Elder Sign

It was not so long ago that I ranted about how I dislike the high amount of luck that decides the outcome (and enjoyment) of Settlers of Catan. I still prefer strategy over luck in my games but at the same time I enjoyed playing Elder Sign quite a lot. Why? Are really the tentacles of eldricht horrors powerful enough to make rolling dice transcend the unavoidable legacy of Yatzhee?

Let's start with the basics. Elder Sign is another take on H. P. Lovecraft's beloved tentacly mythos by the same people who brought us the immensely popular Arkham Horror with all its expansions. Elder Sign is a standalone game that reuses some of the graphics from AH but its gameplay is different. At the beginning of the game, each player chooses/draws a character that he will play as. Also the Great Old One is drawn, an evil creature that wants to break out to our world from its horrible dimension. Okay, so far it's all the same but here comes the twist. The game itself takes place in a museum and its surroundings where something uncanny is going on. Weird shapes move from a room to room, mad people serve dark evil gods, portals to other worlds open and not even dreams are safe anymore.

Alright, so it is sorta like Arkham Horror. And just like AH it has cards and dice but that's it. Cards, dice, tokens... Mythos cards, GOO, investigators... Fine, it IS Arkham Horror lite but that doesn't mean the game is bad. There is a different gameplay mechanic that sets it apart and it is much more luck based but it still is a hoot to play, especially with people in the same eldricht horror mood.

The players - investigators - are in town and on the case of weird stuff happening and the end of world approaching. Their plan is to collect a number of Elder Signs to thwart the Great Old One's arrival and seal him in his prison. The Elder Signs can be obtained by resolving adventure cards that symbolize events and places around the museum. There are always six adventure cards laid out on the table and the characters can choose whichever to resolve. These cards each represent an event, or perhaps a room where something is happening. There's a thematic picture and a short text that tells the story of the adventure. There are also requirements to a successful passing of the adventure and things that happen should the adventure be passed or failed.

Once a character chooses to pass an adventure, he or she rolls six green dice and tries to match the rolled symbols with those required by the card, one set of symbols at a time. If the dice rolled match one complete requirement, those dice are put on the symbols and the rest is rolled again. If, however, no required symbols are rolled, it counts as a fail. One failure is okay and you may discard one dice and roll the rest again. There is a gameplay mechanic called focusing (or assisting in case there are more investigators on a same spot) which allows you to "lock" a dice, save one dice aside in case you rolled a symbol you think you could use in a future roll. If you fail your roll the second time in a row, you failed the adventure and have to deal with the failure conditions - usually lose either stamina or sanity, two standard "health" meters of the characters. Should you succeed and pass all the requirements, you collect the rewards specific to each adventure, usually common or unique items, clue tokens (that can be spend to allow a dice re-roll), or even an Elder Sign, AND the card itself which counts as a trophy.

Players collect the trophies from the passed adventures and defeated monsters. Trophies can be exchanged for various items at the the museum's door, an extra card that works as a shop of sorts. It is also possible to spend the trophies to recover health, sanity or stamina or both because if either reaches zero during an adventure, the character is considered dead or mad and is removed from play. Fear not, a new character is drawn and the game continues. But aside from healing your character, it is a good idea to get some items too. Usually they can be discarded at useful times to prevent loss of sanity or null a failure. Sometimes though they can add an extra useful yellow or red dice to your roll which increase your chance of rolling the right symbols.

However, you cannot spend your turns hidden in a shop healing up and what not. The investigator are racing against the clock. Literally. Well, not exactly literally. There is a cardboard clock with a movable hand that is moved "three hours" at the end of each turn. Every fourth turn the clock strikes midnight and a new mythos card is revealed. Those are divided into two parts - the immediate action and the lingering handicap. The immediate action is usually between the lines of "a monster appears" or "a Doom Token is added to the GOO's Doom Track" while the lingering handicap can affect the whole round until next midnight like "no red dice can be used" or "when the next clock strikes midnight, everyone discards a trophy or loses 2 sanity".

Speaking about the Great Old Ones and their Doom Tracks - GOOs are the standard group that fans of AH have grown to love and hate - the matriarch Shubb-Niggurath, the star of the show Cthulhu, dimension bending Yog-Sothoth, the ultimate Azathoth, and others. In a true AH fashion, the events of the game add to a certain Doom Track - a track unique to each GOO. At certain points in the game (usually through the Mythos Card) Doom Tokens are added to the track and once it is filled, the Great Old One appears and the heroes must fight it. That is unless Azathoth appears, in which case he destroys the whole universe, thus the game ends and the players lose. Fighting the GOOs (and monsters too) is similar to resolving an adventure - there is a combination of symbols that needs to be rolled and if succeeded, a Doom Token is removed from the track. This repeats until it's empty and thus the unimaginable horror is chased back to where it came from. But since the primary goal is to *prevent* the arrival of the GOO, the final fight turns into kind of a last straw of hope fight.

Well, it WOULD if the game was difficult to beat. Unlike Arkham Horror which often times proved to be frustratingly difficult to win even with a skilled group of investigators, winning Elder Sign is not really a tough deal. Sure, characters can die but the supply of new investigators is deep and there is little to bring the feeling of looming dread. Malevolent gods aren't THAT malevolent this time, their minions practically add just another adventure requirements and don't pose a real threat. That being said, Elder Sign IS after all a game of couple cards and dice on the table, not a sprawling megaboard game with a dozen of various token cups.

And yet, it is all about rolling dice. Both fights and adventures are resolved by pure luck which you can only mitigate by using items that add extra dice (items which you have, after all, obtained by luck as well). Can you be good at this game? The only real skill is choosing which adventure you have higher chance to pass and which not based on the items that you have and can use if things go wrong.

And... I don't really have a problem with that. This game is not a competition. The players work together towards a common goal and be it bad luck or good luck, the impact is on the whole group and doesn't let a single player profit. Unless there's an in-team contest who smacks Cthulhu more, that is. Yes, it is easy but its size is ideal for a light-hearted game of chats and role-playing. It keeps its tempo quite well throughout the whole game and can be finished in an hour or so. The adventure cards carry a load of storytelling, the graphics are well-done and the rules that take up only 12 pages (which is nothing for a Fantasy Flight game) so it is explained to newcomers in a moment. It's not as hardcore as Arkham Horror but it's a great, fun game that won't take the whole day to play and still deliver the tentacly madness from beyond the outer space that we all love.