I'm a bit worried about the alarmingly large number of reported rule confusions and ambiguities. I hope a good errata will come out soon which Arkham Cards can then implement for a smoother experience.
@@Cartkun Check out BGG forums there are quitea few issues about SK being discussed, some of them even have official clarifications. At least one of them has a Miskatonic Museum issue, i.e. Agenda b forgetting that Forced text on Agenda a is not effective anymore.
@@DrMcFly28 Can you share the link to the post please? Much appreciated. I'm always confused with Arkham on BGG if it's in the main core box page on the scarlet key box etc.
Hey, if you can cope with Arkham's consistently abysmal rules exposition you'll be able to cope with this. The worst thing about it by far is the meta-game that isn't a game- By far too much flabby writing that undermines the core gameplay. Nobody signed up that, surely.
We are 2 players at home : my husband is Kymani, I took AMina Zidane. 4 scenarios fornow, and we have got only one key.... We do love this campaign and the caoncealed mechanics. The last scnario we succeeded at it on the very last action and only because of one of her card "Word of Woe". What a blast! We love this campaign so far, one of me favorite with the Forgotten Age.
I enjoyed the video! I'm about 2/3 through my first Scarlet Keys run. Here are my thoughts based on my run and this video: 1. I didn't mind the lots of story too much, but I can see how it would turn some people off and I wouldn't have minded that there were a little less of it. I also didn't like the concealed mechanic at first but it grew on me and now I don't mind it either. 2. I hope they keep making locations with 1 or 2 shroud even with the new Survivor cards! I don't want it to get to a point where the game makes me feel handicapped if I don't have a 5-book investigator on my team. 3. I agree with you about campaigns should give lower experience rewards, even though I'm not the best at choosing what to upgrade in my deck haha. (I think this would also limit the crazy things that people can do and might result in fewer cards getting tabooed.) 4. Thank you for the GGs.
We're almost through our second run on hard (gave up the first in 11-B and had to restructure some decks). 11-B is notably always scary (Ended our first run and left the second with 3 mental trauma) which I think is great/in keeping with Arkhams design. The only weak scenario we've seen is 21-F which was, weirdly, a 5 hour long slog for us - an out of this world amount of interaction with concealed cards and crawling lack of progress. Combined with all the text reads I was a little worried it would be an exit points for one of our players.
My first playthrough of Scarlet Keys I didn't really enjoy it, there's just too much going on. But for our second playthrough we switched to using the app and that alleviated almost all of my issues. Having the app track time, cross off and add destinations to the map, show you only the dossiers you're allowed to look at, alert you to the timed events at the correct time, remind you of additional scenario setup steps and especially navigate the trial before the final scenario made the whole experience a thousand times smoother. I go back and forth between using the books and using the app when running campaigns. I'll never run Scarlet Keys without the app again.
Concealed being able to be revealed by fight, investigate, or evade is a big win. Everyone can do one of those, so no one has dead time when this comes up.
I honestly never heard of Lovecraft before playing Arkham😅. I am not into that kind of horror themed stuff. But I still love the game❤. So maybe that is why I love SK so much. I love the travel aspect, the real places I can visit, the concealed mechanics which sometime kicks your butt. The mechanics im general had nice twist. The keyes are also nice, I used them once every scenario and two especially were really fine. 😊 I also like reading in general, so that was a plus for me. But I understand that that is not for everybody. WARNING ! SPOILER: I actually almost teared up while reading, when in the finale, Ece saved my butt after I betrayed her 😅🙈 She is so great, I want to redeem myself and do better by her in my second run. END OF SPOILER I liked the different characters and am excited to find out more about the one's I did not get the chance to interact with yet. So far I only played Carcosa, one fan made scenario and mechinations through time. So this is my second official campaign. (Not counting the coreset) I am intrested to see, how SK will rank after I play dunwich, TFA and dream eaters.
My wife and I play together and we too found this scenario a bit more difficult, especially compared with the last couple of scenarios, so it was re-assuring to hear that we weren't the only ones :)
Also on your note about concealed and 2 players... we found it was pretty difficult, because my wife struggled on getting the clues and was like "what do you mean I have to do the concealed?"
I wonder what was the thing you missed in Dancing Mad which caused you to fail the scenario, because both times I played it, it just seemed, well, like you said pretty straightforward. I honestly can't think of anything ambiguous about it. Also, if you thought Dead Heat was tough, just wait until you stumble upon Kuala Lumpur. Man, that's an insanely hard scenario.
It was a very minor text we forgot about after reading that would've given us a much better shot at winning. Just a minor slip that was unfortunately pretty rough.
Has anyone played this by incorporating the stand alone scenarios? I noticed the world map doesn't have enough for each of the stand alone ones. It's a shame FF didn't add some campaign associated rewards for working through those extra missions.
Really liked Dealings in the Dark. The feeling of "oh crap, I'm going to lose" to "oh HELL YEAH" in the third act thanks to some lucky mystic grenades (forgot the name of the spell haha). Greay stuff. What you said about the roles being altered due to the concealed mechanism is so true - I'm playing Akachi and Jim two-handed, and dealing with concealed has been... a thing ^^'
Agreed on the theme and story - it really doesn't seem like a 1920s approach, even though it seems to take place in the 20s. Phrases like "security consultant" and the like are more 1990s....a bit of a thematic, cartoony fail but a fun campaign.
100%. And ultimately, while it doesn't work for me as much as previous campaigns, I would prefer this game to explore unusual narratives rather than it always be the same thing.
I got into Arkham just last year and am trying to play through the full cycles as they get re-released...excited for Forgotten Age next year! Do you think I should keep waiting for the releases and go in order of how they were originally released, or should I jump into Edge of the Earth or Scarlet Keys while I wait for Circle Undone and so on?
After Dunwich, I played EOTE, and I didn’t have any problems, just make sure you buy the investigator expansion as you’ll need those cards. I have used campaign expansion for EOTE listed on BGG in case you’re interested.
I think you can go with this campaign. Forgotten Age still is the hardest one. But you have to get the player expansion for some investigator and player cards (not the customizable ones because it's a bit too much fot the nex players). Sorry for my english, I'm french.
I am unsure on the campaign. I have played every campaign multiple times but in this one I find the mix of story and missions off. We sit down to play and have multiple times been to 3 or 5 locations before finding a mission. That can mean 20 to 30 minutes reading. It's reached the point we almost did not play a scenario as we were not going to have enough time. The missions are the actual game with the story as a way of building the world and pulling you in. If you are rushing text to find the next mission it actually loses some of the immersion.
I also like the scenarios of SK, but yea there's just too much reading. I love a bit of context, but honestly if I wanted to read a book I would just read a book. And if you play alone it's not that bad, but spending a majority of the time reading stuff instead of playing a game is not something we want with the limited time we have with our boardgame group.
Maybe I'm weird but I find it very strange to not like the reading in arkham. The theme is the selling point no? I get it if your just fatigued but couldn't you just skip the flavor text that you already know? Also I find it interesting that Ybor is on the map. Nowadays thats a rundown section of Tampa. Still has some cigar shops though. Used to be the center of American cigar industry.
I like the reading, but when Travis sometimes has to read for 10-20 minutes, that's *a lot* of reading. Notably, I do skip flavour on reruns, but I do wish there was less. While the story is neat, the story isn't felt as strong in gameplay when more time is spent listening to characters talk about the story.
The individual scenarios all feel really cool and unique, but the frickin campaign just wouldn´t let us play them...I felt really frustrated and annoyed by only being able to play 6 scenarios in total because of the Time mechanic. Everything else felt great, but I´m hoping for a fan rework that lets you play all scenarios (maybe with fewer of the pointless side missions).
The campaign looks interesting but AH:TCG has gone too far with the complexity, esp with the customizable cards. I understand that some players really like this kinda stuff, but I just don't have the time to dedicate to memorizing all the interactions. For me, a campaign with no new player cards or rules would be perfect. IMO there is so much they could have done with just the base set that they didn't need to rank up the complexity so much with each campaign.
Unerringly my least favourite campaign yet. The silly amount of reading (why play a game to play, right?), the swinginess of the scenarios, the story being all over the place... it gets points for aiming high, but I think even that counts against it since it sets expectations high. What a disappointment.
I'm a bit worried about the alarmingly large number of reported rule confusions and ambiguities. I hope a good errata will come out soon which Arkham Cards can then implement for a smoother experience.
Interesting... Do you have anything specific not too spoilerish?
I guess I'll have to play and figure this one out but that's a bit worrisome....
@@Cartkun Check out BGG forums there are quitea few issues about SK being discussed, some of them even have official clarifications. At least one of them has a Miskatonic Museum issue, i.e. Agenda b forgetting that Forced text on Agenda a is not effective anymore.
@@DrMcFly28 Can you share the link to the post please? Much appreciated. I'm always confused with Arkham on BGG if it's in the main core box page on the scarlet key box etc.
Hey, if you can cope with Arkham's consistently abysmal rules exposition you'll be able to cope with this. The worst thing about it by far is the meta-game that isn't a game- By far too much flabby writing that undermines the core gameplay. Nobody signed up that, surely.
We are 2 players at home : my husband is Kymani, I took AMina Zidane. 4 scenarios fornow, and we have got only one key.... We do love this campaign and the caoncealed mechanics. The last scnario we succeeded at it on the very last action and only because of one of her card "Word of Woe". What a blast!
We love this campaign so far, one of me favorite with the Forgotten Age.
I enjoyed the video! I'm about 2/3 through my first Scarlet Keys run. Here are my thoughts based on my run and this video:
1. I didn't mind the lots of story too much, but I can see how it would turn some people off and I wouldn't have minded that there were a little less of it. I also didn't like the concealed mechanic at first but it grew on me and now I don't mind it either.
2. I hope they keep making locations with 1 or 2 shroud even with the new Survivor cards! I don't want it to get to a point where the game makes me feel handicapped if I don't have a 5-book investigator on my team.
3. I agree with you about campaigns should give lower experience rewards, even though I'm not the best at choosing what to upgrade in my deck haha. (I think this would also limit the crazy things that people can do and might result in fewer cards getting tabooed.)
4. Thank you for the GGs.
We're almost through our second run on hard (gave up the first in 11-B and had to restructure some decks). 11-B is notably always scary (Ended our first run and left the second with 3 mental trauma) which I think is great/in keeping with Arkhams design.
The only weak scenario we've seen is 21-F which was, weirdly, a 5 hour long slog for us - an out of this world amount of interaction with concealed cards and crawling lack of progress. Combined with all the text reads I was a little worried it would be an exit points for one of our players.
Thank you for all your helpful Arkham content. HalleluYAH
We headed up to Anchorage for our start and had a great time.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I look forward to hearing them again once you’ve finished the campaign
My first playthrough of Scarlet Keys I didn't really enjoy it, there's just too much going on. But for our second playthrough we switched to using the app and that alleviated almost all of my issues. Having the app track time, cross off and add destinations to the map, show you only the dossiers you're allowed to look at, alert you to the timed events at the correct time, remind you of additional scenario setup steps and especially navigate the trial before the final scenario made the whole experience a thousand times smoother.
I go back and forth between using the books and using the app when running campaigns. I'll never run Scarlet Keys without the app again.
Yeah, I agree. The app is a godsend for Scarlet Keys.
Concealed being able to be revealed by fight, investigate, or evade is a big win. Everyone can do one of those, so no one has dead time when this comes up.
Can't wait for your thoughts on the last scenario of this campaign.
Sweet vids yo
And thanks for the spoiler warnings
very nice, one question is the Dunwich campaign with the investigators from the base game playable and also workable ?
I honestly never heard of Lovecraft before playing Arkham😅. I am not into that kind of horror themed stuff. But I still love the game❤. So maybe that is why I love SK so much. I love the travel aspect, the real places I can visit, the concealed mechanics which sometime kicks your butt. The mechanics im general had nice twist. The keyes are also nice, I used them once every scenario and two especially were really fine. 😊
I also like reading in general, so that was a plus for me. But I understand that that is not for everybody.
WARNING ! SPOILER: I actually almost teared up while reading, when in the finale, Ece saved my butt after I betrayed her 😅🙈 She is so great, I want to redeem myself and do better by her in my second run.
END OF SPOILER
I liked the different characters and am excited to find out more about the one's I did not get the chance to interact with yet.
So far I only played Carcosa, one fan made scenario and mechinations through time. So this is my second official campaign. (Not counting the coreset) I am intrested to see, how SK will rank after I play dunwich, TFA and dream eaters.
My wife and I play together and we too found this scenario a bit more difficult, especially compared with the last couple of scenarios, so it was re-assuring to hear that we weren't the only ones :)
Also on your note about concealed and 2 players... we found it was pretty difficult, because my wife struggled on getting the clues and was like "what do you mean I have to do the concealed?"
We've done 3 playthroughs in 2 player and there is still a bunch of stuff we haven't done and figured out.
I wonder what was the thing you missed in Dancing Mad which caused you to fail the scenario, because both times I played it, it just seemed, well, like you said pretty straightforward. I honestly can't think of anything ambiguous about it.
Also, if you thought Dead Heat was tough, just wait until you stumble upon Kuala Lumpur. Man, that's an insanely hard scenario.
It was a very minor text we forgot about after reading that would've given us a much better shot at winning. Just a minor slip that was unfortunately pretty rough.
Has anyone played this by incorporating the stand alone scenarios? I noticed the world map doesn't have enough for each of the stand alone ones. It's a shame FF didn't add some campaign associated rewards for working through those extra missions.
I think my hope is that the "in between missions segment" of thr game always feels as good as this campaign
I’ll be back when I finish this campaign
Dead Heat kicked us in the nuts and pushed us down the stairs.
3 hours of reading and set up before you even mulligan is not my idea of fun. I won't able to speak tomorrow from all that reading.
My favourite campaing 😁
Really liked Dealings in the Dark. The feeling of "oh crap, I'm going to lose" to "oh HELL YEAH" in the third act thanks to some lucky mystic grenades (forgot the name of the spell haha). Greay stuff.
What you said about the roles being altered due to the concealed mechanism is so true - I'm playing Akachi and Jim two-handed, and dealing with concealed has been... a thing ^^'
Agreed on the theme and story - it really doesn't seem like a 1920s approach, even though it seems to take place in the 20s. Phrases like "security consultant" and the like are more 1990s....a bit of a thematic, cartoony fail but a fun campaign.
100%. And ultimately, while it doesn't work for me as much as previous campaigns, I would prefer this game to explore unusual narratives rather than it always be the same thing.
@@PlayingBoardGames I haven't gotten that far yet but I'm hoping we don't end up in another dimension again for the final scenario :)
I got into Arkham just last year and am trying to play through the full cycles as they get re-released...excited for Forgotten Age next year! Do you think I should keep waiting for the releases and go in order of how they were originally released, or should I jump into Edge of the Earth or Scarlet Keys while I wait for Circle Undone and so on?
After Dunwich, I played EOTE, and I didn’t have any problems, just make sure you buy the investigator expansion as you’ll need those cards.
I have used campaign expansion for EOTE listed on BGG in case you’re interested.
I think you can go with this campaign. Forgotten Age still is the hardest one. But you have to get the player expansion for some investigator and player cards (not the customizable ones because it's a bit too much fot the nex players).
Sorry for my english, I'm french.
@@Wealtharch what first investigator expansion would you recommend exactly
@@happydimsum8221 I only have the investigator expansions for Dunwich, Carcossa
and EOTE. By far, EOTE is the best, the other two aren’t even close.
I am unsure on the campaign. I have played every campaign multiple times but in this one I find the mix of story and missions off.
We sit down to play and have multiple times been to 3 or 5 locations before finding a mission. That can mean 20 to 30 minutes reading. It's reached the point we almost did not play a scenario as we were not going to have enough time. The missions are the actual game with the story as a way of building the world and pulling you in. If you are rushing text to find the next mission it actually loses some of the immersion.
I also like the scenarios of SK, but yea there's just too much reading. I love a bit of context, but honestly if I wanted to read a book I would just read a book. And if you play alone it's not that bad, but spending a majority of the time reading stuff instead of playing a game is not something we want with the limited time we have with our boardgame group.
I can tell by the hope in your voice, you haven't gone to s. America
Maybe I'm weird but I find it very strange to not like the reading in arkham. The theme is the selling point no? I get it if your just fatigued but couldn't you just skip the flavor text that you already know?
Also I find it interesting that Ybor is on the map. Nowadays thats a rundown section of Tampa. Still has some cigar shops though. Used to be the center of American cigar industry.
I like the reading, but when Travis sometimes has to read for 10-20 minutes, that's *a lot* of reading.
Notably, I do skip flavour on reruns, but I do wish there was less. While the story is neat, the story isn't felt as strong in gameplay when more time is spent listening to characters talk about the story.
The individual scenarios all feel really cool and unique, but the frickin campaign just wouldn´t let us play them...I felt really frustrated and annoyed by only being able to play 6 scenarios in total because of the Time mechanic. Everything else felt great, but I´m hoping for a fan rework that lets you play all scenarios (maybe with fewer of the pointless side missions).
Based on your feedback on how tough it is, I would assume you won't recommend this to new players?
The campaign looks interesting but AH:TCG has gone too far with the complexity, esp with the customizable cards. I understand that some players really like this kinda stuff, but I just don't have the time to dedicate to memorizing all the interactions.
For me, a campaign with no new player cards or rules would be perfect. IMO there is so much they could have done with just the base set that they didn't need to rank up the complexity so much with each campaign.
@@TCGHeroes”you do no” ?!! Is that supposed to be English?
the customizable cards are actually really great, and not that complex
Unerringly my least favourite campaign yet. The silly amount of reading (why play a game to play, right?), the swinginess of the scenarios, the story being all over the place... it gets points for aiming high, but I think even that counts against it since it sets expectations high.
What a disappointment.