“Relaxing” Board Game Time They Said

I always loved Lovecraftian themed games. The fact that they combine multiple game styles into one always gets me, they are like the "realistic" adventure game, where sure you "can" fight, but the question is -should- you? It just feels more natural than all those "horror" games or "adventure" games that you do not even have the option, more natural.

Naturally when my friend George invited me to play Arkham Horror for a "chill board game session" I was all up for that!

Arkham Horror is a card based board game in which each player has a character and a deck of cards representing his abilities, items and whatever, you know how it is. The goal is for the players to co-operate and accomplish a set amount of goals before some Cthulhu type awfulness ensues. Sounds easy enough, I thought, game was mostly focused on co-operation and proper managment of what the players had on their hands with just enough luck based mechanics to make things interesting, so knowing the group of people around me, I figured we had this easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Turned out it was going to be difficult difficult lemon difficult.

After an hour of explaining all the rules, and trust me, it takes a LOT of time explaining all those rules, we finally begun the game.

We had plenty of time so we decided to start the campaign from the beginning, run over the first starter mission so me and a friend could get the hang of the game.

From the get go, the game grabbed my full attention. Nice artwork, gripping story telling, we were on our way for some Lovecraftian nonsense.

First few rounds, things were easy, we had the occasional monster, but between our investigator getting them clues left and right, my magician librarian getting equipped and helping out wherever needed and our bruisers beating little rats and ghouls left and right, things were looking good.

The final boss fight was a bit of a drag and had us scrambling a bit, but overall it was a pleasant experience, stressful but not -too- stressful. You could finish it if you did not fuck up in a major fashion.

Then we moved into the second mission.

Second mission started off with the difficulty raised as if it was lifted up by a geyser propelled by a volcano explosion.

From the get go we started to pull -all- the worst things from the deck of shit-evil-omens. Which BY THE WAY, we were forced to draw from every time we were going to end our turn. Because yeah, the game hates you and you deserve to suffer.

To make things worse, we had a time limit in which we had to discover clues about -who- the cultists are, -where- they are and subdue them to get more info about the head cultist before midnight, where all bad things would happen and it would be better if we had regrouped by then

Four players against an entire town, with sanity, health, monsters, cultists, clues and bad omens to fight against, stress was starting to make me physically sick

Back in the real world, hours were passing, and the board only started to look worse for wear. We were failing checks, had only found about four out of the eight or twelve or so cultists and we were approaching the final part of the enemy agenda. We had to pick up the pace or lose. With nervous jokes starting to become the norm, and everyone hiding how much they were sweating with anxiety, we pressed on, and decided to split up to be more aggressive in our search.

Much to our surprise, it actually worked. With our hitters running around taking on the monsters while our more magically and investigation focused people were scouring the area for clues, the tables started to finally turn. Except they did not. They did not turn. At all

Swiftly wiping that smug hopeful grin off our faces in the span of a single quarter of a round, our heavy hitter failed a mental challenge and had his sanity almost demolished. To make things worse, he was the final player of the round, and after him the monsters would go on to cause damage, or move. With a final stroke to his sanity, our heavy hitting detective was unconscious and George was out of commission.

"We can still win this right?"

Obviously turning against George who not only had the audacity to die in the previous round, but he was the one drawing the cards, so it was -his- fault we were know knee-deep in murderous bad things, half insane while bleeding from our hair (I don't know how).

With ghouls on our backs and crazy knife wielding cultists on our front, we decided the most prudent course of action was to flee, regroup and trigger the "not completely lose but did not win either" condition which can promptly be summed up as "flee"

But apparently we were not even good enough for that, as we got tangled up in monster fights -while- the clock was still counting against us, until we eventually froze over the deck, staring at the total amount of omens we had.

"So, what happens now?"

I asked, knowing all too well what having more bad omens than the required for the game to end meant

"Oh we just lost"

Tasos said nonchalantly

"As in?"

"Our characters just died and we failed, we kind of messed up"

Said George, completely chill about the entire thing

"How much does this board game cost"

I said, downing water like my life depended on it

Arkham Horror is a very thematic card-based co-operative board game in which the players fight an increasingly hard enemy deck trying to reach the end of the campaign.

With the only drawback meaning that as a card game, multiple purchases of the board game is required so that more than 2 people can play at once, the game offers a ton of immersion, fun hours of gameplay, while the choices and characters you can choose from give it enough replayability to be well worth the price.

If you are like me and get way into the board game know that this game is going to probably give you some form of anxiety attack, as the stakes only get higher as time goes by, and there is no clear 100% victory, just a "lose less" option