Eldritch Horror

Eldritch Horror has been for some time one of my favourite games and possibility my favourite pure co-op game.  It is the successor to Arkham Horror but has been made more streamlined and given a globe hoping adventure theme instead of a single city like Arkham Horror had.  The game play is close but its global theme gives Eldritch Horror more of a Pulp adventure feel.  It is faster than Arkham Horror but still takes some time to play which means I don't get it on the table as much as I'd like.

Game Play

The game does look complex when you first open the box but it is reasonably simple to play once you get the hang of it.

Two Investigators

Each player controls and Investigator who is trying to stop a Great Old One destroying the Earth.  Investigators all have different stats, starting equipment and special abilities which does make the game interesting as you try and balance your team with everyone doing the job they are best suited for whether that is closing portals, fighting monsters, solving mysteries or supporting other characters.

Great Old Ones

Investigators will move around the globe trying to deal with issues that are coming up, like portals to other worlds, monsters and rumours (special side mission style tasks that come up as the game goes on and can have extremely negative effects if they aren't dealt with in time), all while trying to solve the real mysteries of the Great Old One that they need to complete to win the game.  At the same time the Doom counter will be slowly counting down (especially if they aren't dealing with portals or rumours fast enough) and if that reaches 0 the Great Old One awakens and the game gets a lot harder for the investigators to win.  It really is a game of trying to deal with multiple fires at once all without losing track of the current mystery that you need to complete.  Solve 3 mysteries before Doom reaches 0 and they win, fail and the world could end or you may be forced to fight the likes of Cthulhu before you are devoured.

The game is split into 3 phases per round, the Action Phase, The Encounter Phase and The Mythos Phase.

Action Phase
The first part of each turn is the action phase.  This is when each investigator takes it in turns to complete two actions.  These can be moving to another space, preparing for travel (buying a ticket that lets you travel further by train or boat as part of a move action), buying equipment, resting to regain lost health and sanity, trading items with other players or using a special action either from their character card or an item or spell they currently have.  Investigators cannot use the same action more than once per turn so it can make choices quite hard and limit how far you can travel each round.

Encounter Phase

Generic Encounter Card

This is probably the biggest phase of the game.  Each Investigator gets an encounter based on where they are, it could be are generic encounter or one based on the city they are in.  There are also a few special encounters that they can do, research encounters allow investigators to gain clues which can be used as re-rolls or might be needed for certain tasks, other world encounters let investigators try and close portals and expedition encounters give them a chance at gaining extremely rare or powerful gear.   It doesn't matter what type of encounter it is they all work in basically the same way, you draw a card of the right type, read the text, complete any tests that it asks you to make and then gain the rewards or suffer the consequences based on your success or failure.  Some encounters will give you rewards like improving skills, gaining equipment or learning new spells, others will just mean you avoid negative consequences by succeeding.

European Encounter Card

Tests are simple, you just roll the number of dice equal to your current level in the required stat (plus or minus any modifiers) and any 5's or 6's are successes, most test only require 1 success to pass although some encounters my require a series of tests before you complete it (Otherworld and Expedition encounters are the main ones that require multiple tests).

Expedition Encounter Card

The cards for encounters are really good, they all include plenty of flavour text which is mostly very well written and they really add to the story especially as they are set up for the area you are in, you won't get flavour text telling you that you are in an urban library if you are on a sea or wilderness space.

Monster Token

It is also in the encounter phase that you will fight monsters.  These are just test exactly the same as during regular encounters but each success is 1 damage to the monster.  You have to complete two tests, first a willpower test to see if your can keep your mind while witnessing a supernatural creature and second a strength test to actually damage it.  The way monsters hurt you back is based off the same rolls, for both your willpower and strength tests the monster will have a toughness number, if you get fewer successes than that number you take damage equal to the difference to either sanity or health, run out of either and you are defeated.  Defeated investigators are out the game and can be encountered to try and regain some or all of their equipment.  Players draw a new investigator if theirs is defected and continue the game with a fresh (and unupgraded) investigator.

Mythos Phase
The final part of each turn is the Mythos phase.  This is were the game fights back.  You draw a card from a deck and complete whatever it tells you to on the back.  There are standard actions like spawn clues, spawn gates, complete special actions on monsters and condition cards, move the omen track (which will lower doom if you have portals with the matching symbol on the board) and spawn extra monsters.  There will then be some flavour text (again very well written) and an event which gives you some special thing that you need to do.  These events can be anything from all monsters re-gaining all their lost health, investigators being forced to make a choice or giving up items or clues to stop something bad happening.

Easy (frosted sides), medium and hard (tentacles)
Mythos cards

There are levels of difficultly with these cards, easy, medium and hard, and you can adjust the difficulty of the game but simply removing all the easy cards or all the hard cards.  Some of the events on easy cards can actually be beneficial to the investigators although not many of them.

If you run out of cards in the Mythos deck before completing your 3 mysteries (of defeating the Great Old One if they have awoken) then you lose the game.  This is normally how I lose the game when I play so it is important to be acting fast and not get too sidetracked with the other problems that come up as the game goes on.  The advantage is it does put a clock on the game meaning it can't drag on for too long.

My Thoughts
So you probably guessed I like the game.  The game play is simple once your understand it but thematic enough that I enjoy doing it for 2-3 hours which seems to be about the average game length.  It is also hard and can be quite tense, I have never played the game and been confident we would win even when we seem to be doing quite well because it only takes a few bad events or the number of portals to start stacking up and you are suddenly in a really tight spot.  There is plenty of replay value in the main box with 4 different Great Old Ones that change the way the game plays and offer different flavour text on the cards to build the story.  There are also a large number of different investigators to choose from each with their own strengths and weaknesses.

As for negatives, it is a longer game.  There are defiantly games out there that are longer but you do have to set aside a significant amount of time to play Eldritch Horror which means it doesn't hit the table as much as I'd like.  The player count is also an issue, it say 1-8 players but you'd have to be crazy in my experience to try and play with 8 people, the time per player does go up a lot so it will take way too long with that many for my taste.  At the same time too few players can also be difficult, the game does compensate in some ways depending on the number of investigators in the game but because you do have to be dealing with lots of things all over the map at once if you have too few investigates it can be hard to do everything you need to in a turn and there are very few "Jack of all Trades" investigators so you might find you aren't good enough to buy equipment you need or fight monsters if you don't have a range of different investigators on the board.  I find that 4 is the perfect number, it is enough to spread around the board and to have a variety of investigator skills to complete anything that comes up.  If I play solo or with 2 players I normally still play with 4 investigators and either control all 4 myself or each control 2.

I was drawn to this game because I wanted a big thematic game in my collection which this definitely is and because I love the Cthulhu Mythos and H.P. Lovecraft's work.  I have read almost all of his stories and also own the Call of Cthulhu RPG.  It always ranks highly in my board game rating and I regularly see it high on other people lists as well.  For me it is one of the most tense and thematic games I own and even when you win it feels like you were close to losing which really fits with H.P. Lovecraft's storytelling.

Eldritch Horror and it's expansions

There are a number of expansions for the game out but I don't have any.  I am considering getting some of the small box expansions to add to the game but have held off until now because of how hard it was to get to the table.  Now I think I have been through all the Great Old Ones and Encounter cards enough times I need to add to them to keep up replay-ability and adding the small box expansion should do that.  From what I have seem Forsaken Lore is the best starting point because it just adds more to the existing decks and more Great Old Ones without changing the game drastically, I have even seen people recommend buying it straight away and just playing it from the start with it mixed into the base game.  I am staying away from the big box expansions for now only because of table space, I normally play on a large coffee table at my house but the space needed for Eldritch Horror means that is full with just the base game. The big box's add extra boards that I won't be able to fit on my table so I don't wont to buy them, maybe if I get a proper gaming table I will because I'll have the space.