Fantasy Flight Games Eldritch Horror: Signs of Carcosa Expansion

This review initially covers the base game, followed by one for the ‘Forsaken Lore’ expansion. It is not possible to post the latter review against the expansion due to the manner in which Amazon have linked the products.It is a very long review so I will briefly summarise before diving into the detail:It is a physically big game with many components but with a straightforward turn structure and the rulebook is well laid out. The cooperative element is very strong but success is highly dependant on dice rolls. It is difficult to win, especially with two players, but plays well four handed. The ‘Forsaken Lore’ expansion adds a lot more variability to the base game but does make it more difficult.Base Game:The Lovecraftian universe seems to have spawned a good few games and ‘Pandemic Reign of Cthulu’ is one of our regularly played two player co-operative games. ‘Eldritch Horror’ is another co-op set in the same universe but on a globetrotting scale and with non-Pandemic mechanics.This is a physically big game with lots of components and the board is huge (about 84cm x 56cm). There are seven different types of token (health, sanity, clues, travel tickets, ability improvements…), ten decks of cards for encounters, artefacts, assets, conditions, mysteries and mythos as well as epic & ‘standard’ monsters and finally a stack of gates. In addition to all that, you need space for a dice tray, the player investigator boards and their asset etc., ancient one sheet & mysteries. Our gaming table is 126cm x 90cm and is just big enough (as you can see from the photo). A couple of cheap plastic business card holders are great for keeping the decks tidy and saving space. Component quality is excellent.With all of those components, setup takes about 20mins but once you’ve done it a couple of times it is not complicated. The rulebook is pretty good but we have found a few ambiguities where we’ve had to resort to the internet (there’s an excellent Fandom Wiki). After the first couple of games, gameplay is fluid and we find ourselves only referring to the rulebook during combat (we have only played five games so far). There are three phases to each turn; action, encounter and mythos. During action, each player can perform two actions (travel, rest, trade, prepare for travel and acquire assets) but not the same action twice. In the encounter phase each player has one encounter with a location, monster, gate, clue, rumour, or adventure. Location encounters allow the player the chance to improve one of their abilities or acquire assets etc. The mythos phase is where mostly bad things happen – advancing the doom & omen tracks, spawning monsters & gates. It all sounds very complicated, but it is not.The game finishes when the doom tracker reaches zero from a starting value determined from the current ancient one, the mythos deck is empty, all players are defeated or after a particularly nasty rumour encounter. When any of these things happen, the game is lost. Prepare to lose quite a lot, sometimes right on the brink of victory. The game is won when the investigators manage to solve the ancient one’s three mysteries. Acquiring assets and all encounters are driven by dice throws (number of dice set by the investigator’s ability and usually 5 or 6 wins) and something good happens when you win while otherwise usually something not good. The dice mechanism introduces a huge (often frustrating) degree of luck to the game but it works really well. The two times we’ve won so far have been down to lucky dice rolls at the right time.The co-op play element is strong and essential to having the vaguest chance of winning. As we play mostly co-op games this suites us very nicely. With twelve investigators to chose from, each with strengths and weaknesses in their five abilities, four ancient ones of varying nastiness and the randomness from the card decks and dice throws, no two games are the same. Also, the range of game-over prevents interminable games - with the least nasty ancient one the game will be over one way or another within fifteen turns. Our games usually take a couple of hours.Despite the perhaps daunting size and vast number of components it is a delightful and somewhat addictive game to play. Pace is good for the type of game, there is no analysis paralysis, there’s lots of discussion at the table (although it could fall victim to the alpha gamer syndrome) and the phase sequence is intuitive. My only very minor gripe is that there are no grip-lock bags provided to hold the tokens & decks of cards when it comes to put the game away (thankfully they are cheap & readily available – I have some 10x15cm bags which are perfect). An all-round excellent game if you like co-ops and I’m considering getting the ‘Forsaken Lore’ expansion in the future.Rulebook: 8/10 Complexity: 6/10 Component quality: 10/10 Replayability: 10/10 Gameplay pace: 8/10Forsaken Lore:Having played the base game a fair few times (and even won occasionally), it was starting to get a bit samey with the relatively small number of mystery and encounter cards. We decided, therefore, to opt for this ‘Forsaken Lore’ expansion to add a lot more variety to the gameplay.The small box was packed with loads of cards and some more bits and pieces (another ancient one and some more epic monsters (like we need more of those!)) but there’s no point listing the details here as they are visible on the back of the box in the product photographs. There is a small rule sheet with a minor combat alteration and some ‘cross that bridge when we get to it’ sort of stuff. The cards were all shuffled into their respective base game decks and the much-anticipated game commenced.It is certainly true that there is more variety in the multitude of decks, which is good, but it has also made it harder to win despite the upgraded asset and artefact decks. There are some particularly nasty encounter cards that instead of failing an ability test before something unpleasant happens, the player just gets a nasty condition (there’s only one nice condition (‘Blessed’) that we’ve found so far and neither of us manages to hold onto it for very long). Consequently, we’ve failed to win a game since incorporating the ‘Forsaken Lore’ expansion and are currently developing some house rules (nothing wrong with that) to make gameplay more enjoyable rather than staring defeat in the face at almost every turn. However, as with the base game, success depends greatly on the dice throws and with good luck and a fair wind it can feel like you’re getting somewhere (but then, lady luck is a fickle mistress).We would have a go at playing two investigators each (like when we play the similarly themed ‘Pandemic Reign of Cthulu’) but there isn’t room on the gaming table and, for the same reason and because the game is now ‘interesting’ enough, we probably won’t be getting further expansions as it seems that most of the other expansions have supplementary boards. We certainly don’t need anything to make it more challenging as we’re currently failing to win against the easiest Ancient One, let alone the nastier ones.Adding this ‘Forsaken Lore’ expansion on to the base game makes it feel complete, almost like the base game is a pared-down version. This could easily be the case as the sum of the prices of the base game and this expansion would take it out of the ‘this looks good and not too expensive – let’s give it a go’ group into the less appealing ‘looks good but rather pricey – not sure’ category. Perhaps a clever bit of marketing but, nonetheless, this expansion is pretty much a must-have if you enjoy the base game.EDIT: Having failed miserably to win any games, even with fairly generous house rules, we decided to press my Granddad’s old folding card table into service and have a go at a four handed game. Games take longer but are much more fun, there’s more opportunity to specialise the investigators & strategise, less rushing about fire-fighting and, at last, we have actually won. Time to adjust the house rules if we start winning every game!Rulebook: 10/10 Complexity: 8/10 Component quality: 10/10 Replayability: 10/10 Gameplay pace: 10/10

I'm relatively new to the works of H P Lovecraft so I only became aware of this through a podcast. It's perhaps one of the luckiest mentions I've taken a chance on.It's a cooperative game in which players take on the roles of certain unique investigators who are attempting to prevent the return of an ancient terror.The box contains 8 diverse character sheets and 4 ancient evil or elder God sheets. The interesting thing is that the cards that you draw are themed to the ancient evil you will be setting yourself agsinst, and the variety of the cards being played make it highly unlikely you'll experience the same combination of story elements twice, which makes for excellent replay ability.I'm also fairly new to modern board games, where I understand the rules can seem a little daunting and off putting to the new player in the absence of a teacher to hold your hand first time out. Whilst the mechanics of the game allow a lot of choices to be played out, I found it very reassuring how quickly I was able to pick up the order of turns and before long my turn times speeded up as I grew in confidence.Prior to buying this game I would highly recommend you check out an introductory video of the product on YouTube as I did. I found it to make the process of comprehending the game so much easier, and there are a lot of good quality videos of fans explaining things in simple step by step terms.All in all its perhaps the best board game I own, and with expansions available I can see me enjoying this game a lot.Average play time for me is in the region of 1 hour 50 minutes to just over 2 hours, but on a day off its has been known for me to play game after game from 10am until well into the evening. The fact that I only won a couple of games didn't frustrate me in the slightest as it was a real adventure each time.Only downside I will be mentioning is that there are a fair amount of components in the form of cards, counters, tokens and the board of the world itself of course. The picture guide that comes with the game will tell you how to set it out, but be sure you have access to the dining table or other large gaming surface before deciding to play.Brilliant product. Another stellar bit of work from Fantasy Flight Games.

Great game but set up takes a little while. The game can last quite a long time and is easier with more people playing.This is really fun and contains different scenarios. It has items, characters, dice, the board, sanity tokens, health tokens, tokens to increase lore/observation/influence/strength/Sanity, clues to gain, rumours, scenario cards, shipping ticket and rail tickets included just to mention a few things!Once you start playing, the game is easier to get the hang of. Three phases: action (each player performs 2 actions or if the following: travel, buy a ticket, rest, test influence to gain items), encounter (draw a card based on where you are i.e. city, sea or wilderness space and whether you are trying to gain a clue or close a gate) and the final phase is the doom phase which usually involves everyone playing.It's a really fun game and although it can take a couple of hours with a few people, we really enjoy it.The box is sturdy and the board folda up well. There is actually enough space for extra cars and tokens if you buy an expansion set which we did. We also bought a little holder that comes in flat pack wood that you construct, to make storing everything easier as it can be fiddly to get it in the box space properly otherwise.