As with other Arkham Horror reviews, I'll offer the caveat that my company has some financial interest in the publication of these new games, but I've had nothing to do with the actual development of these supplements.

The Components

Dunwich Horror comes with a slew of new materials, including: 1 game board; 8 new investigators (with sheets, markers, and stands), 4 new ancient ones; 152 new half-sized investigator cards (including new injury, madness, and "condition" cards, plus a more items, spells, skills, allies, and special cards); 180 new full-sized ancient one cards (including new Dunwich location cards and Dunwich Horror cards, plus yet more Arkham location cards, Mythos cards, and gate cards); 28 new monsters; and some additional cardboard bits (including Dunwich Horror tokens, rubble markers, and a few new gate markers).

Generally the components are all up to the same standards as the original game. The cards are sturdy and the cardboard is thick and linen-textured. There also continues to be great art used throughout the game. Some of this is probably thanks to art from the Call of Cthulhu CCG, but the Arkham Horror game continues to overall feature good graphic design.

Here's a few specific notes on the new components:

The cards all feature a special "Dunwich Horror" icon on the front, so that you can pull them out if you want. I can't imagine ever digging through all the decks to do so, but it's possible.

Mostly the cards supplement existing decks. I love the fact that there's now somewhere in excess of 15 cards for each Arkham locations, which means that you can no longer dig for a specific event; contrariwise care seems to have been taken to keep new location cards in the same mold as the old ones so that the icons on the board remain meaningful. Sometimes an event has also been duplicated if it's particularly important (such as the ability to get a Silver Twilight Lodge membership). For the rest of the decks, it's just nice to have that much more variety, as it makes every game that much more different.

On the downside I don't like the fact that each new expansion has introduced yet more different piles of cards. At a minimum, you have three new decks--injury, madness, and Dunwich Horror--plus three new types of "special" cards. This game already takes up a ton of space, and that just adds to it.

The map is the only particularly different new component. It's a two-panel map showing Dunwich as a set of there neighborhoods and nine locations. There are also two new Other Worlds (Lost Carcosa and Another Time) to the side. You move in between the towns via railroad lines, which is clearly setup to allow for additional towns in the future.

The rulebook conveniently includes not just the new Dunwich rules, but also the errata and FAQs for the game. Even nicer, the 7 cards which were errataed in Arkham Horror have been entirely replaced, which I'm really happy for, because those were the errata that I always forgot about.

Other than that, the components are pretty much exactly what you'd expect from having seen the previous expansion and main game, and don't require much comment.

For $39.95, or just $10 less than the main game, Dunwich Horror feels a tad bit sparse, though I'm actually grateful to have the second, large box to fit in the Dark Pharoah and any other small expansions that might come out. Having expansions be overpriced compared to the main game isn't really that surprising in any case; it's how the economics of game publication work. Beyond that everything remains entirely beautiful and high quality. I've thus given Dunwich Horror a "4" out of "5" for Style--very good.

The Gameplay

In general Dunwich Horror expands the Arkham Horror board game through new variability: there are new spells, skills, allies, location events, etc. which are all much like those in the original game, yet original.

The following are the more notable new additions to the game:

Dunwich: The village of Dunwich is introduced via a new board which has 3 neighborhoods and 9 locations. You reach Dunwich from the Train Station in Arkham, by spending $1 and one movement point.

The locations in Dunwich are overall interesting and worthwhile. The most interesting are Harney Jones' Shack which lets you gain 1 Sanity or 1 Stamina and the Dunwich Village which lets you pay $4 for a random Unique or Common item.

The biggest change in Dunwich has to do with monsters. The Arkham monster limit doesn't apply here. Instead there are special "vortex" spaces. When a monster enters a vortex then the Dunwich Horror track goes up by 1 and the Terror Track goes up by 1. (The monster also disappears. Chomp. Chomp. Mmmmm.)

The Dunwich Horror. When the Dunwich Horror track reaches 3, the Dunwich Horror appears on Sentinel Hill. It's a bad, bad nasty. Worst of all, whenever it moves there's a 50% chance the Doom Track increases. It's also really hard to kill. If you try to, you draw a special card from the Dunwich Horror deck which describes its current status. The cards all display 5 Stamina and a -3 double-insanity stat. The combat stat varies. In addition a lot of the horror cards have immunities or resistances, and some do special damage.

In short, you don't want the Horror to appear, and thus should keep monsters out of the vortices in Dunwich.

New Other Worlds. The two new Other Worlds near Dunwich, Another Time and Lost Carcosa, are pretty similar to old ones, but add some nice new color. I particularly like the Another Time descriptions which are (of course) scattered throughout history.

Injury and Madness: This is probably the second biggest addition to the game. When you're reduced to 0 Sanity you can now take a Madness card instead of losing clues and items and if you're reduced to 0 Stamina you can take an Injury card instead. It's optional in either case. Injury and madness have bad, permanent effects on your investigator which are all nice color, and if you get two of the same, you're devoured.

Tasks and Missions: Some Common Items are now Tasks and some Unique Items are now Missions. In each case you must visit a list of locations, in order, ending your turn in each. For Missions you must also sacrifice something at each locations (monster trophies, allies, etc). If you complete a Task you get a small reward and if you complete a Mission you get a big reward.

All the Rest: There are some new additions for various other game systems.

Mythos Card. Some Mythos Cards now include "gate bursts" which blow the seal off a gate. On the plus side, the Doom Track doesn't go up.

Monsters. Some monsters now have "stalker" movement, which means they leap upon adjacent investigators, even in unstable locations. There are also a few additional monsters that you don't put into the cup, including the Dunwich Horror, one new Mask, and some monsters related to the new Ancient Ones.

Special Cards. Condition cards are new cards that give a global bonus based on the event at a location. Rail Passes let you ride between towns for free. Sheldon Gang membership cards let you loot and pillage in the streets. I suspect these don't come up very often. In my game of Dunwich Horror, one player had an opportunity to become a member of the Sheldon Gang, and we never saw the rest mentioned.

Ancient Ones. The 4 new Ancient Ones all add nice new aspects to the game:

• Glaaki: An ancient one that's deadly when played with Dunwich Horror. He creates "Servants of Glaaki" (who cause players to lose equipment and are also monsters on the street) whenever the Terror Level goes up or an ally is lost for any other reason, and then if you fight Glaaki he wins if the Terror Level hits 10. (Meanwhile the Dunwich board increases the Terror Level every time a monster hits a vortex. All said this made the Terror Level important for the first time ever in any Arkham Horror game that I've played.)
• Shudde M'ell: Slowly closes down locations by turning them to rubble and makes Chthonians even more dangerous. And, if all the rubble tokens are used or discarded in a final fight with Shudde M'ell, he wins.
• Tsathogua: Takes away the special effects of most buildings (which I don't particularly like because it makes the game less interesting) and eats players if they can't discard monster and gate trophies.
• Abhoth: Adds Children of Abhoth to the board, and increases doom and terror levels if they're already all out. In the final battle, investigators must discard clues, monsters, gates, and/or items to avoid being devoured.

Relations to Other Games

The Dunwich Horror Expansion is a supplement to FFG's second edition Arkham Horror game. There is one other expansion to the game, Curse of the Dark Pharoah, which is a much smaller, cards-only expansion.

The Game Design

To start off with, Dunwich Horror offers up a bunch of new. This is all good, and I'm generally thrilled to see it. New items, spells, skills, allies, ancient ones, and particular location and gate events add a lot of variability to the game, and that will make continued plays and replays that much more fun.

The Dunwich part of the expansion is, in and of itself, well-done. It's nice having a totally different way to look at monsters. You might choose to ignore Dunwich, and just let the Terror Track slowly crank up, hoping that things don't get bad enough for the Dunwich Horror to appear. Or, alternatively you might have to send someone up to Dunwich to stomp monsters. Our Horror never came out, but it nonetheless remained a focus in the game.

The injury & madness cards are also a great addition because they add a new tactical question to the game: is it worse to lose clues and items or to take a possibly grave injury. I think we only had one injury card come out during the game, but nonetheless it was a question every time someone got thumped.

In general, besides the aforementioned variability, these other elements add either strategy or tactics to the game, and that's another real plus.

Finally, I think that Dunwich Horror does a good job of placing focus on game elements that weren't previously as important. Both the Terror Track and monsters can become more important with this expansion, and that's a nice change to the big, big focus always being on gates.

On the downside, I have qualms with this sort of expansion. Dunwich Horror adds complexity to the game, could potentially increase the length a bit (because you have to kill more monsters and maybe the Dunwich Horror and might have to reseal gates too), and could potentially add difficulty (our Glaaki + Dunwich Horror game was definitely more difficult then other games of Arkham Horror I've played, but then some difference from one ancient one to another is expected; my group didn't agree on whether having to deal with the vortices in Dunwich made the game flat out harder or not).

For this one expansion, that increased difficulty and length wasn't a problem, but if you put together another expansion or two in this same manner, things are going to start to get unmanageable. I would have preferred it if Dunwich had its own, distinct map, and thus you could play in Arkham or Dunwich, rather than continuing to stack new systems on top of each other. But we'll see where the Arkham Horror series goes from here.

Overall Dunwich Horror does a good job of supporting the original game, and also adds enough unique new and interesting systems--and new ways of looking at old ones--that it nicely complements the original Arkham Horror game. As such I've given it a "4" out of "5" for Substance--not as good as the original, but above average.

Conclusion

Dunwich Horror is a colorful expansion for Arkham Horror that adds a lot of new and interesting stuff, some new strategy, and also some new complexity. It changes things up much more than the previous Dark Pharaoh expansion, and is thus well recommended for anyone getting a lot of use out of the original game.