Eldritch Horror - First Impressions

Lily: Yesterday was my birthday, and for my birthday I got a new game! Eldritch Horror, the globe-trotting adventure in the Arkham Files universe!

Lily: The map was a lot bigger than I expected it to be! The physical board was twice the size I expected. The amount of spaces on the board made it a hassle to get around, but that's a good thing here - it made the adventure feel more globe-trotting, especially since you can't take two actions of the same kind in a turn. If you want to move, you need to spend extra effort to get travel tickets.

Lily: I hope there are more allies or investigators that can move through the wilderness easier, because taking two turns to get in and out of expedition sites seemed like so much trouble that it wasn't worth it.

Henry: Yeah, we didn't end up going to the Himalayas - our first expedition - at all, so we never saw what those cards look like. There was just too much else to do on the board.

Lily: I was very impressed by the production value on this game. The art, organization, and overall nature of the game was high quality.

Henry: The stories on each of the cards were really fun. I like this narrative adventure type of game.

Lily: This game was very pickup and go in ways other games from the same game line are not. That makes it quick to pick up for experienced gamers, and beginner friendly for newbies.

Lily: I wish the beginner Ancient One (big bad), Azathoth, had more synergy within the game - maybe a recommendation of certain investigators (player characters) to play with him or something along those lines. It felt like there was not as much specific Azathoth lore involved in the cards we drew, but that might just be how our encounters panned out.

Lily: I played Diana Stanley, and literally zero Cultists showed up! Her ability depends on Cultists being present, and a significant amount of Azathoth's flavor seems to be in his Cultists. I don't know if we were doing something wrong or what, but we got lots of big monsters but no Cultists!

Henry: I played Lola Hayes. I thought Diana was going to be our fighter, but I bought up a lot of guns early and ended up with the stats to make me the more efficient monster-slayer. Lola was very flexible and I think a solid pick for two player to cover whatever we needed.

Lily: I got an artifact early on through a random event - the Gate Box. Boy, was that thing nice! I would have played completely differently if I hadn't got that. It was so handy that it almost seems like the game is a huge struggle if you don't get it.

Henry: Yeah, the Gate Box kind of just became Diana's ability for the whole game since there weren't any cultists. She got lucky and pulled it on turn two.

Lily: Clues were really hard to come by for us. We had so many things to spend them on! If we didn't get Clues from the Gate Box, I don't think we could have won. 

Henry: To win the game, you have to solve three mystery cards. They're more like quests than mysteries - objectives rather than puzzles. The first mystery we had to solve was closing a gate on a specific turn and spending a clue - there's a little tracker called the Omen Tracker that moved on certain turns, and shows different stars that represent Omens. We had to close a gate that had a symbol that matched the specific Omen. Every time we got close to being at the right gate at the right time, the Omen would move! Or we'd be at the right place at the right time and lose our clue to a Mythos card!

Lily: That first mystery was the hardest one for us by far. We went through half the game without solving it. Then each other mystery we solved in a single turn. Lola had a critical mass of items by then, and and I'd managed to gather a lot of clues (finally!) with the gate box.

Henry: There were a few rules we messed up early. For one, we didn't realize that when you spawn a gate, it automatically spawns a monster, until somewhere around turn four. Second, we didn't realize that if you're supposed to spawn a monster and it can't spawn, you have to spawn a gate instead. Honestly, that rule probably would have been more helpful for us - more gates would have meant the first mystery was easier to solve.

Lily: Definitely things to catch for next time.

Henry: Overall, this was quite a fun game and I think it will make our game rotation. I'm interested in getting expansions to help the replayability - I hear that the Forsaken Lore expansion is a must because it adds more mysteries to the core Ancient Ones and more encounter cards, so you don't repeat them as often. 

Lily: One issue I had is that, if you aren't in a city space, you often don't have a use for your second action - there were a few turns where I was waiting in the wilderness for an encounter card, and had to just rest and then waste my second action. The Strange Remnants Expansion apparently fixes this by adding a new "Focus" action, that gives you a Focus token that can be spent for rerolls later, which would have been nice because my dice luck is awful.

Lily: Final thoughts. This game was a delightful macro take on the Lovecraftian campaigns we like to play and has a lot of replay-ability built in. Feels a bit like Pandemic meets Arkham Horror, and it made for a wonderful birthday!