Arkham Horror - Game Guide - Chapter 7: Buyer's Guide

Right, let’s dive in.

As you already know at this point, your first purchase obviously has to be the core set. Once you have that, you can start acquiring the aforementioned expansions. However, loads of people in the community likes to acquire accessories for the game, which can make playing the game easier, or simply make their game more luxurious.

Right off the bat, there’s no right or wrong way to about this. It all comes down to what’s right for you as a player. With that in mind, the below buyer’s guide is obviously just my recommendation, which you can naturally choose to follow or not. It’s up to you.

In my mind, there are four separate paths when it comes to collecting Arkham Horror: The Card Game:

  • Campaign Expansions & Investigator Expansions
  • Standalone Scenarios
  • Return To… Boxes
  • Accessories

It’s up to you which path you want to start on and when, but to simplify things, here are the three paths as I seem them along with the prioritized purchases.

Campaign Expansions & Investigator Expansions

It’s naturally up to you if you’d rather start out with increasing the pool of player cards available to you, or if you’d prefer to acquire an entirely new campaign… or both? Both? Both sounds good. I’ve included the publisher’s short description of each campaign below, so you can gage which campaign sounds the most interesting to you.

    1. The Dunwich Legacy. A monstrous presence once terrorized the secluded village of Dunwich. The season of horror ended only after three professors from Miskatonic University—Dr. Henry Armitage, Dr. Francis Morgan, and Professor Warren Price—ventured to Dunwich, armed with secret knowledge that enabled them to defeat the creature. Now, several months later, Dr. Armitage’s colleagues have gone missing, and he fears the worst…

    1. The Path to Carcosa. For weeks, the upcoming performance of The King in Yellow has been the talk of the town. But research into the play’s dark history has convinced you that something foul is at work. Disappearances. Suicides. Delusions. Insanity. Wherever The King in Yellow is performed, madness follows close behind. No connection has yet been proven, but that won’t stop you from searching for the truth.

    1. Edge of the Earth. In the far, uncharted reaches of Antarctica, unspeakable horrors dwell on the edge of shadows. They lurk, wait, and watch, and with them comes a secret so ancient and profound that it threatens to tear apart our very understanding of the planet we call home—if it doesn’t tear apart reality itself first. Thus, our intrepid investigators must delve into the mysteries of the great southern ice sheets and, hopefully, uncover the truth before it is too late. Will they save the world? Or will they perish in the icy depths?

    1. The Scarlet Keys. Strange disappearances haunt the city of Arkham, Massachusetts. With each object, building, or person that vanishes, they are erased not just from physical existence, but from history and memory as well. Only a select few investigators remember those that disappeared–or so they believe. Before long, the mystery unravels into an international conspiracy, and our wary investigators find themselves recruited by a shadowy government agency whose sole purpose is the collection and research of paradimensional implements they call “Keys.” However, they aren’t the only ones searching for them…

  1. The Forgotten Age. We think we know the history of the Earth, but there are secrets that lie beyond our ken and truths that threaten to undo our understanding of the universe. When renowned historian Alejandro Vela discovers one of these secrets—the ruins of an ancient and forgotten Aztec city—it sets into motion a plot that could unravel the very fabric of time itself. Your investigator(s) join an expedition to explore these ruins, venturing deep into perilous rainforests and forbidden caverns. Will they survive this dangerous journey, or will it be their undoing?

 

Standalone Scenarios

  1. Murder at the Excelsior Hotel
  2. Carnevale of Horrors
  3. Curse of Rougarou
  4. Guardians of the Abyss
  5. The Blob That Ate Everything
  6. War of the Outer Gods
  7. The Labyrinths of Lunacy

There are another two Standalone Scenarios, however I cannot rank them as I simply haven’t played them.

  • Fortune and Folly. Set to release in Q1/Q2 of 2023.
  • Barkham Horror: The Meddling of Meowlathotep. This is now out of print.

 

Return To… Boxes

As you can imagine, the order of which you acquire these boxes solely rely on the order you buy your Campaign Expansions in, so I cannot give you a recommendation on which one you should start with… but seeing as the first campaign you’ll be playing is – or rather should be – The Night of the Zealot from the core box, perhaps the best place to start is with Return to The Night of the Zealot.

 

Accessories

This is naturally also very subjective (like everything else in this buyer’s guide), however I would recommend acquiring accessories in the following order.

  1. Sleeves
  2. Location Connectors
  3. Token Holders (or Coin Capsules, as they’re also called)
  4. Player Boards
  5. Upgraded Tokens
  6. Mini-card Stands

And that’s it.

Thank you so much for reading through this guide, I hope it has been of help to you.

If you have any comments or suggestions on how this guide can be improved, please let us know, as we’re always looking to get better.

You should now enough to get stuck in with one of the best games of all time. No seriously, it’s currently ranked 27th out of 23000+ games. Yes, it really is that good.

Wow, that’s everything.

Except… there is one more chapter.

Remember all the way back in chapter 2, when I mentioned that I had a trick for you when it came to looking up cards and such? What if I told you all cards for the game can be read online for free, that you can speed up your deckbuilding process by doing it all online… all for free? Sounds great right?!

So join me in the next (and final) chapter of this guide, where I provide you with a short list of online resources, that might come in handy, as you keep exploring Arkahm Horror: The Card Game.
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