Month: October 2025

Jump to: Guardian – Seeker – Rogue – Mystic – Survivor – Neutral – Encounters

Guardian

Seeker

Rogue

Mystic

Survivor

Neutral

Reward

Weakness

Encounter Artwork

Intro

Every campaign uses some encounter sets from the Core Set in addition to the campaign-specific sets to make up the encounter decks. As a result, those sets are frequently swapped around between campaign boxes which is a bit inconvenient if you happen to own a bunch of them. Solutions include buying multiple core sets (i own a couple, but this is getting really expensive now unless you can find deals on the original core) or creating proxies. Proxies are fine for homemade slips of paper of course, but not perfectly legal if you want to get them done professionally from a printing service, even if one were to replace the artwork.
So i thought, why not try designing replacement encounter sets that can fill the roles of the core set cards in their respective campaigns without exactly replicating them. This will allow me to tailor them more to the campaign, both mechanically and in flavor. The end result would hopefully be something that i can just store with those campaigns so i don’t need to hot-swap my sets of Ancient Evils and Dark Cult between campaigns all the time.
Let’s do this for one of the more recent campaigns, one that i actually like the flavor a lot of and where i would see some potential to go deeper on that by tailoring the Core encounters to it as well: The Feast of Hemlock Vale.

Sets used

The Feast of Hemlock Vale uses a total of six Core encounter sets:

Chilling Cold: Used in Written in Rock and The Longest Night.
Ghouls: Provides some basic enemies for Written in Rock.
Locked Doors: The Hemlock House has these. Makes sense.
Midnight Mask Treacheries: These haunt us in The Longest Night.
Rats: Filler enemies for The Hemlock House
Striking Fear: We freeze in Fear during The Longest Night, but also at the Silent Heath

Interesting first thing to notice here is that the occurence of the core encounter sets is focused on three scenarios (Written in Rock, Hemlock House, Longest Night) with just one set showing up in a fourth (Silent Heath). The other four scenarios are only using stuff from the box. The second thing that jumps at me is that of the six sets, only two are used twice. The others are only used once. These two things together mean that we can tailor the replacements very closely to the scenario(s) they are used in.

The first thing i want to do now is get a feel for how each of these sets is used currently and what we could do with it. I do this to find both mechanical and flavor hooks to build a design on later. Numbers aren’t interesting yet, this first round is about ideas.

Rats

Let’s start small. The Rats set only has one encounter card, the Swarm of Rats. It’s a small filler enemy that doesn’t have a whole lot of consequence to the encounter deck. My first thought is that i designed replacement rats before (Screeching Rats, Surge of Rats), but giving them Surge isn’t really something that seems all that interesting here. My review of the Hemlock House scenario does complain a bit about the encounter deck lacking punch and there not being enough discard effects around for the Miasmatic Shadows to feel threatening, so that could be an approach. Rats without Hunter, but when they engage you, they knock a card out of your hand? Seems good to me and discarding cards sounds like a “ratty” thing to do! The exact trigger can certainly be something else instead. “On defeat” instead of “on engage”, for example.

Locked Doors

While we are in the Hemlock House, let’s also do Locked Doors, the other set that is only used in that scenario. They should definitely stay able to gate off the clue progress on a location, since winning the scenario by clues is already easier than doing so by combat. That being said, there is a neat piece of flavor that might be an excellent hook here. The room is alive and an enemy, the door is part of the room… so maybe the Locked Door should also be an enemy? Or be in some way connected to the room’s status as an enemy. Like, the way to discard the Locked Door would be to attack the door or the room it is in. Maybe it can only be cleared if the room has a certain amount of damage on it? Yep, that’s a good place to start.

Ghouls

Ghouls has three different encounter cards in it: 3 copies of a small enemy, 1 copy of a medium sized one and 3 copies of an agility vs damage treachery. The job of the enemies in the set for Written in Rock is filling up the numbers on enemies in the encounter deck, with everything else being more impactful and usually Hunters, too. The enemy situation in Written in Rock is already quite hefty, so i don’t want to overdo it here. These should still feel like a bit of a breather compared to what else lurks in the mines. In terms of flavor, the fact that they are Ghouls specifically doesn’t really tie into Hemlock Vale. The scenario happens underground, so the presence of ghouls can be somewhat handwaved, but we’ll certainly take the opportunity here to make that connection a bit stronger.
How about Grasping Hands? Making an agility test at the risk of damage can take many forms, and a wild ride on a minecart has plenty of flavorful hooks to make use of here, from dodging debris over ramming something with the cart and needing to brace against that.

Chilling Cold

The other set that is used in Written in Rock, this is the first one that is also used in another scenario, Longest Night. We have a piece of asset hate here and also a treachery that slows down investigations. I have done replacements for Chilling Cold before (Freezing Blood, Fogged Vision) but the concept of it being so cold that your hand freezes to the point of being unusable is a bit much for Hemlock Vale’s midsommer setting… that’s something to return to when we talk about Edge of the Earth. Ghostly fogs obscuring the way sort of works for both the minecart ride and the showdown under the blood moon at the farmstead, but they are a stretch in either case.
The two scenarios are very different and Chilling Cold is their only overlap, making it difficult to find a common mechanical ground. They do both feature a lot of enemies though and that could be a thing to hook into. Maybe instead of losing an asset when you don’t pass a willpower test against the cold, you might lose it when an enemy attacks you? The other thing that connects the two scenarios is how large their maps are, with lots of necessary movement from the investigators. A possible idea for a shroud increasing treachery would be one that ties into the movement, increasing shroud if you only entered the location this turn (because you can’t investigate properly while zipping by on a minecart or running from a mutated bear…). Sure, why not.

Midnight Mask Treacheries

Both treacheries from this set, False Lead and Hunting Shadow, are themed around our investigations going awry because the enemy we are after interferes or outsmarts us. This fits The Longest Night very well, we can easily imagine the hybrid enemies catching us while we are trying to find something that helps us survive at a location.
I want to keep the general mechanics of these two treacheries (damage vs clue, clue drop) because they are very well integrated into this encounter deck. Especially the one-two-punch of False Lead and Downpour in TLN is very worth keeping.
This is the only one of TLN’s replacement sets that isn’t also used in another scenario, which lends an opportunity here to have one or both of these treacheries interact with the scenario mechanics more closely. I am thinking of the traps/decoys/barrier thing in particular. Maybe the new False Lead replacement would cause you to drop clues unless you can sacrifice (=hide behind) some of those special defenses instead?

Striking Fear

The bane of willpower deficient investigators everywhere, Striking Fear rears its ugly head twice. The two scenarios, TLN and The Silent Heath, are fairly different. They both feature big maps and lots of enemies, but the way those enemies and locations are used by the scenario is different enough that there’s not much mechanical common ground. Two further encounter sets are shared between the two scenarios, Blight and Transfiguration, neither of which is mechanically tied to Striking Fear strongly. As with the other replacements, I don’t want to change the core identity of this set too much. It should still be a major driver for willpower tests, have the opportunity to deal a truckload of horror and focus on slowing the investigators down.
Common grounds between the enemies in either scenario is some of their traits (Creature, Mutated), but crucially the Insect trait isn’t used in TLN so that’s probably not something i can lean on for one of the cards here. Aloof is a big deal in Silent Heath and also appears on several of the TLN hybrids, so that could be an approach. A version of Dissonant Voices that doesn’t let you play cards or activate abilities on your cards in play while there’s an Aloof enemy at your location?

Interlude

Alright, aside from Striking Fear i think this gives me some strong initial ideas to start with. These were mostly focused on the scenarios the cards are used in, but if the goal is tying these cards closer into the Hemlock Vale campaign, i may also want to use some of the Hemlock Vale specific design cues. This means i might go for Elusive on an enemy or two. And i might also consider using the Day/Night switch. While i personally do not think that mechanic does all that much for us in practice, it does give a strong visual that immediately makes the card look like it belongs into the Hemlock Vale campaign.

Firing up Strange Eons

All that is left to do then is start our trusty card editor, plug in some of the above ideas, slap some placeholder art on it and see how it looks.

Clean and simple, this looks good to me. It’s a bit stronger than the original because Hunter usually doesn’t matter on the rats. But it’s easier to evade now and the lack of Hunter might make evading it an option now. The whole package plays a bit like a Deep One now, which is a slight concern, but not enough to make me want to change this. An alternative would be to make it cause a discard on defeat instead, but i think i like the “on engage” better because it’s more likely to have a Miasmatic Shadow come at you after drawing the rat.

The goal here is forcing some combat with the rooms on the players instead of allowing them to just run through the house and collect all clues.
A different idea would be to have the attached location flip to enemy and be unable to flip back or be sealed. The treachery would then soak some amount of damage for the enemy, after which it gets discarded. So basically the players would need to defeat the treachery before they can defeat the room.

Collision Course is just Grasping Hands with an extra clause to avoid it at the cost of a precious switch. Strictly weaker than the original, but considering that we are adding a few small things in other places, that’s perfectly fine. The Host and the Husk are both meant to be slightly more spicy versions of the vanilla ghouls from the Core, tying into the scenario mechanics. Elusive on the Husk plays well with the Hunter focus in this scenario and gives the 3 health on it a bit more weight. To rein it in, the ability to spend a switch can disable the Husk completely, either with the goal of leaving it behind or to disable Elusive.

The idea i had earlier about having the Obscuring Fog expy increase shroud if you moved this turn doesn’t really work out in Written in Rock: The movement happens during the enemy phase, a timing point that makes is very awkward to relate to during the investigation phase. Instead i am keeping it relatively simple, reducing Fog’s penalty from +2 to +1 shroud, but having it move with you.
Critical Blow threatens to turn horror and damage direct, but allows sacrificing an asset to prevent that from happening. There is no test to prevent the loss of an asset completely anymore, instead you get the opportunity of delaying the loss – but that will leave you open to attacks.
On a sidenote, I don’t like the name Critical Blow much here and i feel like this is a waste of a fantastic artwork that deserves to be on a card that is a bit more vicious than this!

The replacements for the Midnight Masks treacheries go all in on the Longest Night specific mechanics. Discarding barriers, decoys and traps is sort of the same as discarding clues, so this translates quite well!

Stalked like Prey and Swarming Horrors, the substitutes for Dissonant Voices and Rotting Remains, both deal with the ever growing number of enemies in play in the two scenarios the set is relevant in (TLN, Silent Heath). Fight or Flight is thematically the opposite of Frozen in Fear. Instead of being rooted in place, you are springing into action… but the range of your options is severely limited.

What now?

This seems like a solid starting point. The Chilling Cold replacement seems most dodgy to me right now and could probably use a makeover before i start actual testing. The Day/Night mechanic could maybe tied into it, since its used in Written in Rock (the only one of the affected four scenario where day/night might matter). Other than that I suppose i should just print these out and start a Hemlock Vale campaign with them. See if anything sticks out as not working as well as i’d hope or annoying. Iterate a bit. Find better artwork. And then i can give these a release for print and play and TTS. Possibly i could do other campaigns as well, if these are well received and i end up liking them myself but i don’t expect this to become a thing where i can do all the campaigns.

Intro

With part 2 out of the door, i figured I’d give a first look at what i am cooking for part 3.
For most investigators, i start with a mechanical identity (what is the core of what they do in the game), but then also quickly try to determine who they are ingame. From there i flesh out the abilities, signatures and weaknesses.
So what i have for you here is the next five characters for the line of investigators using the simple “5 mainclass, 2 subclass” deckbuilding, with their core investigator ability mostly determined and their character introduction for the backside of the investigator card. The sig and weakness and any number are usually still in the air. But obviously, nothing is really fixed yet, anything and everything might still change.

Arabella Freeman – The Inquisitor

Statline 4/3/4/1
Agency. Hunter.
Guardian 5/Mystic 2

For most of her colleagues in the bureau, unnatural phenomena are something to be studied, classified and contained. To Arabella, they are a plague. She has seen too many agents disappear, too many innocent people twisted beyond recognition by things that should not be. She doesn’t trust tomes, relics, or artifacts. They’re weapons, plain and simple. There’s only one proper way to use them: exploit them to wipe out the horrors that created them. And then destroy the thing as well afterwards. When reports of inexplicable disappearances and disturbances started clustering around a small town in Massachusetts, Arabella didn’t wait for a mission briefing. She packed her bags, “borrowed” a few classified items, and set out alone to find the abominations behind all of it and finish them. All of them, one by one.

Investigator ability:

For each empty hand slot, you gain +1 combat, to a max of +2.
For each empty arcane slot, you gain +1 willpower, to a max of +2.

Elder Sign: +2. Replenish an ammo or a charge on an asset you control.

“Study them? If we do our jobs right, there will be nothing left for that.”

Arabella Freeman is the woman on this artwork here:

When it got posted to instagram during preview season for The Innsmouth Conspiracy, parts of the community latched onto it trying to guess what it’s for. Most notably, some custom investigators were made (like this or this) and the name “Arabella Freeman” was made up for her. Now, in the end nothing quite that exciting happened with the artwork, ending up on a rather niche card that sees little play. And the preview season hype around the image mostly got forgotten. But i figured i’d give my own (5 years late) take on who this person is.
The image shows her apparently using both a gun and spells, so Guardian/Mystic it is. The investigator ability reinforces that image. Obviously, the signatures have to do so as well, they are the two “borrowed” artifacts i mention in the backstory i made up for her:

Purge – signature asset, 3 cost, hand slot
Item. Weapon. Firearm. Cursed.
Uses (3 ammo)
Action, spend 1 ammo: Fight. You get +2 combat for this attack. This attack deals +1 damage. If this attack defeats a non-Elite enemy, you may remove an Elder Sign, +1 or 0 token from the chaos bag for the rest of the game. If you do, add that enemy to the victory display.

Disintegrate – signature asset, 3 cost, arcane slot
Spell. Cursed.
Uses (3 charges)
Action, spend 1 charge: Fight. This attack uses willpower instead of combat and deals +1 damage for each of your empty arcane slots (max +3 damage). If this attack defeats a non-Elite enemy, add both Disintegrate and that enemy to the victory display.

The weakness i currently have for her isn’t related to the image itself, but is rooted in the backstory:

Zealotry – weakness treachery
Madness.
Revelation – Put Zealotry into play in your threat area.
While an enemy is at your location, you cannot take actions other than to Engage or Fight.
Action, Action: Discard Zealotry.

There are a couple different things coming together here, i am still undecided if i maybe need to chuck one and streamline the whole thing or if it works like i have it right now. Basically, the parts are:
– uses both firearms and spells
– gets bonuses for unoccupied slots, a theme that a few cards in recent sets hinted at
– ability to eradicate enemies, removing them from the game
I currently have her as “The Inquisitor”, but i am strongly considering “The Zealot” as well.

Clara Alden – The Conspiracy Theorist

Statline 3/4/1/4
Reporter.
Seeker 5/Survivor 2

In Providence, Clara nearly made it as a reporter. But then she started down a rabbit hole of cults, cryptic events and secret lodges. Real or imagined, she chased them all. Somehow, she found proof and clues where there weren’t supposed to be any and found herself ways into places not meant to be entered. Her obsession earned her a reputation as a crackpot, so when her investigation into the Silver Twilight Lodge came a bit too close to the truth, it only took a little pressure from men with way more power than her to see her discredited and cut loose. Undeterred, Clara began self-publishing her findings to whoever was willing to listen to her. She came to Arkham chasing the Silver Twilight, but stayed after finding that there was way more at work in this place.

Investigator ability:

Reaction, At the end of your turn: If you didn’t discover a clue this turn, you may discover a clue at your location. If you didn’t draw a card this turn, you may draw a card.

Elder Sign: +1. You may move a clue from a connected location to your location or vice versa.

Clara started with what i think is a very strong initial concept: When she doesn’t find a clue, she makes one up. If she doesn’t find proof for something, she invents it. This immediately translated to her investigator ability in an obvious way. Her signature and weakness are much less nailed down.

The Plot Thickens! – signature skill
Insight.
Commit only to an investigation you are performing.
For each clue you have, this skill gains +1 intellect icon. (max 3)
If this test is successful, discover an additional clue from a revealed location with shroud value equal or lower than the number of clues you have.

Lodge Interference – weakness treachery
Revelation – into threat area
Forced – After advancing the act or agenda: Draw an encounter card, then shuffle Lodge Interference back into the deck.

I have my issues with both of those and they are pretty much just placeholders for now. I like the idea of having the Lodge be after Clara conceptually a lot, however that will look mechanically in the end. I’d like to avoid making it a weakness enemy unless i can make it more interesting than just a dude that needs to be defeated.

Nikolai Velikanov – The Collector

Statline 1/4/4/3
Assistant. Coterie.
Rogue 5/Seeker 2

Nikolai Velikanov was born into the waning days of Russia’s aristocracy, heir to a lineage of wealth, refinement, and a private vault brimming with rare antiquities. From childhood, he cared less about the monetary value of these things, but more about the stories they carried. And the power often hidden behind those stories. His discerning eye earned him a place within the Red Coterie as “The Eye behind the Ruby Lens”, using a ruby-tinted monocle and his expertise to appraise authenticity and expose hidden secrets in the trinkets the group comes across. In recent years, Nikolai often has taken a more hands-on approach, pursuing rumors of notable artifacts himself. Such whispers have now drawn him to a quiet town in Massachusetts. If the rumors of these relics hold true, he intends to find them, study them and ensure they end up in the proper hands… his own, of course.

Investigator ability:

Reaction, after playing a card that (by name, across all players) has not been played before this game: If the card was unique, draw a card. If the card was Exceptional or a story card, gain an action. (If it was both, do both)

Elder Sign: +2. Search the top 3 cards of your deck for a card and draw it.

I knew early on (before series 1 was even finished) that i wanted my Seeker/Rogue to be about Researched cards and the Rogue/Seeker to be about Exceptionals. Exceptional cards have the inherent drawback of being one per deck, something that Seeker card draw naturally offsets very well so you actually end up drawing your Double Double or whatever you paid a lot of hard-earned XP for. None of the official investigators supports this a whole lot – you can do a deck around Exceptionals with Trish, but she really wants to do other things as part of her own gimmick. Parallel Monterey is almost there, but he just had to have his access to Rogue cut off at level 3… So yeah, filling a niche here that i personally want to see filled.
Thematically, the whole “cares about exceptional stuff” fits in remarkably well with the Red Coterie, so i am taking this opportunity (and my one allowance of getting a bit more gimmicky per set of 5 investigators) and doing a Coterie member here, including giving them their own signature Scarlet Key asset:

Focus of Desire – signature Key
Stable:
Shift – Gain 1 resource for each card in your hand. Flip this key to its Unstable side and shuffle a Desire’s Cost into your deck.
Unstable:
Shift – Discard your hand. Then, if an investigator shifted this key, flip it to its Stable side.

Desire’s Cost – weakness treachery, he has three of them, all set aside at start
Curse. Pact.
Bonded(Focus of Desire)
Revelation – If Focus of Desire is Stable, flip it to its Unstable side and set Desire’s Cost aside, out of play. Otherwise, discard all your resources.

How exactly that Key is going to work is still up in the air, but i figured meddling with something that interacts with cards and resources (the two hallmarks of seeker and rogue) is a good start for testing.
I am unsure at this point if he needs an additional weakness and/or signature aside from the Key which sort of fills both parts.

Elias Parker – The Pragmatist

4/4/1/3
Clairvoyant.
Mystic 5/Rogue 2

Born and raised in Arkham, Elias has experienced some weird things even at his young age, even including a brief run with a clique of self-proclaimed seers that predicted the end of the world. After the date came and went, the group lost itself in endless new predictions and Elias cut ties with them. He found that when it came to predicting the future, all traditional occult methods overlook a simple truth: Things either happen or they don’t. Anything more elaborate is just distracting or intentionally deceptive. When Elias flips a coin, the result doesn’t need longwinded interpretations involving chicken bones or The Ace of Swords. Fate is a matter of binary outcomes and Elias believes that just like a coin, it balances out over time perfectly.

Forced – After each test: If you revealed at least one curse, add a bless to the chaos bag. If you revealed at least one bless, add a curse to the chaos bag (from the token supply).

Elder Sign: +0.

This is the character where i think i like the mechanical core, but could still see myself scrapping the character i invented around it. Bless and Curse are both well defined in their respective classes (Blue and Red for Bless, Yellow and Green for Curse) but despite Kohaku being around, i think there is still some room for a dedicated “Paradox” investigator in Mystic. The idea is an ability that makes the chaos bag trend towards balancing out, to support the mystic cards that have double payoffs. Elias would be able to use the curse generation from Rogue to start off the process. Ideally, he’d end up as an investigator that looks at the Tides of Fate event and wants it. God knows nobody else does right now :D
Early on i had him nicknamed “The Two-Face”, imagining a guy that flips a coin to make decisions. This lead to what i have right now… not really sold on the “Pragmatist” title at all, to be honest.

Coin Flip (event), 0 cost
Augury.
Fast. Play during any fast player window.
Put Coin Flip into play, reveal random chaos token from the chaos bag until you reveal autofail, elder sign, bless or curse, then seal that token on Coin Flip and return the rest to the bag.
Forced – When a chaos token would be revealed from the chaos bag: Resolve the token sealed here as if it were just revealed from the chaos bag, instead. Then, draw a card and shuffle Coin Flip back into your deck.

Balance, in All Things (weakness treachery)
Power.
Revelation: ~ enters play, in the threat area.
Forced, after passing a skill test: Until end of the next investigator phase, you automatically fail all skill tests. At the end of the next investigator phase, discard ~.

The signature is a souped up version of Premonition and it’s probably what i like most about this character so far. The weakness is basically still a placeholder.

Margaret Grady – The Railroad Worker

Survivor 5/Guardian 2

Growing up in a Yorkshire mining town, Maggie never had the luxury of an easy life. Fixing machinery, scavenging for scrap and even setting detonation charges were common tasks that accompanied her during her childhood. During the great war, she was lucky enough to be able to leverage her skills to get out of the mines and find work on the railways, travelling the country and keeping the trains running. But when the men returned from their duty, her job was gone. Unwilling to return to the life she left behind and with no place left to go, she crossed the ocean to America. There she made a living in Arkham’s scrapyards and repair shops. Folks around here talk about strange things, bizarre and outlandish. Maggie doesn’t put much stock in stories like that, knowing that if any trouble would come for her, she’d be ready to put it in its place.

She was in the design file for Series 2 as the Guardian 5/Survivor 2 for a good while which is why I even already have some mockups done in Strange Eons for her. Here’s the signatures:

Frantic Search (event), 0 cost, she has 3 copies of these
Draw two cards, then discard 2 non-weakness cards from your hand.
Reaction, after discarding Frantic Search from your hand: Play it.

Hunk of Junk (weakness treachery)
Revelation – Shuffle Hunk of Junk back into your deck, along with your discard pile.

Her whole deal is using the discard pile, but in a different way than most survivor recursion does. While usually, recursion is aimed at bringing back specific cards to reuse them, Maggie doesn’t care about the cards themselves, just how many of them she has available to toss away for skill bonuses. The core is pretty established (she’s the only one i even played a game or two with already), but i could see tinkering with the signatures some more.

Are We There Yet?

So, when will they be done? Who knows. It took 8 months between release of series 1 and series 2. So … hopefully less than that? It’s very likely there will be another update along the way, as well. In that, I’d hope to share more fleshed out concepts that’d be ready to actually playtest some, if anyone’s interested in doing that. For now, I’ll just tinker around with these whenever i feel in the mood for it.