Arkham Horror: The Card Game

Setup: Follow the investigator back for deck size, permitted cards, and required inclusions. Core investigators normally have 30 cards counting toward deck size, plus required signature cards and weaknesses; normally include no more than two player cards of the same title. Follow campaign or scenario instructions for difficulty, chaos tokens, locations, and decks. Normally start with five resources and five cards, with one mulligan; replace weaknesses drawn during setup as instructed.

Round structure: Resolve Mythos, Investigation, Enemy, and Upkeep in order, skipping Mythos in the first round. The group chooses investigator turn order during Investigation. Each investigator completes their entire turn, normally taking up to three actions. Actions may repeat, and unused actions cannot be saved.

Actions and cards: Draw a card, gain a resource, move to a connecting location, investigate, engage, fight, evade, play an asset or event, or activate an action ability. Playing cards also requires their resource and other costs. Assets normally stay in play; events are discarded after resolution; skill cards are committed to tests. Fast cards do not use a play action but still obey timing and costs.

Skill tests: Commit cards with matching or wild icons before revealing a chaos token and resolving its effects. A modified skill value equal to or above the difficulty succeeds; the auto-fail token follows its special rule. The testing investigator may commit any number of eligible cards; each other investigator at the same location may commit one. Discard committed cards and return revealed tokens when the test ends.

Clues and advancement: A basic investigate action tests intellect against the location’s shroud and discovers one clue there on success. Investigators usually spend the required clues as a group to advance the act, but Objective text and per-investigator values apply. One scenario’s clue requirement is not universal.

Enemies and evasion: A basic fight tests combat against enemy fight and deals one damage on success, subject to weapons and other modifiers. Evading tests agility against enemy evade; success exhausts and disengages the enemy rather than defeating it. While engaged with ready enemies, actions other than fighting, evading, or activating parley or resign abilities normally provoke attacks of opportunity from each such enemy.

Pressure and upkeep: Mythos adds one doom, checks the current agenda against all doom in play, then has investigators draw encounters in player order. Unless a card says otherwise, doom advances the agenda only at the specified check. During Enemy, ready unengaged hunters move, then ready engaged enemies attack. Upkeep resets actions, readies exhausted cards, gives each investigator one card and one resource, and requires discarding down to eight cards.

Resolutions and progression: Follow the scenario’s resolution instructions, or its no-resolution entry if all investigators are eliminated. Damage reaching health or horror reaching sanity defeats an investigator and normally causes corresponding trauma in a campaign. Resolve experience, deck upgrades, and subsequent progress through the rules and campaign log.