A First Look at Two New Expansions for Arkham Horror: The Card Game
“That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.” – H.P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”
It was supposed to be one last job. At the behest of shadowy antiquarian Randall Tillinghast—who presents them with an offer they can’t refuse—our investigators travel to the South Pacific and the vast, alien city of R’lyeh. However, the more they explore, the more terrors they discover, and as a looming sense of dread grows, they find themselves—and all of Arkham—faced with a colossal threat.
The time has come. Cthulhu has awakened, and Arkham will never be the same.
Fantasy Flight Games is thrilled to announce The Drowned City, a pair of brand-new expansions for Arkham Horror: The Card Game!
This pair of separate-but-related expansions sees our investigators exploring the mysterious and deadly city of R’lyeh as it slowly rises from the ocean’s depths. Six new investigators from The Drowned City Investigator Expansion must scale the city’s crumbling foundations, scour the sea floor for alien artifacts, and navigate mind-bending machinery and shifting corridors in The Drowned City Campaign Expansion. As always, you will only find player cards within the Investigator Expansion while all the scenario and campaign content is contained within the Campaign Expansion. This pair of expansions marks a pretty big turning point for the game line (more on that later), but even if they didn’t, you won’t be able to resist the call of this latest wave of Arkham Horror!
An Offer you Can’t Refuse
With a new wave of Arkham Horror: The Card Game content comes a new batch of playable investigators. This time around, there are six investigators joining the roster, each with their own unique strengths and weaknesses.
First among them is Marion Tavares (The Drowned City Investigator Expansion, 1), the trawler. This fierce fisherwoman lost her right arm to a strange aquatic monster, but that hasn’t stopped her from defending those she cares about while sailing the waters off Arkham’s shores. While she only has one hand slot for equipping assets, Marion makes up for it with her inherent affinity for playing events. Once per round, she can play an event, draw a card, and then play another event back-to-back without needing to spend an additional action. Since this is a reaction ability, Marion can trigger it after playing any event during her turn, including a fast one, letting you potentially play two cards without spending a single action!
Marion’s emphasis on events is reflected in her signature cards as well. Her deck comes with two copies of Determined (The Drowned City IE, 2), a skill card that can bounce back into Marion’s hand when she uses it to help herself pass a skill test on an event she played. This means that Marion can open her turn with Ready for Anything (The Drowned City IE, 24), netting herself a card and a bit of horror healing, then use her innate ability to draw another card and wallop an enemy with an Improvised Weapon (The Drowned City IE, 92) played from her discard pile. She can boost her Combat stat with Determination to ensure the fight test ends in success, and boom; the enemy gets hit, Marion gets Determination back, and—since Improvised Weapon was in her discard pile—she draws yet another card. Three cards drawn, two cards played, and all in just a single action! With all this action efficiency, it’s no wonder that Marion has a tendency to say “I’ll do it myself” (The Drowned City IE, 3), which can definitely cause some issues if she keeps playing events willy-nilly.
After Marion Tavares, we have the parapsychologist, Agatha Crane. As a researcher whose work toes the line between science and the occult, Agatha has two different versions: a Seeker version (The Drowned City IE, 7) and a Mystic version (The Drowned City IE, 8). Both versions of Agatha have the same stats and innate abilities, but they differ in deckbuilding elements. Seeker Agatha wants Seeker cards and Insight events, while Mystic Agatha wants Mystic cards and Spell events. Each version lets her splash a bit of the other in her deck, allowing you to craft the perfect union of magic and science regardless of which version you choose to play!
Similar to Marion, Agatha’s inherent ability allows her to play events outside of her normal actions, though hers are triggered by sealing, canceling, or ignoring chaos tokens. Agatha’s signature asset, the Ocula Obscura (The Drowned City IE, 9), lets her seal a numerical token revealed during a skill test, effectively storing it for the next test she performs. This means that, if she sealed a particularly helpful number on the Ocula Obscura, she could ensure that she succeeds the test on Correlate All Its Contents (The Drowned City IE, 40) by the exact right amount to get the maximum benefit. Alternatively, she could use the Ocula’s ability to ensure she can succeed at Whispers of Doom (The Drowned City IE, 72), potentially taking an enemy out in an instant! Both of these events can be played at the end of her turn through her ability, thanks to the Ocula allowing her to seal tokens, but be careful; once you play an event this way, it’s removed from the game. Also, while the Ocula Obscura grants Agatha lots of control over her skill tests, chaos can still reign supreme when she Glimpses the Void (The Drowned City IE, 10)!
In addition to four other investigators (whom we’ll preview at a later date), The Drowned City Investigator Expansion introduces a brand-new type of player card: specialist cards. These cards function as Neutral cards for the purpose of deckbuilding, but you can only include them in your deck if your investigator has at least one of the card’s required traits.
For example, Agatha Crane has the Miskatonic and Scholar traits, while Marion Tavares has the Drifter and Entrepreneur traits. This means that Agatha could add cards like Library Pass (The Drowned City IE, 99) and Archibald MacVeigh (The Drowned City IE, 117) to her deck while Marion could not, despite the fact that both of them can add Neutral cards of level 0 to 5 to their deck. Likewise, Marion can add cards like True Awakening (The Drowned City IE, 106) and Nose to the Grindstone (The Drowned City IE, 111) to her deck while Agatha cannot.
Specialist cards add even more options to the card pool and provide new significance to your chosen investigator’s traits—a feature that they share with elements of The Drowned City Campaign Expansion…
The Doom of Arkham
Speaking of the Campaign Expansion, it’s time to talk about the elephant in the room; or rather, the octopus. We mentioned him earlier, you’ve seen him on the box art, and we’ve been building up to him for a while:
Cthulhu is here. He’s kind of a big deal.
It all starts with “one last job.” You and your fellow investigators set off on an expedition to the ancient, alien city of R’lyeh, which has been slowly emerging from the waters of the South Pacific. You travel there at the behest of Randall Tillinghast, a local curio dealer who possesses a strange effigy of a gruesome, octopoidal monstrosity. To get you to undertake this journey, Randal presents you with an offer you can’t refuse, which comes in the form of various “Tasks”—special side objectives that you’ll work to complete during The Drowned City campaign.
Similar to the specialist cards from the Investigator Expansion, these Tasks are thematically tied to your investigator’s traits, and you choose one to pursue over the course of the campaign. You can technically choose any Task for your investigator, but each Task recommends investigators of a specific class or with specific traits. For example, the Task No Place Like Home (The Drowned City Campaign Expansion, 253a) is recommended for Survivor, Drifter, Hunter, or Wayfarer investigators, while the Task Do No Harm (The Drowned City CE, 258a) is recommended for Assistant, Civic, Medic, Veteran, or Warden investigators. As you play each scenario—and make certain story decisions between them—you’ll gradually mark off progress for your Task in the campaign log. Do so enough times, and you can complete your Task, earning yourself a nice reward (The Drowned City CE, 253b) from Tillinghast.
Having Tillinghast clear your debts and resolve all your problems is pretty compelling, but exploring R’lyeh isn’t exactly a walk in the park. Each step you take is hounded by deadly traps, twisted monsters, and a ton of seawater, and those are just the dangers you face while wandering about the ancient city. When you arrive in R’lyeh, you must choose which direction to explore from: the east or the west. This changes the order and setup of each scenario, which can drastically alter the events of the expedition itself. During your exploration, you’ll need to search for artifacts and decipher alien glyphs, all while dealing with the unique challenges that present themselves based on the direction you choose to explore R’lyeh from.
As you explore, you and your companions feel a growing sense of dread, like something enormous is about to happen. All of this slowly builds up to the inevitable reveal of the monstrous sleeper himself, Cthulhu.
The big, bad, Great Old One is, naturally, the final boss of The Drowned City Campaign Expansion. And what a final boss he is! The investigators of Arkham have dealt with large monsters before, but never has such a massive—and destructive—abomination threatened the city at such a colossal scale before. Cthulhu’s so big that you have to fight each part of him separately, all while desperately trying to mitigate the damage to the city as much as possible. It’s a losing battle from the get-go, since Cthulhu casually floods any location he walks into, leaving all of Arkham a soaked, smoldering ruin.
What can a handful of mere investigators do against such a powerful being? Your chances of stopping him are slim to none, but for the sake of Arkham—and the world—you’ll have to try. No matter the outcome, one thing is clear:
Arkham will never be the same.
One Last Job
With the threat of Cthulhu looming over Arkham and the fate of the city resting in your hands, The Drowned City Investigator Expansion and The Drowned City Campaign Expansion both serve as essential additions to the collection of any fan. Look forward to taking on the iconic big bad himself when these expansions arrive in February and March of 2025!