Arkham Horror: The Card Game - Shut Up & Sit Down Review

to whomever finds this document I'm collecting my notes in one place in case I don't return to my do I fear I may stumble across damp or a secret every human scrap knowledge I gather points to the same horrible truth London's King's College plays host to a number County chorus under cover of darkness we made up reaching up with a fellow investigator would explore the catacombs beneath the University here did you bring me your revolver um yeah why oh yeah and she brought my son to pedia oh I don't mind [ __ ] you pay yet ah yeah um gone and got me else let's read it a little bit yeah I brought another encyclopedia let's put your cups of the tapes Thanks hey a method to protect oneself from home I leave that I don't say Chris and the love guns so here we are again in 2011 shut up and sit down posted a negative review of co-op classic Arkham Horror in 2014 - upon truth Eldridge horror slimmed down version but we still wonder if it was worth your time and today we have Arkham Horror the card game but this is a totally different interdimensional beast this is still a cult game about investigators biting tentacle monsters and the cults who love them but this time your investigator is a deck that you built yourself before the game begins and every scenario you go on is another deck this is the corset this is what you're going to bind first when it comes with a three scenario campaign stringing your evening to play together so the bulk of what you're going to be doing if you like this then is you're going to be buying into an aggressive schedule schedule of expansions and those are often going to new files Peter build your deck with and we love it we love it crucially this is the first Lovecraft game that we it shut up and sit down recommend number one so just sit back and let our own team of internal up hue means a unique event sounds like a slice yes sir but working on so their options here for people who want to keep replaying through the scenarios on higher difficulties but to be honest the main appeal of this is discovering it for yourself and on that note we're not going to have any details in this video about the specific scenarios or any spoilers so you can go a brush head that if you would like to see us playing through the first scenario you can do so by clicking on this video here if a clicky thing doesn't work then go to shut up and sit down calm and it'll be easy to find that I haven't heard about if you don't see anything then all you will need to know is that the three scenarios in this course are full of lots of twists and turns and cool surprises each scenario places locations on your table and as investigators you'll need to travel between them to try and collect the clues that you need to save the day at best you might face locked doors feeling someone out of or into a location at worst these might be roving Horrors that want to put things into fresh take things out of your body or your brain or your deck and as with most co-op games at the end of each turn bad things happen TN you take a card from the missus deck putting more pressure on your already wobbly plans but in your first game you have no idea what form this pressure is going to take and that's because the game really is a roast between the agenda deck and the ax deck the accent represents the things that as players you want to do while the agenda deck is the stuff that the game will do to you without mercy bloody will get your skates on if you dig all the way through these cards then you win the scenario whereas these cards represent a growing threat gradually the thing about this that's great and equally half and half dark and delicious like a vampire dipped in chocolate is the fact you don't know what any of these things do until you have to flip them over at which point you go oh but before that where you got some flavor text that might suggest it sort of suggests you might be being followed but are you I mean maybe you're not being paranoid who knows I know but the thing is these story beats are so there of all that really the first time you place through these scenarios is going to be the one it's going to be the memorable thing and the myths of text no X Factor and there is enough variation here to allow you to play through again and still be kept teetering on those tiny toes of yours they really are very have you seen a doctor about those because I mean I don't have anything wrong with them but they really are very small now listen in the past we've got kind of annoyed by games like mice and mystics and time stories where these maddening plot beats come out of nowhere and just sort of spoil the game but with Arkham it's different the dips and lurches that the story takes feel more like a roller coaster and yes the table will burst out into dropping leaves and growth are but these drugs are always joined by grins these moments simply enhance the game so here's the world's most generic fake example that we've invented you and your friends are exploring a spooky house picking up spooky clues there's a studio a slight in the hallway when suddenly know at the end of the town a wizard of the order has shown up and if you don't kill him right now at the end of this turn he's going to be crawling up on a contest from his special cultists what that group if it is awesome you never could have predicted it but it's awesome right and the two reasons for that the first one which is this is a bit of a bombshell you can't loot the Arkham card game what I mean by that is that your progress through each scenario is in fact you and your friends working towards several different objectives some you might achieve some you won't and I still get a special ending but whatever you get even if you fail and fail as if you've just paid for deployment in botching studies from our own University in the beating heart of tit town you're just going to record that on this sheet and keep going which is vital for a story timing game so you don't have to keep replaying these beats over and over again failure can become part of America but even more importantly it's a love cup game and failure has to be part of a Lovecraft narrative but maybe more importantly the reason that these twists work is that you are given such freedom on your term to twist with them so on every player's turn they draw a resource and they get a card but then they get three actions which they go as shopping from a list able to do any of these actions in any order as many times as they want you can draw a card you can play a card you can activate a card you can move you can investigate you can fight you can try and run away and when you and your friends can combine all your actions in any order finally dealing with this guy seems not just how are we going to do that but how do we want to do that and that's a great discussion I'm a tough decision but even when the board is flat and empty and safe which doesn't happen very often you're still making entertaining and tough decisions you have to figure out whether you're going to draw cards and play equipment and prepare for later or so the Mekons running around picking up clues and doing your job this tiny Webber's your own personal choices then explodes to be a gigantic wet full of tiny spiders of personal ambitions each player vice for controlling and I want to do this I want to do this but what order should you do it in because you get to choose you and the other players to sign each certain goes first to go second how can we muck sighs it but the crucial thing here and it is so crucial is that nothing new bad will happen you can't predict until the end of the turn you carry out all of your actions and then more bad stuff happens then the myth or spec fizzles to life like a dance forgotten firework gifts you all bad thing and when you've got these metal cards this is the window where you and a table of two three or even four players get to sit and work out how you'll turn it all around and discussions of our best Accord may get hot as you all referal with the myriad of options available because you all these are weird different characters it will do call different stuff and if you put your minds together and think about it you could always come up with a plan you can defeat almost anything they just they'll probably be a cost there is always a cost well my favorite things about this game though is the way it gets around quarterbacking which is a problem in court games a very warm player who's more experienced just how everyone else what to do in this it doesn't really work because each player has their own little complex deck the only they are a hundred percent aware of and other players don't really understand your deck insofar as the moments where they go oh my god is there anything you can do or oh my god how did you do that you are amazing I love you let's high-five mulberry or bone this inability to be laser focus on whatever else is doing really poured a bucket of ice over a backseat driver so more importantly unless you celebrate the moment where other players do things you just can't you'll be like Alex you can do that my dad doesn't do anything like that and it builds this joyous atmosphere of teamwork and support because your decks are just so different all my dogs run up - now I'm going to talk about the deck okay so when you build I stopped building a deck before you start playing can be intimidating to a lot of people but that's fine because here you don't have to do it the pre-built decks come in the base set are both fine and fun but once you've got a game underneath your belt or brows or thinner for you'll be chance to just jump in and start sliding different things into your deck having a play because each deck tells a story it's a person what do you wear who you friends with how do you get yourself out of touch scripts a side detail I'd be remiss not to mention is that whilst the stories conjured up my or characters deck will glue around the theme of the game like accommodating butter the story is one always be dark and sometimes be quite funny like the first family places my friends character was effectively mostly in practice a man who either ran into a room and then ran away from everything or run into a room with a book and a knife and then was just a horrendous murder machine or legs anyway for making decks we've got five classes of cars The Seeker is an investigator who specializes in books knowledge and actually collecting the actual clues that win the actual game who's a good for hard-rocking coochie Mama's who get the job done what what if I mean I don't know the counterpart to the seeker is the Guardian who you could also call the murderer depending on how you build your deck The Guardian gets complex first aid and the police but also machetes dynamite and the evidence cards which means after you've killed someone you get a clue just like real police who is it for well people who believe Lovecraft is all about firing a shotgun at a tentacle and I'm a fan that Lovecraft storytelling is really about loneliness and the infant alright that's enough I know because you do this every time stop the mystics deck lets you break carnal rules of the game like blanking bad cards reordering the decks or shriveling monsters like oversized raisins but also going a little bit mad in the process who's this for a lot of people who enjoy this nice elegant sort of eggplant color I think that's that's like a violet like amethyst ah tastes got a periwinkle lavender or Heather maybe or or orchids jam raisin raisin it what a purple oh it's not this purple yeah rubbish the survivor is my favorite class not really good at anything the survivor is like a spanner you insert into the game's mechanics to stop them crushing you to death with cards like lucky they let you succeed at checks you should have failed and the high-tech equipment like a coat the survivor does what has to be done in a coat and when that doesn't work they hide on a windowsill who is it for people who enjoy achieving nothing but saving the day anyway sometimes probably finally we have what will probably be your favorite class yes you the person watching this video the road has combos that you run away from a monster pickpocket them as you disengage only to then immediately run back again with the element surprisin and murder them who's there for people who want a car in their deck called burglary what is it there the burglary the finishing touch to your deck a masterful stroke that really just makes it pop into life makes you feel like a person like a set of investigators looking at something dark and slimy and that's that each of these characters has something really good about it special roland has a special gun Daisy had a tote back Wendy's got an amulet and these things go into your deck and might pop out and help you but also these characters have problems every Church has one card which is a weakness something Naurang of the depths of their soul and if it pops out of your deck at the wrong time you're in a lot of trouble and in addition to these unique powers and unique weaknesses each character also has a basic weakness something a bit wrong with them that might pop out at some point and cause you quite a lot to eat these horrible problems bring your character to life like a cool broken human being Quinn's is a cool drifter who has crippling hospital beds matt is a tough Christian lady who believes God meets her to kill things we fight crime I mean we'll fly anything yeah not very discerning the last thing to talk about is the chaos bag which is not in fact Matt nickname for his balls there clintus in a family show yeah so look here's the thing friendly flight for literally hundreds of years now has been packaging games with custom dice because that sells board games and they're so cute but I've noticed something ugly being smoked some of these games you can hold these dice up to your ear you can actually hear the game designers scream custom dice out awesome and designers continue to do amazing things with them but they have a problem which is that as soon as you locked in how the game actually works and you've manufactured the dice and you decide with all the symbols do you're then stuck with that if you want to change in a thing or expand anything you're making more diced or changing old ones it's not ideal not advice of actually a lot more flexible if you want to see something that isn't a numbered dice is this every time you do a skill check in the art and card game you reach into this bag and produce a symbol which tells you if you pass or fail the check and what this bag is is nothing more or less than a 16 sided die with numbers special symbols which aim to come in your character symbols that change depending on the scenario but here's the really really awesome thing if you want to make the Arkin card game harder you just put different numbers and symbols into the bag if you want to make it easier but if we can do that only kidding you take other negative symbols out of the bag if you want to change how the dice work for a scenario you put more symbols in the bag oh I haven't been so excited by a bag of pages though saying no can't don't and there's one final icing innovation that has a hopping around like mad cultists or terrible Morris dancing as basically a zone right they are basically the same thing if you're quite right if the fact that your deck is not fixed as you do scenarios you earn experience maybe you'll buy a cool new card to provincial deck maybe look up groans one of your favorite cards or maybe you'll just most importantly take something else out that doesn't work and replace it because it's not fixed you don't have to build a perfect deck on your first round and then play with the processions and sections you can change it ideally you and your team of other investigators will behave like a well-oiled machine working together perfectly but chances are you want and the discussions between missions about how you can tweak things and make yourself tighter as a team it's just a brilliant part of the fun and crucially much like the chaos bag which the designers of the game can play with in interesting ways and the campaign's progress they can also put cards into your deck all told then that charming sit down whole hog idli recommends Arkham Horror the card game we think building decks with buddies is fun we think exploring these scenarios together over an evening or two it's fun we think finishing a campaign and completely failing to save the world is great fun it's like a coming up on the sofa with your buddy even watching cheesy TV series together but the way that this game packs your first evenings with it with so much joy is actually the one thing you should really seriously think about before you buy it because if you play your board games a lot you can expend your first run-through with this guy in two or three evenings and that isn't necessarily ideal in fact it's kind of and we don't acquire poor value for money but certainly you'll play at less times than almost any other board game we recommend yeah but even so even fail that this game has left us positively above I mean talking of [ __ ] I kind of had this weird buzzing noise in my head all the time because Northern scarring only really is there when I and then kind of with my back facing a 90 degrees and oh you're having about the dogs the dogs would soon run et not who just whisper secrets day and night and then you can't sleep with the teeth coming out in portable angles of the mouth no no these are the ones that wish the things they talk to you well what do they say they tell me to subscribe to this video because subscriptions Sarah they're a big deal just click that little button that says subscribe right yeah right yeah what I mean the buzzing noises in my head originally to kill ya no one normally I do I think we should maybe deal with that and forwards dogs okay um well I've got that encyclopedia yes you've got the dyslexia lots of friends in library so you can get in contact exactly let's see what I've got um oh yeah no it's it's a hammer haha okay trepanning old school you just turn the camera off let's get buzzing gone [Music] [Music]

Channel: Shut Up & Sit Down

Views: 509,363

Rating: 4.9460611 out of 5

Keywords: Shut Up and Sit Down, SUSD, SU&SD, Shut Up Show, Shut Up, Sit Down, Board Games, Board Gaming, Family Games, Boardgame, Board Game, Gaming, Tabletop, Fun Games, Quintin Smith, Matt Lees, Arkham Horror, Card Game, Arkham Cards, Arkham Review, Fantasy Flight, Arkham, Lovecraft, Cthulu, Co-op games, card games, Arkham Horror card game

Id: 3WA16gyRZyY

Length: 20min 16sec (1216 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 10 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/jonboyjon1990]

This video perfectly encapsulates everything that I love about the game. It really is brilliant.

I would add to their points about a few things. Firstly the personal and basic weakness cards, as well as being great narrative elements they also create great gaming moments. They subvert the expectation that every card in your deck is good for you and that card draw is always a good thing. As the game goes on you're only creeping closer to drawing one.

And the Chaos Bag for the skill checks is great for all the reasons they said, but it also creates a tangible visceral moment of tension and uncertainty as you dip your hand into the void; it's also great because if a bad token came out it's 'your fault, because you chose it'.

I think they overstated the lack of replayability of the core set. There's 5 investigators/classes and 3 scenarios to explore - each of which have replayability with the different possible endings and branching narrative and the randomness of the encounter deck and how the scenario goes in general. If you're curious about the game I implore you to try a single core set - I think you can easily play the whole campaign 5-10 times before you'll feel it's 'exhausted'.

Also on replayability - for this game I think there's two types - the narrative and the gameplay. Whilst the narrative replayability may well become exhausted after a scenario has been played 3-4 times (which I think is fine anyway) the gameplay replayability is very good. One thing I really like about the game is how it morphs over time from a narrative experience to one a bit closer to optimisation. The first few times through any given scenario is about the story but over many games it becomes a bit more about tweaking, about optimising.

And yes it's an LCG so that does mean 'an aggressive release schedule' but for me it's a perfect mix of co-op, deck construction, narrative elements and campaign play that's certainly worth $15 a month. And being co-op there's no meta or local scene to keep up with.

[u/Albatraous]

Arkham Horror Colon? Is the theme about an inescapable horror deep within the digestive system?

[u/Indagaris]

Arkham Horror Colon; Dr. Alhazred's Weird Proctological Practice.

[u/[deleted]]

Amazing game, glad to see it's getting all this attention :)

[u/dalr3th1n]

I question their claim about being able to "twist with" the various twists the game throws at you. Once you're engaged with a monster, you really only have two actions you can do: fight or evade. And if it's a tough monster or you're not good at those things, you have zero actions you can do. This is probably one of my biggest criticisms of the game: it's difficult in a way that doesn't just beat you, it shuts your character down.

This is something I'm very careful about as a DM for D&D games. The players have to be able to do stuff or the game is not fun for them.

Edit: removed a rules discussion.

[u/Darwins_Dog]

This was probably my biggest disappointment in gaming in a long time. I was excited to buy the game. The rules looked great, the chaos bag was fun, characters were interesting, and I LOVED the way the scenario deck worked. Then I played the game, and my heart sank.
The choices you make don't have all that much impact on the later game, and once you know the optimal ones (probably after one play through) they won't change. After that there is only one strategy that works well. Perhaps the biggest issue I has was how much you relied on luck to win. You need to draw just the right cards from your deck, and pull only 0s from the chaos bag. Especially with one core set, there is really no amount of deck building that can improve your odds.
Then there's the cost. Two core sets is widely agreed to be the minimum for the full experience. That's not terribly expensive in the realm of boardgames, just disappointing. Especially since that doesn't even give you full the options for two players; for that you need two more core sets.
The game has a lot of potential, but it's outside of my budget right now. There's just not enough replay value for the money.

[u/clyderd]

So I've decided to purchase it. I've brushed it off because I already have the LOTR LCG and Netrunner. But it seems like it tells a great story and I'm looking forward to those evenings full of wonder. I do question how the persistence of the core box would work into and with the expansions? Maybe I should watch a playthrough.

[u/palaner]

This game bounced off me.. It feels exactly the same as regular Arkham/Eldritch, with deckbuilding giving you the illusion of choice. It's a storytelling game that makes you work too hard for the story.

[u/hmgmonkey]

I don't know about this one. I tried watching their lets play they released a few months ago and it just seemed like thematic token collecting.

Also, the phrase "you're also buying into an aggressive schedule of expansions!" is nowhere near the turn on for me that it seems to be for Quinns.