The best time to start playing a board game (Arkham Horror: The Card Game), and the Big Ball Of Shit problem

Of all the board game hits I regret getting into late, it's Magic: The Gathering, the grand-daddy of all TCGs (trading card games). In 1995, I played a microscopic amount of it on the 4th floor of my Honors dorm, and didn't really get it. I was broke as hell, and the idea of buying more than a few bucks for a random deck of cards seemed ridiculous. I never really got the deckbuilding experience, and the people were playing dumb mono-colored decks, so I just didn't get it. Therefore, I never bought any of the broken rares and never traded them for a mini-van. So it goes, Vonnegut said.

I did buy into other TCGs, mostly Steve Jackson Games' Illuminati: New World Order and Chaosium's Mythos, both of which figured into existing "literature." I spent money badly and randomly, and eventually gave away or sold my small collection, tired of the effort and frustrated by the return on the time and money I had put into it.

In 1995 I also played (Settlers Of) Catan for the first time at Nancon, run by Houston fixture Nan's Games & Comics.  A wag climbed the hotel sign and changed WELCOME NANCON to WELCOME CONAN, which was about how things went.  A couple buddies of mine and I went, smuggled in boxed wine in a briefcase, and played Feng Shui, a great RPG that I think got at least a second, if not a third edition.  But I ended up split up, and while a Puffing Billy tournament was using train whistles to announce rounds, a guy named Marvin taught me Settlers of Catan.

It was great, I bought a copy as soon as I could (for $28), and began a collection that enchants and delights my friends, my family, and myself. Pretty good ROI (I haven't played Catan in 15 years).

In the far, far past, there was a Games magazine 100 issue in 1987. They thought a board game called Arkham Horror was amazing. Monsters came out on the map of a town, moved in a programmed way, and you tried to fight them cooperatively to save the day. I coveted it, later bought it in college too dearly, and sold it off at a small loss. It was weird-looking, and I couldn't get it to the table, so away it went.

All of that changed in 2004.  We were passing my infant daughter around a game table of the "new" Arkham Horror. There was a town, monsters came out, and you fought them cooperat- yadda-yadda, but the graphics and flow had been totally reworked, and it was a much slicker experience, though, er, a little too long for me. I never bought it. I think I was playing a lot of Ra, Puerto Rico, Tigris & Euphrates, and Power Grid.

Fast forward to 2024. I take two of my kids, now in their late teens, to the inaugural ZorCon, in Lake Jackson, Texas. It was great, a pure gaming con with no merch sales. I played the updated Dune game (won as the Fremen on a coalition victory with the Harkonnen, ha!), and played Arkham Horror (the board game) 3rd edition.

AH 3e had been massively reworked, with the old staid map of 1e now modular, and with some other cute QOL updates. Our host mentioned that it was strongly influenced by Arkham Horror: the Card Game, which was not a TCG but an LCG, a "living card game" where there were no random booster packs or random decks, but instead fixed packs so you always knew you were getting a fixed amount of fun instead of gambling. 

Anyway, I had an absolute blast playing Arkham Horror the board game 3rd edition, and I already had experimented and rejected Netrunner and Lord of the Rings, other LCGs. So I was primed to learn more about the cooperative LCG.

I read up on Arkham Horror: the Card Game(2016).  Within the last few years, Fantasy Flight, who put out a lot of games I enjoyed, had reworked their distribution model, for the better, by a lot. Fantasy Flight was running into a problem where they had to keep releasing product, but retailers' shelves were refusing to stretch infinitely to carry that product, let alone the poor retailers having to know minutiae.

The old way of buying: you bought two little old core sets, so you had enough cards for 4 players and had enough cards to deckbuild at all. Then there were scenarios sold in Mythos packs, of which 6 individual packages made up a whole campaign. If you liked that campaign, you could buy "Return To" packs that were sometimes basically fixpacks and remixes of the original campaigns (they didn't sell well and were discontinued, more on that later). There were individual standalone adventures, and some investigator decks. There were also stuff labeled "Deluxe" which they don't do any more.

The new way of buying: you buy a revised core set, with 4 players' worth of cards to start. Then each campaign has a "Campaign Expansion" and an "Investigator Expansion." If you want more adventures you buy campaign packs, if you want more investigators or the cards to build their decks with, you buy investigator packs.  

So that's bonkers better. Retailers say, "Ok, do you want campaign cards or investigator cards?" and it's mix & match.  Every campaign expansion gets you cooler encounter cards and monsters and adventures, every investigator expansion widens your band of hardy do-gooders and the many cards they need to investigate and fight evil. They specifically do not have to slap your hand away from buying a Return To pack if you don't have the original, and they don't have to pray to Retail Baby Jesus that all 6 Mythos packs are in stock so you can get a whole story. (You like whole stories, right?) Oh and you can buy those 5 individual investigator packs, they're still cool.

The downside of all of this consolidation, and updating, and the tariffs, is that Campaign Expansions retail for $70 and Investigator Expansions retail for $45. The revised core set to start it all is MSRP $60.

The revised core set has a little campaign in it. There are three scenarios, and everyone agrees the third one is super hard and basically unwinnable. (I'll just throw in here that the Lord of the Rings LCG was incredibly bastard hard, and basically the instructions for enjoying it out of the box are "buy a second box, get deck plans off the net, still expect to lose." There's a huge disagreement among co-op game players as to what the most satisfying ratio of wins to losses would be, for the perfect game. I stopped trying, sold mine off, the end.)

So clearly, the thing to do is buy a revised core set  and a campaign expansion.  Now, I have been mostly buying games used on Facebook Marketplace, so I didn't realize I was in for a headache.  I bought an old small core set hella cheap, played a 2 player game with my buddy Ben, and a solo game myself with the suggested starter decks, with exactly the investigators they suggest. We loved it. There's great tension between wanting to draw a bunch of cards, and knowing your investigator has weaknesses in their deck, waiting to jump out and trouble them. The encounter deck gives some randomness, while still giving players luck mitigation, for the most part. Monsters? Oh, hell yeah. Investigators have a wide variety of weapons and a few spells to help kick monster ass. The whole thing flows effortlessly. 

So, uh, I bought a used revised core set cheap on Facebook Marketplace, and on Ebay, I got a great deal on all 5 of the single investigator packs that give you more investigators and more ways to construct and improve investigator decks.

So now I looked around, and I ran into a gaming problem, really a collecting problem, I don't think I've articulated before. Because once you open all your Arkham Horror products you have a Big Ball Of Shit. All the investigator cards, you're gonna sort into the 5 archetypes/suits, along with the gray neutral cards. All the actual investigator cards like Roland or Winifred and their unique, required loadouts (usually one signature good card and one signature weakness) are gonna go in a stack.  Encounter cards you'll sort by symbol, and when you play, you just use all the cards of the various symbols the scenario requests. You'll have rat cards from every campaign you've ever played, and so on. Expansive! All the adventures are gonna end up in little piles of adventure notes cards and the location cards that form little maps. So everything wants to be sorted by type and not original package, except adventures.

So, if you want to sell something, are you gonna try and sort absolutely every single card back into the original packaging sets of everything you've ever bought, across a dozen products (or 5 dozen products in the old distribution model)?  Hell, no. You're gonna list your entire collection as a Big Ball Of Shit.

That's terrible. If I want to buy a copy of Twilight Imperium, I can go on BGG and the only notes I have to look at are "moderate shelf wear, complete" and the price, $70 or whatever. Every single lot of Arkham Horror: the Card Game has to be evaluated for value using the subvalues of everything in it, and looking back at old listings means you're again trying to parse their listings against every possible array of ownership and pricing. Reader, I died. Go look at Noble Knight listings of Arkham Horror: the Card Game collections. We movin' a lot of product, lately? (Noble Knight are buy-and-hold retailers, some of this is expected.)

Oh, and remember how I said the "Return To" sets were obsolete? They're out of print, so all the lots that include them are priced past the point of believability. If everything were divisible back into original boxes, people'd gleefully sell the in-print stuff and chisel for value on the OOP items. Catan boxes still work like that. Sometimes.

This is all great for Fantasy Flight.  Players come in, can't really buy things used unless they're unopened, collect boxes at their own pace, accumulate Big Balls Of Shit, die and sink to the bottom of the ocean to lie there near-forever, like a whale fall.

Marvel Champions has much of the same problem, as do Dominion (see this classy Broken Token wooden organizer) and Marvel Legendary. Lotta SKUs, lot of natural incentives to get rid of boxes and condense expansions down into a super-dense pack to haul around, Jacob Marley-style.

Anyway, slow down on those bigger purchases, chew your food.

Ettin Games board game library as of June 29, 2025

 

The Forge Game Library as of June 28, 2025

 The Forge's current location is in the shopping center at Memorial and Tully.

I just saw that they've gotten a big donation of RPG books and game aids, so I'll get pictures of those soon.

Don't forget that The Forge is moving to a bigger, nicer location in October!

Go read "You Will Die In This Place"

 Jay Dragon (of Wanderhome fame - it's being reprinted by Steve Jackson Games as a sumptuous hardcover, too) posted about "You Will Die In This Place" a couple days ago on Bluesky, so I picked up the digital download; it's pay-what-you-want right now, so tip well. It's a wild TTRPG that's also a metafictional delight. 

The conceit is that Samantha Little, game designer, stumbles across design notes for a TTRPG by her friend Charlotte Avery, and puts them together. There's also an editor named KC who throws their two cents in. 

I'm not done reading it yet, but I'm gonna tell ya: I love it so far. YWDITP is swinging for the fences at several levels, and it's a compelling read. 

8th Dimension Comics & Games - Full Pictures of Game Library as of April 7, 2025

We are big fans of 8th Dimension. This is a project I had been looking to do for some time.

 

New York City's Game Cafe Chaotic Good - Full Pictures of Game Library as of March 2025

In March 2025, we visited NYC's game cafe Chaotic Good, and I took pictures of their game library. They also have a dummy BGG user set up with the library's contents.

 

Instant Pot Beef Stew Recipe

Instant Pot Beef Stew

Ingredients

Meat:

~2-3 lbs stew meat (need 2 lbs minimum), thawed

Veggies:

4-5 big potatoes (not like monster Russets, no more than the size of an adult fist)

3-4 large carrots

2-3 stalks of celery

2-3 parsnips (optional)

1 medium white onion (optional) or dried onions (easier)

Spices/Fixins:

2-3 tablespoons of olive oil

1/4 cup flour

3 tablespoons Chinese cooking wine or red wine

5 or 6 hard shakes of Worcester sauce

Several shakes of dried oregano

salt

pepper

Instructions:

1. Get out your Instant Pot (mine is an 8-quart) and a large skillet. If you have an electric kettle, start 2 quarts of water on to boil. 

2. Spread the flour on a plate. Roll some of the stew meat in the flour. Heat the skillet to medium and add a little olive oil. Using tongs, brown the meat well on at least a couple of sides. Toss the browned chunks into the empty Instant Pot. Do this until all meat is browned, and pour in any drippings from the pan.

3. Add the wine, Worcestershire sauce, and seasonings, along with enough boiling water to cover the meat. Set the Instant Pot to cook on high for 2 hours, seal it, and start it.

4. Using a cutting board, peel veggies and cut all of them into bite-size uniform-ish chunks. Go thinner on the celery, it's hardy and isn't going to get mushy very much.

5. Ten minutes before the Instant Pot finishes, start another kettle of water to boil.

6. When the Instant Pot finishes, turn it off. Either let it sit for a few minutes till it loses pressure, or vent it, as your beliefs require.

7. Dump all the veggies in. Pour in boiling water to cover - if you want more broth, fill it to the pots max pressure line. 

8. Seal the pot, set to 15 minutes on high, and turn it on.

9. Hey, now's a great time to make some egg noodles! Drain these, toss with olive oil, and cover.

10. Once the Instant Pot finishes, either let it set till the pressurization subsides, or vent it, up to you. Personally, I am usually hungry and vent it.

11. Ladle stew over egg noodles. Damn, that's good eating. The wine adds a lot of umami, it's pretty great.

My statement regarding Darkest Dungeon 1

 

"Darkest Dungeon is a video game for PC & Mac available from Red Hook Studios on Steam." 

[Series of Twitter posts of entire party wipes]

"Darkest Dungeon is a video game about how work sucks," I said on Twitter. A friend chimed in gleefully, "Yes! Exactly!" Right after that, for my first time, my entire 4-person adventuring party all went insane, and then died in short order, some from stress-induced heart attacks. Gothic horror, after all, requires teeth.

Let's start at the beginning. "Darkest Dungeon is a video game for PC & Mac available from Red Hook Studios on Steam." Also, playing Darkest Dungeon led me to start talking at my tiny adventurers. "Mortmain! Don't eat corpses you find on the ground! That's how people get tapeworms! Is that what you want, Mortmain? Tapeworms?" I've played quite a bit of Darkest Dungeon (~350+ hours) on two different difficulty levels and two different platforms (PC and Mac), and thoroughly enjoyed the gravelly-voiced narration, faux-woodcut loading screens, and gleeful delight in imbalanced encounters.  

You, the unnamed descendant, get a letter from a deceased ancestor asking you to reclaim your birthright.  You show up at your ancestor's estate and discover it overrun by horrific monsters (you also begin to suspect your ancestor is an incredible jerk).  To clear the wilds, you pick men and women of various medieval occupations who've arrived via stagecoach, and send them out in teams of 4 to explore the estate, in spite of it being overgrown and also overrun with monsters, some of whom are giant bosses. (The horrific monsters are also incredible jerks.) Once the characters are ready (or not), you send teams through the Darkest Dungeon, to see the grand epilogue.

Every character is made unique by random combinations of positive and negative quirks.  Mortmain was a kleptomaniac early riser who got rabies, then later after getting better from rabies, got Tapeworms again, then got The Worries and became Curious. He was a handful, but that typically is the character arc: if you don't die, you get weird and kind of awesome.

Part of the fun of discovery is rolling your cursor over new detrimental effects. Rabies makes you less accurate but actually increases damage. The Worries, for instance, causes the afflicted person to suffer more stress. There’s a sanitarium at the Hamlet, and it's going to stay busy.

What do adventurers get stressed about? Being in the dark. Being in the VERY dark. Wearing items that are badass in the dark but stress-inducing in the light (or vice-versa). Meeting people/things they're afraid of. Stepping on spikes. Reading forbidden knowledge. Getting shanked by a bandit. Getting vomited on by a hideous Dr. Moreau-style pig-man. Accidentally locking themselves into an iron maiden.  Having a straitjacket-clad madman proclaim their doom. Being tempted with a goblet of acid by a skeletal priest. Getting an arm caught in a giant clam. Watching someone else in the group do almost any of the above.  Experiencing lurid ultra-violence from giant bosses in set-piece fights. Forgetting to pack enough snacks. It's brilliant, and just reciting that litany makes me want to play more.

Sure, characters have hit points, just like my adventuring party of Felpurr Ninjas and Elf Lords did in Wizardry 7: Crusaders of the Dark Savant, back in 1993. But unlike in 1993, reduction to 0 hit points doesn't have a character die instantly (and then be conveniently resurrected by a Faerie Monk to fight other palette-swapped monsters). Instead, the character is reduced to "Death's Door." and from there on, any damage they take forces them to roll against their Death's Door survival chance. Succeed, and they're still alive at Death's Door (with penalties to everything, including dodging). Fail, and they are dead-dead-dead. Perma-dead. 1993 didn't have that as an option. Yes, Darkest Dungeon gleefully autosaves in the background, so there's no reloading to save your darlings. Did I mention that watching your fellow adventurers dying is stressful for the survivors? Because OF COURSE IT IS. You can bring a Jester for that.

Through it all, there's a learning curve that keeps going. As you figure out party compositions and character loadouts and provisions, as you upgrade buildings, as you buy weapons and armor, as you equip trinkets, you get dramatic feedback on your choices. Teams usually want a healer, a couple damage dealers, and some folks with damage-over-time or stunning abilities. Each character can equip 4 of 7 possible skills, so you can easily have a front-line Occultist or a back-line Musketeer (some jerk monsters shuffle party order, for fun, because of course they do). Different parties play surprisingly differently, and some characters are better suited for one or more areas (especially if they have quirks that make them better explorers). Again, the whole thing is varied and one of the highlights of the game.

There is an active modding community and multiple difficulty levels, making replays attractive. Boss fights are challenging set-pieces, but all the regular missions are random, with enough random events to keep things interesting. The stress system is brilliant, and the DLC bits can be added in one at a time or all at once (the vampire-y Crimson Court area is really hard even if you know the game well, and I am saying that generously as an enthusiast).

Darkest Dungeon doesn't mind killing characters, but most of the time, deaths are preventable and just temporary setbacks even if a party wipes completely. Even trinkets lost in combat can be recovered by a special event. Part of the joy in the game is advancing the game state in ways small and large, and getting rewarded in various ways. There are always more fools and heroes on the Stagecoach.

I just finished a playthrough on Radiant (regular) difficulty in about two weeks, and had so much fun I got in most of another run, and of course Darkest Dungeon 2 comes out later tonight. It doesn't get much better than that.

Infection: Humanity's Last Gasp - Game Review

(Note: I found this draft of a review from 2017, and it was too hilariously timely not to post.) 

WILL YOU PULL YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS

THE PLANET IS DYING

OKAY JUST HUMANITY

ANYWAY GET IT TOGETHER, PEOPLE


Whoa, easy there, chief. That's no way to talk to epidemiologists. Well, maybe the feuding ones who won't make nice long enough to find the cure for a super-bug about to kill everyone on the planet.


Infection: Humanity's Last Gasp is a solitaire game by John Gibson, published by Victory Point Games as part of their Gold Banner series. I had been anticipating this game for a couple of years or so, thanks to the 7.5 rating on BGG, and was happy to get a copy in 2016. I finally got enough plays under my belt to feel like I could be coherent about it, wrote half a game review, and then promptly went on blogging hiatus.

The premise of the game is simple, and turns are short and procedural, in theory. There's a constantly mutating super-bug (not an insect, but instead a type of bacteria if you're playing easy mode, or a type  of virus in hard mode) that is going to kill all of humanity unless you can find a cure. In easy mode, you get funding every turn while governments are still worried about budgets. In hard mode, you've got some seed funding, but don't get regular income. Finding cures for the individual strains of the infection get you money in varying amounts.

The central mechanic and biggest thing to understand in Infection: Humanity's Last Gasp is that there are two pools of chits to manage. The bad Molecules are represented by round chips with letters, some with singles, some repeating (A-L in bacterial mode, D-O in viral mode), and are placed in concentric hex rings in a simulated petri dish on a two-sided (bacterial/viral) playmat.  You fight the bad Molecules (circle chits) with good Proteins, which are represented by chunky square chips with cute shapes. Each of the bad Molecules has a specific "recipe" for the cure as a specific set of proteins printed on the playmat, a die-cut sturdy cardboard production that assembles for a solid feel to a game coming from such a small box. 

Every turn, an event card is flipped up. There are good and bad effects that can improve or restrict your choices. There is also a "Mutation" section on the card. Sometimes, new Molecules are drawn from a pool, and will either replace others (which are discarded for eventual recycling to a new pool), or just jump out to menace humanity further.

Every turn, you can harvest up to 2 of 4 Proteins shown in 4 Incubator spaces on the playmat (and pay for that privilege). Once you've completed a recipe, you can apply it to kill vulnerable Molecules with 3 or more exposed hex sides. Kill all the Molecules in your petri dish? You win! Let all the Molecules be put into play, or let a death track be completely traversed, and humanity dies and you lose! The best part is, the whole thing works really well. There's a lot of back-and-forth as you eradicate strains, old ones mutate away, and new ones pop up.

There is also a deck of cards, most of which is lab equipment you can buy, some of which are employees you can hire. Managing your limited funds is a balancing act. You need equipment to use the lab's special powers (once per turn, sadly, regardless of your collection), hire employees (some of whom will not work with another of their colleagues, pandemic be damned), and develop the Proteins you need to fight individual strains (there are several machines that revolve around re-drawing or re-using Proteins, with good, thinky, implications on how you might want to handle drawing and discarding. There are several obvious strategy archetypes, but the supplies deck is shufffled and has 5 cards tossed out of game randomly, at the beginning of game setup, regardless of difficulty level.

There's an event deck, and each card has several applications. The super-bug Molecules can be shifted or replaced by new ones from the pile, making your preparations useless. (Read through the rulebook definitions carefully, as the terminology looks similar but has a big impact on gameplay if you're doing it wrong. I did it right, but a couple of the keywords seem similar but do different things.)

All of which is to say, there's quite a bit of replayability here. Beyond the random variation of how each game progresses (revealed Molecules and employees/equipment), you can test different strategies and see what the individual moving parts do.  The harder "Virus" level makes there be fewer identical bad Molecules, so the lucrative killing of duplicates in the Bacteria level can't happen. As mentioned earlier, in Virus mode you don't get the every-turn income you get in the early game in Bacteria mode. Money gets very tight, and you will have to make tougher decisions, knowing that overspending early will hobble you later. 

I should mention, there is randomness. If you only own one copy of an equipment card, you need to roll a 4-6 on 1d6 (included, natch). With two copies, the power just works. Again, you can only try to use one power per turn, so there's a lot riding on how your equipment loadout develops. There's also the doom track, which requires rolling the same d6 not to progress along (the odds get worse as the game progresses and you get farther down the track). Some event cards modify that roll, as well, so there's a narrative being generated. "Well it was a quiet night and then nothing happened and then our lab equipment was out, and then the employees were feuding and then..." The flavor text isn't usually too grim, and is sometimes just plain goofy.

Last year, during the height of the pandemic, I got out Infection: Humanity's Last Gasp, and it held up really well. The core Molecules Do Stuff/Proteins Get Grouped To Treat Molecules engine is very solid. There are only 16 Protein chips. but only 4 are put out each round for purchase, barring special event or equipment bonuses. You can usually just buy 2, and their cost depends on the order drawn. I found the whole "I need these two Proteins, some of which have multiple copies. Do I buy the 4-cost one, or let it pass and hope the next round gives me a better spread?" super satisfying. It's nice to understand the implications and play smarter. Even a little rusty, I was able to still beat Bacteria fairly reliably and Virus level some of the time.

Overall, this is a very solid solo game with a lot of replayability. If you can tolerate the whims of a single d6, there's a lot of satisfying moments and emergent gameplay.

Patreon link: Ame Art Illustrations

My friend Angela has started a Patreon for her art of cute funny animals. I have watched her draw from Twitter suggestions and her fluid style makes it easy to love. When I show my kids her drawings, they go "Awww..."; but her care in crafting and blocking out scenes gives her work charm.

Angela did a prior crowdfunding round while finishing school a ways back, and I donated. Angela went over and above on the reward she provided, and my daughters and I were delighted with the result.

Her Patreon page is at Ame Art Illustrations (Patreon link opens in new window.) Patrons backing at $10/month or higher level can request sketches. Go for it!

You can also follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ameartillus - She's a classic animation fan and has a lot of good analysis on more current movies, as well. #ff #art #hashtags

When the Going gets Weird, the Weird Turn Pro!

The title of this post was always followed by groans in our college gaming group, because it meant someone was about to play a "The Weird Turn Pro" card and power up some folks in SJG's long-dead Illuminati: New World Order. It's fair to say our INWO and Mythos playing kept me from being a Magic: The Gathering fan for at least a decade (I got into it later during the notoriously-underpowered Mercadian Masques block. Still loved it.) and was a huge influence on how a gaming group "should" operate.

Last week, I decided to go outside my comfort zone, and agreed to transcribe a Twitter person's podcast. She had been participating in the UK-led hashtag #BoardGameHour, which happens on Mondays, and mentioned that she was looking for someone to transcribe her podcast, and had about 30 minutes left of one episode to get done soon. I've done some short transcription work in the past for Amazon's Mechanical Turk, and it can be a lot of fun to work those aural muscles, so I jumped on the opportunity. I'm grateful I did, as I had a blast doing something interesting and stretching my skill set.

Today, Erin posted the episode I transcribed: "The Geeky Gimp Presents #6: A Podcast With Chris." It was a lot of fun to listen to, even having to jump back to get individual words clarified. I've added her site to my blogroll on the right, as well. She and Chris Preiman discuss Daredevil, comic book movies, and Star Trek. Chris is blind, and as you can imagine, has Daredevil Opinions. He and Erin are both well versed in tons of geeky subjects, and I really can't put into words how much I enjoyed listening to their conversation.

Life is busy

I'm getting in lots of games, but not getting back to blogging.,. I'm sitting on a game to review, learned a few new titles, and played the living daylights out of others.

If you know anyone who wants a copy of Glory To Rome: Black Box edition who has $150 to spend, please send them my way.