I have listed this game as "affiliated", either though I never saw it before I received a publication copy, because my company earns some royalties off of Arkham Horror sales. Caveat reader.

The Components

Curse of the Dark Pharoah comes with 90 full-sized Ancient One cards and 76 half-sized investigator cards. Most of the cards go into existing decks, and they should slide right in, but if you ever want to separate them, each also has a small Egyptian icon on the front.

Ancient One Cards: These include 45 location cards (5 per original Arkham neighborhood), 27 gate cards, and 18 Mythos cards. These all look pretty much like the originals with two exceptions: a few of the gate cards have a new two-colored background, which allows them to be used in either colored Other World; and a few of the Mythos cards have a new double-doom-token icon. More on those rules later, but the iconography itself is fine.

Investigator Cards: This includes 21 new spells and 7 new allies. There's also a new deck of 22 exhibit cards. They're a set of largely Egyptian themed cards with a clear Egyptian icon on the back. There are also 18 new "barred from neighborhood" cards, which are the results of certain new location events; the complete rules are included on each card. Finally there are 4 benefits and 4 detriments. These are various good and bad effects for your characters and they're helpfully colored like blessings (blue) and curses (red) to keep them straight.

Overall the new cards in Curse of the Dark Pharoah have all the advantages of the originals. They're fair quality, they have beautiful artwork (thanks to the CCG), and they have good utility. However, a set of cards isn't as exciting as the whole, gorgeous original Arkham Horror set. I've thus given it a slightly lower score than the original, but still an above-average one: "4" out of "5" for Style.

The Gameplay

Using the New Cards: The new cards can be used in one of two ways: visiting or permanent exhibit.

Visiting Exhibit. When you purchase this new set, you'll probably want to play it this way the first time. You use only the new location cards and the new gate cards, and you swap back and forth between the new and old mythos cards. In addition you keep the new and original spell decks seperate, and let players choose which one to select from.

The resulting game can be a little more difficult, but it gives you a more cohesive storyline, and also provides immediate exposure to lots of the new cards from this expansion.

Permanent Exhibit. This is what you'll want to do once you've played Curse once or twice. You just mix everything together, except the unique decks for the exhibits, the barred from neighborhoods, and the benefits and detriments are kept separate and used as appropriate.

The New Cards: Here's what all the new cards do in the game:

Arkham Locations. These largely add variety to the location draws, though some of the new cards are also give you exhibit cards. It looks like the new location cards match the icons on the board for which locations tend to give which benefits, which made me very happy.

Gate Cards. Again, these mainly provide variety. The big change are the three dual-colored cards which each match two different colors. Each one forces you to fight a Great Old One(!) if you're in the specific location: Ithaqua in Leng; Cthulhu in R'lyeh; or Shub-Niggurath in Yuggoth. Fortunately you only have to fight him at 1 point per doom token, but unfortunately you're devoured if you fail.

I was terrified of these at first, and by not shuffling bad luck we had all three come up during our game, but not once was anyone in the right location to get chomped. They can be kind of fatal (but do give you the benefit of an auto-sealed gate if you win), but especially in the "permanent exhibit" scenario, I expect they don't come up that often.

Mythos Cards. The biggest change in these cards is that three of them don't open a gate, but instead cause two doom tokens to appear. It's actually well balanced. We had all three of these come up too (though I'd swear that deck was shuffled right) and at first we thought we were doomed because our Ancient One got to almost the top of his track ... but conversely we were able to close all the gates and win by that criteria because of the breathing room that it gave us.

Exhibit Items. These are essentially a new type of unique item, but with Egyptian theming.

Spells. These have some new variety, with some lighter Egyptian theming, but I didn't notice any trends beyond that. My favorite of the new spells was "Premonition" which allows you to move a skill slider by up to 2 stops. Suddenly need to roll a Luck roll? No problem, you knew that already thanks to your Premonition spell.

Allies. The new allies in this set are notable because they affect specific rolls rather than the base skills. For example Erich Weiss gives a bonus to Evade (rather than Sneak) and to Spell (rather than Lore). I have concerns that this subtlety will be lost on some players, but it's already there so I suppose you might as well take advantage of it. Because of their narrower scope these allies tend to give +2 rather than +1.

Barred From Neighborhoods. These cards are the result of some of the new encounters, and as you'd expect they keep you from entering the locations of a neighborhood when you're have the card (gate locations being the exception). You keep barred cards until the terror level goes up.

We didn't have anyone barred from a neighborhood despite using the "travelling exhibit" rules, so I doubt they'll come up that much, but it's still a nice bit of color.

Benefits & Detriments. These are additional advantages and disadvantages that your investigator can accrue. They each give you special powers (or disadvantages), mostly used in the upkeep phase, and they're each lost when a specific thing happens.

An example benefit is "Psychic" which allows you to let one investigator loan a Skill to another, but which you must discard if you're lost in time & space.

An example detriment is "Harried" which keeps your focus down at 1 unless you can make Will(-1) checks, and which is lost when your harriers finally catch up with you (e.g., you're jumped by 2 or more monsters).

Relationships to Other Games

Curse of the Dark Pharoah is the first expansion for the Arkham Horror board game. There is a second one in the works, which will be larger, called Dunwich Horror.

The Game Design

Curse of the Dark Pharoah is a supplement that's nice to have, but not needed. The main thing it does is add new variety and new color to Arkham Horror, but Arkham Horror is already a game so full of variety and color that you're really only going to notice the new elements if you play the game quite a bit.

However, the new color and variety is all nice, and any regular player of Arkham Horror is going to enjoy it quite a bit. You don't just get new cards, but also some new results which can really change up your gameplay (particularly the neighborhood barring and the double-doom results). We also had the terror track jump up a couple of points due to various events, and since I've played some games where the terror track doesn't move at all, that was a nice change of play.

FFG did a good job of presenting all of this without really adding to the complexity of the game, which is a plus.

On the whole I've given Curse of the Dark Pharoah an average rating, "3" out of "5" for Substance, with the additional comment that you'll probably want a copy nonetheless if you play Arkham Horror with any regularity.

Conclusion

Curse of the Dark Pharoah is an expansion for Arkham Horror that adds a bunch of new cards which add variety and color to the game. There's nothing spectacularly new here, but any regular player of the game will probably enjoy the newness nonetheless.