Last Sunday was my birthday and amongst my b-day loot was the Dunwich Horror Expansion to the Arkham Horror game. The day before yesterday we got together and tried it out and I have to say I really like it. Not only did it refresh the basic aspects of the game but it added whole new dimensions.

What’s New?

First off there is a lot more of everything. Officially there are:

8 Investigators (Always fun to have new characters. I like the look of Leo Anderson.)

4 Ancient Ones (Scarier than the originals! Fear Tsathoggua!)

15 Item cards (Flamethrowers! Yay!)

25 Unique Item cards (Lightning Gun. Boom!)

21 Spell cards (Can’t decide between Vision Quest and Alchemical Process.)

11 Skill cards (Mythos Lore.)

5 Ally cards (Zebulon Whateley. Silly name, but an excellent Ally.)

4 Condition cards, 28 Monster tokens, 36 Mythos cards, 32 Gate cards

7 new location cards for each Arkham location

And the Dunwich board with its 9 new locations and 2 new outer worlds to the game.

But it’s not just filling out the old stuff; they added new mechanics as well. You can now keep your stuff when you bottom out your Stamina or Sanity. All it takes is the willingness to subject yourself to a Wound or Madness for the rest of the game. I was Paranoid by the end of the game we played. Losing Sanity when around other characters is pretty harsh for a guy with only 3 to start with. The new Ancient Ones have some scary abilities. Unlike their basic counterparts they don’t have a skill check to avoid the cost when you end up fighting them so it is more important than ever to keep them from waking up. Combining that with their brutally scary powers that they have while sleeping makes the chances of success even worse. The Dunwich Horror didn’t really come into play for us. We were ready to send people up there to stop the monsters from waking the Horror but it never got even close to happening. The gates we were closing kept cleaning the monsters out of Dunwich. Speaking of gates, some of the new Mythos cards have what is called a Gate Burst effect. If the card calls for a gate to open where the location has been sealed by an Elder Sign, the gate opens anyway the Elder Sign is removed. We only had one show up in our game but it was painful nonetheless. There are plenty of new monsters some with the new Stalker ability signaled by there snazzy purple border. (About time we got some purple into this game.) Stalkers will chase adjacent investigators in spite of which way the arrows tell them to go. There are other scary monsters, like the Colour Out Of Space, which has the Sanity equivalent of the Cthonian ability (and is very scary in spite of reminding me of a Hyper Intelligent Shade of Blue.) We didn’t get to interact with the Dunwich locations as Tsathoggua’s special ability denied us the ability to use the locations so there wasn’t much reason to go there. We did go to the new outer planes but didn’t get any new encounters for them so I can’t say how scary or not they are. Another game play effects I noticed is that with all the new cards added to the Unique Item deck it is harder than ever to find an Elder Sign to buy. That is one of our major strategies. If you have $5 you go to the Curiosity shop and buy something. We’ve used as many as 3 of the 4 Elder Signs in one game. I also think that some of the new Investigator abilities may need some experience to make full use of. It was practically the end of the game when I realized that my investigator’s (Mark Harrigan) special ability of ‘cannot be delayed’ applied to when he goes to the Asylum or Hospital. Another new thing we missed out on was the Tasks and Missions. These are things you aquire from the General Store or Curiosity shop which give you a list of places and something to sacrifice at each place after which you get a reward of some kind. The one they show in the rulebook is ‘Joining the Winning Team’ where an investigator can sacrifice a bunch of Allies to win the game with the Ancient One instead of the other investigators. It makes me wonder of there were people complaining that the game didn’t have the traitor component that Shadows over Camelot had. Another thing I noticed about the new cards is that they seemed to raise the terror level more than the basic ones. A lot of games we would never get to any of the stores closing but with the expansion we were up to a level 3 terror level not long into the game. Also none of that was from Monsters overflowing the outskirts. It was from location and/or Mythos cards.

My reaction:

Emotionally I like this game. The fact that they use some of the wording from Call of Cthulhu endears this expansion to me. I so want the Spot Hidden skill. I don’t care what it does. I also found it refreshing to be on the bleeding edge of failure before winning. It was getting to the point with the basic game that I was always hoping the game would be a little tougher. That is unless we were playing with the Herald of the King in Yellow. That still kicked our butts. This last game we were one gate opening away from Tsathoggua waking up and we would have stood no chance in a fight. We just didn’t have the firepower. It felt good to hope to get lucky for a change. I imagine the game is going to keep getting harder the more supplements I get. Still I think I’ll keep playing this one for a bit before grabbing another. I like the feel of Dunwich and am looking forward to exploring it in the future. Compared to the other supplement I have The King in Yellow, I have to say I like this one a lot more. It adds much more to the game. I would say that it is definitely worth the extra $20. But then I did get it as a gift so maybe the price difference doesn’t affect me as much. Still, I do hardily recommend it.