"Eldritch Horror" (Tabletop Game)

I tried the game Eldritch Horror last night. It came out in 2013 and was "inspired by" Arkham Horror, which I bought all the way back in 2005 when it first came out and have enjoyed immensely. (I also own the Dunwich Horror expansion to Arkham Horror.)

Yesterday's game was eventful. My first investigator got turned into a Deep One (and was DEVOURED), and we all — including my second character — died horribly when Azathoth awoke, and the world got DEVOURED. (I love the name of the event — which involved DEVOURING by name — and the front of the card describes flipping it over to resolve the event. And then you flip over the card, and everybody just dies horribly, with the world along with it.) But I feel fine.

And getting Innsmouth Look on the back of the Curse card when I was expecting the karmic reversal of the Curse going away that someone else got previously — oh, right, the backs of the cards might be different... I missed that part — and then turning into a Deep One and being DEVOURED instead of merely taking a lot of sanity damage if I were not near the sea was a rather unexpected turn of events.

In so many ways, the dice were simply not on my side last night.

All in all, it was a rather enjoyable first game of Eldritch Horror.

Note: Eldritch Horror was inspired by Arkham Horror (as stated explicitly on the box), but there are substantive differences. It plays a bit like a streamlined Arkham Horror, and it too is a cooperative game, but the authors also took innovations from some AH expansions and added their own. The authors of Eldritch Horror are also different from those of Arkham Horror, but there are enough similarities that it is necessary to cite AH explicitly as inspiration. Once one gets through setup (which was annoying, though I'm sure I'll become better with practice), it is a more streamlined game overall. There were eight years of experience and feedback to use to help with that. There are some innovations that I think are particularly good, though some of them appeared in some (probably very different) form in various Arkham Horror expansions.