Madness, Caravans, and Dwarfs

Welcome to this week’s gaming post! This week I’m discussing a cooperative LCG, a heavy euro, and a bidding/set-collection game. So without further ado, let’s jump into the recent highlights.

I recently completed The Path to Carcosa campaign for Arkham Horror: The Card Game. If you’re unfamiliar with Arkham Horror the Living Card Game (LCG), it’s a cooperative card game where you take control of an investigator within the Lovecraftian universe. You can either tackle scenarios on their own or as part of a larger campaign where choices and outcomes, including deck-building, carry over from game to game.

I’ll preface that I’m fairly new to Arkham Horror LCG, with Carcosa being the first campaign I’ve played through outside of core game (Night of the Zealot). First off, I enjoyed Carcosa way more than Night of the Zealot. Where Night of the Zealot only has three scenarios compared to eight in Carcosa, Night of the Zealot really feels like an introduction to the game and mechanisms, whereas Carcosa really feels like the full experience. On the Carcosa campaign as a whole, outside of a couple of scenarios that were a bit flat, almost every scenario felt unique and mixed the core loop up in interesting ways. The entire experience was incredibly memorable.

There’s also a ton of replayability in the game. Scenarios have branching paths, so even on repeat playthroughs, there’s still plenty to enjoy and uncover. There are also a load of investigators to try out (five in the core game, with more released along with each campaign cycle), each with unique deckbuilding requirements and abilities.

While there are a fair number of card abilities/keywords to keep track of, the gameplay itself is fairly straightforward and smooth – take three actions, resolve monsters, and flip over an encounter card. Also, while I’m not naturally drawn towards the Lovecraftian genre, and even though the game is a card game (no board or gigantic miniatures), it’s still hugely thematic and the art and writing is well done. 

Including Night of the Zealot, there are thousands of cards, ten campaigns, and more standalone scenarios currently available. With so much content, it can feel overwhelming at times, and outside of guides, it can be difficult to know where to jump in. Not to mention, collecting all of the content is expensive. Luckily I have a friend who has all of the content and over 300 scenario plays under his belt, so playing through Carcosa with him made things feel less overwhelming for a newcomer. The repackaging of the cycles has helped in these regards, and I would also recommend ArkhamDB for deckbuilding guides, as well as the Arkham Cards app for managing your campaigns.

I’ve barely scratched the surface with Arkham Horror LCG, and overall, I’m looking forward to returning to Arkham to experience the other campaigns and try out more investigators.

Next up is Wayfarers of the South Tigris, the first in the South Tigris series from Garphill Games. In Wayfarers, players are building a tableau of land, water, and sky cards, some of which unlock new personal dice placement options, all while progressing through a journal/research track that is the trigger for the end of the game.

While relatively new to the collection, this has easily become my favorite Garphill Game. I love the amount of variety, particularly from the five different decks of cards that allow you to specialize in certain areas. Do you choose to focus on land, sea, or some combination? Each game feels unique depending on which cards come out, the new dice placement spots you pick up, and how the journal track is oriented. My favorite mechanisms in the game are the dice placement spots on the cards you collect, as well as upgrading the icons/abilities on your dice. Also, the cards form a landscape, so at the end of the game it’s satisfying to look at scene you’ve built.

With any dice game, there is an element of luck. However, even when you roll poorly, it never feels too punishing because there are so many options to mitigate it, either by modifying the number on your dice or through upgrading tiles. The journal track is an interesting end game timer because to progress along it, you need to collect a certain number of tags. The one downside to this is that if players are not journaling often, it can lengthen the game. Also, since the first player to reach the end of the track may not always have the most points, players may be encouraged to wait to trigger the end of the game in order to try to score more points through other paths. I like that there is a journal action each time you rest to collect your dice because it does encourage players to journal every so often. Finally, since there isn’t much player interaction, I mostly enjoy Wayfarers at lower player counts, but I recently played a game with four players that was still very enjoyable.

While I’ve only played a handful of the Garphill Games, Wayfarers easily surpassed my expectations, not only becoming my favorite Garphill Game, overtaking Paladins, but also one of my all-time favorites. With so much replayability, I’m looking forward to more plays of Wayfarers so I can try all kinds of wacky strategies.

Lastly, I recently brought out Nidavellir, a bidding and set-collection game with dwarfs. In it, players secretly assign coins to three different taverns of dwarfs, with the coin value determining the order in which players get to select cards.

It had been some time since I had gotten this one played, and I was reminded of how quick and straightforward it is. The box says 45 minutes, which I think is pretty accurate, and I think you could easily get it down to closer to 30 minutes if everyone is familiar with the game. One of the most interesting elements of the game is the coin upgrade system. Every player has one zero level coin, and if they use that coin to bid on one of the three taverns, they get to upgrade one of the two coins they didn’t use to bid on the taverns. This creates tense moments where you have to decide how much you value having an early choice on cards versus upgrading your coins to have a better chance at picking early in future rounds.

I recently posted about my favorite Gateway games, and there is a chance this one would have made the cut had it not been for the heroes. Each time a player collects a set of one of each of the five different types of dwarfs, they get to select one of the available heroes to add to their collection, each with different abilities/scoring. Personally, the heroes are sort of a double-edged sword, they create an interesting dynamic to what is a pretty straightforward set-collection game, but it can be difficult to remember how each one operates, and it is the most challenging part to teach to new players. If you play Nidavellir often, then you’ll likely remember how each one operates, but if you only bring the game out every so often or to teach to new players, then it can be a bit of a challenge to remember/teach.

Nidavellir has become a curious part of my collection. It’s gradually been slipping down my rankings, now in the bottom half of my collection, and I’m not quite sure why. I almost always enjoy my plays of it, but it doesn’t seem to make it to the table all that often. While the heroes are interesting, it could be that they make it a bit challenging to return to, or it could be that I don’t find the mechanisms (a fairly straightforward bidding and set-collection game) all that compelling or unique. While, Nidavellir is nowhere close to becoming a cull candidate, I’d like to try to get this to the table a bit more often to see if it has a chance to rebound back up my rankings.

With that, I’ll wrap up this week’s gaming highlights! I’d love to hear your thoughts on any of the games I’ve mentioned, future content, or format in the comments section below. Happy gaming!