Eldritch Horror Gameplay Runthrough

hey everybody today righto runs through the eldritch horror which is a board game of global mystery and horror for one to eight players and today we're going to be playing it as a two-player game this is a cooperative adventure where we are jetting all over the world to Rome and the Amazon and Shanghai and all kinds of places to hunt down the evil minions of one of the ancient ones who is about to be you know reborn into the world and destroy everybody that's obviously based on the call of cthulhu works of HP Lovecraft and in this particular game I'm going to be running through today the ancient one we are worried about the game comes with four the one we'll be chasing after is shub-niggurath which is perhaps an unfortunate name but that talk to Lovecraft about that I didn't name them anyway so this is the guy we're worried about being you know coming back to earth and destroying everything and so we've got to stop them how do we do that by solving mysteries that are related to him EXO there are four of these ancient ones and each one has their own deck of mystery cards there's four each and we have two we will randomly draw and if we're successful solve three of them before time runs out there's actually two timers in this game there's this mythos deck when this is empty if we have not defeated the ancient one we lose straight up the the world is over and there's also this other track up here the doom track that is it counts down as closer and closer when it hits zero the ancient one himself will be born and will actually be a character on the map who can cause us all kinds of additional grief never mind the fact that now instead of solving three ministries once he's out we have to solve all four mysteries to win anyway that's how we win we solved those mysteries we lose if we run out of time and so let's get going up this is a two-player game as I said and in this one I am the old crack pocket crackpot astrologer Norman withers or astronomer who let's see starts with you know there's like a whole background story of who he is he's a you know he's been investigating you know changes in the skies nobody believes him but he knows there's evil coming so he's going to solve it himself and he gets to start with a feed the mind spell and he starts in Arkham over there and so here's my little spell I've got to feed the mind Jen she will be Diana Stanley the reformed occultist or the redeemed occultists who starts out in Central America and has an arcane manuscript and a wither spell which you can see is over here Jen also has seven hit points and five sanity points and I'm basically the opposite I've got five and seven so I'm smarter Jen is tougher also as a redeemed Cultus Jen's got a couple of special powers if there are any cultists if there's a cultist where she is the monsters on that space can be removed or she can scare the cultist away because of her connections with the cult and she's seen it all you know what is if she seen that called who knows but whenever she encounters a monster she reduces their horror to one so doesn't matter how scary they are she just kind of shrugs it off me my special powers are I can spend two clues to get rid of one monster wherever there's a gate you know an otherworldly gate to another world that threatens to destroy so I can spend clues to give her the monsters easy-peasy but more importantly this is the really cool one once per round I can spend I can lose one of my limited Sandee I've got seven sandy the beginning I could lose one to basically produce a clue out of nowhere so if ever I need a clue and I don't have one you know I'm a crazy old kook crackpot I can lose a little bit of sanity and remember oh that's right I've got a clue and then I can use it so that's actually a very very cool power because clues are few and far between in this game and they are the primary weapon we use against the ancient evil one we have to you know do investigations and find clues to win okay so that's the basics let's go ahead stuff the board let's see shove bug Vigoroth requires the first mystery and I'm just drawing randomly he's got four and I'm drawing randomly the first one and it is hunting the thousand now this guy his whole thing is you know he a lot more monsters spawn in around the world with with him as the guy were chasing down and in fact he's got a special thing every once in a while he can just cause extra monsters to spawn on the board and if there were ever 10 or more monsters on the board the doom track increases by two so he gets closer to being birthed so we got to keep the monsters under control and all so we have a mystery that si shub-niggurath spawn the thousand young infest the planet in greater and greater numbers threatened over on humanity so this is really kind of our first goal and once we complete this successfully we'll draw another one and that will be our second goal but our first goal is when non epic monsters are defeated the active investigator can spend two clues to place that monster on this card and when the total toughness of monsters on this card is equal to or greater than twice the number of investigators so there's two investigators so when we defeat for toughness worth of monsters and put them on this card we will solve mystery so the first mystery is we have to hunt down the evil monsters that this guy is spawning but we need clue tokens to spend when we defeat them so clue tokens are hugely important so we got to get some clue tokens to be able to hunt the thousands some more stuff that we have to do for setup we are we're in a two-player game so at the beginning of the game one gate spawns so we just take you know there's random gates for all over the world randomly there's one that spawns in Tokyo so we come over here a gate spawns in Tokyo whenever a gate spawns monsters spawn out of it too so it has gone ahead into the monster Cup which is a cup full of nasty scary creatures and we pull out the serpent people so a gate has opened a gate to an otherworldly domain scary or whatever might be has opened in Tokyo and serpent people came out of it now when that happened this green icon means that something immediately happens when they spawn we read on the back what it is I see when this monster is spawned move it to the Amazon so the certain people spawned in Tokyo but then they ended up coming over here to the Amazon and hey well you know right next to Jen who starts out in Central America there is some serpent people nearby the Jen could take out remember we need to take out monsters because if there's too many of them on the board that's bad for us but also Jen ideally if she could get some clues and then take out the monster we can start working on our objective let's see there also needs to be an active investigation on the board and that's what this deck is this is our expedition I think it is is our expedition token we look at the there's a whole bunch of cards as already shuffled all the decks and on the top there's Egypt so that valid picture of the pyramids so that means in Egypt in the pyramids there is an expedition if we go there and solve this expedition we can probably get some really cool ancient artifacts that will help us a lot in our struggles so that's on the board there's a gate that might spawn more monsters over time and we need to close that to keep monsters from pouring into the world there is a monster let's see and oh and then there's one clue and again in a two-player game one clue spawns so we just come over here we just grab one of these randomly flip it over and it's oh wow now that's lucky the first clue of the game happens to be right there in Arkham right where I start so there happens to be a clue right under my feet I'll probably go ahead and try and solve that investigate that clue right the very beginning of the game so that's set up and now we are ready to go the game actually comes with a really nice quick reference sheet that walks you through everything you're going to do every turn so I am the active I'm the lead investigator I'm an you know it could be gen but I'll be leave this go that means I go first also it means bad things are more likely to happen to me or potentially good things too but more likely bad things are more like that mean plus you know sometimes the order matters if in terms of like moving around and whatnot but for now I'll just be the first player maybe we'll change it later okay so click reference first all first of all we go through the action phase where every player in turn takes two actions and those are travel prepare to travel acquire assets these things there down here rest if we're hurt or you know need a little bit of me time we can rest we can trade if we happen to be in the same space we can trade items with each other and if we happen to have items that let us do actions we could do those actions that are on our items so I'm going to do two of these actions and then Jim is going to do two of these actions Here I am up in Arkham and I see now an action is not to investigate basically what happens is after I've done my two actions and remember those were move trade gets stuff etc etc afterwards wherever you end up you then can interact with the world and I'm gonna I so interesting I'd like to go off yelling and move around and start forming the world but there's a clue right here so I'm not going to leave Arkham I'm gonna have to stay here so at the end of my turn I can investigate this clue so if I'm not going to move remember which is my top choice I'm not going to travel as I want to stay there what else could I do I could that means I can get a travel ticket which will let me move farther in the future I'm probably going to do that I could acquire an asset since I'm in a city if you're ever in a city space and both of us are in cities I could I could try to use my influence to get the Vatican missionary holy water delivery service or a 45 automatic so I could try to get one of those but my influence is terrible it's a 1 because I'm a crazy crackpot nobody listens to me so it's going to be hard for me to try to actually get any of these things you know Jen she's got an influential - it's not much better there's actually a politician character who's awesome he has influence of 4 he can pretty much pick up anything he wants because he's so influential so I'm probably not going to try or acquire an asset because I'll probably fail I don't need to rest because we just started out I'm not going to able to trade because I'm by myself but however I could try to do a component action because remember I started with this feed the mind spell so I think the first action I'm going to do is I'm going to I mean you know this spell I have found in my research I'm going to try and cast it you know because it's my first of two actions so action test lore which is the book my lure is 3 so test lower - 1 so I'm going to do a a 2 which means I roll 2 dice if I pass choose an investigator on my space which at this point would be me because I'm by myself and improve a skill so if I can feed the mind I can improve one of my skills maybe I'll make my influence better or you know I'll become tougher because I'm not very strong right now so let's do a let's try and cast the feed the mind spell test lower - one mile or is 2-1 so I get to roll two dice now whenever you're doing a test you want to roll 5s and 6s every five and six you get counts as a success and in this case I just need to get one success so I'm rolling both these dice come on give me a five or six five or six five or six and oh I got a four and A two so I failed which means I do not get to you'll improve on my skills now here's a tricky thing though um whenever I want to once per round I can spend a sanity token in place of spending a clue and now Clues pretty predominantly have two uses use them to deal with the mysteries and that's why we need to collect clues to be able deal of mysteries but you can also use a clue to re-roll if you don't like your role you can sacrifice clues to reroll so if I wanted to I could and I instead of sacrificing food I can sacrifice Andy I could lose one of my sanity and reroll one of my dice and try to succeed and what the heck I'm going to you know I've still got six more after this and I could rest if I need to so I'm going to sacrifice one of my sanity instead of a clue because that's normal with your special power and I get to reroll one of my dice so come on give me a five or six or five or six that's even worse okay well I tried and I failed I can only sacrifice a sanity once per round so that's it I failed so I do not get to improve one of my skills then either way whether I failed or succeeded I must flip the card and honestly thing is there are there's for all these spells there's several versions of them in the game and when you get a spell you don't know what's going to happen after you casee because you don't know which one you've got so it no point earlier could I have looked at the back of the spell to see what the results are I just knew what the base was so I might have the feed the mind spell that's really bad and if you fail terrible things happen to you go insane or I might have to feed the mind spell that's not so bad let's find out OOP alrighty okay this is not the bad one all right resolve the effect based on your test result now my test result was a fail so I already didn't get to do it and now I have zero successes I don't have any 5 to 6 I've zero successes so that means my test was also is a zero if you are unable to sit you are unable to sufficiently focus your mind you wonder if you simply lack the mental discipline this spell requires if you did not roll any fours discard this card now fortunately I did roll a four so that means if I had gotten all one in a two I would be so disheartened by failing this I would throw this away and I would never get to cast this spell again but fortunately I did have a 4 so at least I have enough meant I couldn't figure out the spell but at least had enough mental discipline not to discard it see if you did not roll 4s discard the card but that's not that's fine so basically nothing bad happened and then I flip the card again so it's ready to be cast again next round so I can try try again but that's a dangerous thing when I ever I cast this if I fail and I don't have any fours I lose the spell forever now if I'd succeeded if I had one more basically this means I would have done a little bit better than I thought but I had no successes so I flip it back that was my first of two actions and it was kind of a I wasted some of my sanity and pretty much got nothing in return well done Norman well done okay interesting Lee Jen she has this arcane manuscript if she could give it to me every time I cast a spell I gain +1 on lore which means I get to roll no die and that would be good to you know counteract this negative one it would make it more likely if Jin gives me this RRK main effect I'll have an easier time casting the spell in future so there might be something we want to do we want to get together so she can give me her arcane manuscript but anyway so that is my first action now my second action you cannot do I cannot do this again you can never do the same action twice in a row so now I've got to do one of the other ones and you remember the other ones are travel and I don't want to travel because I want to stay here to investigate the clue prepare to travel that's all I do acquire assets I'm not going to try to require one because I've gotten all influenced all fail at that more than likely now I could rest and get that sanity back but I've still got plenty so I'm not gonna bother resting there's nobody to trade with I've already done my one component action so I'm going to prepare to travel gained one travel ticket and I can only have a maximum of two at any time City space is only I am in a city right now Arkham is a city space and Arkham is connected both to a rail line and a sea line and that means when I try to prepare I can either take for future travel purposes a rail ticket or a sea ticket a ship ticket so I can take one this is my other actually want to prepare for you to travel and this means in the future normally in a given round you only get to move one space but after you move if you got ticket it'll let you move again so I'm just I'm basically kind of passing on my other action so that a later turn I really need it I can move farther and faster now I want to be able to move farther and faster on train or by ship well it depends ah you know if I want to make maybe I want to head over here to the pyramids as an example so you know that might be the case that I might want to be able to move over here quicker but maybe I want to over to San Francisco I know I'm going to take a ship if I need to go to Europe so I now have one token you can have up to two tickets so those were my two actions my action phase is done I've done my two actions now Jen gets to do two actions as well and she has all the same choices move you know try and get stuff because she's in a city she could rest etc etc now she could move one space and come over here and then try and fight the certain people which would be good the only headache you guys get to see some combat and gin she started with this wither spell that makes her you know a pretty good badass she could cast this spell and work those serpent people over pretty well so maybe she wants them over there and do that or maybe let Elster's you wanna do now it would be good to come over here and get some ancient artifact by resolving this thing in the pyramids it would also be good to travel over to Tokyo and close this gate before more bad guys start coming out of it now it would take Jen two spaces to get to Tokyo because you can see she could move from where she is right now somewhere you know right between Mexico and South America this would be one space and then if she could move a second time she'd be able to take go by sea and come a wrap around the board and land in Tokyo so let's say she let's say that's her focus number one thing Jen's gonna wanna do is she's gonna want to close that gate as fast as she can so she's got two actions first action she is going to do is she's gonna prepare for travel which means she takes his ship token just like I did she can do that because she's in a city that was her first action she's got ship token now her second action is going to be to move and whenever you move you can move once along any of the connected so she can move along this go this way called Uncharted track to the Amazon to get to the Sur people and said she's going to move along this ship lane to get Sam Sisko she's moved and now when you travel move one space and then spend travel tickets to move additional spaces so she's moved her one space now she's going to spend her travel ticket to travel by sea an additional space and boom she ended in Tokyo so that was Jen's whole move she prepared to travel and then she got a double length travel so we are both now done our two actions mine was I tried to cast a spell and then I just got a thing for future travel Jen got her trial and then actually traveled now we move on to the encounter phase or again in player order we deal with wherever we are and you know there might be several things we could encounter but in this case well like for instance I have two things I could encounter I could investigate this clue and remember clues are our lifeblood we need clues to win or I could ignore that clue and I could just investigate the city of Arkham where I might be able to gain an incantation spell if I'm successful now I'm going to investigate the clue because that's much more important than getting an incantation spell now what that means is I draw the top card from the investigation deck and now you'll notice the investigation deck has a picture of good old Shelby here your bad guy because wherever the ancient evil is you get a different deck of cards for clue investigation so I'm going to do an investigation that is unique to shove and lights draw the top one off the board and let's see what I'm going to investigate now am I in a city wilderness or see I'm in a city because that's the city icon so I read the top thing alright um if it focuses come on there we go as he lay dying the bleeding priest begs you to guard the sword he tells you brother Tristan and his order will stop at nothing if you make a solemn vow he will give you this ancient his ancient blade you may gain a dark pack condition to gain this clue and the sword of Saint Jerome artifact and so this is a choice this is a choice only I can make now everybody we could all talk about this but this is a choice I have to make actually I thought I was gonna have to you know if I'd been at sea instead right now you can't shake the feeling that something is hunting you you lie awake at night and watch the threat so this means I would do a and observation check my eyeballs of tree I go to gotten to roll three dice and if I passed I might have found a strange strange tracks on the deck of the SIP which gave me the clue and if I failed I would have been ambushed by monster we would have drawn a cut from the deck I know I had to fight but we weren't at sea we were in a city and I've just got a simple choice to make do I want to make a dark pact which will come back and haunt me later but if I do I'll get the clue and the sword of Saint Jerome you know what dark pacts are insanely dangerous but what the heck I'm a crazy old coot I'll totally do it now that means I get the clue so I've collected our first clue and remember every time we defeat a monster if we have to clues we can move that towards our mystery solvent so I've got a clue also I've now got to dig through what it's an artifact isn't it through the artifact deck and find the sword of Saint Jerome and then reshuffle this Necronomicon the flute of the older gods agate box glass of sorta statue area so I have just found the sword of st. Jerome and it's a magical weapon which gained two mind and five strength when resolving combat card so obviously this is going to help a lot and that's really good because I really I was not particularly good at fighting monsters so it's kind of nice to have that sort of seen Jerome now I got to shuffle these back because normally you draw randomly from the artifact deck so I'll just shuffle in the bits just a little bit all right so that's nice I got the gods clue but even cooler but oh now I have to get a dark pact now a dark path comes from the condition and there are all kinds of conditions you could have internal injuries or you could suffer it from amnesia or you could be under debt and you have to pay that debt off someday or you could be cursed but now I have to draw from the body you have to draw from the bottom of this deck because you can see what's on the top so I got draw from the bottom of the deck until I find a dark pact and then that would be my dark pact that I carry on so let's just start drawing hallucinations hallucinations right there dark pact okay that's my dark pact and now I'll shuffle these back in and shuffle the deck a little bit more who knows when those hallucinations will show up but I now carry a dark pact that is the price I pay now ah see it was a deal that I've made now later on everyone still on the game I'm when these uh when these red icons happen any having every once in a while I have to roll a die and on a one my time will come through where I have to pay off my dark pact whatever it is now I don't know what this is I don't get to look but so this could happen at any time that my deal comes due but for now I made pretty much a deal with that old guy to get the swords in Jerome and the clue so that was my investigation a pretty successful day occasion I'm pretty actually happy about that now Jen she's gotten enough she's got choice she could either investigate Tokyo where she could basically should probably make some monsters if she has to she doesn't wanna do that she wants to investigate this gate and try to close it down so that means Jen has got to draw the top card from the gates deck and deal with whatever it says and now that means she steps into the gate and these can be she could travel through time she could go into some kind of crazy dreamscape she might go to some alien dimension we never really know so let's see what happens when she steps into the gate who paints upside down okay did she find herself in lost Carcosa you grow frustrated walking through empty streets must be some kind of weird dreamscape now through empty streets able to hear people talking and laughing nearby but unable to catch up with them you try to focus and distinguish specific words from the mingling conversations do an eyeball check which means Jen has to check her eyeballs three she rolls three dice and is trying to get a success remember a success is a five or six and she got a 4-1 and a six she succeeded now you can see there is a success and a failure so we read the success hoops because she got that six variety the words you hear sound familiar to something you've read you try to recall their significance now Jen has to do a lore check her lore is for she's actually really good at lore Plus this arcane manuscript gives her plus one lore went oh but only if she were casting a spell the Archaea manuscript health but it won't help in this case because this is not casting a spell she's trying to remember something because of something she overheard so she gets to roll four dice unless she if she succeeds at that pretty likely because Jen is pretty good at lore being a redeemed cultist a three a five a two and a five okay that is this in fact it's two successes but we only need one for this so she rolled her if you pass what she did you use the words to close this gate so gate closed problem solved mischief managed boom goes into a gate discard pile Tokyo is clear now if we had failed the words would have insinuated themselves into her account in to every conversation she would hear and Jen would have become paranoid that would become a permanent condition that she would suffer under that might you know hamper her later but fortunately she succeeded now if she's if she failed in the first place the words would have been unintelligible she would have realized that she lost in the city while chasing after the voices she watched lost through character Carcosa is darkest alleys and considers you know and consider time staking Li retracing her steps she ultimately she would have lost to sanity and oh no she would have chosen to lose to sanity to find her way out or she would have become delayed which means her next turn she would have been able to do nothing because we have taken forever but none of those bad things happened she had a pretty good time everything worked perfectly she closed the gate which is perfect because if she hadn't monsters could have spawned through that and so she closed the gate hooray we have both done our investigations and now we're done with the encounter phase and now we move on to step three the mythos phase where we draw a mythos card and yellow Advanta whatever the mythos cartel's and there's a lot of icons they might do various and sundry things who knows what's going to be now before I started I built this mythos deck based on Shub settings shove annulus over the first third of the deck has one really the blue cards are terrible these are rumors there's one rumor there's two particularly bad things and there's one maybe good maybe bad thing you never really know so I'm you know and then later on there are more things and more things you never really know what you're going to get because it's all totally random and you can see there's a ton of cards here that we didn't use this is the Decker drawn I've already built the deck and randomized it and so let's see what the first mythos phase gives us what do you know growing madness right off the bat this is the worst thing this is the blue card of the four cards this could have been it was the worst one there is now a new permanent problem we have to solve in addition to everything else we now suffer from growing madness okay so whenever you draw these cards first of all you do what the icons in order say up at the top so first of all hey there's a good thing a clue gets spawned and in a two-player game that means one clue gets spawned somewhere in the world so I draw randomly let's take this one randomly and it's a clue in Antarctica so there's a clue down here waiting for us to solve remember we need clues so somebody's going to get down here and investigate that mystery or that clue then um alright this is what is this icon this is the place the rumor talking so we have to put the rumor token in space number eight on the board this is the rumor or no no I'm sorry this is the rumor and I see space number eight Oh laughs that's not too bad it's right here just south of Arkham out here in the middle of the ocean on this sea spot so there is now a this is where we have to go to solve this rumor of growing madness right then I see this is the already calm the the place elders tokens place the indicated number of elders tokens on this card so we got to put this is a timer we put four eldritch tokens so you can see the number four on this card and this is kind of usually this is a countdown or some coins or something like that so let's see what the rumor actually is for growing madness your dream of a life of an insane wizard thousands of years ago in Atlantis you also dream that the same Wizard is alive today on an uncharted island I bet you that wizard is alive yeah out here in the middle of the Atlantic on an uncharted island so ongoing that means this is going to stick around until we solve this as an encounter an investigator can place on space 8 so if we go to that island you can go there and it's have to find the Uncharted Isle so we have to pass an observation if we pass we can then spend clue tokens equal to half the number of players we're two players so we have to spend one clue token to get rid of this rumor so we have to come down here and spend our precious clue tokens to get rid of this guy when there are no eldritch tokens on them and let's see and meanwhile there's a countdown if the elders tokens ever go away we will each suffer we will each lose three sanity and then the river so we have a certain amount of time for turns until to get rid of this before we have this huge sanity supper and then also this is a card one of the icons that could have been on this card would have been this red oh I forget what it's called Oh reckoning it could have been a reckoning whenever a reckoning happens every reckoning card that's in play triggers so this thing would trigger which means the lead investigator would gain a madness condition so the longer this wizard stays out here in the Atlantic casting spells the more mad the more crazy will become and let's see so that's why we want to get rid of this and we are and every time that happens one of these goes away so that's our problem unfortunately I'm really close to it so next turn I might just go down there and find that guy and take care of him once and for all because it just so happens I've got a clue to get rid of him but that means we're not using the clue to investigate as time counts on righty so but anyway all things considered this wasn't youto be bad because the rumor is really close and we already have what we need to get rid of it and so I'll just put this over here the rumor or I'll put it over here by the by the mystery we're trying to solve and no bad things happened like if whatever this is if this card had been drawn then oh sorry come on focus we would have had a clue but monsters would have surged and The Omen track would have advanced which would have been bad so bad things could have happened but as it is know for only one bad thing happened although it's a pretty bad thing all right so that was the mythos phase and we have made it through one of many rounds of adventure in el retorno if you'd like you can hit the button on screen for extended play and I'll play through a few more rounds you'll get to see me confront the ancient wizard in Atlantis you know Jen let's see she's way over there in Tokyo what is she going to do I see the pyramids are really far away it would be good for her to get down to Antarctica and one too so she could maybe make it down to Sydney and then on the following turn she could make it Antarctica to investigate this clue that's probably what Jen's going to do it's going to take her a couple turns to get down there with her advanced travel and whatnot me I'll probably deal with the wizard and then who knows what else will happen as we fight shub-niggurath and try to save the world in eldritch anyway like set the buttons on screen you can hit the button to see that and see a bunch more stuff I'll try to show you combat which I haven't shown you I'll show you casting more spells drawing more cards all kinds of stuff or you can hit the other button is on screen and go straight to final thoughts your choice 5 4 3 2 1

Channel: Rahdo

Views: 134,590

Rating: 4.868505 out of 5

Keywords: radho, board game, boardgames, boardgame, baord games, board games, baordgame, baord game, baordgames, game, rahdo, rhado

Id: _iLIJ-DXiQ0

Length: 30min 39sec (1839 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 29 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/bykk]

I know there are quite a few that enjoys rahdo's runthrough besides me and Eldritch Horror has been a hot topic in WSIG and in discussions.

Part II: Extended Gameplay

Part III: Final Thoughts

[u/dhniceday]

Rahdo gets every up vote possible from me. I really would like to meet him in real. Feels like a friend to me.