OUR REVIEW

ARKHAM HORROR

THE ELDER SIGN

ROLL FOR YOUR LIFE

The day is uncertain, the hour, however, only too certain: at midnight, an evil, unearthly creature will awaken from his Sleep of Eons and bring terrible destruction upon mankind – once again! In any case, the omens for this horror scenario are increasing, monsters and followers of banned, blasphemous cults are appearing in the Museum of the small university town of Arkham, Massachusetts. Whoever feels at home in the world of Howard Phillips Lovecraft may want to travel thither immediately to boldly hamper this oh-so-scary end. As so often is the case, the situation is hopeless, but not serious.

Fantasy Flight Games and Heidelberger Spieleverlag (for the German edition) are promising a "Game of Suspense and Supernatural Investigation". Players are to try to collect enough Elder Signs (represented by cardboard markers, obviously inevitable in the "Arkham Horror Files" series of games) to avoid the appearance of a Great Old One. The usual suspects are there for the pick (or to be drawn at random from eight possible): e. g. Shub-Niggurath, the eerie Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young; Hastur, the King in Yellow (who appears in H. P. Lovecraft`s own stories merely as a quote from a work of his colleague Robert W. Chambers); Nyarlathotep drops in as well, accompanied by his masked followers (it is not without reason that he is considered a malevolent deity with Carnivalesque traits within Lovecraftian myth); of course, the great Cthulhu is not to be omitted; and as soon as Azathoth, the Destroyer, awakens, everything will be over anyway and for good.

To conclude the exorcism in time – it almost never seems possible –, all players jointly have to gather trophy points to trade them in turn into Elder-Sign-Tokens. Depending on the selected (or randomly drawn) Character, you start out with physical strength and mental health only (in most cases at a rather low maximum value). Sometimes, though, you get an ally or a (magical or ordinary) helpful item (cards) to begin with to fight monsters or survive adventures. Even though a lot of the tasks sound interesting (for example, decipher an ancient stone tablet, or even travel to another dimension), actually confronting them means endless dice throwing: just obtain the respective required combination on your set of symbol dice – very similar to rolling Poker dice. There really cannot be any question of "investigation“ as one would expect in a detective game.

Regarding the graphic design, the good people at Fantasy Flight Games tread upon tried and tested paths. Task-Cards (value: between 1 and, very rarely, 3 trophy points) and other playing cards, as well as the monster tokens (draw from an opaque mug when required) are nice, but unfortunately not designed particularly innovative. Rather they are taken from the existing repertoire. The same applies for the Characters. Whoever played the role of "Ashcan" Pete, the Tramp, or Professor Harvey Walters (a veteran whose roots reach at least as far back as to the role-playing game "Call of Cthulhu", Chaosium 1981) or once has chosen Sister Mary, the Nun, can do this here again confidently. Players may select from sixteen well-known Characters.

To successfully complete a task, you have (normally) two attempts, but you can also ask another character for support (obviously only when you're not playing alone; "The Elder Sign" offers the possibility of solo playing, but that is not recommended). In an emergency, you may also pay for a re-roll from your storage of clue markers. Once you have solved a problem, you usually will get other rewards besides the trophy points, too. For example, you win back lost strength points, find an object (draw from the stack), or maybe a portal opens into other worlds where there are to be gained even more rewards. On the other hand, if one fails in mastering a task, additional monsters may appear or similar hardships might come to pass. Fortunately, not all consequences of failure are disastrous.

There remains only one mystery that may never be solved: elapsed (in-game) time is marked on a cardboard clock, but every twelve hours it is supposed to strike midnight. At this dark hour (on any day the destruction token spaces are filled completely), the awakening of the Great Old One will occur. The Great-Old-One-Sheet receives an additional marker at least every midnight. The light-sleeper among the Great Old Ones (Yig) needs eight tokens to awaken, at the other end there is Azathoth (wakes up when the twelfth token is in its place). The game is likely to be most interesting for collectors of the "Arkham Horror Files" series of games.

Martina & Martin Lhotzky

Players: 1-8

Age: 14+

Time: 90+

Designer: Richard Launius, Kevin Wilson

Art: Dallas Mehlhof, Anders Finér

Price: ca. 30 Euro

Publisher: Heidelberger / FFG 2012

Web: www.hds-fantasy.de

Genre: Dice poker with a horror topic

Users: For experts

Special: 1 player

Special: Many players

Version: de

Rules: de en

In-game text: yes

Comments:

Mixture of standard and well-known elements from other Arkham Games

Contrary to the background story there is no investigating, but dice rolling to solve puzzles

Atmosphere nicely implemented

Feels like Arkham Horror Junior

Compares to:

Nearly all other games in the Arkham Horror range

Other editions:

Elder Sign, FFG

My rating: 1

Martin & Martina:

A mixture of established elements, rather haphazardly thrown together and with few new elements. Probably mostly of interest to collectors of games in the Arkham Horror Range.

Chance (pink): 3

Tactic (turquoise): 1

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 1

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0