Arkham Horror: Dunwich Horror Expansion

Customer Reviews

My investigator was driven mad… Review by Aimee

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If you’ve never played with an expansion before, make sure you have a large table to play on as the Arkham game board takes up lots of room already. The new Dunwich game board addition includes a Dunwich Horror track, new Dunwich and other world locations, and vortices. Vortices are entered only by monsters, who then get returned to the monster cup. While less monsters on the board sounds like a good thing, each monster returned adds one to the terror track. Travel to the Dunwich locations is done via train and passes are available for frequent travelers.

As anticipated, there are lots of new scary things to watch out for. Four new ancient ones -including one that can reduce locations to rubble via earthquakes. Two new monster types: spawn and stalker; spawn, similar to mask, are only used with a certain ancient one. There’s also a new gang to watch out for in the woods. And of course, there’s the Dunwich Horror. When the Dunwich Horror track fills up, the Dunwich Horror monster appears at Sentinel Hill. When he is encountered, there is a special deck that cards are drawn from, detailing what the monster can do. The track is emptied if he’s defeated, but it can fill up again.

A most important change to be aware of is Gate Bursts. Some mythos cards will cause even gates sealed with an elder sign to re-open.

My favorite addition was the Injury and Madness cards. Instead of losing skills or clue tokens, Injury cards can be taken if your stamina runs out and Madness cards when your sanity runs out. Don’t worry if you think you’re too crazy or injured, if you get two or more cards, you can retire your investigator – at a cost of course.

We played with 6 people and after 6 hours, we still weren't done. I have no problem with long duration games, but you'll want to make sure that everyone at the table is up for paying attention for a long time. I’m sure that time will be reduced with more frequent play.
(Posted on 4/13/11)