“Arkham Horror: The Card Game” is a cooperative living card game inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft. First released in 2016 by designers Nate French and MJ Newman, this undeniably legendary game ranks in the top 50 board games on BoardGameGeek and has won awards for “Best Card Game” and “Best Two-Player Strategy Game.” The revised edition is fully compatible with all previous expansions and boasts updated content:

• One box now supports four players (the classic edition only included cards and tokens for two, requiring a second box for three or four players).
• Two copies each of 96 cards from the original core set, plus two copies of each of 13 additional player cards from past expansions—absent in the classic edition—some featuring brand-new artwork.
• A chaos bag for tokens.
• New in-box organization that greatly simplifies finding cards for player decks and scenarios.
• New “3” and “5” resource tokens, clue/doom tokens, and a lead investigator token.
• A revised rulebook to ease new players into the game.

About the Board Game “Arkham Horror: The Card Game – Revised Core Set”

In this game, you—alone or with partners—become investigators unraveling eerie, mystical happenings in the quiet New England town of Arkham. You’ll battle horrors, search for evidence, move between locations, build your character’s deck, and make tough calls as you play through the base campaign, “Night of the Zealot.” The campaign splits into three scenarios, each with unique traits and multiple possible endings. Your personal decks carry over for new investigations in later scenarios and campaigns.

Rules in Brief

Fully detailing the rules isn’t practical—each scenario has its quirks, and the full rulebook risks story spoilers. To start, you set up the scenario deck and players’ starting decks. The game board forms from face-down location cards. Entering an unknown location, you flip it, read its text, and place the required clues. Each round has four phases:

1. Mythos Phase: Place a doom token on the agenda card; each player draws and resolves one encounter card. If the final agenda card is revealed, the game is lost. This phase skips in the first round.
2. Investigation Phase: Each player takes a turn with three actions. An investigator can draw a card, gain a resource, engage in combat, investigate a location, move to an adjacent one, attack or evade an enemy, or trigger abilities.
3. Enemy Phase: Enemies act and attack. If none are present, this phase is skipped.
4. Upkeep Phase: Refresh all “exhausted” cards; players gain one resource and one card. If an investigator has over eight cards, they discard one of their choice. The round ends and restarts with the Mythos Phase.

Throughout, investigators face skill tests by drawing chaos tokens from the bag. Most card plays require versatile resources, so use them wisely and gauge your strength carefully.

We recommend checking the video rules in the “Video” section and, if you’d like, diving into the illustrated PDF rules in the “Files” section.

One Last Note

The game’s design ensures every scenario feels fresh on replay, and the extra card copies in the revised edition offer more deck-building freedom. Galu the Rooster insists “Arkham Horror: The Card Game” is a must-have for your collection—but brace yourself to lose your first few attempts at tackling this gripping tale.