Reaching out our tentacles to the box
FFG doesn’t change its traditions. If you own even one live card game, then you already know what you can find in the box with Arkham: The Card Game (hereafter AH:CG).
The rollbook with the title Learn to play was easy to read, everything seemed to be clear, but there were a lot of questions in my head. The general principle of action of the reviewed board game was clear, but the nuances in Learn to play were not revealed at all. Before preparing the game for the first game, I still had no idea how to play AH:CG correctly. It turns out that preparing for the game is the responsibility of a small scenario book that explains in detail what cards are played in the first scenario, how decks are formed, and when the game ends. That said, you will still have questions and continue to have new ones as the game progresses. The answers to these questions can be found in the Reference Guide, which you will use a lot at first.
In general, I experienced some cognitive dissonance while learning the game. I thought that games with small rules are played faster and more fun, because while you are preparing for the first game of AH:CG, someone else can watch a few episodes of your favorite TV show, read a book or knit socks.
The cool thing about it is that so much rules text has been invented for only two dozen cards. In this game, you can’t hope that you’d better start playing first and the cards themselves will tell you what to do and how to do it. No – you have to figure out the rules first, and there are quite a few of them for only 239 cards.
But let’s get to the point. In AH:CG, the basis of the game is the scenario. It’s a kind of story that the players have to go through. Players act together, cooperatively, although each player has their own personal game deck. In the base box, the story (aka campaign) is divided into 3 parts (3 scenarios). Once you’ve gone through one part, you can take a break, spend the gained game experience on new useful cards, write down your progress on a piece of paper and postpone the playthrough until tomorrow or any other day.
AH:CG can be played with 1 to 2 players (if you have one base box). It may well be possible to play this LCI with more than 4 players, but I don’t see the point. Based on my little experience, I can say that the base box is designed to be played by two people. It is very difficult to play alone. Two is the best. Well, three or four people can’t play one basic box, because some detectives use the same cards in their decks, and there is only one set of them. Want to play with four people? Buy another base box.
With the detective, you get a deck consisting of 30 cards and a few other special cards that don’t count. The detective cards are divided into 3 basic types:
event – a one-time card that goes into discard after being used;
asset (item/”trim”) – after purchase, it is “attached” to the player’s character and has a quantity limit (for example, a detective cannot have more than 2 hand items, more than one assistant, more than one pendant, etc.);
skill – a one-time card that helps the player to successfully pass checks.
AH:CG has a very interesting point that was taken from the card-based LotR and developed a bit. In LotR there is a deck of quests (usually 3 cards). We go through one quest, flip the card over, see what it says, go on the next quest. AH:CG has this too. Such a deck is called a deck of acts. In the first scenario, three acts are played out. But in addition to acts, the game also has a deck of agendas, which is the game meter. The longer players play an act, the more doom tokens will be accumulated on the agendas. When a certain number of tokens are accumulated, the top agendas card is opened, some unpleasant event for the players takes place, and then the tokens start to accumulate on the next agendas card, which hides an even more severe event. The agendas made me very happy as they bring an element of experience to the game.
There are no locations in LotR LCG, but there are in AH:CG. All the detectives in the game are in locations that are scenario driven. For example, in the first scenario of the base campaign, players start the game in a workroom where the exit door mysteriously disappears. Other scenarios will have several locations available to explore at the same time. And not every location can be accessed from every other location, which is also very interestingly thought out.
Before the game begins, players draw 5 cards from their decks and get 5 resources into their hands.
The game round is divided into several phases:
Mythos Phase. This phase is not played in the very first round. During the Mythos Phase, one die token is placed on the top Agendas card. If there are enough tokens to draw agendas (this number is indicated on the card), the tokens are removed, the top agendas card is revealed and players apply what the card says. Each player must then take one card from the encounter deck and play it. There are two types of cards in the encounter deck – treachery, which the player immediately plays the text on the card and sends it either to the discard or puts it in front of him (depending on the card’s action), and enemy, which immediately goes into the location and scares the detectives.
Exploration Phase. During this phase, each detective (aka researcher) may play 3 actions (can be identical) from the following list: draw one card, get 1 resource, activate an action on a card (marked with an arrow), move an enemy to his zone (this enemy will then only affect this detective), explore the location (take an intelligence test and, if successful, take an evidence token from the location), move to another location, play an item or event card from your hand (requires spending resources), try to evade an enemy (if successful, the enemy will not attack you for one turn), fight an enemy by trying to deal damage to it.
Enemy Phase. During this phase, enemies deal damage to the sleuths.
Preparation Phase for the next round. Players turn all turned cards, take one card from their decks and one resource each, discard extra cards if there are more than 8 cards.
Which is better, LotR LCG or AH LCG? And are the games similar to each other?
Oh, these are actually pretty tough questions. In my opinion, AH:CG has been building off of LotR LCG. The basics were taken from Lord of the Rings and developed and embellished with new ideas. In my opinion, the combat is more pronounced in LotR. In AH:CG, the fights are much simpler – either a token draw test, or when an enemy attacks, it just deals health and stamina damage to the hero (without any defenses). I’ve seen some sad sighs on BGG about how the fights in AH:CG can’t be called epic. But in AH I like the ideas of locations, agendas, collecting a deck of cheeseclaws, and passing checks better.
It seems to me that if you are closer to the story told by Tolkien, you will still find LotR LCG more interesting. If you like Lovecraft’s stories, then AH:CG will also be interesting to you. AH certainly didn’t kill LotR. It recently came out and is just starting to develop, while LotR is dying out and has a lot to offer board gamers. Some users on BGG have written that LotR has much more epic scenarios. I’m sure there will be such scenarios in AH as time goes on.
At the moment I think AH:CG is more interesting gameplay-wise, but that might be from the fact that I’m a bit closer to Lovecraft’s work than Tolkien’s.
In any case, LotR LCG and AH LCG are related games, unlike, for example, Warhammer 40k LCG or A Game of Thrones LCG.