Arkham Horror LCG Session Report: The Witching Hour (The Circle Undone Part 1)

By Chris Renshaw

Disclaimer: If you haven't heard about Arkham Horror: The Card Game, you might have trouble with this post. Also, potential spoilers ahead. 

Last Time...

Last time, we started off a new campaign “The Circle Undone” by playing through the prologue. We played some “investigators” provided by the scenario until they all eventually met their untimely deaths. However, we were able to leave behind a significant amount of clues. Also, thanks to everyone for correcting me on the proper use of “Haunted”.

This time, we (err 3 of us at least) decided to mix up our characters and play some different character classes:

Myself: Calvin Baker
Cory: Rex Murphy
Jimmy: Mark Harrigan
Mike: Tony Morgan

Honestly, given Calvin’s abilities, I was really nervous if I could pull off playing him effectively. For him to be of any use, you really have to be on the verge of dying, but have access to other ways to dump damage and horror.

The Saga Begins

Oh Arkham, you do such a good job of making things so ominous from the beginning. How, you might say? Well, it could be the intro text, which has your character run into a fortune teller who tells you your future is not looking so great. Or it could be the fact that you are playing Arkham Horror, so you know what you signed up for. Or it could be the fact that we are still seeing Agendas like this:

AHHHH! There’s nothing like having this font to already put you “on edge”. Once you have read through the intro text, you find the game beginning by suddenly finding yourself in the middle of a forest for no apparent reason. Also, you are by yourself - not “you” as in the group of investigators, “you” as in each individual investigator. The Witching Hour throws the cooperation of Arkham for a loop as each player finds themselves in a separate part of the forest, isolated from the other players and unable to help them.

The way the Act card uses the placements of locations to isolate the investigators is really good for making everyone feel “lost”. Luckily, we had a bunch of things in our favor: I had a location which caused every enemy to automatically spawn at my location. This combined with having a decent weapon in my starting hand meant I was in a better position to deal with those threats. Secondly, as there are 5 locations, I had two of them on my side of the board, so if things got too hairy, I could get away to another location. Plus, my second location was really helpful to the rest of the group. For the first part of the game, I spent a lot of time at this location, as it meant I could help out other investigators by throwing cards down the well to them:

Stuck in the middle with you

Once we got to the later portions of the scenario, the way that the locations were connected did make for some confusion when we tried to get to each other. “Okay so I need to jump to this location to get in front of you, then move over to this location, then be able to go to this other place to help.” These are the types of conversations we had in trying to help each other out. At this point, monsters start pouring into the woods as we are trying to get enough clues to advance the act cards.

Eventually, you start encountering actual witches (go figure, this is Arkham after all). Depending on how you progressed the story, you either prevented them from performing a ritual or allowed them to do so. Also, there’s nothing more intimidating for a “final boss” of a scenario than someone with health of four times the number of investigators!!!

Suffice to say, we didn’t end up killing her, we just advanced through the Act deck to finish out the scenario. Luckily, it seems that this Anette lady isn’t interested in us, and convinces the other witches to stand down. Seems she is just as confused as we are as to how we ended up in these woods. They vanish, and the woods open up and allow us to escape. However, I did end up dying in the process, which sucked in the moment, but for Calvin, starting off the game with 1 horror or damage is actually a bit helpful, so in the long run it will help me out in future scenarios.

As I flip to the beginning of the next scenario, I see that we are going to end up back at the Twilight Estate. Greeeaaaaaaatttt. Totally looking forward to experiencing that again.

What did you think of this Battle Report? What kind of monster/enemy do you hate to encounter in Arkham? Let me know in the comments, or you can hit me up on twitter or facebook.