I'm glad that Fantasy Flight Games revised and reprinted Arkham Horror. I like the Cthulhu Mythos theme and I think the game is pretty good. It does suffer, in my opinion, from being a "character building" game, which is another way of saying a board game that tries to be an RPG. These types of games are okay, but they tend to be repetitive and quickly become boring for me. I think another problem Arkham Horror has is that it's not difficult enough. Barring tragic die rolls, I don't see how a competent group of four or more players can lose this game. It's better with fewer players (two might be optimal) because with fewer players the game becomes harder.
There have been a number of variants proposed for the game. I tend to avoid variants simply because they are usually too complicated and a game as published shouldn't need to fixed. This is often considered an odd position to take, but there you go. On the other hand, sometimes a simple tweak to the rules is all that's needed to make the game better.
Chad Walton (C.H.A.D on BGG) has come up with a few simple changes to Arkham Horror that I think are worth the effort of including in future games. In his words:
"I believe that the game is too easy. However I am not a big fan of complicated variants (the rules are long enough already and I don't need more charts or more game terms or more markers on the board...). I also prefer variants that make the characters weaker rather than accelerating the GOO. I think it is more thematic to make the game a struggle rather than a race. Anyway all the tweaks I've listed below have been thoroughly play-tested with two and four players. How well they scale to larger groups I don't know or care as we always have either two or four players. :)
So the first rule we use is:
No clues on the board at the start of the game
This does a lot of things. First it makes sealing gates harder and secondly it makes encounters harder. With a shortage of clues the decision on whether to spend them or save them becomes more significant.
The other rule we use is:
Can only use Lore to close gates
In our experience using only lore instead of both lore and fight to close gates has balanced the game more. Let's face it spells are no where as good as items when it comes to dealing with monsters (or anything else). The gangter equipped with both his starting gun and a magic sword can clear out large groups of monsters plus he is the best at closing gates... When we played the players playing the fight oriented charaters (the gangster, private eye, etc.) were always the heroes while lore characters (the nun, magician, etc.) just tried to survive and contribute something... It also encourages more teamwork as often one of the fighty guys has to play fullback and jump into a gate before the lore guy to clear out those pesky monsters hovering on the gate location when before the fighty guy could handle it all by himself. Basically as the game stands now certain characters can do everything while others can harldy do anything.
Besides those two changes we do use Stormknight's variant more often than not, and if we want a particularly hard game we use Richard Launius's (the deisgner) house rule of hidden gates (nasty when combined with the using only lore to close gates rule).
Oh the other rule we play is knowing that any cultist who is truly intent on bringing his tentacled/many-eyed deity into the world would know that the #1 threat to his plans is a young researcher by the name of Mandy Thompson so he'd take an axe to the back of her head before setting into motion his plan of destroying the world. She stays in the box...
If the game is still too easy for you try starting the game with more than one open gate on the board.
So that's basically it. A few simple tweaks to make the players struggle and make the choices they have to make more significant."
I like Chad's suggestions. They are simple and easy to implement and don't require major changes to the current rule set. I look forward to giving them a try the next time I play Arkham Horror.
Another variant that is getting a lot good buzz on BGG is one proposed by Brian M (Stormknight on BGG):
Changing the Flow of the Doom Track
"We've found that Arkham Horror tends to have the opposite feel that it should - in the begining, there is a frantic rush to seal gates. Later on once you have a few gates sealed, you can move at a very relaxed pace. In fact, it often becomes apparent there is no way for Old One to appear at all, since there aren't really enough gate locations to build up enough Doom tokens, which also leads to the problem that its actually very BAD to close (without sealing) a gate, since it just lets more Doom tokens appear!
We tried changing things a bit, and really liked how this worked out.
When you draw a gate at a location with no gate, place a gate and a monster as usual, but DO NOT add a Doom token.
When you draw a gate at a location with an active gate, add a monster at the location and ADD a Doom token, but do not place extra monsters.
When you draw a gate at a sealed location, do not place a gate or doom token, but place one monster at every open gate (as you would have when a gate opened where there already was an existing gate in the normal rules). (This represents dark forces mobilizing in direct response to your investigator's efforts).
This seems to nicely alter the flow of the game. Early on, the Doom isn't building up, and you can actually afford to close gates. As more gates build up, the Doom track builds up faster. Seal gates, and its a big boon - but you will face more of a threat. And there's never a "safe" point where you know the Old One will never appear.
The other change we made, which is really quite seperate, is to reduce the number of monster strength trophies need to "cash in" to 3 (or 6 for those that would normally cost 10). One gate trophy would replace 3 strength. This lets you actually get to buy more stuff, and have more fun in choosing what to get and actually getting things like allies.
Forgot to mention a minor thing. We did start out the doom track with one token on it.
Just for the record, credit for this variant goes a lot (probably more than me) to Nightmare."
I have not tried Stormknight's variant. It looks interesting and is worth considering.
Another tweak I am considering is making unique items actually unique by removing all duplicates from the Unique Items Deck. This will certainly make the game harder for those players who like to "mine" the Unique Items Deck and extract all of the Elder Signs. With only one Elder Sign available from the Unique Item Deck, the players will have to work harder to win the game.
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