da | Arkham Horror Sunday

A finish of my weekend wrapup:

Sunday was Games Day. After lunch,

chezmax and

the_infamous_j came over. With

dr_tectonic,

saintpookie, and

kung_fu_monkey, we played "Unspeakable Words", a Lovecraft-inspired game where you try to spell sufficiently angular words (real words) before you go insane. Yup. The best part was the optional rule that if you were one point from insanity, you could play any sequence of letters you liked. I won the game with... darn, I forgot. Maybe I'll tell you the next time I'm nearly insane.

Next up was Arkham Horror, which everyone had played except for d. and I. This was a good ratio of new-to-experienced players, because the game is complicated. Setup took a full 20 minutes, mostly setting up card stacks. We needed a few side-tables along with the dining-room table.

Azethoth, the Great One the size of a planet, was identified as the foe who would awaken and enter our world if we didn't close or seal enough gates before 13 turns elapsed. If we didn't, we'd have no chance to fight Azeroth; he would eat the Earth, game over.

Despite the steep learning curve, I liked the game. Players work together to try and fight the otherworldly horrors visiting the town of Arkham. Gradually, the game adds more Terror and Doom; players gain spells, abilities, items, and clues. It seems well-balanced for six players; apparently it scales well for smaller and larger parties. It is also fairly luck-dependant, and we were pretty much doomed by mid-game.

We only (intentionally) broke one rule, which was to allow

melted_snowball to chose his Investigator, the Professor. By mid-game, the Professor's unexpected strengths at offensive magic came out. He was redubbed Professor Kickass. The Prof had the ability to cast spells that cost others one stamina with no charge. We funneled all of those spells in his direction, so he became quite handy at killing nasty bads.

Another investigator I particularly liked was Monterey Jack, the bull-whip wielding archaeologist, played by

saintpookie. He suffered some awful luck near the start which lost him his sanity as well as his bull-whip. Eventually he became the Deputy Sheriff of Arkham, careening around the board behind the wheel of his Paddy Wagon, crashing it upon re-entering a portal that opened into a private club. Oops.

I was Sister Mary the Nun. Her best moment came when she was exploring the University, and she helped a scientist fix a machine which could close extra-dimensional gates; and she spent her large collection of clue tokens in order to successfully close three of four open gates (unfortunately trapping

dr_tectonic's character and leaving him lost in time and space for a few turns. Oops.)

Anyhow, around 11pm, in turn 9 or so, we were down to one open gate, though it was likely a second would open shortly, since it would be at least a turn before we could close this one. Without any warning, the investigator who was stuck behind it drew an encounter card that automatically forced it closed- winning us the game. Woo!

All in all, a splendid way to spend a day with friends.