3 And A Half Hours Of Ranking (Almost) Every Treachery (Arkham Horror: The Card Game Tier List)

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This was recorded ages ago and has finally hit the KZbin airwaves. I hope you enjoy 3 and a half hours of Justin ranking how scary he finds every treachery card in Arkham Horror: The Card Game!
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[@adamgoff7566]

I think you are approaching how bad ancient evils is incorrectly. I believe you were saying "The game is balanced around ancient evils, so ancient evils are not that bad". Totally correct. But thats an answer to a different question. When determining a treachery cards impact, it makes the most sense to measure it by how many action points it takes to resolve. That standardizes it across treacheries. Ancient evils, in a 3 person game, takes 9 action points to resolve. That is by far the highest of all treacheries. Even though the game is designed around ancient evils, they still cause the most impact.

[@PlayingBoardGames]

But it can also be argued that with each player in the game, the players have more opportunity to get ahead of the actions that Ancient Evils takes away. So, if you are ahead enough of the game, the impact of an Ancient Evils can be completely negligible. At my point in my Arkham life, I can reliably get ahead enough that an Ancient Evils is a dead draw for me from the encounter deck.

[@trlongwell]

What you say is true only if you will lose via running out of time. That is generally not the case for me. I lose when the bad cards pile up in a way that I can't deal with them. Ancient Evils isn't great, to be sure, but there are worse cards.

[@JackMack]

"Ancient evils, in a 3 person game, takes 9 action points to resolve." That's only true if you were going to win the scenario in your very last action. If you were going to win the scenario 3 rounds before the end, then 3 copies of Ancient Evils are dead draws. In my experience, at 3 players, winning the scenario 3 rounds or more from the end is completely normal. In fact I find it's not crazy to finish 4, 5, 6, or even more rounds before the doom clock runs out. Arkham is just a lot easy with more players, and you have waaay more actions to get ahead of the doom clock and finish the scenario quickly.

[@DavidBatson]

This one was especially fun to watch. Great vid. I love the moments when Justin realizes just how long this video is actually going to be. Hilarious.

[@AureliusAudio]

Justin entering GOAT'ed status

[@shawnc292]

Ancient evils eats more actions at high player counts than a frozen in fear and you cant control the actions you lose.

[@michaelsitter9841]

Good point! Way worse at higher player counts. & frozen in fear is actually way less threatening at higher counts b/c it's costing you a smaller % of total actions per round

[@rossedwards3623]

Excellent point about shuffling AE back into the deck being the true villain. Every fucking time an agenda flips, shuffles the discard pile into the deck and then immediately AE comes back up

[@MrNephthys17]

Yep, Ancient Evils is nowhere near as bad when you just house-rule it to have Victory 0. Justin is right that it's really a game-design problem than anything specific with the card, but the damage has been done imo when it's already in so many scenarios that shuffle the deck. It's also really bad in scenarios with Surge cards.

[@davidja1336]

Using a return to replacement also works - good for dark side of the moon, untamed wilds, etc - even if they don’t have sets

[@nunyabiznis7]

I had just gotten the Harvey Walters deck and it really appealed to me for drawing mechanic I have loved in other games. Then we played Dunwhich for first time and I was introduced to "Beyond the Veil"... Game over...

[@kelly-de-haan]

I played The Miskatonic Museum this week as the fighter and when I drew Ephemeral Exhibits I was like "Didn't have anything to do with my actions anyway..."

[@matthiasmuller7273]

That was surprisingly fun to listen to and remember all the bad times I had.

[@JUBEJU22]

put a pot of coffee on, Justin made another list video

[@lau2720]

According to the FAQ from 2018 you have to discard all assets if you cannot reach the threshold from "Corrosion". You have to discard all your Assets (including 0 cost ones) and it doesn't surge.

[@ultralalaful]

A big thx for all this interresting content

[@blossbenji21]

@19:46 Surprisingly, last night I was playing City of Archives with my group and more than once it was the correct choice to draw 2 and place 2 doom. I had NEVER had that happen before.

[@davidko9289]

That was a marathon! 1. My first playthrough of Dunwich, Dr. Milan Christopher was sacrificed. The economy of my deck was ruined. 2. The general trend seems to follow the difficulty of the campaigns, which makes sense since so much of the difficulty comes from the encounter deck (as opposed to act and agenda).

[@siege1289]

Hunting shadow: 1 clue or 2 damage Ancient evils: Lose 3X actions. This affect can advance the agenda/end the game. I know which one is worse.

[@Frankzoar]

Had to go snag my phone charger for this one 👍

[@Jazza889]

Holy 3 hours of hype

[@YanKonyshev]

Comment about Ruin and Destruction. 46:57 It's much worse that grasping hand, because it work for every investigator. So every investigator with Brood, could take damage. Also you could end turn with Brood, but exhaust them if i not mistaken and they gonna leave anyway.

[@iamtigra]

I am agreeing that I disagree with your assessment of Ancient Evils. As far as I'm concerned, the card reads "Each investigator loses each of their actions." This might be more impactful, as I play in a 4 player group, so a total of 12 actions are being lost on average, but even losing 9 or 6 actions is really bad if we're talking about the tempo of a game, and getting experience at decent rates. We should not have to include ward of protection in every mystic deck specifically because Ancient Evils exists as a core set card. I like the "Ancient Evils" they've printed since then, that you have to test, or take alternatives to doom; because then you get your ability to make a choice back. "Don't want extra doom? Test Agility (4). Don't wanna fail the agility test? You better pitch your two or three cards that have agility pips to get the best odds. Or you're a rogue with base agility 5, and you like to live on the edge."

[@Casey093]

Exactly. This is the one card you safe your cancel cards for... if you cannot cancel 2-3 of those, the game is pretty much over.

[@Sierra7329]

No way it's ranked that low. Easily reads as lose 12 actions for 1 card and needs a specific cards to cancel it which isnt a good design.

[@kitsunin4690]

But it only costs so many actions if you specifically needed those actions to close out the scenario. I think with a smaller collection and in Dunwich/Carcosa, that's a real consideration. But nowadays I'm with Justin. I'm never losing the game because the clock is going to run out, I'm always losing the game because I run out of steam in other ways. Sometimes I do lose to doom, but the reason we ran out of time, was because other problems piled on us and slowed us down, not because the timer was simply too short. As long as that remains true, Ancient Evils is simply a dead draw.

[@trlongwell]

Justin nails it re: Slithering Behind You. In my experience at least, you pretty much win the scenario if you don't draw it more than once, and probably lose if you do.

[@masonbrantley9774]

I literally was searching for background music to get some stuff done, and this is about to be my playlist today. Thanks for all the content y’all do! Edit: A little surprised by Ancient Evils placement, but I totally get where you’re coming from. Recently, it’s been a card that I don’t think about because (like you discuss) scenarios are designed with them in mind.

[@flopus7]

Strong disagree on ancient evils. In no world do I take a doom over 2 damage. I can mitigate damage, I cant mitigate doom. But you have grasping hands and rotting remains as bigger threats than test less doom.

[@PlayingBoardGames]

You can mitigate doom by being ahead of the game in tempo, which I find all decks are able to easily accomplish with the card pool today.

[@tcr7]

I love this video. I wish it were released by expansion so you could take just a little more time going in-depth with each card. Or, alternatively, timestamps. But really though: one video for each expansion.

[@PlayingBoardGames]

I could definitely swing a discussion/evil-ranking series on treacheries by expansion.

[@IamBramBramIam]

Jesus Christ that's a lot of treacheries

[@kelly-de-haan]

About Dissonant Voices: I respect that play styles differ, but I've had team mates draw it and caught myself thinking "Oh good, you're actually going to do something this turn, instead of playing that asset you don't really need"

[@PlayingBoardGames]

lol I think the same thing sometimes too...

[@Varrakk]

This gonna take time to get through ☕

[@LKristick]

Have you ranked the basic treacheries yet?

[@pietjehans206]

Twist of Fate - not to bad... What?! This card has killed me so many times. There is hardly anything you can do against a bit of bad luck.

[@stephenball2108]

This video is a 3.5 hour explanation of why Neither Rain nor Snow is a busted card

[@EdmCaper]

Wait , what? They don't reshuffle ancient evils into the encounter deck in the edge of the earth??? Lol our team just "semi lost" the second last game (the heart of madness) because we had to reshuffle the encounter deck. And our last turn, the very last card was ancient evils which caused the game to end ... Did I miss something

[@thirteenthirtyseven4730]

On Beyond the Veil: The dream is to Deny Existence lvl5 the 10 horror at full health to supercharge Soul Sanctification and have Unexpected Courages for days!

[@PlayingBoardGames]

That does sound pretty sick. :D

[@cavaliercanzone2277]

wtf... this video is crazy

[@zeroisnine]

To all the people who read "Ancient Evils" as "Each Investigator loses their actions this turn." 1) If there is an action you have to take (say fight and a enemy that will kill you otherwise), do you instantly die if you draw Ancient Evil in the mythos phase? 2) If there is a location action at your location that says "Win the game." Does Ancient Evil prevent you from winning the game? 3) Do you typically re-write reality when making judgement and drawing logical conclusions?