Eldritch Horror: Cities of Ruin Review - with Tom Vasel

[@RobertHMayfire]

Tom Vasel: Boxes in Ruin expansion

[@sextonj87]

This is such a great expansion. It adds a blockbuster movie feel to the game. Truly fantastic to see great content still coming for this game 7 expansions in.

[@Mandrake42]

Even to this day I still wince when you hit the box with the hammer ;)

[@mrsuitcase9799]

What was this called? "Expansion Box in Ruin"?

[@doomedark]

I mixed all the expansions together and play the game. Depending on the Eldritch I choose to play with or without the expansion's map. Is it OK?

[@mikejonesnoreally]

This looks great and I will be adding it to Eldritch, but I think if you only get one expansion with the base game, you'll probably appreciate Strange Remnants the most. The focus mechanism *is* that important. It's also in the large expansion: Mountains of Madness. Either way, you'll be glad you have it.

[@999slawter]

But you can add the focus mechanism to the base game without the expansion. I mean, you just need some marker and you need to say "We can focus now".

[@mikejonesnoreally]

That's true but it feels too much like a house rule or that I'm just taking someone else's idea without giving them the credit they worked for (the sale) and besides that, there's a *reason* Strange Remnants was so hard to get for so long. :)

[@dorpth]

No way. Forsaken Lore is the one mandatory expansion. It fills out all the decks that were way too sparse in the base game. The focus mechanic requires no expansion to be bought, you can just house rule it in and use any marker you want. I can't remember if it was Strange Remnants that started adding those unique asset cards, but that feature needs to go die in a fire. It undoes the entire point of all the streamlining they did and makes it just as bloated as Arkham was.

[@aliasbrush2]

Focus is an almost essential mechanic, imo, especially against AOs where you often find yourself battling something in the wilderness/at sea. It gives your investigators an action they can always perform when all other actions are closed off to them. Otherwise you can find yourself simply wasting entire turns doing nothing. It doesn't add complexity. It's no different than buying a travel ticket. The next X-pac adds yet another action (gather resources) as a different alternative. This suggests that these extra options were needed.

[@SanjuroSan]

You really hit that box didn't yah.

[@Diabolik771]

He probably got it for free, he don't care.

[@mircasta]

Did tom or any of the others review the dreamlands expansion

[@eVanDiesel]

Got it day 1! Great new set!!

[@cherryfuchs]

OMG, I got so excited watching this video. I will definitely buy this one! Thank you

[@TheRmm1976]

Anyone else notice the rain outside the window? :-)

[@Emsworth377]

Love how you can hear the rain gitting the roof all through the review. Very peaceful.

[@tomkirby3281]

Wasn't Shudde M'ell a Brian Lumley addition to the Cthulhu Mythos? Not that it matters that much...

[@cthulwho8197]

Tom Kirby Yes.

[@jonthebaker123]

Ashcan Pete is my favorite character in every game he's in.

[@mikejonesnoreally]

I don't play Ashcan Pete. I play Duke and his sidekick. The Arkham Horror LCG *really* did a great job with him! :)

[@WierdoWithTheBeardo]

I think he got too into the destruction there

[@loicovis426]

Great explaination! Thank you a lot!

[@357Dejavu]

This was the first expansion I got

[@JoelC724]

Lol, one day he's going to sledgehammer a box and people are really going eat their $h*t

[@mbalazs3544]

my faw is the yellow sign :D

[@Fissi0nChips]

Also, Shudde M'ell can just be pronounced Shud Mell. :) You're welcome ;)

[@gamera2351]

Why do so many people freak out when Tom destroys the box? #1 - He does this with most expansions so it's been done many times before. #2 - If the expansion fits in the base game you do it and chuck the box don't you?

[@saykhia]

Lots of people never throw out anything

[@alanohagan3112]

Noooooo. I have a box to store all my boxes!

[@dorpth]

So we played a couple games with Shudde and they were pretty underwhelming. The ruins and devastation barely come into play. On average, only 2-3 devastation cards get drawn per game. Half of them inflict damage if you're in certain random spots, and only half of them turn cities into ruin which I thought was supposed to be the whole thematic hook of this expansion as the world is turned into a post apocalyptic wasteland. Nope. At most only 1 city gets ruined, not counting Rome which always starts ruined (screw you, heroes who were hoping to improve their will! The Haunted condition means you're fucked!). Which makes me suspect that they skimped on play testing this. One devastation card says that Rome is now ruined, but Shudde's ancient one card says that Rome always starts the game ruined. Did the ancient one designer and card designer just never talk to each other? One minor, yet major complaint is the awful visual design for the devastation tokens. The marker to show that a city has been devastated...you would imagine that it show ruined buildings, rubble, or fire, right? No, it's...a watch with an eyeball in the middle? It looks like an alternate expedition counter yet it's supposed to be showing that major cities are now destroyed husks. Really really weak design to the point that I almost suspect it was originally supposed to be a marker for something else but they changed it to devastation at the last second and didn't have time to print something new. It's REALLY weird because the backs of the devastation cards is exactly what you would expect the ruin tokens to be: cities aflame. Why didn't they use that for the devastation tokens instead of an eyeball watch?

[@yavivanov6650]

I guess you can use the devastation deck while playing against another AO, via a prelude card. That's why Rome could be devastated later, during a game, or never.

[@floodkevin4716]

They match with the icon, it can't be any easier

[@davidhaycock6538]

Shudde M'ell = Shoodih mell

[@dorpth]

I would honestly say avoid all the big box expansions for Eldritch. The primary strength of the game is how it streamlined Arkham Horror and all the big box expansions undo that. None of the sideboards are any good; there's no reason to not spend the whole game on them so they actually shrink the scope of the game. All the interesting ancient ones are in the small expansions. Forsaken Lore is the only one I'd call mandatory since it fleshes out the base game decks to what they should have been in the first place.

[@starwish6278]

the dreamland sounds pretty cool though

[@dorpth]

It SOUNDS cool but it's incredibly boring. Half the locations you just use the generic encounter cards so you don't even get a theme. The mechanic to enter the Dreamlands isn't any more interesting than traveling to the Antarctica side board in Mountains of Madness, and once you get there it's more boring and generic.

[@Jcro-10]

Disagree. If you are a die hard fan and love the game get it

[@EmperorDarthCat]

i want :)

[@santozs]

Did he just smashed the box???????? WHY????????????????????????????????????????

[@BrateTebra123]

Got it for free ;)

[@Fissi0nChips]

FYI, Tom...the 'C' in Cthonian is silent. So it sounds like Thonian.

[@StefanLopuszanski]

It isn't silent, it is just under pronounced from everything I've heard.

[@dorpth]

The greatest trick Cthulhu ever pulled was convincing the world that the 'c' sound didn't exist.

[@Subcomandante73]

Shudde the Door

[@StefanLopuszanski]

Unlike Tom I think this was a pretty bad expansion. We just played it and had a pretty horrible experience. The new character who works with Services is pretty weak if you have all the other expansions, since Services are so diluted in the deck. But that's not a big deal. The bigger deal is the Devastation cards. They are super random and super swingy. Taking 5 damage, losing 3 sanity, and getting 2 conditions is basically an instant kill. And the places that get hit are randomly draw, so you might just get hit with no ability to do anything about it. Most of Eldritch Horror is about when to pull out the stops. When to use the Clue tokens, your Focus, and when to spend time doing one thing over another. But randomly getting hit and losing a character isn't fun, it is frustrating. We went through ELEVEN characters when fighting Shudde M'ell. The Devastation are just insane and killed so many characters with no recourse. While I do like the story elements of cities getting destroyed and how the map changes, the problem is that there's no way to counter getting hit by it other than to simply avoid all cities and the top half of the map (Polar Vortex killed 3 of us in one turn) which isn't very feasible. Really wanted to like this expansion but it was way too random. Maybe if you knew the top Devastation card before it was played so you could plan around it then it might be better. But even then it just seems overly random.

[@Muhd_Akmal]

Stefan Lopuszanski maybe u just had a bad game or something? This expansion really brought out the adventure feel from the game which is liked very much

[@dorpth]

I'm wondering if we played it wrong because we found Shudde to be incredibly easy and the disaster deck hardly coming into play at all. We maybe draw 2-3 disasters all game and they didn't do much. I'm not even sure they bothered testing Shudde. His card says that every game starts with Rome devastated, but then one of the disaster cards has you put a devastation token on Rome. It's like the card or ancient one sheet was designed before the other and they never went back to redo the other. The services investigator (Handyman?) is pretty weak, but no one is ever going to beat the bounty hunter for worst hero in the game.

[@StefanLopuszanski]

I guess it depends on your objectives? Ours were all over the world and required a ton of Clue Tokens which we had trouble getting.