Arkham Horror: Dunwich Horror Expansion [おもちゃ＆ホビー]

I should say that my wife and I chose basic Arkham as our "gateway" for boardgames based largely on the theme and the promise of coop gameplay. We were extremely pleased with the results, despite what many people cite as serious flaws of the game...its length, the rules complexity, the length of time it took to set up and put away, etc. If you are one of those people, Dunwich will likely not address any of your concerns. It takes a long, complicated game and gives you even more options, capable of being added incrementally or all at once.

What it does do, even implemented piecemeal, is significantly alter the game balance, in our opinion for the better. We tried it in "touring mode" first where you put all of the Dunwich cards on top of their decks to maximize the experience, and while we did ultimately get crushed in that session, it was easily one of the top plays we've had of the game. Since then it's become a fully integrated part of our routine, because we find what most of what it adds indispensable now and after one or two plays, really not much more to keep track of if you could handle the original.

Its strengths: new encounters, new characters, new mythos, new old ones, new monsters, new items and allies. I look up on those as a real improvement to the game that I can unequivocally recommend to someone that already likes the base set. The game does get harder, but the experience overall is a much higher quality one, if that makes sense. I never got to the point where I was seeing a lot of repetition with the core set, but this virtually guarantees that won't be an issue for a very long time.

Its less well rounded additions: the additional board, the Horror itself, the vortex mechanic. I like these but I can't say they work as smoothly as I'd like, at least within the context of our mostly two player games. I haven't dropped them from gameplay as we've continued, but I could see myself phasing out the board and those two parts in the future, especially when the upcoming Kingsport Horror is released. I will still be pleased to have the rest of its additions and consider them well worth the price of admission.

Dunwich Horror is an expansion to Fantasy Flight's popular/infamous Arkham Horror boardgame.

Having played many games with this expansion, I can say that it provides many necessary improvements to the base game where it had originally been lacking.

1. The Injuries/Madnesses - Instead of losing items and being dangerously set back when you run out of Stamina or Sanity, you'll draw an Injury (for no Stamina left) or a Madness (for no Sanity) card which lets you continue on without losing half your items but still wind up at the Asylum or Hospital. The cost is that you incur interesting penalties for each injury. The Injury/Madness decks are made of small cards, with several repeats (getting a duplicate card means you are devoured!).

2. Gate Burst - Perhaps the most intriguing addition, and a necessary one, the Gate Burst mechanic causes sealed gates to be torn open. When you draw a Mythos card with the location with an orange background, that means a gate burst occurs at that location. If the location is sealed, it becomes unsealed. This adds quite a bit of tension to the game and keeps the game from slowing down when the major locations are finally sealed (Witchhouse, etc.). The slow-down of the base game is definitely fixed with this mechanic and is quite noticeable as me and my friends are hardcore co-operative horror boardgame players (I'll admit that it's a niche hobby). THIS IS WHY I BOUGHT THE DUNWICH BOARD.

3. The Dunwich Horror - Like the devious Terror Track and Doom Track, each expansion offers a sort of countdown to unspeakable horror. For the Dunwich board, it is the presence of the Dunwich Horror - the world-bound spawn of Yog-sothoth. As monsters move around the Dunwich board, they may fall into vortex spaces where they are eaten up and the Dunwich Horror track increases by one. At three, the Dunwich Horror appears as the game's toughest monster yet! When fighting it, it's abilites vary depending on a small deck of large cards that accompany it. The reward is the ability to search out and take any one card from the item/ally/spell decks. I've yet to see him make an appearance, but it's been close and he'll raise the Doom Track as he moves.

4. More items, more investigators, more Great Old Ones with even stranger powers (I love Shud'mell and Glaaki). You get more of everything that was in the base game.

5. Adds more Arkham location encounter cards (I believe that Dunwich adds the most out of all the other expansions), so this makes it great if it's the only one you want to get for a while.

And of course, there are more locations. The size of the Dunwich board is about one third of the Arkham one, but loaded with neighbors and unstable locations. My favorite thing is the look on people's faces when they see how monstrous the board becomes with more and more expansions.

The major problem of the Dunwich board is that it suffers from card dilution. As the Mythos deck gets bigger from expansions, you'll draw less Dunwich cards. This can be resolved by separating the Dunwich mythos cards out and rolling a die each turn to see whether you draw from the Dunwich Mythos card deck or the Arkham one. Dunwich probably suffers the most from this sort of card dilution.

Ultimately, the pitfalls are greatly exceeded by the advantages. It addresses many problems that made the base game lag in its final stages. I've heard that adding more boards does not affect the play time that much, and may even make it shorter as there are more and more threats.

If you're looking for your first Arkham Horror expansion, get this one! Especially at the low prices you'll find around here (I'm a bargain hunter when it comes to games).

Arkham Horror is perhaps the second most complicated board game in history, so when I heard that this expansion would make the board BIGGER by adding a whole additional town, plus adding two other worlds, new rules and cards AND the Dunwich Horror itself, I was intimidated. I mean, how many rules, cards and tokens can one person keep track of? After playing it a few times, I got the hang of it and loved it. Dunwich is a village that is only accessible through Arkham's rail station, and it has its own locations and collection of unusual characters. There's a new twist up there that makes you want to kill the monsters up there in that if any monster moves into a "vortex" (that's new), you get closer and closer to the Dunwich Horror showing up, which isn't as powerful as an Ancient One but close enough to wipe you out. A must-own for Arkham Horror fans (and if the new board is too much for you, you can just take all of the new cards and use them in the main board anyway).