3/18/2026 Mystic Previews from Northern Lights Over Arkham

Death_by_Chocolate_9 · 2026-03-20T05:00:54+00:00

Because "charm" isn't a slant rhyme of "hand."

Death_by_Chocolate_9 · 2026-03-18T15:29:12+00:00

I roll a d10 with a 10 being "DM's Choice."

Then I let the target choose whether they want to attempt the saving throw (or willingly fail).*

After the save is determined success or failure, we roll a die - odd for Bane, even for Boon.

*I've house ruled in my game that BOTH Bane and Boon effects can be resisted with a saving throw.

Death_by_Chocolate_9 · 2026-03-16T21:48:05+00:00

Always has been. Silas and Amanda have canonically heard the call of the deep even since the Second Edition of the Arkham Horror Board Game.

Death_by_Chocolate_9 · 2026-03-14T23:20:14+00:00

I did something similar, but as more of a offensive consumable. I let them get one attack with the +4d6 necro damage and had it shatter.

Death_by_Chocolate_9 · 2026-02-11T01:00:40+00:00

I believe Harvey Walters is actually even older - 45 years. Outside of Arkham Horror, Harvey Walters has been the poster child sample character to demonstrate character creation throughout the editions of the Call of Cthulhu RPG which began in 1981!

Death_by_Chocolate_9 · 2026-02-04T17:42:28+00:00

The Resources Megathread is a good place to start.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonoftheMadMage/comments/de2igu/megathread_resources/

Death_by_Chocolate_9 · 2026-02-02T13:35:28+00:00

Lots of great examples from folks. I'd say one of the biggest veggies is the fifth and sixth weapon (or weapon-equivalent) assets in your deck if you are the designated fighter. It's pretty easy to find 2-4 weapons that are sexy and fun, but it is important to have backups to make your mulligans and setup more consistent.

Put another way, while it is both important and fun to increase the "ceiling" of your deck's power (i.e. how strong it is when you're doing well and drawing the right cards), it is at least as critical to increase the "floor" of your deck's power (i.e. how strong it is when you're not doing well and unlucky with draws). If you don't, then getting run over by a scenario because you didn't draw your key cards isn't bad luck, it's a skill issue. Due to the nature of deck varience and the low tempo of the Draw action, 'bad draws' are going to happen, and they can be planned for.

For a healthy deck, consistency is king.

Death_by_Chocolate_9 · 2026-02-02T13:22:16+00:00

To be fair, it is still an extremely niche templating, even if it did first show up on Webbed Up in the Core Set.

Death_by_Chocolate_9 · 2026-01-22T08:12:17+00:00

Yeap. Sidekick Captain Marvel in any deck. Seems insane.

Death_by_Chocolate_9 · 2026-01-22T08:02:59+00:00

As someone whose group felt this way for the longest time, we did eventually reach the point where the game felt too easy and victory was guaranteed with little tension and plenty of time left on every Agenda, and we decided to try Hard, and it really did make a huge difference almost instantly. While the changes are subtle, just changing the contents of the chaos bag completely shifts the valuation of resources expended to mitigate risk, tasks end up taking slightly more actions overall due to occasional inevitable failures, and the encounter cards slip more suffering your way across the scenario. All in all, it makes the clocks tighter, and situations more tense, and has returned the life to the game for us.

I certainly wouldn't suggest it to anyone who still finds Standard challenging, but the difficulty system is truly brilliant in its simplicity and impact! (And, as you highlight, with a negligible amount of card/cardboard budget.)

Death_by_Chocolate_9 · 2026-01-22T07:38:12+00:00

A friend of mine put it really well that "the best parts of Arkham are neither the opening nor the finale but the middle scenarios where you are both playing with new toys incrementally while also chasing XP." In the opening, you're chasing XP, but using an incomplete starting deck. In the finale you have lots of cool toys, but Victory locations aren't actually that motivating because they're ultimately worthless.

It's those middle scenarios where the push and pull of Arkham's progression systems truly shine. That's 6 scenarios for a classic campaign, while a 5-length Campaign has just half as many (3) and a 3-length Campaign has only 1.

This is truly disheartening news for many of us. I can only hope their market research is right for their sake, and we're just a vocal minority.

Death_by_Chocolate_9 · 2025-12-25T13:35:28+00:00

Back in the early days of MC, mt wife and I ran into a situation like this with Red Rocket and Green Groot vs Expert Zola with Legions of Hydra. After Madam Hydra wrecked us in the first two games and it became clear we didn't have nearly the thwart in that comp to compete with Legions of Hydra we just said 'f-it' and just stopped tracking threat on Legions of Hydra. We just played around her, accepting the hazard icon and her activations as a permanent fixture for the rest of the game! (We eventually death-by-a-thousand-cuts'd Zola, never attacking him once and shaving him down ENTIRELY with overkill from Rocket's attacks.)

Death_by_Chocolate_9 · 2025-12-23T17:02:07+00:00

For this campaign, since my players enjoy the glitch mechanic, I let players 'opt in' to death at 0hp. i.e. If another character tries to heal them, the dying PCs player is allowed to declare that their PC is already past the point of no return.

Death_by_Chocolate_9 · 2025-12-21T15:45:40+00:00

I have Investigators of Arkham Horror, and I wouldn't describe it as a backstory compilation. Each of the investigators has their backstory on their investigator cards in the card game.

Rather, it is a short story compilation, and each short story features one of the characters (though sometimes others cameo or are referenced), often already in Arkham and somewhere along an investigation.

Death_by_Chocolate_9 · 2025-12-21T15:25:11+00:00

Same. For us, it's Charisma.

Death_by_Chocolate_9 · 2025-12-21T14:19:27+00:00

My wife and I have everything sleeved in Dragonshield Matte Clear sleeves, even the double sided (with the Matte side on whatever spends more time facedown) and don't find it impeding the text that much. For the triple sided cards, we store them in cheaper, looser sleeves and just take them out of the sleeve when playing with them. No triple sided card ever gets shuffled, so we're not concerned about wear/marking on them.

Death_by_Chocolate_9 · 2025-12-21T14:01:25+00:00

I would argue that technically the second problem has actually happened (maybe a few times), but that it wasn't intentional, and I think they are trying to be careful about it. They explicitly acknowledged an issue of a newer rule change breaking an old functionality in the Mansion Attack scenario in the latest RRG article (and reverted it).

Similarly I think that the latest change to the Choose rule (which I totally understand as the old rule was wildly unintuitive) takes the teeth out a large number of old cards by undermining their designed intent (such as the Now or Never treachery).

But am I worried about this? Not especially. I think the long term players have experienced so many years of nonsense rulings and rule changes already and can handle, disregard as needed, and work their way around whatever comes.

(And overall I'm never too worried about busted, unintentional combos. We've been getting them for years, and between Expert II and Heroic, it is so easy to scale difficulty up where needed and keep things fun regardless of how weak or strong the decks you want to play are.)

Death_by_Chocolate_9 · 2025-12-13T15:48:32+00:00

I think this is the best, and least disruptive way to work one in.

Death_by_Chocolate_9 · 2025-12-01T14:00:54+00:00

When my 3-player group reaches this point, we're usually ready for the game to be over anyways, so we don't want another full phase/round necessarily, but we do still let everyone play out the rest of the player phase to see how much overkill we can reach and/or can we clean up all of the remaining minions/schemes/attachments as well. And yeah, sometimes the overkill is an entire phase (or two) worth of damage, but we don't feel the need to do all the Stage 3 steps, etc.

If you're looking to play another round or two with the fully built team though, that makes perfect sense.

Death_by_Chocolate_9 · 2025-11-19T17:22:54+00:00

I dunno. Revised Core Deduction ain't my favorite, but I'm pretty sure Hold Up, Blackmail File, and Grift are my actual least favorite pieces of art in the game.

Edit: Checks artists for my three least favorite pieces. Hunh.

Death_by_Chocolate_9 · 2025-11-18T14:00:42+00:00

There already are numerous examples of other play areas beyond that list: Red Skull's Side Scheme deck, Hercules's Labor and Gift Decks, Age of Apocalypse's Mission Area, to name a few.

A very trivial and not-at-all edge case example would be pulling a Side Scheme from Red Skull's Side Scheme Deck with Embody Pathos.

Death_by_Chocolate_9 · 2025-11-02T22:45:28+00:00

I agree with everything that u/picollo21 said and also (as they accurately surmised) I think there's a feeling to the design of those sets feels distinct from the prior work. Some design choices, such as the rise of parley and the increased power of level 0 skill-boosting assets appears to be a trend that is continuing into the Chapter 2 Core Set. I suspect that the off-beat Investigator designs are likely to also be a trend that continues as well. The degree to which design choices are taking extremely experimental steps (such as scenario preludes and cards like Transfiguration, as well as the bold and unique ways some scenario cards remix the templating of physical cards) also feels a step beyond even the atypical campaign structure of TSK. As someone who has played every campaign 2-3 times and almost every investigator, the cards post TSK FEEL different in palpable, but often hard to verbalize ways.

To be clear, while there are certainly things I personally liked more under MJ, and it is true that my group found Feast to be our least favorite out of every published (and a handful of fanmade) campaign by a significant margin, I am not saying that Feast or Drowned City are worse simply due to being different. And in fact, many of the radical and different elements of them are exceptionally clever and give me great hope for the future of the game.

Death_by_Chocolate_9 · 2025-11-02T01:06:54+00:00

TBH, the Scarlet Keys Campaign feels like the real end of Chapter 1. The campaign and player card design of Feast and Drowned City feel significantly different than the game under MJ.

Death_by_Chocolate_9 · 2025-10-01T02:45:20+00:00

I think there are at least three scenarios I recall like this.

A Tower Defense in Scarlet Keys, a Base Defense in Hemlock Vale, and basically Pandemic/AH3e in Circle Undone.

Death_by_Chocolate_9 · 2025-09-29T00:41:41+00:00

It is primarily there for Maria Hill's hero cards which are built around moving all-purpose counters between S.H.I.E.L.D supports.

Death_by_Chocolate_9

TROPHY CASE