A one-two punch of games wrecked my life/elevated my existence to the next level back in 2024. One was Horrified, which I’ve chatted about until people weep. The other is the deep and dark delight of Arkham Horror: The Living Card Game. To say it literally changed my life is no exaggeration. Nothing has been the same since that day. This announcement, therefore, is about as exciting as it gets.
Fantasy Flight Games have devised a brand new core set for Arkham Horror LCG, which will (rather cleverly in my opinion) serve simultaneously as both a continuation and a fresh starting point for this acclaimed game. This new core set heralds the beginning of what they’re calling “Chapter Two” for the game. Taking place several months after where The Drowned City left off, this box provides a new introductory campaign, five mechanically new investigators, and a fresh card pool to expand your collection—or start a new one (I’m happy to both expand upon what I’ve got, and start new as well: just gimme the cards, all the cards).
The critical thing to know is that this is NOT a new edition, and therefore it does NOT mean old timers are starting from scratch. This is the same Arkham Horror LCG you know and love. You can regard this new core set as simply another expansion to add to your collection. You can mix and match the player cards from this box with everything that came before it and everything that will come after it; it’s all fully compatible because it’s all the same game!
There’s a combination of brand new investigators and returning favourites who have been rewritten and rebalanced to such a degree that they are almost entirely new. For example, Joe Diamond returns but with a very different selection of abilities: after all, he’s spent a long time dealing with the supernatural, making him a changed man. New to this chapter is Isabelle Barnes, who is so set on vengeance against those who wronged her that she’s willing to use her own sanity as a resource (this is the kind of character I really want to play, and I’m keen to see how this risk/reward dynamic plays out). Most obviously there’s also a new introductory campaign, Brethren of Ash, in which a string of disappearances has cast a shadow over Arkham, lighting a fire under you and your fellow investigators as you work to get to the bottom of the mystery.
Chapter Two sees the introduction of “reward cards,” which are earned for winning a campaign, finishing a specific scenario, or fulfilling some other special condition. You can’t include a reward card in any of your decks until you’ve officially unlocked it in-game, which means these rewards serve as a form of permanent progression as well as proof of your investigating chops.
The new core set introduces the first of these reward cards: Collector (Core Set, 181), which you can earn by completing the Brethren of Ash introductory campaign. In exchange for increasing your deck size, this special neutral asset lets you include a Relic or Charm card from any class in your deck, opening up all sorts of new deck-building opportunities.
I had been worrying that I’d joined Arkham Horror LCG at the end of its shelf life, that the recent expansions might be the last. I’ve never been so pleased to be wrong, and this new chapter is the most exciting news to come out of this Halloween season.
More will be revealed on November 22nd, and I intend to be all the way across it.
About the Author:
Steve is currently a freelance board game blogger, but often dreams of life as a pirate, or as a ghost herder in the Lake District, or as an evil estate agent who sells haunted houses for his own dark pleasure. Instead of figuring out how to do these jobs in real life like a normal lunatic, he tries to write about them instead, and releases the resultant books upon the unsuspecting world via famous digital bookstores. More books are bound to follow. Find this peculiar entity here.
