Category: Weekly Evils

Introduction: Alright, “most fun” might be overselling it slightly, but there’s no doubt that some weakness are just more interesting than others. In a sea of weaknesses that merely ask to spend an action or two to discard them or are just some damage here and there, these standout weaknesses give players something to play around, some actual challenge that spices up the game. Here’s my Top 10 of basic weaknesses i’d rather draw randomly than most others because they create interesting situations.

#10: Dark Pact. Arkham LCG has a couple of “campaign only” multi-stage weaknesses. While some of those are also the most frustrating things ever (i actually removed Doomed and Offer You Can’t Refuse from my pool), Dark Pact is the best of them. It gets the lowest spot on the Top 10 because it’s probably one of the weakest in the pool, but i do appreciate the flavor of the card and that you can use it to stab a teammate, one of your allies or even yourself.

#9: Your Worst Nightmare. When a weakness can promote interactivity between the players, that’s a win all around. This enemy can’t be defeated by its carrier, so someone else has to take it. Now, of course this is already true for many enemies that come off naturally from the encounter deck, after all most teams have investigators that already need to be protected this way.

#8: Reckless. As one of the few skill weaknesses, Reckless immediately stands out. It sticks with you, draining your resources until you finally manage to get rid of it by failing a test with it. This reminds me a bit of Rex’s Curse, but without all the annoying token pulling. Reckless is quite impactful for investigators that like keeping their resources and does often require taking some lines of play you usually wouldn’t just so you get to take some tests that you can fail on purpose.
EDIT: Okay, so i messed up here. I got how Reckless and Arrogance work mixed up. Obviously you will want to pass a test with Reckless and not fail it. So what i wrote above is poppycock. Sorry about that! Not sure it still belongs on the list now, but it is what it is.

#7: The Thing That Follows. The enemy that keeps coming back. Most enemies you just want to defeat as soon as possible so it’s out of your hair. This one you want to let stick around as long as possible so it doesn’t replace more of your draws. Its impact on the game depends on the location layout of the scenario, so there’s some variance to the card as well which is something i usually appreciate.

#6: Stubborn Detective. This guy is famous for the stories he creates, being so stubborn that he’d literally follow you to the City of Archives because he has a hunch. His ability is also quite unique in that it makes get by without you investigator ability while he’s around. Ultimately he’s not difficult to defeat, but he certainly can create some interesting situations.

#5: Narcolepsy. More multiplayer goodness. Literally only take a single action to disable, but the timing this card has is often awful. Especially when it is in the deck of someone who is usually supposed to take their turn first. There’s also something deeply hilarious to having your team mate get all sleepy while you are fighting Atlach-Nacha or trying to run through a disintegrating train.

#4: The injuries. Hot of the presses, these new EotE weaknesses ask the players to run specific cards to deal with them. In turn, these are more or less impactful depending on how well you adjust to them in your deck building and upgrade choices… i find that very satisfying and rewarding.

#3: Kleptomania. The final three weaknesses are where i’d actually go as far as claiming they are fun to play with. As some other cards mentioned before, Kleptomania has that multiplayer interactivity going on. But more than the others, this one rewards using it creatively and can even create opportunities for combos or at least mildly positive outcomes.

#2: Damned. This one uses the tarot deck from the RtTCU box. While it is wildly unpredictable and often downright nasty, there is just something to be said for a weakness that changes from scenario to scenario and gives you different challenges. Sometimes the effect is minor but often it is major enough that it requires some adjustment of the playstyle for the duration of a game. That’s basically exactly what i want to see from a weakness.

#1: Through the Gates. Of all the weaknesses, this is the one i like playing with the most. Like Damned, it creates different sorts of experiences whenever it is drawn. Sometimes it just plucks something inconsequential from your deck. Other times it costs you something from the board or from the hand. Or goes straight for some key piece of your deck and you will now have to go into damage control mode. Like the Injury weaknesses, this one can be built around when upgrading, as it encourages diversifying your cards instead of buying cards in pairs as you’d usually do.

Final words: Lots of these are just hitting the same buttons: Interactivity, Variance, Uniqueness. Weaknesses are something we have to include in our deck so there’s always some sort of roadblock happening along the way. If i have to see that like once per game (or more) for all of a campaign, it better be something that’s not boring. Something that actually interacts with what else is going on and that gives me something to think about. To be perfectly honest, Dark Pact and Worst Nightmare are already stretching it by that definition, but it turns out that once you remove all the “spend 2 actions” weaknesses and all those that are just a bit too punishing… there’s not all that many left to talk about!

Introduction: An integral part of the game is having the encounter deck push back at our attempts of making progress towards our goals. When we go into the Mythos phase, we already do so expecting unpleasantry and complications. But some encounter cards just take this to the top and those are the ones that lead to us grimacing in frustration or sighing because we now have something new to care about that we really didn’t want to. Here’s my Top 10 list of encounter cards that i really don’t want to draw. For this, i am making no difference between scenario specific, campaign specific or core cards – meaning i try to ignore how frequently the card is used for its place on the list.

#10: Ants! As mentioned, there’s a certain expectation we have when going into the mythos phase, expectations on what a singular encounter card is going to cost us. A card? An action? Maybe even two? Some life? Well, what we certainly do not expect is having to discard up to 4 cards from our hand and/or board. Random ones from the hand, at that. This card is a menace and thankfully it’s contained to one specific scenario.

#9: Merging Timelines. Another one that can just wreck your hand. What adds to the frustration here is not only that it also can cost you your turn… but that it is completely random. “Ants!” at least gave you a test, this one isn’t that merciful. Short of building your deck to include more singletons there’s nothing you can do about this one. You have to close your eyes and hope you end up with at least part of a turn when all is done.

#8: Brotherhood Cultist / Stolen Mind. It takes a lot for an enemy to get on this list. Usually enemies aren’t terribly frustrating because they come with lots of ways to defeat them built in. Sure, they cost some actions, but usually there will even be investigators on the team that are actively looking for enemies so they find a use for their weapons and fight events. What makes these two special is that they not only collect doom, but they scale their stats with it. Brotherhood Cultist is the well known example, an enemy that you can not afford drawing the autofail against because each attempt at defeating them that fails only makes successive attempts more difficult. Meanwhile, they work towards ending the game faster. Stolen Mind was added by the Return and crossbreeds this behavior with the automatic doom collection from Wizard of the Order, for a disgusting end result.

#7: Meddlesome Familiar. Finally, something that’s not from The Forgotten Age! One of a very, very few cards in the game that are able to cause me actual IRL stress. Brown Jenkins just gets to me and Meddlesome Familiar is a huge part of why. The Secret Name is a drawn out affair that can be taxing and having this card make sure that you always have that stinking familiar in your face is just something else. Nothing quite like taking Jenkins down for the fourth time under use of actions and other resources, only to draw a card that goes “Okay, do it again. Also, have a damage.” It’s mocking me, i swear.

#6: Ancient Evils. Ah, the fan favorite. Probably the most overrated encounter card in the game, but obviously it does have quite the impact. It can be safely assumed that the doom thresholds on agendas are balanced around having Evils in the encounter deck, so i am usually not one to think to much of it. But things get quite sketchy when excessive randomization comes into play (looking at you, Untamed Wilds!), when the thresholds are very small (looking at you, Essex!) or when it comes bundled with Cultists, preferably in the same mythos phase (looking at you, Black Throne!). These are the moments where Ancient Evils can feel absolutely rotten, especially since it doesn’t just work towards killing a single investigator. It tries to directly end the game.

#5: Straitjacket. Man, this one just keeps getting me every time. Unspeakable Oath is a truly excellent scenario that i enjoy a whole lot, but i can not deny the amount of stress and grief that a deck with both Corrosion and Straitjacket causes me. Straitjacket is an immense setback. While it doesn’t send your assets to the bin, they are returned to the hand, so you do lose all the actions and all the resources you spent on them. And before you can replay them you even have to spend 2/3rd of a turn just on discarding the Straitjacket. This thing can just on its own cost two or even more turns. Drawing a second Straitjacket after rebuilding from the first one is a legitimate table flip.

#4: The Sign of Hastur. While we are on the topic of Unspeakable Oath, tableflips and IRL stress, who the hell thought this was a good idea? Increasing all horror by 1 over multiple turns translates into so much additional testless horror, it outclasses any other horror dealing card. It’s also really difficult to get rid of sometimes, so all you can do is try and weather the storm. This is one of those cards that makes me go into high alert mode immediately when it enters play, and for the whole duration that it stays there. I’m pretty sure this card is to blame for at least some of my grey hairs.

#3: Beyond the Veil. The card that holds a whole campaign hostage. It has all the hallmarks of a frustrating encounter card: No printed way of dealing with it. High consequences for having it trigger. Low to no interactivity. What Beyond the Veil adds to the mix is that you get a front row seat to your slow but inevitable demise. Oh, and Surge. Can’t forget the Surge. That always feels like getting a kick in your face while you are already down. I can’t think of another card that this actively discourages me from playing a campaign than this one. Some investigators just don’t stand a chance in Dunwich and it’s all thanks to Beyond the Veil.

#2: Frozen in Fear. A core set classic that has been keeping Rogues and other low willpower investigators down since the inception of the game. Arkham has a lot of debilitating treacheries, as anyone who has seen the typical TCU threat area can attest to. But what sets Frozen in Fear apart is the way its Willpower test works. Unlike so many other cards, this is a test that the player who drew the card will have to pass themselves. No helping out by your friendly Mystic or Guardian. It’s also guaranteed to hinder you for at least one full turn, as the timing is fixed. Fixed to a point just ever so slightly outside of your turn, so you can’t even use something like Eye of the Djinn on it. It’s like the wording of that Forced trigger was specifically crafted to be the most frustrating it can be. Since then, we’ve seen this same templating on other treacheries as well, with TCU’s Realm of Torment being particularly notable. But none of them gets quite the visceral reaction from me that Frozen in Fear does.

#1: Umôrdhoth’s Hunger. This frigging card. The Devourer Below is already a scenario that isn’t exactly known for how fair and fun it is, but the presence of this card just makes it that much worse. Threatening instant demise to one or even multiple investigators, even its best case of costing everyone a card is annoying. Having this card around also means that every discard effect in the encounter deck is more powerful – and RtNotZ introduced quite a few of those. And playing cards is also discouraged, something i never like. Really, this card looks like it came straight out of a LotR Nightmare scenario instead of an Arkham Return to box. This is an easy #1 spot for me, the only saving grace here is that i don’t see the card ever because i don’t play that scenario anymore.

Final words: This list features a lot of TFA and Carcosa. That might be partially influenced by the fact that those are the two campaigns i play the most, so of course they left the biggest impression on me. But it does align with the reputation of those campaigns. The surprise for me here is the relative lack of TCU. I find that campaign somewhat stressful and i expected more than just Meddlesome Familiar (and a mention of Realm of Torment) to make an appearance here. There’s 4 cards from Return To boxes on the list, which is about what i would’ve expected.
I’m sure that with almost 700 different encounter cards, i must have forgotten a few important ones. So please chime in and tell me which ones. What are the cards that make you want to open a window and chuck the damn thing out?

Introduction: If we believe arkhamdb (and i don’t see a reason not to), then the Investigator Expansion for Edge of the Earth features 133 unique cards. A truly large number of cards to dump on us all at once, but i’d argue that even if we ignore the timing of them all landing together, the impact of the EotE player cards is more significant than most other cycles. There’s just that much good stuff in it, with barely a coaster in sight. This Top 10 list attempts to figure out the most important additions. Note that in this context “most important” doesn’t necessarily mean “strongest”. I am interested in cards that open up new archetypes or otherwise give us things we didn’t have before. Stuff that actually changes the game. Not just some number tweaks or spins on old cards.
Ah, and i will exclude the actual investigators from this list. Obviously they are the ones that do open whole new angles for deck construction all on their own, but i don’t want to take the first 5 slots of the Top 10 just for them.

#10: Protective Gear. Edge gives us 3 new assets that take the body slot and all of them are interesting in their own way. While the news of getting something other than Bandolier and Backpack for the body slot is already great, the Protective Gear is also notable in that it does offer some great encounter protection to Guardian which didn’t really have much for that before and to Survivor which dabbled in canceling before but never really got there. There’s no test here, as long as the treachery is a hazard, this can blank three encounter cards. And the sizeable soak alone could do a great job of neutralizing two or three encounter cards that deal damage/horror if no Hazard traits are around. It’s expensive to play, but a very nice new tool for the deckbuilding toolbox.

#9: Quickdraw Holster. The other body slot item that made the list. So far, Bandolier stood alone with its effect of giving additional weapon hand slots. Holster is finally some competition and allows Rogues as well as Guardians to keep a sidearm next to their two-handed main weapon. This is huge for investigators with signature firearms that would be interested in going for two-handed weapons but so far didn’t have a way of doing so without it being awkward. Looking at you, Tony. But Finn and Jenny could certainly also use this well. As could any investigator that wants to hold tools and relics in their hands but also keep a weapon on hand. Is it better than Bandolier(2) for Guardian? Probably not. But for Rogue, this is an important new card.

#8: Black Market. In an effort to support Bob’s unique playstyle, the EotE expansion opened up a couple new ways of trading assets between players. The combo potential that is opened by this is immense. This is the sort of card that can only exist in non-competitive games, as i am pretty sure it breaks the game in a hundred different ways. There were some ways to do switcheroos before, but they were very limited (“You owe me one”) and/or restricted to assets (Teamwork). With EotE, these limits are gone. And Black Market is the poster child for this, able to trade any card type from any player to any other player. Meanwhile it’s costed cheap enough that its even a good as just pure card draw in solo. A really fantastic card.

#7: The upgraded Composures. I don’t think i ever put one of the original composures into my deck. Too fragile, too much investment, not enough payoff. Now, these upgrades though… they are pushed to the limit. These are playable even before reading the textbox. They are slotless card with 4 points of soak, costing neither resources nor actions to play. That’s immediately playable. Using Moxie in Sefina could do wonders for her survivability, something i have used Bulletproof Vest for before. Hold Moxie next to the Vest and have a good chuckle. Similar things go for Combat Training, Scientific Theory, Plucky and even Grounded. These cards can do wonders for your next run through TFA, Innsmouth or similar campaigns where a lot of damage and horror rains down on you.
(And yes, we didn’t even look at the text box yet. It’s a really good text box, too!)

#6: Ice Pick. What looks on first glance like it’s just the next little variant on Mag Glasses is actually sort of a powerhouse. When the Council in Exile designed the Flashlight(2), a lot of noise was made around the fact that it can be used in combination with other assets. Arcane Insight has this sort of templating on a 4XP card with 3 charges. And now look at this little 1XP card, giving you that effect an unlimited amount of times and not just for investigations, but also for fights. You can cast Spectral Razor and use this to enhance it. Or This is really remarkable and held back only by its need to exhaust. Or while using Archaic Glyphs. With Duke. Or Sled Dogs. Or while using a Lantern. It even works with Monstrous Transformation! This sort of interactivity is exceptional. There’s an upgraded Ice Pick of course and it introduces another layer of shenanigans using Scavenging, but today i am just here for the remarkably open wording of how this helps your tests.

#5: Counterespionage. Any sort of cancel mechanic is immensely powerful, as it can directly translate to a whole lot of saved actions, resources, health and/or sanity. Canceling also allows for better planning, so surely FFG have to be careful about giving us too much of it. With that in mind, i would’ve called you crazy if you told me a few months ago that we are going to have Dismiss in Arkham. Dismiss is crazy good! Or that it would be modular and thus even better than Dismiss. I would’ve called you even crazier if you would’ve told me that it would be a Rogue card. Doing what another class does, but fast and while drawing a card? “Obviously this would be a Seeker card!”, i would’ve told you.
Well, but here we are and the green Dismiss is real. What a card. Solves so many problems in a world where people have been running “You handle this one” just so they wouldn’t be stuck with Frozen in Fear. I’ll play the hell out of this one.

#4: Sled Dogs. The reddit and the Discord are abuzz with people trying to tell you that Sled Dogs are bad, that they are overcosted or, and i quote, “a worse Mauser”. Those people are fools. It’s easy to look at the card and come up with a lot of others that fight better. And then many others that are better movement. And others that offer better soak for the resources. But that fails to realize that Sled Dogs is all of this at once. It’s a bad Mauser that is also a bad Pathfinder, a bad Bulletproof Vest and a bad Elder Sign Amulet. Well, turns out that the sum of all that is actually a pretty great card. And you really only need two of the dogs to get your value. This will give you once per turn either a bonus move action or a non-hand slot attack for 2 damage. While also giving you a 4/4 soak. So the argument that it takes too long for these to pay off also doesn’t hold. Of course, find more dogs and stuff gets out of hand fast. Inconsistent you say? Well, you aren’t doing it right then.
Now, the one argument against the dogs is how much space in the deck they take up. 4 dogs, 2 Calling Favors and maybe even 2 Lucid Dreaming aren’t available in every deck. But everything else is absolutely worth it, considering they are doing 3 jobs at once. On a neutral level zero card!
PS: Rod of Animalism is a bad support card for them, though. I’m pretty sure you want Charisma.

#3: The Tri-Class Talents. All five of these are fantastic pieces of economy, use the 2 resource discount twice and you are already making profit. Their trait requirements are very broad and most decks will at least eye one of these at some point. Paying 3XP for them is a bit rough, but especially non-Rogue decks or such with lots of events of a relevant trait can get a lot of mileage here.
Their capability of handing out cash to pay for your cards is what i would call their primary function, but they are at least noteworthy for enabling Synergy and for their ability to boost skill tests on cards of the correct traits.
I appreciate these a lot as sort of guiding stones that you can build decks around.

#2: The Injuries. I really like that these exist. One of the things that i learned early on in Arkham is that healing is not worth it. Soak is more efficient and spending actions just to undo damage or horror is a fool’s game. Now, that never sat right with me thematically, but it is what it is, right? I am very much in favor of EotE trying to skew the balance towards healing a bit more. It does so with some actually playable healing cards like Bandages and Words of Healing(2), but also with this set of 4 weaknesses. Each imposes a penalty that can be quite severe and the only way to get rid of it is healing it as if it was a damage or horror. A real nice double whammy of nailing a theme and shaking up a bit of gameplay. Anyone who finds themselves with one of these in their deck will want to include some sort of healing for it. Or ask someone in the group to do so. Much, much more interactive and interesting than the old “2 actions: Discard this.” we have seen way too much of.

#1: In the Thick of It. Any other card on #1 would’ve been a sham. This card on its own opens up deckbuilding by a lot. We can now buy crucial pieces for our deck right at the start of the game and no longer have to play the first scenario with our hands tied behind our back because we weren’t able to pick up that essential Charisma, Relic Hunter or Covenant. Combining it with Versatile opens up even more doors. Mateo players can now start the first scenario with 8XP!
This boost in XP is excellent in general, but gets even more important for campaigns like Dunwich or Innsmouth that are either notoriously stingy with XP throughout or at least through the first half of the campaign. You can also bank the XP instead of spending it immediately, making sure that you can get something like a Stick to the Plan after your first scenario for sure.
This is maybe the most important card since Charisma for deckbuilding.

Final words: After the yuckfest that was yesterdays Top10 list i decided to switch it up today and go in a completely different direction. I am sure there is plenty to disagree with here, but that’s fine. Opinions, right?

Which player cards from Edge of the Earth have been keeping your attention? What decks can you suddenly build that weren’t able before? Let me know, so i can leech your deck ideas so we can discuss them!

Introduction: There are a lot of encounter cards in Arkham LCG, a game that constantly rides the borders between horror, fantasy and camp and all of them have artwork, of course. While the art rarely goes into full horror and usually sticks to the fantastical, there is certainly some around that unsettling in some way. Maybe they are a bit disgusting, maybe they hit a bit too close to home… in any case, here are 10 cards from my point of view that hit a nerve.

#10: Outbreak. Look, i am not afraid of spiders. I actually kinda like spiders and i think there’s some real great spider artwork in this game specifically. However, this bloated thing… yuck. None of the elegance, instead it’s just an ugly pustule on legs. Hans, get the Flammenwerfer.

#9: Ravenous Ghoul. Ah, a classic. I remember that this guy stood out to me in the Core Set because its artwork is just that more visceral than the others. Smeared with blood on hands and face, there is also no doubt how it got this soaked in blood. Or what it wants to do to you. It looks extra fierce when you put it next to the somewhat goofy looking Ghoul Minion.

#8: Descent into Madness. Eyes are weird. At least from this close. We are just not meant to get this close to an eye. And while there’s not actually a whole lot happening in this image, it gets its point across perfectly. A very realistically drawn eyeball with the veins in it, wide open so we see the red under the lids and all the little details. A great case of the image being enhanced by the flavor text, too. I can’t make out anything specific in the shadows reflected in the eye, but that actually works in the artworks favor.

#7: Abduction. Due to Arkham creature design rarely crossing from fantasy into full horror, there is little artwork of enemies that is actually scary. Now, while this is a treachery, it still does show an enemy that somewhat gets the job done for me. The coloration reminds me of Ravenous Ghoul and while i don’t think it is supposed to be a ghoul, i have to wonder… what is it actually? It’s not like we see this thing on any of the enemy cards in Carnivale. All we know is that it eats whatever they can fish out of the canal. Again, good flavor text and it also only vaguely alludes to these things as “they“.

#6: Blood on Your Hands. Just the fact that this scene is presented to us from our own view makes it very real. Most other treacheries show something happening to someone else, making us spectators. This however is first person perspective. Combine this with a really gruesome display of blood and you can’t help but feel a bit uneasy looking at it.

#5: Corrupted Orderly. When we look at the Corrupted Orderly, we also have to consider the Suspicious Orderly, so this is a double feature. While i did claim earlier that i am not bothered by spiders, i can tell you for sure that i am deeply troubled by the idea of someone having spider legs coming out of their mouth. Full artwork here: [1] and [2]. Can i also just talk about how the legs break out of a face mask and how we are all running around with face masks these days? Try not to think too hard about it when you are out shopping the next time…

#4: Visions in Your Mind. A somewhat generic scary artwork, but it’s very well executed. I am not 100% sure what is going on here, to be honest. Presumably this woman is looking into a mirror and seeing herself decay or something? It’s of course (as the title of the card alludes to) all in her mind, but if this is indeed a look into a mirror… does this mean this is another card from first person? Something to think about during your next Return to Carcosa campaign!

#3: Fine Dining and Tough Crowd. So, i’ll cheat here and put these two cards together on one spot. But really, these two firmly belong to each other, both having a very similar style to them. They give a lot of flavor to The Last King and introduce the players into a lot of the Carcosa theme in an expertly fashion. Tough Crowd shows its horror elements a bit more overtly than Fine Dining, but both are the sort of artwork that don’t seem to bad at first glance but get worse the longer you look at them.

#2: Meddlesome Familiar. So, pardon my french, but fuck this guy. More so than the actual Brown Jenkins card, this treachery cements the incredible annoyance that the witch’s familiar brings with it. The artwork is truly disgusting, biting ankles is really awful and relatable and the game effect is also on point. A very exhausting card to draw and the artwork is just right for such a memorable card.

#1: Radical Treatment. Carcosa certainly featured a lot in this list, but this one from the Return to Carcosa takes the cake. This appears in Unspeakable Oath, a scenario that already walks on heavy terrain with the asylum and human enemies that are apparently tortured by cultists or other inmates or whatever. It’s all pretty dark and there are some other artworks in this scenario that could’ve made this list, but they pale next to Radical Treatment. Well, this is a picture of a lobotomy in process. Executed on someone who is fully conscious and obviously in panic. Too real. Oof. Sadly not supernatural at all, which just makes this more horrendous than any tentacled enemy could ever be.

Final words: As alluded to along the way, Arkham is rarely scary when it comes to creatures of the Mythos. It mostly starts crossing lines only when it becomes too relatable for us, when there’s things that we could imagine the impact of. I don’t know about you, but i can’t really seriously be afraid of something like the Mindless Dancer or Hunting Horror, despite them having excellent artwork. However, make me think about something biting my achilles tendon or sticking stuff in my eye and you’ll see me squirm. Obviously, this is a personal feeling and i can easily imagine someone shying away from artworks like Maggot Swarm, Night Terrors or some of the more grotesque enemies like Piper of Azathoth or Royal Emissary.

Feel free to write in your own picks! And see you for the next Top 10 list. I plan on doing a couple more over the Christmas and New Year holidays 🙂