Product Description

Of all the cities found in H.P. Lovecrafts vision of Massachusetts, perhaps none is quite so deadly as the small fishing village of Innsmouth. Decrepit and dying, Innsmouth is being consumed from within by an ancient pact once made to save the town. The investigators will find every hand turned against them as they explore its rotting docks and fetid beaches. In the end, perhaps the only way to save Innsmouth is by destroying it along with the terrible creatures that haunt its waters near Devil Reef. Innsmouth Horror introduces several new game concepts to the Arkham Horror board game, including Personal Stories unique to each investigator as well as the Innsmouth Look. The town of Innsmouth is hostile to the investigators, and they may well find themselves thrown in jail and fed to a Shoggoth while they search the town for evidence to call in the Feds. However, leaving Innsmouth to fester is a bad idea, since the Deep Ones will gather and rise, bringing with them the Ancient One. Innsmouth Horror also adds 16 new investigators, eight new Ancient Ones, two new Heralds, Epic Battle cards for the new Ancient Ones, over 30 new monster markers, plenty of new encounters, and an expansion board featuring the town of Innsmouth. Over all, this expansion adds over 300 new cards to the base game. Innsmouth Horror requires a copy of Arkham Horror to play. Arkham Horror is a cooperative game for 18 players, ages 13 and up, that can be played in 24 hours.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6162 in Toys & Games
• Brand: Fantasy Flight
• Model: VA57
• Published on: 2009-06-10
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 11.50" h x 11.50" w x 2.75" l, 3.40 pounds

Features

• Expansion to Arkham Horror
• For 1-8 players, Ages 13 and up
• By Richard Launius and Kevin Wilson

Customer Reviews

Tough, but fun . . . . .
My son and I have purchased all the Arkham Horror expansions. This is the latest one. It is a big expansion, with lots of materials and an additional game board.

A person needs the base Arkham Horror set to go with this expansion, in order to play it.

We set up the game with the base set and this new expansion, but put away materials from other, earlier expansions. This gives the new expansion more of an opportunity to be fully appreciated.

Generally, this may be the toughest expansion yet. Every game has players battling a Great Old One, as is always the case. The new Great Old Ones that come with this set are very challenging. New features include a private challenge for each investigator, which adds interest. There are also about 275 new cards to be added to the original game deck. The price for this expansion is a bit stiff, but Amazon prices it with a major discount compared to other sources. And you do get "lots more stuff."

Anyway, we have been having great fun with the new Innsmouth Expansion. We only win about half the time -- that adds to the fun.

The art work and creative imagination of the game designers have paid off in a terrific game.

Note: The website associated with this game encourages that players create "house rules." In other words, players can get together and agree to modify the official game rules in various ways. So if the game seems too difficult, it is easy to make a few adjustments, thereby ensuring success at least part of the time.

Those who own the original Arkham Horror game will probably get great fun and entertainment out of the new set.

For any interested, the new Innsmouth Horror expansion is based on a novelette by H.P. Lovecraft, entitled "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." Some of you may enjoy checking this out of the library and reading it. It is included in most collections of Lovecraft's short fiction. This reading will enrich the game experience for you.

As I write this, Halloween is only a week away. What a great fun project for Halloween! ! !

Another great expansion for a great game!
Finally, your Arkham Horror play can tackle the horrors of Innsmouth! It was well worth the wait.

Firstly, naturally the board, pieces, and card art are well-done and evocative. The investigators draw from the usual Lovecraftian tropes, and the Ancient Ones added (Ghatanathoa, and Cthugha, among others) are suitably scary to tackle in-game.

One interesting new mechanic is that now all Investigators (from AH and all the expansions) can have personal story cards that affect the game experience. I can't wait to try this out!

Note that his is a 'city' expansion and so includes a board you set up next to the AH board (like Dunwich and Kingsport), and so can make for a more drawn out game. A new rule is included that actually takes into account this extra board space, and changes the limits the game places on the game for the number of players.

Overall this is another worthy addition to Arkham Horror, and is well worth the investment!

Don't Make the Same Mistake Twice Like I Did!
I had high hopes for the basic game, Arkam Horror. I tried to play it with a friend who loves Cthulu stuff and is a big time gamer. At first we thought it just wasn't that much fun for two, but playing two characters each didn't improve the game. Even though both of us enjoy complex games, the randomness and repetitiveness of the actions, complicated by the vague rules and numerous negative cards, killed our interest.

When I saw that they had released an expansion set, supposedly one with a better rule system, I bought a copy to surprise my friend with for his birthday. I sent him home with both games and we agreed he would study the rules and bring it back a week later so we could play with another long time gamer.

When we met to play the game, the news was not good. My friend had found the rules to be no better and the cards even worse than the first edition. I had to agree. Determined to have some fun, we struggled through the long setup process (around 30 minutes to separate everything out which should give you an idea of how difficult play is!!) and began to play. Immediately the same issues surfaced.

The characters were just as weak as in the previous games. My character spent all of her time running and could never use her powers because her initial spells all required other spells to work. Another character got very strong and we kept feeding him spells and other items so he could defend us, but even his character was killed because there were too many cards that brought multiple monsters to the gates. I have to add here that this form of working together is NOT fun. There isn't enough strategy to handing over cards and clue markers to make the process enjoyable. For instance my character had to give all of the clue markers she'd picked up over the last 5 turns to remove a bad card from the table that would have slowly drained everyone's stamina and ended the game. While the action was noble on her part, it just added to the drudgery because there was no feeling of accomplishment. The next card in play could do the same thing or something worse.

Many of the cards are also way too vague, hard to understand or complicated. All three of us have masters degrees and yet we had to read many of the cards two and three times to come to a consensus of what they meant. This was partially because the cards were either too unrelated to each other or too interrelated. There was also the problem that some cards controlled movement on the whole board and remembering all the limitations that could be on play was a headache and not a challenge. The cards also dealt with random events rather than creating any flow of action toward a common goal. All the places from Cthulu are there, but also all the monsters. This is part of the problem.

Rather than concentrating more on campaigns like the role playing games, it does not contain any real storyline. You go from place to place with no real motive other than to kill monsters and close gates. This simply isn't entertaining enough to make the learning curve worth your trouble. Where is the pay off for the learning curve and complexity? We kept saying..."Where is the fun?"

We ended the game because everyone was dying, as usual. Only one character even made it to the small expansion board that featured Innsmouth (BTW it is about 1/4 the size of the original board and you need a long table to set the board up...Add all the cards in and you need a HUGE table to play).

If it weren't for the beer and pizza I provided, I doubt we would have played as long as we did. This game needs a completely reworked expansion set with a more integrated card system that favors strategic play and fewer, less fragmented story lines. The constant flow of monsters doesn't engage the players enough and it quickly turns into a dice rolling competition complicated by an onerous rule system. I hope they do something to streamline play and post it to their website. I've got an investment of over $90 in this game and would really like to see it become playable...I may end up writing my own rules. The game's creator would do well to introduce some short campaign sets that ditch most of the rules and cards and allow people to have a little fun. We all agreed that playing it was like spending a very bad day at work. This was not how we had hoped to spend a Sunday afternoon.