KATIE MARIE

Game Night!

Today I am writing to you to talk about a game. But not a video game.

Recently, as in the last six months or so, the wonderful Mr Sherlock and I have gotten into boardgames in a big way. Our collection went from one game to three, then one to a solid dozen.

It is one of those games I want to talk to you about today.

Arkham Horror.

Arkham Horror was my first choice of board game, I remember being in the game store and seeing the box art, noting the title and not needing to be told anything else. It was very much a shut up and take my money moment.

Arkham horror is a fantastic game and I’ll go into why in a little while. First off, a little overview of what it even is.

The year is 1926, and it is the height of the Roaring Twenties. Flappers dance till dawn in smoke-filled speakeasies, drinking alcohol supplied by rum runners and the mob. It’s a celebration to end all celebrations in the aftermath of the War to End All Wars.

Yet a dark shadow grows in the city of Arkham. Alien entities known as Ancient Ones lurk in the emptiness beyond space and time, writhing at the thresholds between worlds. Occult rituals must be stopped and alien creatures destroyed before the Ancient Ones make our world their ruined dominion.

Only a handful of investigators stand against the Arkham Horror. Will they prevail?

This is a board game, yeah, I know, I made that clear already. It was originally designed based on the Call of Cthulhu role play game, which was based on Lovecraftian horror and lore.

The game is set in the town of Arkham, which as you can expect is under threat as ‘gates’ are opening to other worlds and bad shit is coming through them. The players must work together to try and close gates, fight the boogies that come through said gates, clean up the ‘doom’ that’s popping up everywhere and uncover what or who is opening the damn things.

Players can take physical damage, boogies tend to mess you up physically, but they can also take mental damage. Some boogies don’t have to punch you, just their existence on the board sends you off the deep end.

Death or insanity is not the end, however, there are a fair few characters you can be in the game and when one dies you just pick up another one and keep going. Be prepared to leave a trail of madness and corpses in your quest.

Each round multiple things happen, you get your turn as the player, and you can move around the town, and then take action. An action is usually something like fighting boogies, cleaning doom, investigating an area etc. Your goal is to keep your characters alive long enough to figure out what’s happening and advance the story along. The story advances when certain conditions are met, such as ten doom popping up, or several investigations taking place. The story goes in various directions depending on how ‘well’ you’re doing.

Once you’ve had your pop the ‘game’ gets a go. Kind of like Jumanji its all of you fighting the game rather than you fighting each other.

The results of a game can vary. We’ve played three games so far and we’ve only succeeded once. We almost saved the town on the second go but then things got away from us very quickly.

Aside from the mythos, which I very much enjoy, the game is a great one for multiple reasons. I love the mechanics, which seemed daunting the first time we played but once we’d done a couple of rounds it was very easy to pick up. I like that you can do so many different things in one turn.

I love the variety of characters, each character has their own little backstory, as well as different strengths and weaknesses that depending on your playstyle can make then really fun or very tricky to play with. I’m a tank, always have been, I like being the damage sponge for the team and being able to hit hard. My favourite character to play is my mafia dude, mostly because he has decent health and a big bloody gun. Whereas Mr Sherlock excelled as the street urchin, he’s better at thinking three steps ahead and moving quickly.

I liked that money played a role in the game, though not a huge one, I usually find resource management to be a bit of a bugger. But this game balances it quite well, money can give you advantages, but not overwhelming ones.

But my favourite thing about the game was the co-operation. I love the fact that it’s us fighting the game, not us fighting each other. It gives game night a fantastic atmosphere and is fast becoming one of my favourite ways of gaming. I’ve always enjoyed couch co-op style videogames when you and your fellow players are working together to reach a goal as opposed to kicking the crap out of each other. It allows for a good competitive vibe, we’re competing, but we aren’t competing with each other. We’re kicking ass but we’re kicking the games ass.

The single negative thing I have to say about this game is that there’s a lot of set up. It takes a good twenty minutes or so for us to set the game up. So, game nights usually have us sorting the game out well before people turn up. This means we have to plan in advance what we play, as opposed to people just rocking up and playing whatever, we fancy.

But while the set up is a big job its well worth it as the game is long and involved. So, you’re getting your moneys worth out of each game.

I strongly recommend getting this game, filling your fridge with beer, coke and snacks and having a great night.