DoomTurtle
United States
Redford
Michigan
-
I am finally getting enough plays of my later Arkham Horror expansions in order to give them a review. I bought all the expansions over a year ago, but as I get more and more games, each game gets played less and less. And since I usually introduce expansions to this game in the order they came out, it has taken a while for me to get to the later expansions.
I just finished my 6th play with this expansion earlier this week, so on to my next review in my A Year With... series!
The Premise:
Arkham Horror is no stranger to weird events, odd people, ancient rituals, and other strange happenings. This time, a dangerous cult is forming and recruiting others to join them. This cult is responsible for unleashing dark powers and making sacrifices in order to awaken an ancient being from beyond time and space. The investigators must put a stop to the appearance of the Ancient One as usual, but they now have to deal with this cult (which they can join and infiltrate from the inside) where becoming corrupt can bring some great boons, but is also slowly helping to bring about the arrival of the Ancient One.
The Components:
This expansion is in the small box format, which means there is no other board to include, it simply adds in cards, a Herald sheet, and small cardboard sheet with 9 monster tokens.
New card types include "One of the Thousand" Cult Membership cards which allow you to be part of the cult and a deck of Cult Encounters. Those that join the cult, or even try to stop it can often become corrupted, and this is taken care of with Corruption cards in green and red. There are also new Mythos, Arkham and Gate Encounters, Common Items, Unique Items, and Spells. Last, there are 5 Difficulty cards, which can be used to alter the game setup slightly to make a game easier or more difficult than the normal setup (the normal setup being one of the included cards).
All of the cards in this set has a unique symbol printed on them so that the cards can be differentiated from other expansions or the base game and separated more easily. Oddly, they put the expansion symbol on the bottom center of the card instead of in the corner as previous expansions have done.
The Herald sheet is used to add some challenge (and theme) to the game. The Black Goat of the Woods Herald presents some new rules and rule changes that break away from the normal rules.
The 9 monsters with this expansion are a mix of some monsters already seen and some new ones. All monsters are of the hexagon movement type which falls in line with some of the abilities of the Herald.
The Gameplay:
All the times I have played this expansion, I have used the included Herald. Without it, the expansion is basically just a bunch of cards that you mix in with your existing cards, with virtually nothing else changed. With the Herald, you get the following changes in gameplay:
- A second monster cup is used and all monsters with the hexagon movement symbol are placed in the second monster cup. Whenever a gate opens, monsters are taken from the normal monster cup as usual, and then a monster is added from the hexagon cup. This means there are now two monsters per gate for 1-4 investigators, and 3 monsters per gate for 5-8! On a monster surge, half the monsters are taken from the normal cup and the other half from the hexagon cup.
- Hexagon monsters do not get sucked through a gate when a hexagon gate is closed. Anytime an investigator defeats a hexagon monster, they must draw a corruption card.
- Dark young now move like normal monsters.
- Monster surges add a doom token to the Ancient One's doom track. This is brutal, and really shortens the amount of turns available in this game.
Corruption cards are fun, and can sometimes help, but on the whole are pretty bad. There are 16 green and 16 red cards, and you don't draw from the red cards until the green ones are all taken or discarded. Each corruption card has a movement symbol and color (black or white). Anytime a Mythos card with the matching movement symbol and color is drawn at the end of a turn, the investigator must follow the instructions of their corresponding corruption card. Sometimes this can bring money, but a lot of times, more corruption cards are drawn or discarded. If the entire deck of green and red corruption cards ever run out, the Ancient One awakens immediately. Closing a gate will allow you to discard corruption cards with the matching symbol, but you can never replenish the deck.
The last change to gameplay is being able to join the Cult. You can get an opportunity to join through several Arkham Encounters, or through the corruption cards. Once you are part of the cult, you will automatically take a cult encounter whenever you have an encounter at the Woods, Black Cave, or Unvisited Isle. Much like the corruption cards, sometimes you can get some benefits, but mostly at a cost.
The rest of the game follows the standard rules. This expansion does include Gate Bursts, which were first introduced in Dunwich Horror. If there is a seal at the location of the gate burst, the seal is removed and a gate appears, but a Doom Token is not added to the Doom Track. If there is no seal, than the burst is treated like a normal gate (causing one to open, or a monster surge). In either case, all flying monsters move despite their movement symbol.
Final Thoughts:
This is a brutal expansion, mostly due to the herald allowing doom tokens to be added during monster surges. Usually, the only turn a doom token is not added is when a gate opening bounces off a sealed location (or worse, when a gate burst through a seal). So you want to get those seals up quick to avoid the doom track filling up too quickly. There are some Mythos cards that does not have a gate open, and only the terror level goes up. However, this is balanced by Mythos cards that has you add two doom tokens instead of opening a gate.
Adding to the difficulty are the extra monsters that the Herald places on the board. The Terror Level will go up more quickly than usual since the monster limit and outskirts will reach their maximums quicker. Thanks to roughly half of the monsters being hexagon types, corruption cards will come into play. I have never had the corruption deck come close to running out, since the race against the doom track doesn't really allow for it. But the corruption cards are a fun addition and I am glad they are used often.
Much less often used is the Cult Encounters. It is rare that the opportunity to join the Cult comes up, and even if it does, you may not necessarily need to go to the locations where the encounters occur. This seems to be very situational, which is odd, since the story of this expansions seems to revolve around this Cult.
As difficult as this expansion is, we did win 50% of the games we played with it so far. But its always tense and you don't get the time to explore. The easiest change is to just ignore the monster surge rule if you want to have some extra time. All the extra monsters and gate bursts will still add plenty of difficulty. And you can use the alternate setups of the new difficulty cards to help you fine tune the type of game you want.
The new items and spells are fun, with several of them allowing self-sacrifices to be made for the greater good. For example, one item allows you to bring all monster on the board to your location, which can be very helpful in clearing the way for others. However, you then immediately go insane and are carted off the asylum. At least you don't have to fight them all. You also get some pretty cool new items like the Ancient Spear. It is a two-handed physical weapon which adds +4 combat dice, but can be exhausted to make it a magical weapon. And you get some power single-handed +5 Magnums, but they exhaust after one use and cost $1 to refresh.
This is a fun expansion, which is only marred by the extreme difficulty and small chance of joining the Cult. But this is balanced by the many ways you can tweak it and the fun item and corruption cards included. Another great thing about the Mythos cards is that they are generic enough so that you can add them to your deck for virtually any other setup to add gate bursts (great way to add some challenge to the base game).
After a year with this expansion, following the BGG guidelines, I will rate this one an 8.
As always, thanks for reading!
-
Erik Andersson
Sweden
Rimbo
-
Great review. I acually ordered this one today (it will be my second expansion, my first is Dunwich horror).
I did not know it was this brutally hard though 
-
-
I'm really tempted in buying this expansion (with Dunwich Horror).
However, the herald makes the game really brutal, what I think will end our games quickly.
Any suggestions instead BGoTW?
-
DoomTurtle
United States
Redford
Michigan
-
If you really want the Black Goat of the Woods, the easy way to keep the game going longer is to just ignore the part about adding a doom token on monster surges.
If you want to look into a different small box expansion, then take a look at The King in Yellow than I also did a review on.
-
Bob T
United States
Mantua (near Woodbury)
New Jersey
-
It's October again, so I drag out the Black Goat expansion....Have I really had it for TWO Years already? Yup, got it as a Halloween present (from me) 2 yrs ago...Added most of the other expansions since then.
Somehow it still holds up after 2 years. I know it's the least of all expansions, adding things that happen only rarely (like joining the Cult) but it's the one I think of around Oct 31st. Just played a solo 2-Investigator game using nothing from other expansions except the Ancient One and Epic Battle cards- to make it REAL scary I picked Quachil Uttaus(!) Did I say a 2-Investigator game? Hmmm, I counted six piles of dust at Q's feet by the end of it...Yes, that many people got Devoured by the Dust Deck...
I always have to 'Nerf' this expansion- in this case one Investigator began the game with a Cult Membership, I used the easiest difficulty card (double Clues) and a house rule where Monster Surges only add a Doom Token on a die roll of 1- and yet I STILL LOST! (Q awoke a few turns after the Terror Track reached ten and the board was absolutely overrun with monsters)
Guess what? Harvey Walters chose to spend all his Clues to seal a fifth Gate, assuming the next Dust card would be the Death Card (it was) heroically sacrificing his life that the next poor sucker might live. Jenny Barnes had an Elder Sign card but too little Sanity for the other worlds, so she wanted to pass it to Carolyn Fern (who'd replaced Harvey and had the Find Gate spell) Think about it- in just 2 turns the curse could have been lifted, no one else need crumble to dust. But Noooo....Jenny had the Corruption card that forbade her to trade Items! A classic Arkham Horror fail!
So why does this still hold up as one of my fav expansions- because there is absolutely NO SHAME in losing to the Black Goat! If you even come close to winning (or to not dying) that's a good game...
-
Raymond Schalk
United States
Orlando
Florida
-
Great review, I was thinking of writing one myself after playing again last night, but you were right on target.
One thing I would recommend is all players starting the game with a cult membership. Sooooo much more fun.
I can't stand the herald and was severely disappointed with it. Much too hard and didn't find the hexagon cup thing fun at all. We gave up on trying to seal gates for the win and now we just run around preparing for the ancient one to come while the monster surges occur over and over again.
-
DoomTurtle
United States
Redford
Michigan
-
mutilatedlips wrote:
Great review, I was thinking of writing one myself after playing again last night, but you were right on target.
One thing I would recommend is all players starting the game with a cult membership. Sooooo much more fun.
I can't stand the herald and was severely disappointed with it. Much too hard and didn't find the hexagon cup thing fun at all. We gave up on trying to seal gates for the win and now we just run around preparing for the ancient one to come while the monster surges occur over and over again.
I like the hexagon cup because I think the corruption cards are fun, and probably the best part.
Cult encounters aren't easy to get, but someone in our group ended up getting at least one in a couple of our plays. But even with the cult membership, it didn't affect much because the 3 locations didn't need to be visited by that point. It's just one of those things that I pass off as being one of the parts of Arkham Horror that have an extremely small and situational chance of happening. Just one of those things that if it finally happens after 100 games, it makes you realize how there is always something new to happen in this game even after so many plays.
There is a sweet Inner Sanctum encounter that one of my friends got that punishes you for being a Cult member (since you're also a Silver Twilight Lodge member). I can't remember it specifically, but they don't like you joining other memberships when you're with them, and you get some sort of penalty. It was pretty funny when it happened.
-
-
I'm looking forward Miskatonic Horror expansion, so cult encounters are more frequent, but as I can see, you can only be part of the cult via "Talk to your friend" witch is very difficult to happen if not playing with the Black Goat herald.
-
|
|
