Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set)

Set up the investigation: Choose different investigators and legal decks, then follow the scenario instructions for locations, act, agenda, and encounter decks. Build the chaos bag for the chosen difficulty. Normally start with five resources and five cards, with one mulligan; set aside opening weaknesses, replace them, and shuffle them back after the opening-hand step.

Rounds and actions: Resolve mythos, investigation, enemy, and upkeep phases, skipping mythos in the first round. Choose investigator turn order freely, but finish one turn before another starts. An investigator normally has three actions for drawing, gaining resources, moving, investigating, engaging, evading, fighting, playing cards, or activating action abilities. Unused actions are forfeited.

Explore and find clues: Move to a connecting location, revealing it and placing its indicated clues on first entry. A standard investigate action tests intellect against shroud and discovers one clue on success. The group normally spends the act’s required clues to advance without an action; a bold Objective instruction can change the requirements.

Resolve skill tests: Commit cards with matching or wild icons before revealing a chaos token and applying its modifier or effect. Meet or exceed the difficulty to succeed, subject to automatic failure. The tested investigator may commit any number of eligible cards; each teammate at the same location may contribute one. Pay no resource cost for committed cards; discard them and return tokens to the bag afterward.

Handle enemies: A standard fight tests combat against fight value and deals one damage on success. A failed attack against an enemy engaged with a teammate damages that teammate instead. A successful agility test against evade value exhausts and disengages the enemy. While engaged with ready enemies, actions provoke attacks of opportunity except for exempt actions such as Fight, Evade, and abilities with Parley or Resign designators.

Play cards at the right time: Playing an asset or event normally costs an action plus resources. Assets remain in play and obey slot limits; events are discarded after resolution. Skill cards are committed rather than played. Fast cards cost no action but retain timing restrictions; free triggered abilities use player windows, and reactions require their specified triggering conditions.

Mythos and upkeep: Add one doom to the agenda, check all doom in play against its threshold, then draw an encounter card for each investigator in player order. The agenda advances only at that check unless a card explicitly permits advancement. During the enemy phase, ready, unengaged Hunter enemies at locations without investigators move along a shortest path toward the nearest investigator; ready engaged enemies attack. Upkeep resets actions, readies cards, gives each investigator one card and one resource, then enforces an eight-card hand limit.

Resolve the scenario: Damage reaching health or horror reaching sanity defeats an investigator and eliminates them from the scenario, potentially causing campaign trauma. When a resolution is reached or all investigators leave play, follow the appropriate campaign-guide conclusion and record its consequences. Keep resolution text unread until needed.

Build and develop decks: Revised Core investigators use thirty standard player cards chosen within their printed deckbuilding options and requirements, with at most two copies of a player-card title. Investigator-specific cards, weaknesses, and scenario cards added to the deck do not count toward that size. Begin a campaign with level-zero cards, then use experience purchase rules to upgrade. Add a random basic weakness after choosing the other cards.