Arkham Horror LCG

Arkham Horror: The Card Game is Fantasy Flight's cooperative narrative LCG, launched in 2016 as the card-game entry in the long-running Arkham Horror universe that includes the namesake board game, Mansions of Madness, Elder Sign and Eldritch Horror.

The game

Designed by Nate French and Matthew Newman, Arkham Horror LCG is a one-to-four-player cooperative campaign game where each player takes an Investigator (a journalist, a professor, a bootlegger, a socialite) into a Lovecraftian scenario that plays out over multiple linked sessions. Investigators gain experience and trauma between scenarios, decks are built with upgrade economies, and the scenarios branch based on your choices. It runs on a custom card-based skill-check engine with a chaos bag of tokens for the random element.

The context

FFG released Arkham LCG after several years of refining the cooperative card-game formula through Lord of the Rings LCG, and it is widely regarded as the purest cooperative LCG on the market. It arrived during peak modern horror-gaming interest (same era as the Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition re-launch) and has been continuously expanded since 2016.

The collector angle

Revised Core Set (2021) is the current starter, replacing the original 2016 Core. Deluxe expansions plus Mythos Packs make up each of the completed cycles: Dunwich Legacy, Path to Carcosa, Forgotten Age, Circle Undone, Dream-Eaters, Innsmouth Conspiracy, Edge of the Earth, Scarlet Keys, and Feast of Hemlock Vale. Promo investigator cards from GenCon and Arkham Nights events are the prestige collector items. Sealed original-Core Sets from 2016 are already trading at a premium since the Revised Core is now the standard retail entry.