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Review of Signs Of Carcossa
Blurb from the publisher: 'Madness spreads across the globe!
The tides of madness rise across the world. Poets and artists are driven mad by the light of the moon, and a mysterious play spreads insanity to its audiences. The Unspeakable One is stirring, and his cursed city tears through the dimensional walls. Lost Carcossa has come to Earth!
This expansion features Hastur, a dreadful new Ancient One. It also includes a wealth of new encounters, Mythos cards, and Prelude cards. Four more investigators join the game, along with Artifacts, Spells, and Unique Assets to aid them in their struggle.'
What you get: Your USD 24,95 or equivalent will buy you Signs of Carcossa, the third small expansion for the wildly popular Eldritch Horror game line. It is reminded that the basic game, one of the most prominent cooperative games as well as one of the most popular games in the world (top-50 on BGG by the writing of this review), accommodates 1 to 8 players in around two hours.
In addition to the 4-page English rulebook that can be found in the publisher's website free of charge, the game also contains the following: one Ancient One sheet, 4 Investigator sheets, 84 Encounter cards, 8 Mystery cards, 24 Mythos cards, 4 Prelude cards, 4 Artifact cards, 16 Asset cards, 28 Condition cards, 12 Spell cards, 16 Unique Asset cards, 4 Investigator tokens with plastic stands, 8 Monster tokens, and 20 Impairment tokens.
Gameplay: A Mythos-themed game without Hastur is like a ship without sails. Prepare for a lot of sanity-losing mechanics when the Investigators confront the King in Yellow; even open gates on the board will lead to a loss of sanity, while after Hastur awakens, each blighted Investigator loses all his sanity. You'd better be in pristine condition if you want to defeat this guy.
The expansion includes new Prelude cards, first introduced by Mountains of Madness. These can be used randomly, chosen as desired, or not used at all. For those who don't own that expansion, these cards alter the game from the setup already, before the start of the game. They might make the game slightly more difficult while making the Investigators more powerful, simplify game effects etc.
The Impairment mechanic was first introduced in Under the Pyramids. It is the opposite of improvement; a skill's value drops, at a maximum of -2 from its original value.
Unique Assets were first introduced in Mountains of Madness. They are assets that cannot be acquired through an action like normal assets. They can only be obtained through Mythos cards, location encounters, Adventures or through other specific means.
The game introduces Mystery, a new mechanic that can lead to different effects. Clues, Gates, Monsters or even Health might need to be placed on the card.
Finally the game includes an optional rule leading to Insane Game Difficulty. It's rather easy to achieve that. Just build the Mythos deck with hard Mythos cards. Depending on the chosen Ancient one, you might need additional expansions to pull this through.
The rulebook ends with a 7-question FAQ.
The strong points: I had an idea of how a Hastur-themed game was going to be like, and I wasn't disappointed. In a nutshell, it is a race against time. Thanks to his 11 Doom you will face the big baddie fast, very fast. Pair this with the fact that unless the Lead Investigator gains Blight during a Reckoning the whole group will lose sanity, you understand that even though you need to solve two Mysteries only to defeat him, it is not going to be an easy task. Blight is great fun when it comes to theme, yet a major hindrance when it comes to gameplay. Namely, your Allies might leave you, just because. Even worse, on Reckonings they will act randomly, with effects that you are very unlikely to enjoy. That blends greatly with the madness theme that Hastur invokes.
Depending on which other expansions you already own, some of these rules might appear new. In reality none of them is; they have already been introduced in previous expansions. If you don't own them however, you are going to get a nice little intro. I particularly enjoy Preludes. It customizes the game and gives each play a unique, deeply personalized feel.
I enjoy the four new Investigators. They all appear to have straightforward powers, yet they are clearly distinguishable from the ones in previous expansions. The feel more useful than others, even though I can't prove this through my statistically insignificant number of playtests. For me the most interesting, both fluff and crunch-wise, is Dexter Drake, a magician (more accurately: an illusionist). Think of that: a bona fide illusionist (or not so) in the Mythos. In addition to moving Monsters to Gates, when he gains a spell, he effectively gains an additional one. It's magic!
As much as it makes life harder, I enjoyed the Impairment mechanic. It's good to know that characters don't necessarily improve, but they also go down. One has to be careful however; seriously impaired characters are a liability.
Even if one doesn't wish to use Hastur as the main adversary, the game can greatly profit from the rest of the material. Blight is a nice paradigm shift. Allies are now very fragile; styles of play which involved amassing a number of them has now found its bane. The other cards also add a lot of flavour to the game, while at the same time increasing variety and replayability. The more cards I see as options in each location, the better.
I don't have much to say about the art or the component quality. It is of a very high quality and on par with the basic game. That's what Fantasy Flight Games was aiming for, and they nailed it. Having Hastur, a very well known Mythos entity behind the overall concept also helped.
The weak points: As with every other expansion, mechanics-wise, the inclusion of many more and different cards dilutes the initial deck composition. The game is likely to get longer, seeing how more encounters lead to additional complications, additional randomness and missed turns. I already covered that in the strong points: I do enjoy a harder challenge, as long as it is well-structured and it is not a result of randomness or poor engineering. Here, however, something went wrong. Talents, the new Condition card type that is introduced here, are only obtainable through cards from this expansion only. If you enjoy them, and you add them in a game with multiple expansions, the chances of Investigators getting them are very small. I would have appreciated some instructions about which expansions to use together and which to omit, in order for card draws to remain statistically relevant.
I wasn't exaggerating when I wrote that this expansion is packed to the rim. In fact, it is so packed that after you open the box you literally have to throw the insert away to make everything fit in again, unless you decide to store the counters in another box. If you plan to sleeve the cards, there is simply no way the box can hold its contents. You will be obliged to move something to another box. That's rather insane (pun intended). I am definitely not advocating for less stuff in the small boxes, yet if they barely fit, wouldn't it make sense to produce slightly bigger ones?
The more expansions for Eldritch Horror one has, the more obvious it is that the material cannot fit in the basic box alone. I am now using two boxes for the game and six out of the eight expansions. If you are space-starved, this is becoming an issue. I start wondering whether it makes commercial sense for Fantasy Flight Games to produce a box as big as the one in Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition without any contents, but just with the correct arrangements and inserts in order to contain this game's spiraling demands.
Conclusion: I am a big fan of games with internal timers; the opponent in Signs Of Carcossa scratches that itch. Seeing how it expands on material first seen in other expansions, this is a nice, rounded expansion that takes care of the theme as much as the crunch. Some of the rules might or might not be new to you, yet that's the appeal. You won't be driven insane by them, I guarantee it.
For more info on Signs of Carcossa and the whole Eldritch Horror game line, visit Fantasy Flight Games at https://www.fantasyflightgames.com.
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