The transition from 2025 to 2026 marked a sea change in the world of the Arkham Files, in addition to the Arkham Horror RPG series from Edge Arkham Horror: The Card Game (AHTCG) closed its first decade out with the completion of what was now termed “Chapter 1” and the opening of its second chapter. This came with a bunch of various updates and changes, but the most significant for this review are the two new formats of Legacy and Current. As time passes for a product that has multiple expansions there is a growing amount of pressure caused by the backlog of releases. The card pool deepens to the point where the power outliers from each expansion can twist the game into a place where degenerate synergies deform the game, on top of that it becomes harder for stores to hold the product due to the increasing shelf space that the games devour and also the demand for the older products eventually drops below the printing threshold – essentially meaning your expected amount of sales is far short of the minimum number of copies you need to print.

This is not a new problem, it's similar to something that many older card games have also been through, Magic: The Gathering is one of the largest examples of this and it's closest in comparison as the new AHTCG formats loosely echo various formats that have been used in Magic over the years. But it's also similar to how Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) have handled things in the past as Chapter Two is a soft reboot “2nd Edition”. This matters because the Core Set we are reviewing here is the intended start point for this second Chapter and it is the foundation for not just all the upcoming campaigns, investigators, player cards and scenarios but it is also the new jumping in point for fresh players. I'm going to take a look at this box through both of those two lenses, how good a foundation is this and how good is it if you are a new player seeking to experience the game. In short, is it a good self contained experience that is going to provide a good enough first impression that players will want to dedicate more time to both it and other future releases?

One of the core changes that Chapter Two brings to future releases is the reduction in campaign lengths, with previous campaigns around eight scenarios in length and/or offering alternative paths for re-playability. This was not a hard rule, releases like The Dream Eaters were in essence two four scenario campaigns and ones like The Scarlet Keys were sprawling sandbox experiences where you'd not play all encounters per run. So, it was not a hard rule. The new structure is going to be stand alone scenarios, three scenario short campaigns and five scenario long campaigns. I am from the group that has the opinion that eight scenarios was a bit too long, generally I've felt most campaigns have one or two scenarios that don't really justify their experience. I would have prefered to see 3 Scenario Campaigns with narrative and mechanical spaces for Standalones between each scenario, 5 Scenario Campaigns and 7 Scenario Campaigns. We'll see how this experience shakes out, but spoilers Chapter 2 in 2026 isn't off to the best start on that front.

It is hard to really work out at this point if three scenario campaigns are going to work or not, as the only official three scenario campaign that came out in Chapter One was the original Night of the Zealot; which consists of a tutorial that isn't great to replay (even with the Return to... expansion adding more to it), a second scenario that is one of the best in the game (The Midnight Masks) and a frankly terrible finale. What this means in practice is I run The Gathering when I want to teach players the basic mechanics, I play Midnight Masks when I want to test out a deck and really run it through its paces and I tend to avoid playing the entire three scenario campaign unless someone asks for it.

To continue this look back on the “original” Revised Core edition, the second scenario based side of the original release is the encounter sets. The encounters that are provided in the core set offer a common base pool of options that can be reused by later expansions, this not only saves development time and printing costs, but it also increases the value of the cards for the customer. We're not only using these cards when we're playing the Core Set campaign, we're also using them in other campaigns and even as a part of print and play releases such as the Challenge Scenarios.

I won't break down the entire original encounter sets here, but I do want to highlight that sets like Rats, Striking Fear, Ancient Evils, Chilling Cold, Dark Cult, Nightgaunts and even the Ghouls from The Gathering have all had multiple returning visits to campaigns and they've worked fairly well due to a simple, universal design like Rats, Chilling Cold and Ancient Evils or having excellent pressure on the players such as Striking Fear and especially Dark Cult. Dark Cult in particular is one of my favourite core game encounter sets because those cultists are generic enough that they can fit anywhere while also causing a lot of pressure due to the combination of generating Doom and also positioning themselves at a distance from the Investigators, forcing difficult decisions or asking the players to send a spare investigator to handle them. There's a lot to like here, though it is worth acknowledging that the Old One specific sets are a lot less flexible and saw a lot less use except in the specific campaigns for the matching Old Ones (They often see a lot of use in those specific campaigns, but they still would have been better included there).

To move onto the player cards, the ones in the Revised Edition are, let's call them uneven. The game was in its infancy and as such the designers didn't know exactly what cards were going to be too good and which ones would be absolute stinkers. I'm very much of the opinion that bad cards should never be printed in Living Card Games (I don't want them printed anywhere to be honest because it's a waste of cardboard and ink, but this applies especially in LCGs) and there was a fair share of both good, too good and bad cards in that box. Note that Situational Cards, as in cards that work for specific situations and are inefficient elsewhere are good, cards which are bad for the sake of filling a box or "skill testing" players to get them to avoid them are bad.

However, one of my largest gripes with the original release has always been the investigator design, now do not get me wrong, Roland, Daisy, Wendy, Agnes and even Skids are all investigators I love to play with, however they've never been the right fit for me as the starting quintet. This is because of their mixed class design. I love the way that Arkham spices up its deck building with additional classes and similar, but when you are learning or teaching a new card game having access to as simple a baseline deck as possible is very valuable as it reduces the amount of information new players have to deal with. A single Class investigator has cards that match their colour, plus cards allowed to everyone. That's it, that's really simple and it not only helps the learning experience, it also makes deck construction more accessible when you are starting to build your own decks.

It's a proven path to first start with mono-theme/colour decks and then once players are comfortable with that you move on to mixing in extra colours/themes/classes. It's a part of what makes Magic so successful, the primary on-boarding beginner decks are normally single colour and have a very narrow, focused theme. It's just good tutorial design to keep everything as simple as possible. Here's the Guardian, you fight enemies, here's the Seeker, you collect clues and so on. Yes, the original quintet can be played as mono-investigators for sure, but in the service of reducing the cognitive load on new players who are learning it's better to not add in the potential confusion in the first place. There's no need to make these introductory investigators more than one class, that's much better placed in expansions and starter decks.

The last part of the look back on the original Chapter 1 Core Box is the player card quality, you want your base game cards to be strong enough that they are useable, but not so strong that they crowd out future designs, nor do you want them to be so weak that they are basically a waste of design time, art assets, cardboard and ink. Chapter 1's base was incredibly uneven, with some cards that remained staples even to this date, but it also had cards that crowded out newer designs. The largest area where this is a problem is in the game's slots, having a “best in class” card that sits in a slot is a really bad situation for future releases because every new card needs to be either stronger than that previous release, or very specialised to it can justify pushing out the original.

A few examples of this would be Machete, Dr. Milan Christopher, Leo De Luca and to a lesser extent Magnifying Glass. Each of them crowds out other potential options in the same slot. Machete made Guardian's firearms less desirable because it was as good as most guns in a 1v1 fight and it didn't have any ammo concerns at all. This resulted in Machete having a wild ride of nerfs and un-nerfs through the “Taboo system” (a bunch of optional balance patches for cards that are over or underperforming released each year). In the case of Dr. Milan and Leo, Dr. Milan got a permanent nerf in the Taboo list and while Leo wasn't touched we see Charisma; which allows an additional ally slot, slotted into so many decks in order to keep the staples and have an additional more specialised option as well. One of the best openers for many Investigators with Rogue access is still +1 Resource, Play Leo, have two actions left for the turn. It's such a massive amount of extra actions across the entire scenario.

All of this kind of stuff is very forgivable when you're looking at an early release from your designers; they're still learning what the boundaries of the game are and how the player base are going to utilise the tools they are provided. However, these are the kind of things that I'm going to look at a lot less favourably when we are considering a release with around 10 years of game behind it.

So let us now take a look at Chapter 2's beginning, we'll deep dive into each aspect of this new box, starting with the physical components, then moving through to the Investigators, then the player cards, then the campaign and finally the individual encounter sets. It's hard to say exactly how everything will shake out in the future, but we can at least make some educated guesses.

Components

The starting point for this is not a good one, the box is somehow simultaneously too large and too small. All of the FFG LCG box releases in recent times outside of Marvel Champions follow the same rectangular design that sits on most shelves either vertically or horizontally across the short edge. These boxes are notorious for holding a lot of air, but player cards/decks can be held in these as well, so while I think the older “Return to...” box designs are the best versions of the Arkham Horror boxes, the wider campaign ones are not complete failures.

No the failure here is in the height of the box, the decision was made to reduce the size of the box only on its shortest axis, and this adjustment was made without taking into account the card dividers that are included in the box. The solution wasn't to shorten the dividers, instead the bizarre decision was made to instead provide fold lines on the top side of the dividers. Asking the owners of the game to fold over the tabs to make them fit. I really do not at all understand how this solution was reached, it seems clear at some point it was noticed that this height discrepancy occurred, but somehow the only possible solution was one of the worst ones outside of not including dividers in the first place. If they had time and resources to adjust the dividers with this fold, they had time to cut the bottoms of each divider and adjust it in a cleaner fashion. Also these dividers do not have any text on them in the way that the past ones did, while the Arkham card set icons are useful for collating the cards after a scenario, they are not anywhere near as useful during setup. It's worth noting that the box height issue is fixed in Children of Blood, but the Dividers remain lacking text.

The various counters provided on the other hand are some of the best we've received, not only do we have the same selection of clue/doom, horror, damage, chaos and resource tokens but we also have the inclusion of the “5” resource tokens, five double-sided investigator tokens that can be used instead of the mini-cards and 20 connector tokens to allow for easier mapping of the game. These connectors cover two-way routes on one side and one-way routes on the other. It's even possible to construct T and + junctions with these, though I would have preferred there to be a couple of T and +s in the box instead.

I do want to briefly gush about the art design of the Investigator and Connector tokens, they're clean, stylish and nice to look at without being too busy. This matches a bit of a light redesign that's happened to many of the other cards and I very much like the redesign a lot. It's all very clean and retains enough similarities to the original. After seeing the card designs on Unfathomable and the upcoming Arkham Horror 2nd Edition Reprint I think we've been fortunate on this front. The redesign of the Chapter 2 cards echoes the original but are honestly a bit cleaner, one of things I've always loved is the Art Deco design of AHTCG, it's always been a great frame for the text boxes and card art.

Also before we move on, there are printing/layout issues/typos and given the experience of the company behind this, that's not something that should happen. Overall it's a mediocre, functional box holding good components and bad dividers.

Our Five new Investigators are four returning from Chapter 1 and one whose absence from Chapter 1 was a core motivator for Jenny Barnes. As at the conclusion of the Dark Horse comic story written by Cullen Bunn; Jenny, assisted by Joe Diamond (now canonically the owner of the house in The Gathering scenario) managed to free her sister Isabelle but is now lost herself.

Our investigators are Daniela Reyes (Guardian/Survivor) originally from Edge of the Earth; Joe Diamond (Seeker/Guardian) from The Circle Undone, Trish Scarborough (Rogue/Seeker), Dexter Drake (Mystic/Rogue) both from The Innsmouth Conspiracy and Isabelle Barnes (Survivor/Mystic) from The Terror at the End of Time but new to the main series. I'm first of all a bit disappointed that despite this chapter starting after the events of the comic series there's no real connection between Joe who worked with Jenny and Isabelle (Izzie). There was an opportunity for Joe and Izzie to be both released in a campaign that explored seeking Jenny, but that's less likely now that they're baked into the core set instead.

The main thing I do not like about these investigators is that they are once again split 0-5 Main Class and 0-2 Secondary Class. This is a good split for Investigator decks when you're experience, it is strong, but I do not think it should be how the Core Investigators for a set should be designed. These all should have either been mono-Class versions of themselves or saved for a release near a five chapter campaign, perhaps one that follows on and has the investigators searching for Jenny. I won't belabour this point much more though, I think it is a bad choice for your core five investigators intended to work as learning investigators to be multi-class but that doesn't inherently make them bad themselves.

Daniela in many ways represents a close to archetypal example of what one would think of when considering what a “Guardian” as she gets to attack enemies back when they attack an investigator at her location. Her signature card “Daniela's Wrench” leans into this design and it has light support in the guardian pool so she performs well enough in this role thanks to a 5 in combat and a reliable melee weapon that can be tutored for and access to survivor melee weapons. We'll get into the shifts on the guardian card pool later, but as it stands for Daniela she's in a great position because she's a melee fighter with access to survivor melee weapons.

Joe Diamond's new iteration is something of an inverse Roland Banks with his 0-5 Seeker and 0-2 Guardian deck building split. He's a lot more straightforward than his original incarnation, still able to fight, but more focused around rewarding the collecting of clues. Joe's main weakness has always been his Willpower and that hasn't changed much here, but his new signature does provide him with some healing.

Dexter Drake's gimmick remains very similar to his original one, he's quickly moving assets in and out of play with feats of prestidigitation. This is always a very powerful as it allows you to reset limited use assets and juggle limited slots around for more flexibility. It's also a rather complicated playstyle and I don't think it's right for what the core Mystic should have been. He's powerful for sure, but Agnes was a far better Mystic to learn the class on. Dexter's play patterns are weird compared to the rest of the class.

Trish is our primary rogue, secondary Seeker and I like how focused she is on evading enemies and collecting clues. I prefer this over the generic extra action focus that the original Rogue design leant into with Luca and Skids, extra actions are of course very powerful, but they do cause a single player to lionise more of the game time. Trish still has that extra action, but it's an evasion, meaning she's not always using this extra action and she can also use it to free up other players turns if they are struggling with an enemy. It's especially great to be able to leave a non-hunter enemy behind in a location that doesn't need to be returned to.

Finally we have Isabelle Barnes, she is a low to the ground skill based survivor who is able to reuse her skills once per round from the discard at the cost of taking 1 horror. Again, like most of these Investigators she's got a straightforward design to operate that has a lot of potential for depth in deck building and play. I am of the opinion that Isabelle is the strongest of all the current Chapter 2 Investigator including the ones in the Investigator decks. She is a lot of fun to play and will only get stronger and stronger as more skill cards are released.

As for the overall card pools, for the most part I don't have as many complaints in regards to identity and accessibility for newer players. Each of the classes has been focused very well and they tend to do two things well which one hopes will be the core part of that class going ahead. The main issue I have is that each pool of cards could have done with being about 30 different cards, instead I am concerned that the goal here was to make the starter decks as essential as the core game. I hope I am just being cynical about that, but when I look at this new core set through the lens of a complete game for first time players it is noticeably lacking when considering the level 0 cards.

Guardian for example has two weapon options, the M1911 firearm and the Machete melee weapon. This new Machete does not have the same text as the original one, the design team decided that rather than call this weapon by a different name they're simply going to roll with the Taboo precedent. I think this is an absolutely horrible decision that didn't need to happen. Simply changing the name of the machete or adding a prefix would have worked just fine and not created this situation. It's creating potential confusion for no actual gain, this could have been any other kind of bladed weapon that hasn't already been used in the game. Again if I was cynical, then one could suggest this is a money saving exercise because the art can be reused. I will briefly note that the Level 1+ weapons are both two-handed and this is again a place where more cards would have helped because while Joe can tote a two-hander, Daniela has to give up her Wrench and that feels awful.

The guardian pool overall is reasonable however, the new unique guardian ally Logan Hastings is a great example of taking an old broken design and making it balanced by switching classes and changing its trigger. In this case we now have a combat version of Dr. Christopher Milan and because fighting is less valuable than clue gathering Logan feels fine to use where Chris didn't. I'm less enamoured with the second ally, Bodyguard, but I do appreciate what the design is trying to do as it does lean into the “Guard” aspect of guardian and the upgraded version of Bodyguard (2) has been very impressive.

I've been quietly impressed with the new talent Endurance because while it is not as good as the old Wolf Mask, it does provide a sink for the extra resources Logan generates and occasionally the evade is useful if you want to save ammo and move away from a non-hunter enemy that can be left behind. The Events and Skill are where the real good stuff is for guardian; we get clue discovery, tutoring for a weapon/tool and the ability to cancel an attack plus deal damage. Add onto that the staple Vicious Blow and the guardian suite looks great overall when you consider Daniela. I'm not as convinced about it when used with future Guardians, Tommy in particular doesn't benefit much here and he was the first full Guardian released. But overall it's certainly tighter and better balanced than the original pool.

Seeker's chapter two pool I think is significantly better balanced than the original Chapter 1 Seeker pool, especially because towards the end of Chapter 1 Seekers were essentially able to do whatever they want. Our hand slots are all devoted to either card draw or gathering clues, though I do wish that the Magnifying Glass had been left out as I was looking forward to a fresh start without that staple constantly nagging for one hand and two cards in the Seeker deck. Local Map in particular is a very interesting design in that it allows you to follow someone else along due to it investigating adjacent locations. That is a nice bit of thematic mechanics in that now you're asking for someone else to go in and clear the location while you stay behind and grab clues remotely until it's clear and you move in. It's a nice space to explore and feels new.

Dr. Milan's new student Dorothy Simmons is our fixed version of her teacher and she's far better balanced than he was. Exhausting to generate the resource and requiring a success by exactly 1 or 3. Succeed by 1 or 3 is an archetype I am interested in if it is followed up more across Seeker's design. Laboratory Assistant is the generic ally and she's a combination of card draw and big hand support. Big hand is further supported with Studious and the Sharp Rhetoric talent hints at Parley being something Seekers will dabble in which I am excited about as I like the mechanic.

Our remaining Events and Skill provide card draw, more clue gathering and some enemy management, feeding further into this style of keeping a bit distant from the problems while still grabbing clues. This feels very much Trish coded, but it also has a bit of that gumshoe to it, constantly on the move gathering clues and avoiding trouble.

Rogue does really well with the new Chapter 2 pool cards, Evasion is front and centre, with both cards to assist evasion and also benefit from it. Overall the core rogue pool also supports succeed by 2, item juggling (because of Dexter Drake) and resource generation. It feels like going ahead that evade, succeed by two and big money are the main archetypes Chapter 2 will focus on, though there is also again some potential Parley support with Silver Tongue, but it's very weak right now. There is also the return of the excellent Breaking and Entering, which provides both clue gathering and evasion in a single action.

The big hitter for Rogue is the new Rogue ally of Olivier Bishop. Olivier not only gives you +1 Agility but he also gives you a free move every turn by exhausting. This is not the kind of Ally I wanted to see, Leo was already enough of a slot hog for Chapter 1, I wanted a more disposable henchman kind of Ally in the core pool rather than a “best in class” but that's what we have now.

While I am not enamored with Dexter Drake being the Mystic here, the selection of cards that comes in the core pool for Mystic feels thin. There are some very good cards here, Ward of Protection is a classic staple. Soul Link is a wonderful new skill card that inflicts horror in exchange for three wild symbols and that ties into the Cloak of Resonance which lets you cosplay as Agnes Baker. There is a little bit of Chaos Token Control, some sealing and some clue discovery in exchange for placing doom. However overall I find that Mystic leans very heavily on Marie's starter deck and that in combination with how Dexter orientated the Core Pool is I'm left feeling rather unhappy about my favourite class when/if Marie's stuff rotates out. I do however really like the Chapter 2 Mystic cards that came in Marie's deck.

Before we move on I do have to mention the new Mystic Ally. This is the ex-Investigator Jim Culver, Marvel Champions has had multiple different types of cards for a given character for a while now, but this is the first time we've had an investigator -> Ally move for AHTCG. Jim's had a troubled time in this card game as his original design was underbaked by a lot. His Parallel alternative form is very good, but the Parallels are always treated as being a bit less than the cards which come in releases by both the community and FFG themselves.

Jim as an Ally is absolutely bonkers, he's doing everything that Mystics want and like Olivier he's a best in slot situation. I'm not thrilled with the overall Ally situation in Chapter 2 because it's looking like the play patterns of Chapter 1 are going to continue (Charisma being a staple for a lot of investigator builds) and that I think is not ideal. I'll touch more on that in the Neutral section.

Then we have my other favourite class, the Survivors. I think survivors have done very well with their core pool. They have a dependable weapon in Meat Cleaver, a solid ally with Aleksey Saburov, an interesting body slot card with Jump Suit plus a trio of slotless assets that I've found to all be useful in their own ways. The real meat here is of course in the Events and Skills as that's part of the Survivor core design for Chapter 2 and they offer not just Clue gathering and Damage but also ways of passing checks.

Finally there's the Neutral Cards, and if I'm honest this is both the category with the cards I'm happiest to see return and also a couple which I wish hadn't been printed into this box. We have all of the classic skills of Guts, Unexpected Courage and company with some that have fresh new art depicting Investigators that I assume will be returning like Winifred. But we also have a new knife in Broken Bottle and the Fedora which debuts a new slot, the Hat Slot (I'm still disappointed Chapter 1 didn't codify the foot/shoe slot even though it basically did). The Broken Bottle is pretty terrible, which is fair enough because overly strong neutral weapons risk making every weapon printed useless. The Fedora being so garbage though is incredibly frustrating, especially when we could have had a Signature Hat for Joe instead of this waste of cardboard. I'm excited about the Hat slot, but this is no Footwear or Mask.

I am also of the opinion that it was time for Relic Collector and Charisma to be retired and other options explored for expanding these instead of just giving these two staples to everyone.

While I do think the Core Pool is too small and I am firmly of the opinion that mono-class investigators is the correct design choice for what is intended to be an introduction to the game for new players I can't complain about the player cards as a whole, there are solid returning staples and interesting new cards here, I just wish there was more in this so I didn't feel that the Investigator decks were essential purchases. I want the core game to be a box that you can recommend to players without the caveat of "You'll also probably want these X expansions very soon afterwards."

There's also a neat reward card, but I'll leave that for after the discussion of the campaign, because you have to beat that to unlock it.

Brethren of Ash

Now it's time to get onto what I firmly think is the weakest part of this new Core Box and that's the campaign. Given that the decision was made for the game to now have three scenario and five scenario campaigns putting a three scenario campaign in the core box with only a three scenario campaign coming out in the same year is frankly just terrible. Especially when you look at this particular campaign, which if I am honest, is Night of the Zealot: 2026 Edition. I don't think I've ever looked at a campaign before and honestly considered accusing it of plagiarization, but I think that might have to change when it comes to Brethren of Ash (BoA).

Before we do get into it, I will also have some comments about the Encounter and locations sets individually afterwards and there are some positive things to cover for sure, but until then brace yourselves.

Our first scenario is the tutorial "Spreading Flames", we have the weird set up where we're sent to find a missing friend from the university. This starts in the dormitories, which is a little odd considering who the starting Investigators, but it is very possible that staff also stay in the dorms so I can hand wave that. Though it is worth once again pointing at the fact that we have Joe and Isabelle in the box and that meant there was a valid hook of having the investigators heading to the University for reasons relating to Jenny's disappearance. Still it is a better setting than the previous one, The Gathering's house location proved to not be something that could translate to any other campaigns so I think this is a solid change.

The scenario itself though does feel very much like a tutorial, there's a very straightforward route through it and there's not a lot of variation on replays. This is the kind of scenario that I think a core box needs, but it's not one that should be a part of the core box campaign. This is the same thing that happened with The Gathering, even with the Return to Box there wasn't really enough to elevate it. One of the large reasons for this is the Dormitory, which could have been its own generic set of locations for use in the future is basically just a single starting location that has a function which reminds me of The Study in The Gathering.

I won't get into it too much more in respect to this scenario, it's a fine tutorial but it's not something one wants to repeat outside of teaching/learning. There's just not enough depth as you're ushered along from one location to the next by the combination of the persistent enemy and fire.

The second scenario, "Smoke and Mirrors" is the best of the three in this campaign, but given that it is The Midnight Masks 2.0 and Masks is one of the best scenarios in the entire game it was going to be hard for it to be bad. There are some interesting alterations to Arkham itself in this, including balance changes for smaller investigator numbers. This is something that I really like to see as I often play True Solo (single investigator) because of how much faster the game is when you compare it to running two investigators.

The scenario itself is very similar to Masks, you're running around Arkham gathering clues to talk to various people in the City. The change is that these characters are not all Cultists and that means they're going to be useful in future scenarios. There are even returning faces here such as Allies like David Renfield, Naomi O'Bannion and Abigail Foreman. One of the interesting parts of Chapter 2 is it has allowed the world of Arkham Files to move forward in time and seeing Abigale promoted after her internship or Naomi after the events of the Drowned City is a wonderful experience. Combined with the Edge Studios RPG Arkham's world is growing more and more fleshed out, which is wonderful to see and experience.

The main mechanical changes when comparing Mirrors to Masks is how the “targets” appear on the map. In Masks we know where each cultist will appear as each of them always appears at the same place, but we don't know the order they'll appear in. In Mirrors the residents are in randomised places but they're all set up face down underneath the locations so we get to decide the order and route we take through the city. Another large change is old Mr. Jumpscare the cultist isn't a repeated design, which is a bit of a change because having an enemy materialise out of the Agenda is such a great mechanical trick to show new players because it really makes your head spin with the possibilities that the game can achieve with just cards. There's nothing here like that in Mirrors, but there are some fun small moments like impressing Margret Liu by succeeding a skill test at 2+ to get information from her.

The bottom line for me here is that while this is the best of the three scenarios it's cribbing hard from a scenario that came out 10 years ago and it's not better than its predecessor, in fact I personally still rank Masks as one of the best scenarios in the game while Mirrors is good, but not on the same level when you consider replayability. It's concerning to see something like this happen because the question is where the improvement that 10 years of development should represent? This is why I (sadly) end up pointing the finger at Brethren of Ash and accusing it of plagiarization, there's so much of Masks in Mirrors, but the end result isn't on the same level.

The third scenario "Queen of Ash" on the other hand is significantly better than its Night of the Zealot version, though given that The Devourer Below is a very bad scenario with poor balance that doesn't take into account how little strength investigators can gain, especially when considering that Masks is a challenging scenario to get a full “clean sweep” of all the cultists. That's part of what makes Masks such a great scenario, but it's also part of why the steep difficulty of Devourer is so egregious. Some people claim that Devourer is here to “Teach players that Arkham is a hard game to win.” Which frankly is a pretty poor way to get players engaged with your play experience, while some players love the challenge, they are in my experience an exception. In addition, the location set that was involved with The Devourer, which is the Arkham Woods set, ended up hardly being used at all, making just one memorable reappearance in The Circle Undone.

Queen of Ash takes place in the sewers, while these are the sewers of Arkham, the location set is generic enough that they can be reused in later campaigns. This is one of the places where the 2026 Core set does excel over its ancestor, all three of the setting for this campaign are ones that can be used in future releases, but I'll get into that a bit more with the encounter set review.

To return to the scenario, this has the Investigators exploring the Sewers to try and find the ritual site and stop the ritual that will summon Elokoss. So once again the basic strokes of this scenario are the same as its older brethren. However the structure here is a lot better, the sewers are more pleasant to explore, well pleasant is a probably not the right word given that they are sewers. But mechanically it is. If I am frank however, this isn't the best iteration of this kind of environment we've seen and I did still find the Sewer design disappointing in comparison to the catacombs in Carcosa's “The Pallid Mask” which you can read about in my review here.

The way the sewers work is you start at the Sewer Culvert, which connects to every Sewer Tunnel location. The Sewer Tunnels have identical backs, but the fronts are different, meaning you need to explore them to find the right way forward. However, this isn't really exploration, it's just opening doors until you find the right ones. In this case that is places to gather enough clues to let us move into the Ritual site. The Sewer Tunnel locations trend towards being unpleasant and harmful places to linger (or lacking in clues), so you're encouraged to rush in, grab the clues and get out of there. It just does not feel like exploration of a tunnel network. This isn't a location set I think has much merit in being brought back in the future, I really enjoy exploring the Arkham Woods in The Circle Undone, but I am currently unconvinced that this new Sewer design will work as well. I will revise this opinion when I see how they use it in the future, but opening 6 mystery doors isn't as intriguing as exploring a map you lay out as you go.

Once you find the ritual site there are a number of different options towards closing out the scenario and achieving victory, this is one of the great parts of this scenario. Investigators can spend clues to place clues onto Elokoss as a way of undoing the ritual, or instead good old violence can be employed. There's also an option for a pyrrhic victory that can be achieved by flooding the sewers entirely, the ritual is stopped, but the cost here is high.

I like all of these, it makes for an engaging finale and I especially loved the sluice gate option as it's appropriately desperate. It's also not free, you'll need to spend clues to get into Sluice Control in the first place and those clues are the same ones you may have expended trying to foil the ritual in the first place.

Lovely stuff, lots of tension.

The bottom line though is this scenario isn't going to get close to the top list of my favourite campaign finales, it's not even going to make my list of top 3rd Scenarios and the decision to create a new enemy in Elokoss isn't inspiring. Elokoss doesn't even appear on the lore page for ArkhamHorror.Com and they've even given Asterias, who is literally just “I'm called Starfish and I'm a Giant Starfish” an entry in the RPG. But to be fair, the "Comets" that are associated with Asterias are really good monsters, it's only the Ancient One who I find uninspired, but I guess Atlach-Nacha is a big spider so maybe I should be kinder to Starboy.

There are certainly understandable benefits for the setting to move towards their own pantheon entries alongside the classics, but Elokoss with her incredibly shallow background is not it. Still, while we are on the subject, Dezmaethragel the Feaster from “Terror at the End of Time” shows a lot of promise and there are some other excellent entries in the Edge Studios pantheon that I am looking forward to seeing turn up. Perhaps the next 5 scenario campaign will feature Tsocathra and its nightmarish design.

I guess we'll see, but to return to the Brethren of Ash and Elokoss, I found them to be poor antagonists in comparison to Umôrdhoth, its cult and the Ghouls from a lore perspective.

Locations and Encounters

That just leaves the encounter sets and their future potential. The original set is a bit of a mixed bag, some sets turned up time and time again – classics like Striking Fear, Rats, Chilling Cold, Locked Doors, Ancient Evils and Dark Cult turn up time and time again. But the “Agents of...” collections turned out to be too specific and tied to their own Ancient One to be able to see much reuse. Agents of Shub-Niggurath in particular were underused a lot and due to the Black Goat of a Thousand Young's name being what it is I'm not surprised that she seems to have faded away from Chapter 2 entirely.

Our first three sets are the location sets that are available for future campaigns, for my money the best kind of location sets are the ones that are generic and can be used anywhere. That's the trouble the first lot of core game locations had, they're all very tightly tied to Arkham and in the case of The Gathering, that's Joe Diamond's house, it's not really a prime location for scenarios, though it certainly did have potential that wasn't reused.

We now have the Miskatonic University, Arkham City and Sewers. Of these three new locations it is Arkham that presents the most interesting potential, but that is the same as it was last time. Having Miskatonic University as a potential location pool does allow more campaigns to draw upon that place, but of course smart design needs to make sure that the University is just not constantly the backdrop for some rampage as it has been the previous two times it was used (though to be fair, Extra Curricular Activities from The Dunwich Legacy isn't always a rampage). Overall I think they are fine, but I also think much more could have been done here and I'll get back to that thought after this overview.

The good sets that I think can be used in future scenarios very well include the Arkham Citizens mentioned above and the generic form of Bystanders, the latter are a wonderful addition due to how if they are defeated they push the Agenda forward, Cosmic Evils is a superior riff on Ancient Evils, plus both Eldritch Lore and Hallucinations offer some solid mechanics wrapped up in good thematics.

Fire is another set that has fair potential for use, a version of it has been seen before in A Feast At Hemlock Vale. Bad Weather is the watery equivalent to Fire and provides the feeling of downpour in coastal locations. Arcane Lock is the new version of Locked Door and while it's good enough I wanted to see Locked Door also return as it's just a solid thematic card that provides a fair obstacle. Dead Ends, Flying Terrors (Bats) and even Gangs of Arkham offer some more generic foes that can be used in many scenarios (despite their name, the Gangs of Arkham are suitably generic and could have just been called Organised Crime or Gangsters).

Whippoorwills make a triumphant return as a core card set and I'm absolutely thrilled to hate these annoying little pests all over again. Their design is so wonderfully perfect and I am glad they came back here so they can sing their little death ballads over and over while I curse their existence.

The new Cultists, which represent the replacement for Dark Chants are one of the major disappointments I have about this new pool. The original Dark Cult are so well designed as they generate doom while being placed a distance from the Investigators. This creates situations where you have to work out if you can make it cost effective to go deal with them, or if instead you should just accept that the scenario is now a round shorter. It can sometimes be an easy choice, but at other times it can be a real debate.

Cultists on the other hand turn up in the investigator's location, the Zealots have aloof, but given that it's 1 action to engage and 1 action to defeat these guys that's generally the right choice because 2 actions is less than an entire round worth of actions.

The Dark Magician is even more baffling, it's a hunter that places doom on other enemies. So it chases after you and demands that you deal with all the enemies near you. This makes it another enemy that you chase down and squash asap, a lot less interesting than the Wizard of the Order who would hide away and generate doom every round. The Dark Magician could have been very interesting if it was Elusive instead of a Hunter, that would be a very tricky foe to handle due to him slinking away each time you hit him. This would force Investigators to deal with all the enemies around or rush the objective. Instead he's just kind of an action sink that the Fighter mops up in a round.

The last couple of encounter sets are Reeking Decay, which is fine for stinky locations or dealing with the undead and Torment which is a collection of banes that can be inflicted on Investigators. They're both solid but nothing special.

I think this is overall a better set than the original collection as it has more generic applications and less highly specialised enemies like the Agents, however the Cultists are very disappointing when compared to their predecessors and I hope they are not used too much in the future because of how basic the play patterns to deal with them are.

My Ideal Core Box

Given all that I've written, what would my “Ideal” Core Box contain?

We'll start with the Investigators and player cards; I wanted one investigator of each class that can take only cards from their class plus neutrals. Each of these should be very specialised in doing “the thing” that is iconic for their class; the Guardian shoots enemies, the Seeker avoids them and collects clues, the Rogue uses their agility to evade and fight/collect based around exhausted enemies while the Mystic expends their personal/limited resources to fight/collect clues via the arcane slot. Our survivor would utilise recursion from their discard pile along with skills and events focused around succeeding through failure. Overall not that much different from the selection we have here, just mono-class for teaching purposes.

I'd also like there to be double the number of player cards for each class, enough to have a solid base for all the key aspects each class is going to draw from. Most of these I'd like to be staples, or good “fillers” nothing that's going to dominate a slot in the way that Dr. Milan and Machete did in the past, but nothing as tragic as the Fedora. These could easily be drawn from Chapter 1 as time has shown what cards are great without being overpowering, but new designs are of course welcome.

As for what I'd like to see each classes core focus, I'm flexible on that but my initial pitch would be:

Guardians: Guns, Finding Weapons and protection, Gathering Clues via Enemies, Fighting, protecting others and physical healing

Seekers: Mobility away from enemies, gathering clues safely, drawing cards for self and others, horror healing. Succeeding by 1 and 3 is also a very interesting design.

Rogues: Using evasion to deal with enemies by locking them down for a turn or two, gathering clues via evasions, fighting with melee weapons and plenty of event/skill based actions. Big money and Succeed by 2 are great archetypes that can have crossover and it's really fun to have two classes caring about "Succeed by" with different numbers.

Mystics: Using arcane slots to cover both fighting and gathering clues but having these geared towards handling large opponents or high shrouds. They do the BIG stuff, but they can't do it repeatedly. I'd like them to have tutoring for spells and ritual based equipment and their healing is via exchange, such as taking 1 horror to heal 2 damage (and the reverse) but also at the cost of charges.

Survivors: Discard Recursion rather than draw/tutoring. Use of Melee weapons and the classic failing forward focus. Overall I'm pretty happy with Survivors as is, they got a bit out of hand in Chapter 1 because their original design was strong cards across the board but no Level 4+ cards. That changed and Survivors ended up really crushing things and doing whatever they wanted near the end of Chapter 1.

A lot of this is already being done by this Core Set, which is great and mostly what I want to see was a more substantial starting collection for players joining this game. Stuff focused on allowing new players to “do the thing” that their class does while also providing a backbone for the game going ahead. As it stands at the moment I can't help but feel that the backbone for the game is located in the five Investigator decks, and that's not a good way to introduce players to a game.

The campaign side of things on the other hand is disappointing; when you pitch that your campaigns are going to be a 5 scenario and a 3 scenario campaign with some standalones each year then your core box had better contain 5 scenarios. It is also simply a better experience for a new player, they get a bit more than a month's worth of play if they play one scenario a week and I think that's a fair proposition for what should theoretically be a “stand alone” game experience in a box. In truth I'd go further than that and propose that there should be 6 scenarios in the core box, but one of them is the tutorial scenario and isn't relevant for the campaign itself, but it could be used as “warm up”.

My pitch for the campaign's overall structure is this; have it set in a mixture of known Arkham Country locations such as Arkham, Kingsport, Dunwich and Innsmouth by providing the core street layout for each of those. Only Kingsport doesn't have an existing design to lean on and I can write with experience that both Dunwich and Innsmouth's layouts are excellent bases to build from. In addition to this a few generic locations layouts would be great, while Miskatonic University is solid enough, a generic University would have been more flexible. Likewise Arkham Asylum from “The Unspeakable Oath” could have been repurposed into a generic hospital/asylum layout and it is again from a superb scenario. Other options could include a redesign of the Clover Club, either again as a generic option or even as The Ticktock Club which hasn't had its AHTCG debut yet.

Most of the Encounter sets are great and I'd keep as is, but the Cultists really needed a bit of a rework. Having them move away when attacked would have been an interesting variation on the original Dark Cult, but I am sure there are other options that could be used.

As for Elekoss, just more work put into building up who she is and what she is about may have been enough. She's just so absent from anything outside of the Brethren and that really undermines her potential threat. It's hard for me to not look at her as being anything more than a burning scarecrow or Wicker Man and even though her Ashen Pilgrims are a set that could be used elsewhere it hard to see it working at the moment. Perhaps Edge Studios will be able to round out this Ancient One more, because I'm not convinced AHLCG will do it any time soon.

So here's my campaign pitch based on that.

Our tutorial will take place in Miskatonic University, involving going to visit the Campus to speak with Dr. Armitage

We start at Arkham Hospital, where a colleague of Dr. Armitage (Professor Rice? Dr. Morgan?) has recently been sent after a fire in one of the University Buildings harmed them, they have sent a warning to Henry and he wants us to go check that they are safe and ask what it is about. As we head in, the hospital s attacked by the Ashen Pilgrims who start to try and burn the building down. The goal here is to navigate the chaos, reach the cell where they are located and get out. Similar to The Unspeakable Oath because it's just a good scenario and having a hospital available as generic locations is always going to be useful.

After this we head into Arkham itself, first to head to Miskatonic University and reconvene with Dr. Armitage, after that it is time to interview various people around Arkham and try to find out who was behind the attack on both the university and the hospital. This can pretty much be Smoke and Mirrors as is.

Next the leads expand out, and the investigators can choose to head to either Innsmouth or Dunwich to follow up on the next steps (I've chosen these two because they're already designed). In each of those places the normal inhabitants need to be interviewed and potential hideout locations checked out. The normal threats of those places can also be present and these scenarios can be done in either order.

Finally we head to Kingsport for the final confrontation which starts in the streets before eventually moving down underground where the ritual site is located and having that final act take place in the sewers below the city.

In truth I'd end up designing this one as a seven scenario campaign, but in order to stick around five scenarios I'd have one in the hospital, one in Arkham, one in Dunwich, one in Innsmouth and then one in Kingsport. This means in the future campaigns can lean on Sewers, Hospital, Miskatonic University, Arkham, Dunwich, Innsmouth and Kingsport because they are already designed.

If I'm really honest I'd probably also add an underground catacombs location set based on The Pallid Mask, a dock/warehouse area and a new set of generic woods based on the Arkham Woods in order to really have a robust core set that is future proofed for a bunch of different campaigns. These are the kind of things that classic Arkham investigations often revolve around so having access to them feels good.

Oh and I'd put Jazz Mulligan in the Miskatonic Location Pool cause I love that guy.

Final Thoughts

If I look at this Core Set through the perspective of an enfranchised player there's a lot of good player cards and interesting encounter sets that I can make used of. There are good player cards, the base direction for the class pools is solid and having access to all the backlog of Arkham means that there's a lot I can lean back on and Chapter 2 and its Current Environment provides an interesting space to play in and we're seeing that from the experienced members of the community.

However, when I look at this box as the base point for a new game environment and an intro point for new players and it is here where the release lacks. I expected so much more from a release with 10 years of content released before it, not something that borrows so much from its predecessor. I know the saying is “If it's broke, don't fix it.” but the core box release, even if we consider its Revised Edition and the Return too box, was flawed. I'm just surprised how much I can lay the contents of the two boxes next to each other and see how much they have in common.

If you're wondering how good Arkham Horror The Card Game is? It's one of the best games out there, but I would not recommend getting into it at the moment because there's just not enough content in this core box in my opinion and if you wanted a good Chapter 2 starting experience it leans on the Core Box, the Investigator decks for the Class(es) you want to play and the Children of Blood 3 Scenario campaign as well. That's a lot to spend for a good introductory experience, especially when we look at what we get from other similar games.

Arkham Horror remains one of the best board/card games out there, but Chapter 2 has not put its best foot forward and it remains a rough starting experience for newbies.