Dark entities work maliciously in the city of Arkham, doing everything within their power to realize unspeakable goals. Many of the city’s residents stand idly by or live in blissful ignorance of this growing darkness. Others, however, stand up and fight against these threats and do what they can to keep the city of Arkham and its citizens safe.

As an Arkham Horror: The Card Game hopeful, maybe you are interested in joining this defense against the Mythos, but you aren’t sure where to start. Or, perhaps, you have all the tools you need but aren’t sure how to put them to good use. Luckily, with proper guidance and understanding the basics of Arkham Horror, you’ll be confident to join the fight against the Mythos in no time.

All you need to start playing Arkham Horror: The Card Game is a copy of the core set. Within this core set, you’ll find five different investigators, a collection of player cards to build decks with, and a three-scenario campaign to play. Though the box contains pre-built decks for each investigator that you can play with immediately, you can also build your own decks with the cards included in the core set. While playing with the pre-built decks is a perfect way to jump in and start playing, understanding deckbuilding opens up more options to you as a player to express yourself through the game.

It is this player expression that makes Arkham Horror’s deckbuilding so exciting to delve into. Each investigator has a card pool with restrictions, but players are free to explore as they wish within those restrictions. One player can build Daniela Reyes (Core Set, 1) as a defensive support for the team, using cards like Bodyguard (Core Set, 16) to soak damage for others. But another player can build Daniela as a reckless damage dealer, using a Meat Cleaver (Core Set, 77) paired with Resilience (Core Set, 21) to maximize her damage output.

It’s this openness in deckbuilding that enables such deep exploration, letting players play the three-scenario campaign included in the core set multiple times, trying different decks and investigators. Different builds and team compositions can handle the campaign’s challenges in distinct ways, and discovering the strengths and weaknesses of each class and investigator is a key aspect of learning Arkham Horror.

The challenges will change from scenario to scenario, but for a better understanding of Arkham Horror: The Card Game, it’s important to know the foundational form that these challenges take. Deckbuilding can be daunting, and having the knowledge of how the game confronts you and your deck will provide a solid base for the decisions you make while building it. Let’s take a look!

The Three Pillars of Arkham Horror

When playing a scenario of Arkham Horror: The Card Game, the players will find themselves challenged by constant threats. There are enemies and pitfalls lurking around every corner, and players will need to find clues to unravel the mystery around them. These three aspects (enemies, survival, and finding clues) make up the three pillars of an Arkham Horror scenario. Managing all three is key, and knowing how they challenge you is an important baseline to learn.

Enemies can show up at any time, and they are threats that must be dealt with. If even the weakest enemy is left alone, it will cause chaos, hurting the investigators every turn. Hellhound (Core Set, 122), a monstrosity rampaging through the Miskatonic campus, is a terrifying creature that shows the risk an enemy can pose. With every attack, it will deal 1 damage and 1 horror to an investigator and also burn away the cards they control, costing valuable resources and setup time. This is why enemy management is crucial. An unchecked enemy will cause great stress for the investigators, but players have a variety of methods at their disposal to help manage them.

Enemies can be fought against their fight value, designated by the red number next to the fist symbol on the enemy’s card. Successful attacks—such as the Fight action on Machete (Core Set, 20)—can deal damage, and when enough damage is dealt to match the enemy’s health value (the black number in the center), that enemy is defeated. Instead of fighting the enemy directly, investigators can also evade enemies, testing against an enemy’s evade value (the green number next to the shoe symbol). This will exhaust the enemy for the turn, meaning that they won’t attack this round, but it also means they will eventually ready and become a threat again for the next one. Some enemies, like the aforementioned Hellhound, have keywords that pose additional challenges. In Hellhound’s case, it has the “hunter” keyword, which means it will continue to chase you down, even if you manage to temporarily escape from it.

The next pillar of an Arkham Horror scenario is survivability. This challenge asks how much physical and mental strain an investigator can take before they are defeated. While enemies can deal damage and horror when they attack, survivability is tested more commonly through treacheries drawn during the Mythos phase. Each player must draw a card during this phase, meaning that each player’s survivability will be tested in some way. Most treacheries, like Noxious Smoke (Core Set, 130), demand that the players take a one-time test and will punish them if they fail. Other treacheries, like Unspeakable Truths (Core Set, 125), will remain in play and pose a threat over multiple turns.

Each investigator needs to build a plan for how they will survive these treacheries, and it is important to keep their risk in mind both while deckbuilding and playing a scenario. Isabelle Barnes (Core Set, 13) can lean on Aleksey Saburov (Core Set, 72) to take damage and horror for her, while Dexter Drake (Core Set, 10) can use a Ward of Protection (Core Set, 65) to cancel the treachery at the cost of 1 horror. There are very rarely “wrong” ways to protect yourself in Arkham Horror, but it’s important that you have a plan and don’t go unprotected against the Mythos.

The final pillar of an Arkham Horror scenario is the act of investigating and discovering clues. Unlike enemies and survivability, investigating doesn’t have to do with how you lose, but rather it’s how you win. During a scenario, the agenda deck is how the game advances and attempts to defeat the investigators. The act deck, on the other hand, is the investigators’ method of advancing through and succeeding a scenario. Acts are often advanced through the collection of clues, so a team of investigators must strive to discover clues, and the pace at which they do so determines how many threats they may have to face.

Your Friend’s Room (Core Set, 113B) is a location you’ll come across in Spreading Flames, the first scenario in the new core set. This location has a shroud value of 2, which is the difficulty an investigator tests against while investigating that location for clues. Your Friend’s Room also has 2 clues per investigator, which are the clues you discover upon a successful investigation. Like enemies, locations can throw additional challenges or penalties at players, such as the Science Hall (Core Set, 118) causing investigators to discard cards from their hand upon discovering clues.

If an investigator can survive enemies and treacheries, but can’t get clues, they’ll live until the end of the scenario with nothing to show for it. Likewise, if an investigator can get clues but has no protection, they’ll be overwhelmed before they know it. This is why the key to finding success in a scenario is to balance the solutions for all three pillars.

The Five Classes

To manage these challenges, each investigator “class” approaches their solutions differently. There are five classes in the game—Guardians, Seekers, Rogues, Mystics, and Survivors—and each class brings their own strengths and weaknesses.

The Guardian class is the protector class. They do what they can to keep themselves and their teammates safe. They show off their combat prowess through allies like Logan Hastings (Core Set, 18) and powerful skill cards like Vicious Blow (Core Set, 25). When surrounded by enemies, they can turn the tide with a Lesson Learned (Core Set, 22) or Scene of the Crime (Core Set, 24). However, Guardians need time to set up for their battles and will often find themselves short on resources compared to other classes.

The Seeker class is the master of investigating. They have a variety of tools at their disposal to increase their ability to discover clues. They can utilize a Fingerprint Kit (Core Set, 31) to grab multiple clues at once, boosting their consistency with a Magnifying Glass (Core Set, 34) or Sharp Rhetoric (Core Set, 35). Additionally, Seekers can maximize their card draw potential, refilling their hand with a Laboratory Assistant (Core Set, 32) or Gather Intel (Core Set, 36). While Seekers are masters of investigating, they lack permanent solutions to enemies, offering temporary fixes instead.

The Rogue class find its strengths in movement and resource economy. Rogues can move across the map in the blink of an eye with skills like Out of Sight (Core Set, 53) and allies like Olivier Bishop (Core Set, 46), evading enemies and leaving them in the dust. That said, Rogues also bring their own style of enemy management to the table. They can utilize the M1903 Hammerless (Core Set, 45) to take enemies out or Paint the Town Red (Core Set, 51) to bring one into play in exchange for a few extra resources in their pocket. Survivability is the biggest weakness in a Rogue’s kit. Their recklessness puts them at a disadvantage against the Mythos deck, putting them at risk of getting overwhelmed by the horrors around them.

The Mystic class is the class of spellcasters in the world of Arkham Horror. A Mystic’s biggest strength is that they can do pretty much anything, but they have to risk something for that power. They can take advantage of Cosmic Flame (Core Set, 59) and Second Sight (Core Set, 62) for fighting and investigating respectively, but both of these spells run the risk of hurting them. A wise Mystic knows how to navigate the advantages and disadvantages of cards like Will of the Cosmos (Core Set, 66), which provide a great reward with a great risk. This is where Mystic’s weaknesses lie: they are powerful, but this power always comes at a cost.

Lastly, the Survivor class is the ultimate class of survivability and card recursion. They often brute force their way through challenges, taking them on without knowing whether they will come out on top. A rough scrape with an enemy can be mitigated through a clever use of Bandages (Core Set, 73) while a bad token pull can be softened with “Look what I found!” (Core Set, 78). Though Survivors are durable, they need to expend more of their cards to survive, which is why cards with recursion effects like Hunter’s Instinct (Core Set, 74) can be so lifesaving, allowing the investigator to find the right card at the right time. This class has to put in a bit more effort than the others, meaning that they pose the highest risk of getting outpaced by the scenario.

Deckbuilding

Even with the knowledge of the classes, it can be a daunting challenge to know how to best construct a deck, much less upgrade it with the experience you’ve gained during the course of a campaign. There are three fundamentals to help lay the beginnings of a good deck: the investigator’s role, the deck’s foundation, and the deck’s economy. Understanding these will give strong guidance for building any deck for any campaign.

An investigator’s role is likely the first decision you’ll make when deckbuilding after choosing an investigator. There are four main roles in Arkham Horror:

• The Fighter: An investigator who focuses on defeating enemies.
• The Cluever: An investigator who focuses on discovering clues.
• The Flex: An investigator who does a little bit of both fighting and investigating.
• The Support: Like a flex, but focuses more on helping their teammates excel or survive.

In the core set, Daniela Reyes and Isabelle Barnes would make good fighters, Joe Diamond (Core Set, 4) and Trish Scarborough (Core Set, 7) would make good cluevers, and Dexter Drake would make a strong flex. However, these investigators are not locked into these specific roles, and it’s always a good idea to include options for cards outside of your role. For example, between breaks of whacking enemies with her Meat Cleaver, Isabelle Barnes can pick up some clues with a “Look what I found!” or even Second Sight (since her deckbuilding options let her use some Mystic cards).

After deciding on your role, you’ll want to build a strong foundation to ensure that you can accomplish that role. To do this, you’ll want to include assets and events that help you with your role’s goal, and you’ll want enough of them so you can do your job reliably. Since she can include both Rogue and Seeker cards in her deck, Trish Scarborough will want to include multiple good investigation assets like Thieves’ Kit (Core Set, 49), Fingerprint Kit, and Local Map (Core Set, 33) to ensure that she draws one in her opening hand. After that, she’ll likely look at investigation events like Breaking and Entering (Core Set, 50) and Working a Hunch (Core Set, 38) to round out that consistency.

Lastly—and arguably most importantly—is your deck’s economy. This fundamental aspect of deckbuilding ensures that your deck has the ability to draw cards and also pay for them. While not the most exciting part of deckbuilding, it is crucial to make your economy a focus. A staple piece of Arkham Horror’s economy is Emergency Cache (Core Set, 89). Because it’s Neutral, every investigator can take it, and it provides a good starting point to ensure you have the resources for the cards you want to play. After that, you’ll want to look through your investigator’s card pool for what can draw cards (like Gather Intel in Joe Diamond) and what can gain resources (like Sticky Fingers (Core Set, 48) in Trish Scarborough).

After establishing a strong foundation for your deck, you can build around those cards. You will want to check if your deck has the survivability to manage the Mythos phase, and then you can add in what you feel would be powerful or fun. Maybe you want to use Prestidigitation (Core Set, 52) to swap assets in and out of play as Dexter Drake? Or maybe you want to use Jim Culver (Core Set, 60) to draw extra cards on top of your recursion effects with Isabelle Barnes? Explore the card pool and find what is fun for you, because Arkham Horror’s amazing deckbuilding is the perfect way to express yourself.

As you near the completion of your deck, another consideration is your deck’s “curve.” This checks the cost of all the cards in your deck and tracks how many of each resource cost you have. If you have a lot of cards that cost 3 or more, your deck’s curve is higher, meaning that you potentially would want to run more economy than if your deck’s curve was lower with mostly 1- or 2-cost cards. When you’re first building a deck, this can be hard to grasp, but it’s something that you can pay attention to while you play if you often feel that you have too many or too few resources.

Additionally, don’t feel like you shouldn’t include Neutral cards just because they aren’t in your investigator’s classes. The Neutral skill suite of Guts (Core Set, 90), Perception (Core Set, 93), Overpower (Core Set, 92), and Manual Dexterity (Core Set, 91) can all help you pass a test and grab an extra card, which can potentially find an answer to a future threat. Unexpected Courage (Core Set, 94) can help you pass any test, and that versatility shouldn’t be overlooked. Fedora (Core Set, 87) can soak a little damage or horror if you feel you’re missing some survivability, while Broken Bottle (Core Set, 86) or Hand-Crank Flashlight (Core Set, 88) can be another asset to help build the foundation of your role.

With all this said, don’t feel as though using the prebuilt decks is a bad place to start. If you want to immediately jump in and play, you can use the decks included in the core set. With these, you can get a good idea of the investigators and how they fit into their class, as well as see the three pillars of Arkham Horror in action. After getting a game or two in, you may feel more knowledgeable and confident to try building your own decks with the core set’s card pool.   

Outro

There is a lot to discover in Arkham Horror: The Card Game. Jumping in and playing the core set is a great place to start. You may struggle as you begin to face the threats before you, and they may seem impossible to beat, but if you persevere and continue the fight against the Mythos, you’ll be surprised by what you’re capable of. Explore the card pool, get to know the investigators, and build decks that speak to you as you discover all the amazing stories that exist in Arkham Horror!

 

Written by Justin Cauti