But that's not why we're here today! We're here to talk about tabletop gaming, specifically to continue my retrospective of how I've interacted with board games and card games, etc.. Last time we talked about my childhood and adolescence, with special focus on the trading card games of my youth. Today we'll be talking about my adult life so far and how much I've gotten into the hobby since moving to Canada.
Actually, that's an important part of the story that's worth talking about for a second. See, when I first moved to Canada to marry my wife, there was a long period of time where it was literally illegal for me to have a job. My wife, of course, took care of me and still does, but we also had to live with her family, that being her parents and her three sisters (she has four but one lives in America).
What we had originally planned to be a relatively short amount of time turned into almost five years. There was a lot of stress, and not a few fights. I'm not always the easiest person to live with. But none of that could ever outweigh how great it was of them to take me on and put up with me for such a long period of time. They took me into their home and into their family and treated me like one of their own, and I'll always be grateful to them for that.
My wife and her sisters have a long history of doing things together, whether it be playing games (video or otherwise), going out, or just generally having fun. Obviously, then, new multiplayer games were pretty much always a good thing. As it happens, just a few months into my living with them, I learned about Arkham Horror.
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| Image borrowed from Yog-Sothoth.com |
After doing my usual amount of research into the game, at that point deep into its second edition, I ultimately decided it could be fun for my wife, her sisters, and I, and I bought it as soon as I tracked it down. It's a somewhat complicated game to learn, and people's schedules are equally as complicated, so it took a couple weeks before any of us could really sit down and play it, but when we finally did, it was like a switch being flipped.
I'm not going to pretend to perfectly remember the first time we played, but I do know that we had a great time. I was playing, of course, as was my wife Jessie, and my sisters-in-law Emily and Hannah. Now, keep in mind that Arkham Horror is heavily, heavily influenced by the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, which my wife and I had both known about and were interested in, but had never really tried to get into. Hannah, at that time, was interested in just about anything, but Emily, as far as I know, had no interest in Lovecraft, and isn't much of a horror person, so I wasn't sure how she would respond to it. Well, it's possible she loved it the most out of all of us, which is really saying something.
That became the normal group for a long while, the four of us playing Arkham Horror together when there was time, which wasn't extremely often since it's a pretty long game. So many great stories came out of that time, but the one that sticks out to me the most was the time the character Jenny, whom Hannah was playing in that particular game, saved the world from evil by closing a portal to another dimension - with herself on the other side. That was an emotional moment.
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| Requiescat en pace, Jenny Barnes. Image borrowed from the Mansions of Madness wiki |
Beyond that, it's also the game that started my foray into tabletop games as a hobby and led directly into part 3 of this series, which I sincerely hope will be up tomorrow. I'll finally get to talk about what has become my absolute favorite tabletop game, the final expansion of which I finally received recently. I'm very, very excited, even though it might mean the end of all reality!
Before I go, I just want to reiterate that Arkham Horror is a fantastic board game. I haven't played it since Emily moved out, and now Jessie and I have our own place as well, so things are even more complicated. The game takes so long to set up and play, and we get together so rarely that it's difficult to put the time into it. With all that considered, I'm really not sure if I'll ever play that edition of the game again.
But that's okay! I'll always have my memories, and there are new things on the horizon! See, a lot has happened in the tabletop gaming landscape in the years since Arkham Horror second edition was released. Fantasy Flight, the company that publishes the game, has also released another game called Eldritch Horror, similar to Arkham Horror in concept but more streamlined and with a more globe-trotting approach rather than a single town. I've heard it's very good, but the global span of it seems a bit too big picture compared to Arkham's more intimate setting, so I've been hesitant to invest in it.
Closer to home has been the release of Arkham Horror: The Card Game, which again is a faster and more streamlined take on the original Arkham Horror. It's still cooperative, but pared down to a maximum of two players (though two copies of the game can be merged to allow a maximum of four players). Again, I've heard really good things about it, and I hope to be getting a copy of it soon enough. I'm actually quite looking forward to it.
And now it's all come full circle, since before long we'll be seeing the release of Arkham Horror Third Edition. It seems to bring back the characters and locations of the original (rather, the one I played), but with (again) faster and more streamlined play, and boasting a modular board that changes depending on the scenario being played. That style of board is a great idea, but I feel like it loses a bit of its aesthetic appeal when compared to the town map of the second edition. Still, I'm excited to see how things go with it.
With all that stuff going on, it seems even more likely that I won't play my second edition copy again, at least not more than once or twice. It's a sad thought, but with all these new, faster ways to play, maybe we can finally get the old group back together and save the town of Arkham from evil together, just like the old days.
Until next time!
Current Interests:
Listening - No Joke! (Meat Puppets, 1995)
Playing - World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth
Reading - Island 731 (Jeremy Robinson, 2013)
Watching - Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Return (2017)
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