Arkham Horror LCG Session Report: Disappearance at the Twilight Estate (The Circle Undone Prologue)
By Chris Renshaw
Disclaimer: If you haven't heard about Arkham Horror: The Card Game (AHLCG), you might have trouble with this post. Also, potential spoilers ahead.
Last Time...
Wait...The Circle Undone? What happened to the rest of Carcosa? If this is what you are asking, then I need to point you to Last time. With the COVID pandemic and running games digital with Tabletop Simulator, I found it tough to get the energy to summarize each week’s Arkham game through a blog post. Now that we are starting a new campaign, I’m going to try and resume this weekly column. Our group has now finished the Core Box and the Path to Carcosa campaigns, so when I threw out all the other campaigns, The Circle Undone (TCU) campaign stuck out to one of our group. So that’s what we are going through next!
So what investigators are we playing this time around? Take a look:
Myself: Penny White
Cory: Valentino Rivas
Jimmy: Jerome Davids
Mike: Gavirella Mizzah
Wait a minute….
Those don’t look like normal Arkham Horror investigators, you might say. You would be right, as The Circle Undone begins with a “Prologue” called “Disappearance at the Twilight Estate”. After playing a bunch of different AHLCG scenarios, this was a little weird to see. Especially since we had already put together a bunch of different investigator decks when we opened up the instructions for TCU. So we set aside our decks and gathered the cards that made up these four “investigators” that the campaign is designed for us to start with.
There’s something strange in your neighborhood
Arkham Horror being mysterious is nothing new to us. Nor is the thought that no matter how bad it is, it’s always going to get worse while playing. But TCU takes that assumption and starts off the campaign by beating you over the head with this feeling. First of all, the campaign log lets you know that there is no “winning” this scenario. The “disappearance” mentioned in the title is, in fact, you. So the overall point to this prologue is to establish the setting of this campaign and for players to gather as many clues as possible before they are killed.
Just like the prologue is unique for this scenario, another piece that is unique to TCU is that the Agenda cards feature this creepy font on them, which really re-enforces the “we’re all going to die” theme that is being built. As you’ll hear in the Carcosa recap I linked above, I’ve discovered that the AHLCG designers like to put in things just to throw people off. This next pic is an example of this:
This is the reverse side of the only Act card that is in play. Note the “...?” in the title. That’s because technically there is no way for players to see this text. Since players will ultimately die and lose the prologue, there is no way to “flip” this act card and read it. That didn’t stop the designers from throwing some more creepy text at us and even giving a penalty to the players (I’m assuming it will be a penalty later on) that actually do flip the card over and read it.
You are being Haunted….I mean hunted
At this time of writing this post, we’ve already gotten through Parts 1 & 2 of TCU. Having played those, and looking back at our playthrough of the Prologue, I can tell that this scenario does a good job of setting the scene in multiple ways. Of course, all of those ways are terrible. Like the new keyword that this campaign introduces: Haunted! When this keyword is on a card, such as a location or an enemy, it means that when you fail ANY type of skill test, the Haunted effect is triggered. (EDIT: Thanks to the many people who pointed out that Haunted only triggers when you fail an investigation skill test. You made our next play MUCH better) Obviously, there are encounter cards that take advantage of this to the extreme.
This brings us to this card, Whispers in the Dark. I hate this card. Sure, it only lasts for one round, but we’ve had the “luck” of two of us drawing this encounter card on the same turn. That means that every time we failed at any type of draw from the token bag, that’s 2 horror we had to take immediately. Spoiler for the rest of the campaign (I imagine): the Haunted keyword sucks...a lot.
Not convinced? The Wraith backs this point up. Unfortunately, we haven’t been playing with any characters that have any Spell or Relic cards. So these cards never go away. They just sit at various locations, waiting for an investigator to fail a skill test. For example, here’s how a typical encounter with a Wraith goes:
Investigator turn: spends 1-2 actions getting rid of the Wraith, then maybe has an action to do something.
Encounter phase: investigator draws encounter card. “Oh ok, I got this”
*investigator draws auto-fail token*
*Wraith spawns at location*
*Wraith engages investigator*
Investigator: “@#($*@#*$&*@&#$(@#”
I always feel like...somebody’s watching me…
The last piece that the prologue introduces is The Spectral Watcher. Just like the Wraith, it’s one of those “fun” enemies that never really dies. Also, you’ll notice that it has the “Alert” keyword. This means that when you go to evade this enemy and fail, it automatically attacks you. Note that a failed evasion is also a failed skill test, which means that if you are at a location with the Haunted keyword (spoiler, you probably are), then those effects will kick in also. The vibe of this card feels very similar to the Man in the Pallid Mask card from Path to Carcosa. What I mean is that I get the suspicion that our group will be seeing this card a lot over the course of the campaign.
Wrap Up
We calculated that, for our group of 4 investigators, there was a possibility of about 24 clues that we could have gathered over the course of this prologue. After all the ashes settled, we managed to get about 19 of those clues. We felt like that was a pretty good attempt, of course I’m sure Arkham Horror will correct that in due time.
What did you think of this Session Report? What keyword do you loathe in the game? Let me know in the comments, or you can hit me up on twitter or facebook.