Find Arkham Horror a terrifying, impenetrable behemoth? Fancy getting some Lovecraftian action without devoting an entire day to sitting around an immense board? Why not try a bit of Elder Sign - dice rolls and doom coming together in perfect gaming harmony!
I will happily be the first to admit that playing Arkham Horror isn't going to be an experience everyone enjoys. It requires a reasonable investment of time; at least three hours from set-up to completion, more if you fancy throwing in expansions. You need a hefty amount of real estate;my living room table easily seats eight but we'll often struggle to make space for everything with more than four players. The rulebook is... well, it's pretty rotten. And yet, I truly love Arkham. It's a great game but (there's always a but) it can be hard getting it to the table for the reasons previously noted.
I find the best thing to do is to ease unwilling people into it through surreptitious means. I'm not saying trick them outright – more like give them a little taste of the kind of stuff they can expect from a game where you're looking to save the world from hideous creatures from another place. Show them that the story is partly where the fun lies, then tell them that they can get a good feeling for the whole thing in an hour spent with Arkham's little sibling: Elder Sign.
I like to refer to it as AH: Arcade Edition. All of the story and horrible bad luck and awfulness and entertainment and brilliance – now with added dice rolls and playable on a table in the pub! What more could you ask for? Set in the same Lovecraftian universe as Arkham Horror, Elder Sign manages to capture the spirit of the bigger game but also brings much novelty to the table. And it's well worth a look...
Working co-operatively, you and your fellow players play a range of characters exploring the local museum after reports of curious happenings. These are more than simple rumours, though – the museum is actually becoming a portal that will usher in a Great Old One to bring terror to the world (or eat it whole, that also happens). Cthulhu and his fellow evil things will rise if your group fail to close the portal in time, and this is far from an easy task.
Cards representing different quests are laid out, and each turn sees an Investigator (that's you) attempt to complete them by rolling certain symbols on special custom dice. Many of these tasks require combinations to be rolled – a couple of skulls, a scroll and some magnifying glasses,for example – but if you don't manage to hit an element you need on that first go, things get tricky. Well, trickier. Failure to get anything with your first roll means that you'll have to discard a die, meaning the likelihood of getting what you need gets harder and harder.
Thankfully, a couple of things are on your side. The elements, as I said, can be complete one-by-one. You also get to 'lock' one die of your choice if you think it's going to be helpful later – for example, should you need two Terror icons but only roll one, that die can be held for use in subsequent attempts. When that second Terror comes up, grab the locked one, trade the pair in and you're a step closer to finishing the task.
Eventually, one of two things will happen. Hopefully you'll be successful, get everything you need and be handsomely rewarded with items that can be traded into use the two uber-dice, clue tokens that let you reroll or extra spaces to lock more dice. The trick to winning is to use these item cards liberally – there's no point in holding on to them. Doing that will invariably lead to your downfall, for screwing up your quests means Lots Of Bad Stuff.
Said Bad Stuff includes seeing your character taking physical or mental damage – should your Health or Sanity hit zero, you're out (but you do get to grab anew Investigator to continue the fight). There's also a very good chance that random monsters will appear on certain quests which will make them even harder, like you need that. Lastly, and most important to keep an eye on, are Doom Tokens. Each of the Great Old Ones has a track that will be filled up with these tokens. Should the track get completed, it's time for an all-out final battle – generally this'll be heavily weighted in favour of the bad guy, so it's way better to get things sorted before everything hits the fan. There's also a mechanism involving a clock that, after every four turns, triggers a new world effect which could be great (a health boost or, if you're lucky, "nothing happens") or wretched (more monsters, loss of sanity, that kind of thing).
Being dice driven, there's an awful lot of luck to deal with in Elder Sign but you will get plenty of opportunity to mitigate it, so the game never really feels unfair. Admittedly, pulling a victory out will always be a challenge, especially against some of the tougher Big Bads but it's always an enjoyable romp. There's something very entertaining about witnessing one of your fellow players utterly ruining their rolls,and it's even funnier when you're the one throwing the poorest of rolls. It also serves as a great introduction to the whole Arkham Universe and – even if you have a terrible adventure and manage to destroy the world through your ineptitude – it's a fantastic way to convince others to try the more hardcore game while still being an excellent game in itself.
Have you tried Elder Sign yourself? Perhaps you've played the tabletop game or given the iOS / Android app a shot! Tell us your thoughts below!
I will happily be the first to admit that playing Arkham Horror isn't going to be an experience everyone enjoys. It requires a reasonable investment of time; at least three hours from set-up to completion, more if you fancy throwing in expansions. You need a hefty amount of real estate;my living room table easily seats eight but we'll often struggle to make space for everything with more than four players. The rulebook is... well, it's pretty rotten. And yet, I truly love Arkham. It's a great game but (there's always a but) it can be hard getting it to the table for the reasons previously noted.
I find the best thing to do is to ease unwilling people into it through surreptitious means. I'm not saying trick them outright – more like give them a little taste of the kind of stuff they can expect from a game where you're looking to save the world from hideous creatures from another place. Show them that the story is partly where the fun lies, then tell them that they can get a good feeling for the whole thing in an hour spent with Arkham's little sibling: Elder Sign.
I like to refer to it as AH: Arcade Edition. All of the story and horrible bad luck and awfulness and entertainment and brilliance – now with added dice rolls and playable on a table in the pub! What more could you ask for? Set in the same Lovecraftian universe as Arkham Horror, Elder Sign manages to capture the spirit of the bigger game but also brings much novelty to the table. And it's well worth a look...
Working co-operatively, you and your fellow players play a range of characters exploring the local museum after reports of curious happenings. These are more than simple rumours, though – the museum is actually becoming a portal that will usher in a Great Old One to bring terror to the world (or eat it whole, that also happens). Cthulhu and his fellow evil things will rise if your group fail to close the portal in time, and this is far from an easy task.
Cards representing different quests are laid out, and each turn sees an Investigator (that's you) attempt to complete them by rolling certain symbols on special custom dice. Many of these tasks require combinations to be rolled – a couple of skulls, a scroll and some magnifying glasses,for example – but if you don't manage to hit an element you need on that first go, things get tricky. Well, trickier. Failure to get anything with your first roll means that you'll have to discard a die, meaning the likelihood of getting what you need gets harder and harder.
Thankfully, a couple of things are on your side. The elements, as I said, can be complete one-by-one. You also get to 'lock' one die of your choice if you think it's going to be helpful later – for example, should you need two Terror icons but only roll one, that die can be held for use in subsequent attempts. When that second Terror comes up, grab the locked one, trade the pair in and you're a step closer to finishing the task.
Eventually, one of two things will happen. Hopefully you'll be successful, get everything you need and be handsomely rewarded with items that can be traded into use the two uber-dice, clue tokens that let you reroll or extra spaces to lock more dice. The trick to winning is to use these item cards liberally – there's no point in holding on to them. Doing that will invariably lead to your downfall, for screwing up your quests means Lots Of Bad Stuff.
Said Bad Stuff includes seeing your character taking physical or mental damage – should your Health or Sanity hit zero, you're out (but you do get to grab anew Investigator to continue the fight). There's also a very good chance that random monsters will appear on certain quests which will make them even harder, like you need that. Lastly, and most important to keep an eye on, are Doom Tokens. Each of the Great Old Ones has a track that will be filled up with these tokens. Should the track get completed, it's time for an all-out final battle – generally this'll be heavily weighted in favour of the bad guy, so it's way better to get things sorted before everything hits the fan. There's also a mechanism involving a clock that, after every four turns, triggers a new world effect which could be great (a health boost or, if you're lucky, "nothing happens") or wretched (more monsters, loss of sanity, that kind of thing).
Being dice driven, there's an awful lot of luck to deal with in Elder Sign but you will get plenty of opportunity to mitigate it, so the game never really feels unfair. Admittedly, pulling a victory out will always be a challenge, especially against some of the tougher Big Bads but it's always an enjoyable romp. There's something very entertaining about witnessing one of your fellow players utterly ruining their rolls,and it's even funnier when you're the one throwing the poorest of rolls. It also serves as a great introduction to the whole Arkham Universe and – even if you have a terrible adventure and manage to destroy the world through your ineptitude – it's a fantastic way to convince others to try the more hardcore game while still being an excellent game in itself.
Have you tried Elder Sign yourself? Perhaps you've played the tabletop game or given the iOS / Android app a shot! Tell us your thoughts below!
