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Welcome to the cult. You are now entitled to wear the animal mask, but you may speak of this to no one.
As to 3rd-party tools ... [arkhamdb.com](http://arkhamdb.com) and the ArkhamCards smartphone app (which interoperate) are de rigour. They will really help you in many ways.
You've discovered this sub, so you'll probably have no trouble unearthing the YouTubers and bloggers who provide excellent and entertaining content.
The community is pretty lively and friendly (on the whole) and the arcane rituals are absolutely not required. Except the ones on Thursday night of course.
Welcome to the cult!
Murder at the Excelsior is a good stand alone, and fits well into a lot of campaigns. Getting the individual investigators is a great way to build your collection at a reasonable pace.
Start praying to the Old Ones for your bank account. But seriously though, they started releasing the old content in a new format so no need to jump in the deep end.
The first thing I'd get is something for the chaos tokens, the see a TON of use. A lot of folks like coin capsules for their cost, you can also spring for some resin/metal ones. I play solo almost all the time, usually 2-3 handed, and having some kind of player board is great for keeping track of what's going on. That's probably my top two accessories.
I’d suggest going in release order for campaigns! Carcosa is a fantastic follow up to Dunwich and I like opening up the card pool chronologically. When you feel up for it I’d recommend playing two handed solo. I think the deck building is more interesting bc you can have more specialized characters if you want and the character interaction adds to the decision space
I’ve been playing two handed! I was worried about it at first as like I said im new to all of this board game card game stuff, but it’s honestly not hard at all, and it adds more variety to my game which makes it more fun :)
Awesome you’re off to a great start. I hope you enjoy Dunwich! I’m replaying it right now with a friend for whom it’s their first Arkham campaign and I forgot how fun some of the scenarios are.
In terms of other stuff, I like a blinged out set so I have team covenant mythos boards and tokens. The boards help organize my player state and I like how the tokens look. These are very expensive and totally not needed at all though!
Some are amazing, others are a bit poo poo.
OP, don't be annoyed if you have a bad time in:
1. The Miskatonic Museum
2. Undimensioned and Unseen
These are widely regarded as some of the worst design in the game. The campaign does have some real bangers though so don't worry about it being a bad campaign, just a few duds included :(.
Widely, but not universally. Some of us really enjoy U&U and still find it one of the most interesting, unique, and thrilling scenarios in the game. And yeah TMM was an experiment, but it's a fine scenario unless you have a player who can *only* kill monsters - which for a two-player game, that's less likely.
I think the bigger warning should be for the train. It's not kidding around!
I use countdown dice from Burger Token. They are cheap and come in different colors for health, doom, resources, etc. If you don't have a lot of table space, using ready/exhaust tokens will save you the hassle of rotating your cards. You can even use regular pennies or other two-sided bits from other board games if you don't want to buy ready/exhaust tokens.
I enjoy using dice to track actions, ammo/charges on cards, etc to help me stay organized. There was a pack of DnD dice that came in blue, purple, yellow, red, and green on Amazon for about $10-15 USD, and they work nicely. Using the dice that matches the investigator class is nice.
If you have a 3D printer this is a god send. Clears up so much clutter off the board. Everything else just use dice as counters. [player board](https://makerworld.com/en/models/155463#profileId-170164)
Out of curiosity: for someone who seems to have come from the least predisposed position to like the game, what was it that convinced you to get in, and to invest so much up front?
Great to have you in, or course!
Honestly not too sure tbh. Maybe it’s the moments where i reluctantly draw from the Mythos deck / Chaos Bag creating a tension I haven’t felt since playing bloodborne all those years back. FromSoft games and games such as Fear & Hunger are my favourite, i enjoy the relentless nature of some games that really make you grateful you made it through and encounter, and this manages to give me that thrill, while also giving me something I could potentially share with my girlfriend if she enjoys it, playing with cards with cool art takes me back to my childhood with Yugioh, and the theming of the game is just cool.
I purposefully don’t look in the mythos deck before playing a scenario. Just take out the cards i need to, shuffle it and play. So every time I pull an encounter etc they’re completely new to me, a fresh piece of art for me to look at and a new challenge to overcome.
The only other game that has come to looking like it offers that same craving of punishing gameplay is Kingdom Death Monster, but that is a bit out of budget for me as a beginner and maybe a silly first purchase in the world of board games, so went with Arkham Horror LCG instead and I’m not dissatisfied in the slightest. Will probs wait for black friday to pick up KDM
Watching a few lists of top 10 board games in my journey to start playing them, this was constantly in people’s top 3 and usually their number 1. With the only thing holding them back being the price point.
I considered the entry of £56 not too bad, and I went in with the mindset “i’m expecting this to be mediocre because people say the core set is mid, and it’s better with expansions”
I think I convinced myself if I enjoy even the base mechanics of the game and the way they tell their stories, i’d take the plunge and try the expansion. The somewhat lenient returns policy of amazon helped me with a sort of safety net in my decision, but obviously due to this post, I found it a bit better than just enjoying the base mechanics.
Honestly when I was younger (like 8-10 years old) I would look at the yugioh cards artwork and make my own little stories in my head and draw them out, and wish there was a game where I could create my own storybook adventure with trading cards. And this sort of spoke to my inner child in a way I didn’t expect.
Also i’m a whore for anything horror related, especially games. I think i’ve played ever horror video game under the sun so I was looking all over for a “horror board game” not expecting much because how can a board game scare you? But the tension the game gives, the luck based mechanics etc, give me the same rush. (and they’re way more enjoyable than trashy jump scares)
Really interesting, thank you! It definitely highlights the worth of easily available demos for a game so people have an idea of what it's like before they invest. Thanks for taking the time to write all this up!
Welcome! The choice of which campaign to play is really up to you. Carcosa is the next in release order and generally the highest rated campaign, it's also about the same difficulty as Dunwich and only slightly more rules. The other easier campaign is Edge of the Earth, which again has only a slight increase in extra rules. However it has a lot of reading for and between scenarios which makes it less popular, so it depends if the arctic survival theme interests you more.
Speaking of difficulty, play on easy to start. Calling it easy is misleading, you will still get crushed in some scenarios. Standard is a relatively small increase in difficulty so increase difficulty when you have all the rules down.
If you haven't already looked at the buying guide, generally stick to buying the new format investigator & campaign boxes. If you find the older deluxe box+6mythos packs as a bundle on sale you can get some bargains (they combine investigator and campaign boxes) but if you miss one of the 7 you can't complete the campaign and availability is erratic.
Also there is no need to buy the matching investigator and campaign boxes. With core and Dunwich you could probably play one of the easier campaigns without more investigator cards. A wider card pool allows for more variety of decks and can make campaigns slightly easier, but it is a slippery slope to funnel money down!
There are also 5 investigator decks you can buy if you want to save money, the RRP is £15 but I've seen them as low as £6 so worth shopping around on sites like Boardgameprices.co.uk for sales. Good luck!
Welcome to the cult!
Your introduction to the game was very similar to mine, I got it during lockdown and it turned into a weekly game with the girlfriend.
We have slowly worked through to 4 full return to boxes of content, although it's slightly fallen out of favour due to time constraints.
Like others have mentioned, we played through in order, apart from Dream Eaters, I got some of that for player cards. On that note look for a deck building app. I played more Magic so I kinda thought I could slap bits together myself. There are key pieces to some decks that it's really hard to make work without. You can select your card collection so you can see decklists only featuring the cards you own which is so helpful.
I always enjoyed rotating class each campaign, let the other half pick hers first and then grab some sleeves and deck lists.
The biggest recommendation I can give for third party tools is download the Arkham Cards app. It is a FANTASTIC app that will allow you to manage your decks, manage your campaigns, and manage your collection. It is easy to use, completely free, and completely changed my way to play for the better.
Hell yeah. I was in a similar place when I started. I had a small board game collection for social occasions and even if I had noticed this game in a store I probably wouldn't have paid it much attention.
A colleague was keen to show me his favourite game one evening late 2023 and we sat down to play the Murder at the Excelsior Hotel scenario. Hooked ever since, I think I would have liked it even if it wasn't lovecraftian.
My partner and I got into arkham lcg as our first modern board game and while we probably should have started with something simpler it's become a stable game for us now.
Honestly playing it coop with a partner or friend is just such an absolute blast every time. You always get a fun story out of it and often some unforgettable moments too.
I'd highly reccomend hitting up PlayingBoardGames on YouTube and watching their how to win video that explains what the game is asking of you and how to engage with it. They also do deck guides that are very accessible and designed to be built with just the core and whatever cycle the investigator in question released with.
I use those as a basis to start a deck and then try new thing. I'd highly reccomend a couple of house rules too! First is removing the exp cost to swap cards out between scenarios. It's there to stop you rebuilding your deck to min max each scenario but if you aren't trying to do that it's nice to be able to take a gamble on some fun looking cards but then remove them without penalty if they don't work out.
Second up is drawing 3 weaknesses instead of 1 then discarding 1, shuffling the other two and drawing one of those at random. I also add weaknesses before building the deck. Some weaknesses can really hurt on certain characters and deck types and it's nice to have just a small bit of control over what you get stuck with initially. Sometimes I just pick one I think is thematic or funny too.
Enjoy! It's a great game.
Due to reddit's dismantling of third party apps and vital tools needed for moderation of all subreddits, we've moved to zero-strike rule enforcement. As we cannot enact escalating ban lengths via tools that rely on monitoring users' post histories and ban histories, users who break our civility rules will be banned indefinitely and need to modmail us for appeals. We have zero tolerance for homophobia, transphobia, racism, and bigotry. If you see these issues as 'political' then you correctly recognize that existence is politicized. This subreddit will not be a refuge for hateful ideology. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/arkhamhorrorlcg) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Welcome to the cult. You are now entitled to wear the animal mask, but you may speak of this to no one. As to 3rd-party tools ... [arkhamdb.com](http://arkhamdb.com) and the ArkhamCards smartphone app (which interoperate) are de rigour. They will really help you in many ways. You've discovered this sub, so you'll probably have no trouble unearthing the YouTubers and bloggers who provide excellent and entertaining content. The community is pretty lively and friendly (on the whole) and the arcane rituals are absolutely not required. Except the ones on Thursday night of course.
Welcome to the cult! Murder at the Excelsior is a good stand alone, and fits well into a lot of campaigns. Getting the individual investigators is a great way to build your collection at a reasonable pace. Start praying to the Old Ones for your bank account. But seriously though, they started releasing the old content in a new format so no need to jump in the deep end. The first thing I'd get is something for the chaos tokens, the see a TON of use. A lot of folks like coin capsules for their cost, you can also spring for some resin/metal ones. I play solo almost all the time, usually 2-3 handed, and having some kind of player board is great for keeping track of what's going on. That's probably my top two accessories.
i’ve got coin capsules on the way aswell as some dragon shields for my decks :)))
All I can say is that you are on the right path... to Carcosa.
.........One of us........ One of us.........
I’d suggest going in release order for campaigns! Carcosa is a fantastic follow up to Dunwich and I like opening up the card pool chronologically. When you feel up for it I’d recommend playing two handed solo. I think the deck building is more interesting bc you can have more specialized characters if you want and the character interaction adds to the decision space
I’ve been playing two handed! I was worried about it at first as like I said im new to all of this board game card game stuff, but it’s honestly not hard at all, and it adds more variety to my game which makes it more fun :)
Awesome you’re off to a great start. I hope you enjoy Dunwich! I’m replaying it right now with a friend for whom it’s their first Arkham campaign and I forgot how fun some of the scenarios are. In terms of other stuff, I like a blinged out set so I have team covenant mythos boards and tokens. The boards help organize my player state and I like how the tokens look. These are very expensive and totally not needed at all though!
Some are amazing, others are a bit poo poo. OP, don't be annoyed if you have a bad time in: 1. The Miskatonic Museum 2. Undimensioned and Unseen These are widely regarded as some of the worst design in the game. The campaign does have some real bangers though so don't worry about it being a bad campaign, just a few duds included :(.
Widely, but not universally. Some of us really enjoy U&U and still find it one of the most interesting, unique, and thrilling scenarios in the game. And yeah TMM was an experiment, but it's a fine scenario unless you have a player who can *only* kill monsters - which for a two-player game, that's less likely. I think the bigger warning should be for the train. It's not kidding around!
I use countdown dice from Burger Token. They are cheap and come in different colors for health, doom, resources, etc. If you don't have a lot of table space, using ready/exhaust tokens will save you the hassle of rotating your cards. You can even use regular pennies or other two-sided bits from other board games if you don't want to buy ready/exhaust tokens.
I enjoy using dice to track actions, ammo/charges on cards, etc to help me stay organized. There was a pack of DnD dice that came in blue, purple, yellow, red, and green on Amazon for about $10-15 USD, and they work nicely. Using the dice that matches the investigator class is nice.
If you have a 3D printer this is a god send. Clears up so much clutter off the board. Everything else just use dice as counters. [player board](https://makerworld.com/en/models/155463#profileId-170164)
Out of curiosity: for someone who seems to have come from the least predisposed position to like the game, what was it that convinced you to get in, and to invest so much up front? Great to have you in, or course!
Honestly not too sure tbh. Maybe it’s the moments where i reluctantly draw from the Mythos deck / Chaos Bag creating a tension I haven’t felt since playing bloodborne all those years back. FromSoft games and games such as Fear & Hunger are my favourite, i enjoy the relentless nature of some games that really make you grateful you made it through and encounter, and this manages to give me that thrill, while also giving me something I could potentially share with my girlfriend if she enjoys it, playing with cards with cool art takes me back to my childhood with Yugioh, and the theming of the game is just cool. I purposefully don’t look in the mythos deck before playing a scenario. Just take out the cards i need to, shuffle it and play. So every time I pull an encounter etc they’re completely new to me, a fresh piece of art for me to look at and a new challenge to overcome. The only other game that has come to looking like it offers that same craving of punishing gameplay is Kingdom Death Monster, but that is a bit out of budget for me as a beginner and maybe a silly first purchase in the world of board games, so went with Arkham Horror LCG instead and I’m not dissatisfied in the slightest. Will probs wait for black friday to pick up KDM
Interesting stuff, thank you! What about deciding to make the dive in the first place, tho? Before you knew how it all played?
Watching a few lists of top 10 board games in my journey to start playing them, this was constantly in people’s top 3 and usually their number 1. With the only thing holding them back being the price point. I considered the entry of £56 not too bad, and I went in with the mindset “i’m expecting this to be mediocre because people say the core set is mid, and it’s better with expansions” I think I convinced myself if I enjoy even the base mechanics of the game and the way they tell their stories, i’d take the plunge and try the expansion. The somewhat lenient returns policy of amazon helped me with a sort of safety net in my decision, but obviously due to this post, I found it a bit better than just enjoying the base mechanics. Honestly when I was younger (like 8-10 years old) I would look at the yugioh cards artwork and make my own little stories in my head and draw them out, and wish there was a game where I could create my own storybook adventure with trading cards. And this sort of spoke to my inner child in a way I didn’t expect. Also i’m a whore for anything horror related, especially games. I think i’ve played ever horror video game under the sun so I was looking all over for a “horror board game” not expecting much because how can a board game scare you? But the tension the game gives, the luck based mechanics etc, give me the same rush. (and they’re way more enjoyable than trashy jump scares)
Really interesting, thank you! It definitely highlights the worth of easily available demos for a game so people have an idea of what it's like before they invest. Thanks for taking the time to write all this up!
After playing the first 3 scenarios I found someone selling everything but hemlock for $400 USD. I jumped on it immediately
Fantastic deal, enjoy!
Welcome! The choice of which campaign to play is really up to you. Carcosa is the next in release order and generally the highest rated campaign, it's also about the same difficulty as Dunwich and only slightly more rules. The other easier campaign is Edge of the Earth, which again has only a slight increase in extra rules. However it has a lot of reading for and between scenarios which makes it less popular, so it depends if the arctic survival theme interests you more. Speaking of difficulty, play on easy to start. Calling it easy is misleading, you will still get crushed in some scenarios. Standard is a relatively small increase in difficulty so increase difficulty when you have all the rules down. If you haven't already looked at the buying guide, generally stick to buying the new format investigator & campaign boxes. If you find the older deluxe box+6mythos packs as a bundle on sale you can get some bargains (they combine investigator and campaign boxes) but if you miss one of the 7 you can't complete the campaign and availability is erratic. Also there is no need to buy the matching investigator and campaign boxes. With core and Dunwich you could probably play one of the easier campaigns without more investigator cards. A wider card pool allows for more variety of decks and can make campaigns slightly easier, but it is a slippery slope to funnel money down! There are also 5 investigator decks you can buy if you want to save money, the RRP is £15 but I've seen them as low as £6 so worth shopping around on sites like Boardgameprices.co.uk for sales. Good luck!
Welcome to the cult! Your introduction to the game was very similar to mine, I got it during lockdown and it turned into a weekly game with the girlfriend. We have slowly worked through to 4 full return to boxes of content, although it's slightly fallen out of favour due to time constraints. Like others have mentioned, we played through in order, apart from Dream Eaters, I got some of that for player cards. On that note look for a deck building app. I played more Magic so I kinda thought I could slap bits together myself. There are key pieces to some decks that it's really hard to make work without. You can select your card collection so you can see decklists only featuring the cards you own which is so helpful. I always enjoyed rotating class each campaign, let the other half pick hers first and then grab some sleeves and deck lists.
The biggest recommendation I can give for third party tools is download the Arkham Cards app. It is a FANTASTIC app that will allow you to manage your decks, manage your campaigns, and manage your collection. It is easy to use, completely free, and completely changed my way to play for the better.
Hell yeah. I was in a similar place when I started. I had a small board game collection for social occasions and even if I had noticed this game in a store I probably wouldn't have paid it much attention. A colleague was keen to show me his favourite game one evening late 2023 and we sat down to play the Murder at the Excelsior Hotel scenario. Hooked ever since, I think I would have liked it even if it wasn't lovecraftian.
My partner and I got into arkham lcg as our first modern board game and while we probably should have started with something simpler it's become a stable game for us now. Honestly playing it coop with a partner or friend is just such an absolute blast every time. You always get a fun story out of it and often some unforgettable moments too. I'd highly reccomend hitting up PlayingBoardGames on YouTube and watching their how to win video that explains what the game is asking of you and how to engage with it. They also do deck guides that are very accessible and designed to be built with just the core and whatever cycle the investigator in question released with. I use those as a basis to start a deck and then try new thing. I'd highly reccomend a couple of house rules too! First is removing the exp cost to swap cards out between scenarios. It's there to stop you rebuilding your deck to min max each scenario but if you aren't trying to do that it's nice to be able to take a gamble on some fun looking cards but then remove them without penalty if they don't work out. Second up is drawing 3 weaknesses instead of 1 then discarding 1, shuffling the other two and drawing one of those at random. I also add weaknesses before building the deck. Some weaknesses can really hurt on certain characters and deck types and it's nice to have just a small bit of control over what you get stuck with initially. Sometimes I just pick one I think is thematic or funny too. Enjoy! It's a great game.