Eldritch Horror: First Impression
Last night I got to break out my copy of Eldritch Horror for the first time. Our regular game master was unavailable but our gaming group still wanted to meet. Cookiemonger and I had actually intended to play EH Sunday evening, but I couldn’t wade through the rulebook quickly enough then.
We got through setup quickly enough, and that included punching out all the little tokens. FFG has streamlined character setup — oh, if I sound like I’m treating this as the fourth game in the Arkham Horror series, it’s because I am.
There wasn’t too much confusion that I can recall — but I do remember appreciating that all common/unique/ally cards seemed to be combined into a single deck. Spells are separate, but I think that’s okay.
There’s an “artifact” deck that takes over for unique items, but that’s okay. Objects like the Necronomicon are more difficult to obtain now.
I had already figure out the “deck building” portion of setting up the Mythos deck for the Ancient One — looking back now, I don’t remember how far we got through it. I want to say about halfway by the end — we lost the game without realizing it, for missing a rule about advancing the doom track.
I think I like the “omen” mechanic, though it will likely take some getting used to before I figure it out — it cycles through comet-constellation-eclipse-constellation before repeating, and closing the corresponding gates prevents the Ancient One from awakening while the PCs struggle to solve AO-specific “mysteries.”
We played Azathoth, and the first mystery we got was hard. We were supposed to spend Clue tokens while closing gates in accordance with the current Omen, and we ran into problems simply holding on to Clues, let alone getting the proper gates — and that doesn’t include closing them.
By the time we “retroactively lost,” we had nearly completed one of three mysteries.
Overall, I’m liking the game so far. I hope to play again soon.
My girlfriend and I tried to figure out one of those games once, but after 20 or so minutes gave up and decided we’d need someone who’d actually played it before to learn. The new game doesn’t have anything like the hag-witches with their boobs hanging out, does it? My girlfriend is (understandably) grumbly about that sort of thing. (Given what she’d seen in the games and film adaptations, it took me reading a few short stories aloud to convince her that Lovecraft wasn’t chock full of graphic deviant sex. “No, baby, just antiquated racism.”)
I’ll have to look again. I don’t remember any of the fishnet witch sideboob, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. ;)
I think it was the original Arkham Horror game; the hag-witch minis all had the tops of their rag-dresses ripped with both breasts showing.
Eldritch Horror is definitely easier to approach than Arkham Horror – and it plays in a reasonable time as well. I don’t feel it’s as rich an experience, but OTOH I prefer playing Arkham solo, and Eldritch isn’t that much fun that way.