Elder Sign

[Manxome]

I've just read about a fully-cooperative board game for 1-8 players set in the universe of HP Lovecraft.

Players take on the roles of investigators trying to stop one of the old ones from breaking into our world and destroying humanity. Each investigator has a health and sanity stat, a unique special ability, and different starting items. You can acquire more cards representing items, allies, and occult knowledge as the game goes on, and you roll dice to try to overcome various challenges.

Meanwhile, one of several old ones is striving against you. Each has different special abilities to hinder the players, and a "doom track" that shows how close it is to waking up. Gates to other worlds open up, and monsters attack you. Every round, you have to draw a "mythos card", which advancies the various nasties opposing you.



Now at this point, you're probably thinking, "Arkham Horror has been out for years and discussed here numerous times, where have you been?" Except it's not Arkham Horror. It's an upcoming game from the same designers AND publisher called Elder Sign.

Wha...?

[Username17]

It has a doom track but no board, it appears to deal with locations as cards that come out of the deck. That makes it a lot more expandable than Arkham is (without taking up more space).

So the relevant locations for a scenario are dealt from a deck rather than being placed on the board all the time. So the locations that don't have monsters and clues in them don't clutter things. I'm certainly interested.

-Username17

[K]

Yeh, setting up and cleaning up the board is always a pain. Going board-less would be interesting.

[Cynic]

Really, the board is the primary reason that I never got any expansions. Since, my primary game is usually just me and the wife, it turns out to be too much.

I have played in a few four player games of AH, and it was good but quite long. I wonder how much the lack of a board would boost play time.

[Neeeek]

Yeh, setting up and cleaning up the board is always a pain. Going board-less would be interesting.

Finding a table big enough for the board was hard enough to make the game a little hard to work with.