Product Description

Dunwich Horror adds 8 Investigators, 4 Ancient Ones, 15 Item cards, 25 Unique Item cards, 21 Spell cards, 11 Skill cards, 5 Ally cards, 4 Condition cards, 28 Monster tokens, 36 Mythos cards and 32 Gate cards to the base set. It also adds new location cards, for a total of 14 cards at each location instead of 7. Dunwich Horror also adds many new mechanics. Players can take a train to Dunwich (a new board that is placed on the end of the Arkham board), which adds 9 new locations and 2 new outer worlds to the game. Players reduced to 0 stamina or sanity have the option of drawing from the Injury or Madness deck, acquiring permanent handicaps, rather than losing half their items and clue tokens. Gates are no longer permanently sealed (a popular house rule in the base game). Condition cards provide benefits to all players may be activated. And, of course, the Dunwich Horror itself - not as strong as the Ancient Ones, yet far stronger than any other monster in the game. This expansion also features revised rules and an FAQ that addresses many of the perceived faults of the base game. Replacement cards are provided for items and spells that are subject to errata.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12038 in Toys & Games
• Brand: Fantasy Flight Games
• Dimensions: 12.00" h x 3.00" w x 12.00" l, 3.00 pounds

Features

• "Features new investiators, Ancient Ones, monsters, dozens of new items and skills, and enought enco
• Over 300 new cards
• "Arkham Horror is a cooperative game for 1-8 players, ages 12 and up, that can be played in 2-4 hour
• Requires the Arkham Horror board game to play.

Customer Reviews

Bigger board, bigger threats
Arkham Horror is perhaps the second most complicated board game in history, so when I heard that this expansion would make the board BIGGER by adding a whole additional town, plus adding two other worlds, new rules and cards AND the Dunwich Horror itself, I was intimidated. I mean, how many rules, cards and tokens can one person keep track of? After playing it a few times, I got the hang of it and loved it. Dunwich is a village that is only accessible through Arkham's rail station, and it has its own locations and collection of unusual characters. There's a new twist up there that makes you want to kill the monsters up there in that if any monster moves into a "vortex" (that's new), you get closer and closer to the Dunwich Horror showing up, which isn't as powerful as an Ancient One but close enough to wipe you out. A must-own for Arkham Horror fans (and if the new board is too much for you, you can just take all of the new cards and use them in the main board anyway).

A worthwhile expansion
I should say that my wife and I chose basic Arkham as our "gateway" for boardgames based largely on the theme and the promise of coop gameplay. We were extremely pleased with the results, despite what many people cite as serious flaws of the game...its length, the rules complexity, the length of time it took to set up and put away, etc. If you are one of those people, Dunwich will likely not address any of your concerns. It takes a long, complicated game and gives you even more options, capable of being added incrementally or all at once.

What it does do, even implemented piecemeal, is significantly alter the game balance, in our opinion for the better. We tried it in "touring mode" first where you put all of the Dunwich cards on top of their decks to maximize the experience, and while we did ultimately get crushed in that session, it was easily one of the top plays we've had of the game. Since then it's become a fully integrated part of our routine, because we find what most of what it adds indispensable now and after one or two plays, really not much more to keep track of if you could handle the original.

Its strengths: new encounters, new characters, new mythos, new old ones, new monsters, new items and allies. I look up on those as a real improvement to the game that I can unequivocally recommend to someone that already likes the base set. The game does get harder, but the experience overall is a much higher quality one, if that makes sense. I never got to the point where I was seeing a lot of repetition with the core set, but this virtually guarantees that won't be an issue for a very long time.

Its less well rounded additions: the additional board, the Horror itself, the vortex mechanic. I like these but I can't say they work as smoothly as I'd like, at least within the context of our mostly two player games. I haven't dropped them from gameplay as we've continued, but I could see myself phasing out the board and those two parts in the future, especially when the upcoming Kingsport Horror is released. I will still be pleased to have the rest of its additions and consider them well worth the price of admission.

A good expansion for larger groups.
Dunwich Horror adds a lot to the base game. All manner of new goodies, including a bunch of new investigators. The goodies can be used with or without the board expansion. The new rules will take a game or two to get down, but that's to be expected. As a blessing, Dunwich Horror includes a number of rule clarifications for the base game in its rulebook.

The board expansion adds several new neighborhoods and lots of unstable locations where gates open. The extra real estate may be more than two or three players can handle, causing the game to devolve into a mad rush to get gates closed and/or sealed before the gate limit is reached. One cure for this is for each player to play a couple of characters. This is easy once you get used to it, and makes the game a lot more fun with small groups.

The Dunwich Horror itself (it's a big, bad monster) is a scary beast - essentially unbeatable. You get big prizes if you can kill it, but it's probably better to keep it locked away. Fortunately, that is not too hard; just keep the gates in Dunwich closed and kill off any monsters that appear there.

If you love Arkham Horror and you don't mind playing with 4 or more characters, Dunwich Horror is a good investment.