Arkham Horror: The Card Game

I came to this from Eldritch Horror, which I still rate highly, and this is everything I liked about that game done faster, tighter, and with real character progression carrying across an entire campaign instead of resetting every session. You build a deck for your investigator, and that deck actually changes as the story goes, cards get burned, trauma sticks, a choice you made three scenarios back can come back around. Close to the perfect system for generative storytelling at a table, and the complexity it asks of you is earned rather than padding.

The teaching curve is real though, I won’t undersell it. The core box’s first three scenarios do a genuinely good job ramping a new player in, better than most campaign games manage, but there’s real vocabulary and bookkeeping to get through before someone’s making informed decisions instead of just following along. I’ve had new players fully lost by scenario two if I didn’t slow down and walk the icon language through with them first.

Two things keep this from a perfect experience for me. First, solo play gets swingy in a way that multiplayer smooths out, a rough investigator draw can tank an entire scenario before you’ve had a real choice to make, and I’ve heard other solo players say the same thing almost word for word. Second, and this is the bigger one, it’s a real money pit. Between core sets, campaign expansions, and mythos packs, keeping up with new content is a genuine financial commitment, one person I know put it as the ten out of ten experience with the money pit as the only thing keeping it from a perfect score, and that’s about where I land too.

Still my most-played game by a wide margin. I just budget for it the way I’d budget for any other expensive hobby now.