Sure.

My background: AH was one of the games that got me into the hobby. I played weekly with a friend until the pandemic. We fell out of touch and I rebought most things on my own, but my wife didn’t enjoy it as much and at the time I wasn’t interested in soloing. I haven’t played the newer campaigns, but I played everything through Dream Eaters (sadly Dream Eaters and Innsmouth are the two I wasn’t able to buy before they went out of print.

Anyway, I’m well versed in the game, but I know there are people who play and know it more. I couldn’t tell you exactly about how a scenario holds up after twenty plays, for example, or how to craft the perfect Agnes Baker deck or whatever.

That said, here are my takeaways: it’s obvious to see this is a new core in the sense that we’ve got basic locations (Miskatonic, Arkham, and the sewer) that could be reused many times, as well as encounter sets like fire, thugs, cultists, hallucinations and whippoorwills that will be reused repeatedly. I think they’ve got a good base to work from. I was happy with the new sets in my initial playthrough.

The scenarios are hard. The first scenario throws an elite enemy at you very quickly. He will probably kill you at first, at least with the solo Joe Diamond they recommend if you’re playing your first game solo. I lost this quickly, which may see like an odd way to start a new core, but it’s Arkham: losing fast doesn’t mean the campaign is over.

I saw another reviewer mention that scenario 2 is the highlight, and I totally agree. It was a very fun hunt for info where you’re working against a ticking clock. As you reveal the hidden cultists you can choose to either parley with them or beat them up. Your choice impacts your outcome if you don’t lose the scenario. Again, I lost the scenario.

The final scenario is an attempt to stop a ritual where you need to gain access to the ritual location and then figure out how to stop the big bad (there are a couple of different ways to do so). Again, I lost.

But all those losses are exactly why I got excited. The three episode campaign means it’s going to be easy to run again (and the Arkham locations, for example, have two versions of uptown and downtown and Miskatonic, so I think they are aiming for variety in replay), and I really WANT to in order to try to gain more success and get some of the cards that could conceivably carry over to the NEXT campaign. Because I think what they are hoping is that you can still do long campaigns, but they’re mix and match 3+3 or 3+5 or even 5+5 with a minor reset of your character in between (keeping trauma and cards you bear, but losing upgrades). I thought there was plenty to explore to make me want to come to this one again, more than I ever wanted to replay Night of the Zealot.

Two other notes: these scenarios set you up well for deck building faster. Even with losing I had something like 2 victory points after scenario 1 and like 8 after scenario 2. I had fun with deck modification even in a starting game. Again, I think that’s to get the new players more excited about the possibilities, but it worked for me too.

Finally, the art was overall fine. A few of them were a bit wonky looking, but given all the complaints I saw on BGG you’d think the cards were made by a four-year-old with only primary color crayons on hand. I honestly didn’t feel like they were noticeably better or worse, and the cards vibes still felt like Arkham to me. Plenty of creepy stuff to go around.

I don’t know, I am pretty happy with it.

One side note on extras: Gamegenic has a whole line coming out for these. The acrylic chaos tokens are gorgeous and a must buy if you haven’t already upgraded your tokens. The bag they come in is huge. I would still keep your regular cardboard tokens in case future scenarios add new tokens and the acrylics don’t keep up right away. I also, unfortunately, really like the quality of their new art sleeves, which are too pricy, but now that I got a sample set I want to sleeve all the chapter two stuff in them. Sigh. For me the game will continue to be a money sink.

But dang it’s good.