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Review of Eldritch Horror
Blurb from the publisher: 'The end of the world draws near!
The world stands on the brink of catastrophe. The year is 1926, and an elder being of unfathomable power threatens to awaken from its long slumber, bringing death and madness in its wake. Strange cults and unspeakable monsters wreak havoc on every continent as the fabric of reality tears itself apart, opening gates to bizarre other worlds. Only a few, brave investigators understand what is truly happening. These tenacious souls come from every walk of life to pit their skills and weapons against the threat of the Ancient One. It falls to them to explore the most remote corners of the globe, to fight the nightmarish creatures that lurk in the shadows, and to find the answers to the ancient mysteries of this Eldritch Horror!
Eldritch Horror is a cooperative adventure game for one to eight players, inspired by the best-selling Arkham Horror board game.'
What you get: Your USD 59,95 or equivalent will buy you the Lovecraftian-themed, cooperative Eldritch Horror, the basic game of the Eldritch Horror game line. Since its publication in 2013 it is one of the most popular games in the world (top-50 on BGG by the writing of this review), and accommodates 1 to 8 players in around two hours. It is heavily supported, with four small and small big expansions up to now, the latest being Masks of Nyarlathotep. We will keep examining them thoroughly until we exhaust them all.
In addition to the 16-page English rulebook and the 16-page Reference Guide that can be found on the publisher's website free of charge, the game also contains the following: one Game Board, 12 Investigator Sheets with matching tokens and plastic stands, 4 Ancient One sheets, 122 Encounter cards (8 America, 8 Europe, 8 Asia/Australia, 12 General, 24 Other World, 18 Expedition, 12 Special, 32 Research), 51 Mythos cards (21 yellow, 18 green, 12 blue), 16 Mystery cards, 14 Artifact cards, 40 Asset cards, 36 Condition cards, 20 Spell cards, 43 Monster tokens, one Lead Investigator token, 20 Travel Ticket tokens, (8 Train, 12 Ship), 30 Improvement tokens, 78 Health and Sanity tokens, one Mystery token, 36 Clue tokens, 20 Eldritch tokens, 4 Rumor tokens, one Omen token, one Doom token, 9 Gate tokens, 4 Reference cards, 4 six-sided dice and one Active Expedition token.
In the interest of full disclosure, I started playing Eldritch Horror one year after it came out. I have played it, and most of its numerous expansions, more times than I can count. Additionally, reviewing a product that is well-established and five years already in the market gives a certain hindsight that does not exist when one reviews a product that just came out.
Gameplay: Azathoth, Yog-Shothoth, Shub-Niggurath or Chtulhu himself threaten the world, and it falls upon the Investigators to save it. Each Ancient One wins in a different way; as an example, should Azathoth awaken, he wins immediately, something that is not the case with the other three Ancient ones. The Investigators can win by solving three Mysteries before an Ancient One awakens, or, after he does, to perform the additional actions that are required of them. If they are all eliminated from the game however, or if the Mythos deck gets exhausted, they lose by default.
Each Investigator has five stats (Lore, Influence, Observation, Strength, and Will) ranging from 1 to 4. The number denotes the amount of dice the Investigator will roll when a test is asked for that stat. To succeed, an Investigator needs to roll a 5 or a 6. He (or she) also has Health as well as Sanity, both ranging from 4 to 8. Each has a special action he can undertake. As an example, the Politician can allow another investigator to perform an extra action there and then, while the Shaman can trade clues with any Investigator irrespective of where he is.
The game is played in rounds on a board depicting 15 different locations, some of them cities like Arkham or Shanghai, and others like the Pyramids of the Amazon. Certain cities have a reputation of improving one stat or the other, e.g. San Francisco is likely to improve your Observation, while in Tokyo a number of monsters can be found for the Investigators to defeat.
There are three phases in the game.
In the Action Phase, and starting from the Lead Investigator (a status that may change at the end of each round), each Investigator performs two actions. There are six basic actions: travelling (moving around the board, either in adjacent spaces or even farther through the use of travel tickets), Resting (recuperating Health and Sanity), Trading (assets, artifacts, clues, spells and travel tickets with someone else on the same space), Prepare for Travel (earning a travel ticket, as long as the Investigator is on a city), Acquire Assets (through an Influence test, and Component Actions (actions that are found on either cards or the Investigator cards).
In the Encounter Phase, and again starting from the Lead Investigator, each Investigator resolves one Encounter. Some of them are combat encounters; these are resolved through a Will and a Strength test. The Investigator might lose sanity and health irrespective of whether it defeats the monster or not. Location encounters also exist. A player can choose whether to resolve an encounter on the space he is at (e.g. from the America deck), or a General one. Examples include learning Spells or getting conditions in order to improve a skill, gaining clues and spawning clues in different cities etc. Additional encounters include Clue tokens (which lead to Research encounter cards), Gate tokens (leading to Other World encounter cards), the Active Expedition (with Expedition encounter cards), Rumor tokens and Defeated Investigator tokens, which under circumstances might allow a player to gain some of the valuables of an Investigator who either died or went mad. An Investigator can also be devoured, a fate slightly worse than the previous ones, since everything he had amassed up to then (assets, artifacts, spells etc) is discarded. Just because an Investigator is incapacitated however does not mean that the player is out of the game (at least not before the Ancient One is awakened). He may simply pick a new Investigator in the next round, and take it from there.
Phase three is the Mythos phase, and belongs almost entirely to the opposition. The Omen token is moved in a perpetual movement that may or may not advance Doom; if Doom reaches zero and the players haven't won yet, the Ancient One awakens. Reckoning effects of Monsters, possessions, conditions etc are resolved, usually through skill tests. Gates get spawned on the map, while monsters might also appear depending on the Omen token. Gates are tears in the fabric of reality, the anomalies where monsters come from. They are the main way of advancing Doom. Thus, Investigators need to close them in order to stall the otherworldly monstrosity from appearing on Earth. Clues and rumors are spawned before placing Eldritch tokens being placed on the Mythos card and before its effect is resolved.
Optional rules include adjusting the game's difficulty through the manipulation of the Mythos deck, as well as scoring. It doesn't only matter if you won or lost. How you did it is important.
The strong points: Eldritch Horror is a big puzzle of a game waiting for you to solve it. You are trying to keep the encroaching darkness at bay, while at the same time pumping up your Investigator, improving him with Spells and Assets to be used when the time is right. Working as a team is imperative in the game's environment of controlled randomness, and especially once you get to know the decks. Having the right person at the right place matters; idem for using your Investigator's abilities to the biggest possible extent. The game has an internal timer under the guise of the Doom track. It is vastly easier to defeat it before that track reaches zero, than try afterwards... if the Ancient One you have chosen allows you the luxury in the first place. There are many things I can commend on ruleswise, like the choice between actions, the smooth Asset obtainability system without the use of money (even though one needs to get lucky) or the sheer diversity of the Investigators. The rules might look daunting at first, when once you get the hang of them, they all fit like a spell.
The solo element is particularly welcome, especially for those who enjoy the multiplayer version. By definition a solo game will be much faster, with zero downtime. When it comes to understanding and deconstructing the game, I totally recommend it. In fact, play your first few games solo. Teaching it to others will soon be a piece of cake.
The fluff and the storytelling element is extremely strong. The fight against the Mythos is no longer confined to a deserted location away from humanity. That might be the end of the world as we know it. Your group might or might not insist on the narratives after a few games, the point is however that there are concrete stories being weaved through the actions of the Investigators. I will put it differently. In the otherwise excellent Pandemic line, irrespective of the game you prefer, you are of course likely to remember last minute victories or defeats, great or devastating plays etc. You are however very unlikely to remember them through the eyes of your character, be it the Generalist, the Transport Specialist or what have you. In Eldritch Horror that's exactly what happens. It is far easier to identify with the Investigator and get engaged in an almost RPG style of way. The fact that even in death or madness the belongings of the eliminated character can be retrieved is rather telling. Even though it is not a campaign game, playing Eldritch Horror means that you will invest in your Investigator; nobody likes it when he has to change him mid-game, and especially because he had managed to buff him up with all sorts of goodies.
The quality of the components is excellent. From the drawings on the cards to the minis, everything has an evocative, pulp 1920s feel. That would be very different to the classic Lovecraftian nihilistic feel of an uncaring universe that doesn't even register your existence. Then again, if you have seen the box's cover where Mark Harrigan, once of the Investigators, uses a tommy gun against a mess of tentacles, you have realised that already.
Seeing how we are five years after the game's initial release, there isn't much point in comparing it to its big brother and major influence, Arkham Horror. Compared as basic game to basic game, AH is more complex, probably coming out as a bit dated as well. After all, Eldritch Horror was advertised as the slicker, streamlined version when it came out. To a certain extent, that is true. Taking all the expansions into account however for both lines, saying that EH is 'easier' is kind of a stretch. They are approximately of the same difficulty, with the present game coming out as the more modern design, and for obvious reasons. It is also shorter, even though it is by no means short. Theme-wise, Eldritch Horror is obviously more pulp, with the Investigators roaming the world like there's no tomorrow (ahem). That contrasts heavily with the claustrophobic feel of Arkham Horror and its plays which center on the horrors of New England. To my eyes that makes Eldritch Horror come out more as a cooperative game than Arkham Horror, which feels almost like a proto-roleplaying game. This, however, is just me.
I don't really need to talk about how well-supported this line is. It is so well-supported that the last supplement to come out, Masks of Nyarlathotep, was announced in one go along with Chaosium's announcement for the reimagining of the campaign of the same name for its Call of Cthulhu game line. Talk about clever marketing!
The weak points: Diverse and engaging as the basic box of Eldritch Horror is, its decks are admittedly low on cards. Idem for the Ancient Ones; four is simply not that high a number, seeing how you can be come thoroughly accustomed to their decks. After only a handful of plays, you will know all the regional decks by heart, something that, for those who have a very good memory, will alter significantly the character of the game since you might be able to anticipate what is going to happen. The solution is rather simple: purchase both the basic game as well as Forsaken Lore, the first expansion that came out, in one go. It is pretty obvious to anyone that its components should have been included in the basic game in the first place. This, of course, does not cast the game in a positive light; it should have been a click more diverse from the very beginning, and not force the buyer to get an expansion from the get go. From then on, and depending on whether you are a regular player, you might decide whether you want to invest further. In hindsight, and after all these expansions, many of the rules should have been there, like the Preludes, or the possibility for stats to also go down and not only up. It falls upon you to choose.
It is evident by now that Eldritch Horror has both card draws and dice rolls; the luck element is rather strong here. I feel it fits the game's motif and do not mind it. Those however who enjoy perfect information games and games without luck, are clearly looking at the wrong game line.
I don't find Eldritch Horror a particularly hard game to understand, play and teach. I am however probably a minority on this. Expect to make a fair number of mistakes on your first few plays, and quite a bit of page-flipping. I wholeheartedly recommend downloading the always updated FAQ from the publisher's page. More likely than not, you will need it.
The game is undeniably fiddly, and with a fair amount of time devoted to setup. There's absolutely no mitigation against that. If you like the game enough you will find a way to optimize its component distribution in preparation for the next game.
The game demands quite a big table, as well as a lot of your time. There is no way it will last two hours in your first few games. Expect to hit times like this once you are extremely comfortable both with the game's mechanics as well as its decks, something that will facilitate your decision making as a group.
When it comes to coop games, there is always the alpha gamer issue to be addressed. The same sort of warning can be also addressed to those who dislike coop games. Depending on the group, the experience can mutate into decision-making by committee irrespective of whose turn it is. As much as luck alleviates the problem of someone deciding for everybody, players will always tilt towards consensual decisions. The odd disagreement and different courses of action might cause unneeded friction. You know your gaming group better than I do.
Conclusion: Eldritch Horror is a great game. Thematically involved while mechanically solid, it promises a great experience both as a game as well as a way to create a memorable story. That is however as long as one is willing to invest in it, and by that I mean both time as well as money. The first expansion is a sine qua non, in order for certain aspects of the basic game not to become repetitive. That having been said, I don't know of anybody who just bought the basic game; be it because you want additional mechanics or even more theme and dedicated maps, you are very likely to ask for more.
For more info on Eldritch Horror visit Fantasy Flight Games at https://www.fantasyflightgames.com.
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