My friends tend to prefer various kinds of boardgames – wargames, politically themed, EUROs, etc. – and I really like being able to experience all of them. There is a special group focused almost entirely on H. P. Lovecraft prose and titles connected to this. Believe it or not, I am very eager to jump to any position with this theme. My oldest and favorite one is still Arkham Horror 2nd edition. And just recently Krzysztof and Maciej – two of the most ardent Lovecraft fans in my group – proposed to come back to that great classic (publish date 2005). What could I cay? I of course agreed!

The Game

Arkham Horror was my first cooperative game. It is themed around H.P Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Players choose from 16 Investigators and take to the streets of Arkham. Before the game, one of the eight Ancient Ones is chosen and it’s up to the Investigators to prevent it from breaking into our world. Sounds like a fun, doesn’t it?

During the course of the game, players will upgrade their characters by acquiring skills, allies, items, weapons, and spells. It’s up to the players to clean out the streets of Arkham by fighting many different types of monsters, but their main goal is to close portals to other dimensions that are opening up around town. With too many portals open the Ancient One awakens and the players only have one last chance to save the world by defeating the monster in the combat.

Thanks to the many characters to be chose, multiply monster and Ancients types, the game is very re-playable and gives a lot of fun and satisfaction!

The session report

I would like now to present short session report. In the end we prevailed but the path to it was very long and perilous! As always, a photo-session report as picture is worth a thousand word!

Set-up – we are playing with 3 adventurers – Sister Mary, Mandy Thompson and Bob Jenkins.
Set-up – our arch-enemy will be Yog-Soggoth; he makes closing all of the gates more difficult plus the Cultists gets Magical Resistance
Set-up – all of the tokens nicely sorted, ready to be used during the game
Action! Mendy Thompson is maybe not the strongest of characters, but his skill to re-roll the critical checks is very strong. What is more – it can be used by any adventurer. Sp she was not afraid she was not afraid to face such monsters like Zombie or Ghost.
Sister Mary – unlike what you might think of her – were couple of times put to the arrest! I am not sure how Maciej managed to do it but this is the fact. At the same time, Mandy Thompson (Krzysztof) was relentlessly fighting the monsters.
In the end, Sister Mary proved to be pretty proficient in closing inter-dimensional gates – Krzysztof managed to get rid of 3 of them using the Old Gods Sign.
The final situation – it took us pretty long, with many battles with monsters but by sealing 6 of gates with Old Gods Signs we managed to permanently prevent the Ancient One from entering the Arkham.
Last look at sister Mary (Maciej) was our expert at closing the gates.
Last look at the Mandy Thompson (Maciej) – she was pretty proficient in getting rid of monsters.
Last look at the Bob Jenkins – my adventurer was pretty versatile; I closed some gates, I killed some monsters, I collected some clue and even become member of secret association.

Summary

That was a great com-back to one of my favorite classics. The result was of secondary importance as the joy from the game was great. Yes, I know there was a third edition later and also the card games. But the sentiment stays and whenever there are willing fellow boardgamers to play Arkham Horror 2nd edition I am all for it!