Arkham Horror: The Card Game rules refresher

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You and your fellow investigators win or lose together. You are trying to advance the act deck to a good resolution before the agenda deck runs out the clock on you. You'll do that by moving through locations and investigating them for clues, then spending those clues to push the act forward. Along the way you'll be fighting or evading enemies and surviving whatever the encounter deck throws at you.

For setup, each player takes an investigator card, a mini card, and their deck. Choose a lead investigator, who takes the lead investigator token. The lead breaks ties and makes group decisions. Fill the chaos bag with the tokens listed for your chosen difficulty. Each investigator takes five resources and draws five cards. If you draw a weakness during setup, set it aside and draw a replacement. Each player may take one mulligan: set aside up to five of those cards and draw that many again. Then shuffle everything you set aside back into your deck.

Next, build the scenario. Stack the agenda deck and the act deck in order, with one A on top of each. Put the scenario reference card beside the agenda. Put the starting locations into play with the unrevealed side up. The unrevealed side is the one with the keyhole under the title. Set aside the other locations and any cards the Campaign Guide tells you to. Shuffle the remaining encounter cards into the encounter deck, and read the introduction and the opening act and agenda. Finally, place everyone's mini card at the starting location. That reveals it, and it gets clues equal to its clue value. A clue value marked per investigator means you multiply it by the number of investigators who started the scenario.

Each round has four phases: the mythos phase, the investigation phase, the enemy phase, and the upkeep phase. In the very first round you skip the mythos phase and start with investigation. In the investigation phase, each investigator takes one turn, and the group decides who goes next each time. On your turn you get three actions, and you can repeat any of them. You can draw a card, gain a resource, activate an ability, engage an enemy, investigate, move, play an asset or event, evade, or fight. When you're done, flip your mini card facedown. Any unused actions are lost. After everyone has gone, enemies hunt and attack. Then upkeep resets everything, and the next round opens with the mythos phase.

Here are the actions in more detail. Draw takes the top card of your deck, and resource takes one resource from the pool. Activate uses an ability marked with the action arrow. That ability can be on a card in play that you control, on an encounter card at your location, or on the current act or agenda. Engage pulls an enemy at your location into your threat area, even one engaged with someone else. Move takes you to a location connected by the icons along the bottom of your current location card. If that location is unrevealed, flip it and place its clues.

Investigate is an intellect test against your location's shroud value. If you succeed, you take one clue from the location and put it on your investigator card.

Play means paying an asset or event card's resource cost, shown in its top left corner. An event resolves and then goes to your discard pile. An asset stays in your play area. Cards with the fast keyword cost no action to play. Skill cards are never played; you only commit them to tests. Assets are limited by slots. You have one ally slot, one body slot, one accessory slot, two hand slots, and two arcane slots. If you don't have room for a new asset, you must discard one or more of your own assets to make space.

Evade is an agility test against an enemy you're engaged with, compared to its evade value. If you succeed, the enemy is exhausted, the engagement breaks, and the enemy moves out of your threat area onto your location. An exhausted enemy doesn't engage, doesn't make attacks of opportunity, and doesn't attack in the enemy phase.

Fight is a combat test against the fight value of an enemy at your location. If you succeed, you deal one damage, plus any bonus from your weapon or spell. When an enemy's damage reaches its health, it is defeated. Defeated enemies go to the encounter discard pile, or to the shared victory pile if they have a Victory value. Be careful: if you fail an attack on an enemy that's engaged with another investigator, that investigator takes your attack's damage instead.

There's a big trap while you're engaged with a ready enemy. Any action other than fight, evade, or an ability marked Parley or Resign triggers an attack of opportunity. That means every ready enemy engaged with you attacks you.

Advancing the act costs no action, and the group can do it during any investigator's turn. You spend clues as a group from your investigator cards, using the number shown at the bottom of the act. Some acts have an Objective line that adds to or replaces that requirement. To advance, flip the act, follow its B side, and set it aside. You keep any clues beyond what you needed.

Skill tests drive almost everything. Before you reveal a chaos token, you may commit any number of cards from your hand whose icons match the skill being tested. Each matching icon gives you plus one, and the question mark wild icon matches any skill. Each other investigator at your location may commit one card to help. Committing a card costs no resources, and you can also use free triggered abilities during the test. Then reveal a token. A number modifies your skill. The skull, cultist, tablet, and elder thing tokens send you to the scenario reference card. The elder sign triggers your investigator's own elder sign ability. The tentacle token is an automatic failure. You succeed if your final value equals or beats the difficulty. Afterward, discard all committed cards and return the token to the bag.

In the enemy phase, hunter enemies move first. Each moves one location toward the nearest investigator, unless it's exhausted or already at a location with an investigator. Then every ready, engaged enemy attacks, resolved in player order. Player order means the lead investigator first, then clockwise. Each attack deals the enemy's damage and horror together, and the enemy exhausts afterward. Attacks of opportunity don't exhaust enemies.

You can place damage on your investigator or on your assets that have health, and horror on your investigator or on assets that have sanity. A card whose damage reaches its health, or whose horror reaches its sanity, is defeated. A defeated asset is discarded, and a defeated investigator is eliminated.

A ready, unengaged enemy at the same location as an investigator engages that investigator immediately. That happens when the enemy spawns there, when it moves there, when an investigator arrives, or when it readies there. If several investigators qualify, the lead chooses, unless the enemy's Prey instruction decides. Engaged enemies travel with you when you move.

A few keywords come up often. Aloof enemies don't engage on their own, and you can't attack them unless they're engaged. A massive enemy engages every investigator at its location. A retaliate enemy attacks you if you fail an attack against it while it's ready. Surge makes you draw another encounter card. Peril means nobody else can advise or help you while you resolve that card.

In upkeep, flip your mini cards faceup and ready all exhausted cards. Each investigator then draws one card and gains one resource, and anyone holding more than eight cards discards down to eight.

The mythos phase has three steps. First, place one doom on the agenda. Second, count all doom in play, on the agenda and on any other cards. If the total meets or exceeds the agenda's doom threshold, the agenda advances: remove all doom from play, flip the agenda, follow its back, and reveal the next one. Unless a card says otherwise, that is the only time the agenda advances. Third, in player order, each investigator draws an encounter card. A treachery resolves and is discarded unless it says it stays in play. An enemy spawns engaged with whoever drew it, unless it has a Spawn instruction sending it elsewhere. Whenever you draw a weakness from your own deck, you resolve its Revelation right away.

If you're ever unsure how to resolve a rule or timing conflict, the lead investigator applies the Grim Rule: pick whatever is worst for the investigators and keep playing.

The scenario ends when you reach a resolution, usually by advancing the act deck, which tends to go well, or the agenda deck, which tends not to. An encounter card can also send you to a numbered resolution. Either way, read that resolution in the Campaign Guide. If every investigator is eliminated, use the conclusion for when no resolution was reached. In campaign play, finishing a scenario may earn experience points, which you spend on higher level cards for your deck.

A turn, played out

It's the investigation phase, and the group has chosen you to go next. You stand in a revealed location with shroud 3 and 2 clues still on it. A ready enemy sits in your threat area. It has fight 2, evade 3, and 2 health, and its attack deals 1 damage and 1 horror. Your intellect is 4, your combat 2, your agility 3. You hold 1 clue. The player to your left, two rooms away, holds 3. The act asks for 6. You want those 2 clues badly, but investigating now would be an action other than fight or evade, so the enemy would make an attack of opportunity first. You could fight it, but combat 2 against fight 2 only deals 1 damage, and it has 2 health. So your first action is evade. Agility 3 against evade 3. You commit a skill card with 1 agility icon, making 4, and reveal a minus 1. That's 3, which equals the difficulty, so you succeed. The enemy exhausts and slides out of your threat area onto your location. Exhausted, it can't re-engage you. Your second action is investigate. Intellect 4 against shroud 3, and the token is a 0. You take a clue onto your investigator card, and 1 is left on the location. Your third action is investigate again. Out comes the tentacle, an automatic failure, no matter how far ahead you were. The group now holds 5 clues, 1 short of the act. No advance this turn. You flip your mini card facedown. In the enemy phase, your enemy is still exhausted, so it doesn't attack. In upkeep, everything readies, including it. Now it's ready, unengaged, and standing in your location, so it engages you on the spot. You draw a card and gain a resource, knowing next round opens with that enemy back in your threat area.