Arkham Horror LCG - Dunwich Legacy Jim Culver Review

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Manfromleng, Nate 'Lost in Time and Space' Winslow and Mattastrophic continue their review of the investigators in the Dunwich Legacy Investigator Expansion with a look at the Mystic in the box, Jim Culver! CC licenced music from the album Lovecraft Memories by Zreen Toyz. Contact [e-mail].
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[@ioannispaxinos5171]

I think people are miscalculating how much better the odds are with Jim's ability. The average campaign has at least 2 skull tokens with varying degrees of negative outcomes that usually scale the longer the game goes on. Essentially, Jim takes those skulls out of the chaos bag AND on top of that adds two 0 tokens. And that's just the base. On top of that, all he needs is 6 experience to play Nkosi Mabati and now all the symbols except the autofail are zeros and he can even start with one copy of that ally with in the thick of it so he really just needs 3 xp to make the chaos bag a light breeze. Add a couple of ritual candles and he might as well be playing with a bag full of bless tokens.

[@Athanatarch]

Jim broke my heart. 💔 🎺 💀
Kudos to anyone who enjoys him, but I tried time after time to play him when I first started the game- he was consistently one of my favorite Arkham investigators in other games, and his curse/power to reanimate the dead could have had an awesome ability tied to it in the card game.
But instead, his ability is one that is rarely noticed, terribly inconsistent, often ineffectual, and totally dependent on the scenario and difficulty level you play at. I don’t think any other investigator is so dependent on the mission they are in- few skulls in a bag and Jim just doesn’t do anything special for all or most of the game and you sit there wondering why you aren’t playing a more interesting investigator.
I first really got into the game around the same time the Circle Undone came out, so I had most of the tools Jim needed to take advantage of his ability. Even then, it felt like I was playing a character with a blank ability 90% of the time.
Rather than playing a groovy necro-musician, I was playing a Jack-of-all trades who needed a precise collection of tools to function- and even with all those tools, was at the mercy of the bag when it came to if his entire plan would even work.
I eventually moved on and had way more fun with the game, but every so often I go back to Jim in the hopes that I’ll recapture that old Dead Man’s Stomp magic, only to find a lackluster time so banal it’d be a sin to call it jazz. 😢
(PS. I think it’s implied in some of the old backstory text that Jim is the son of the musician featured in that old “Call of Cthulhu” campaign.)

[@ioannispaxinos5171]

I can't comment on what expectations other arkham products gave you for Jimmy and I agree he's not the most interesting investigator one can play, but he's definitely one of the most powerful in the game. I think you have a misunderstanding of his design due to how subtle his ability is. Arkham LCG is an action management game. You get 3 actions a turn and have to maximize their outcome. It's easy to see how someone like Rex can accomplish that. He just gets extra clues for the same investigate action. That's obviously powerful. Jim's ability is having 2 less negative tokens and two more zeroes in the chaos bag. It's not intuitively obvious how powerful that is but it makes the average skill test significantly more likely to pass. Most actions in arkham are spent doing skill checks. Every check you fail is an action lost so by failing far less than average he gains tons of value.

[@ioannispaxinos5171]

Ι still haven't found a reason not to play drawing thin and Leo DeLuca in Jim. As far as I'm concerned they're the best cards in the game and it seems suboptimal to not include them.

[@Cartkun]

I've played only once with Jim but I thought maybe he would be better at higher difficulty levels where the tokens have nasty effects especially with Nkosi Mabati!

[@TheWhispererinDarkness]

That is true! As the negative modifiers on the skulls get higher, Jim laughs at them even harder. Once Nkosi enters the mix, Jim can mitigate the impact of other tokens too.

[@pastafarian7779]

Did I miss it, or did none of you rate this character? I see a spot on the screen for a rating, but it was never addressed.

[@TheWhispererinDarkness]

We don't rate the investigators. Just haven't gotten around to making a new template.

[@pastafarian7779]

@@TheWhispererinDarkness Oh, okay. My first time watching one of your videos, so I thought I missed something.

[@InfernoJo]

If talking about origins, there's a call of cthulhu rpg called "Dead Man Stomp", that can be where he's referenced from.
But if you wanted to talk about OG's... you missed the opportunity. Jenny Barnes has been in EVERY arkham files game since original arkham horror.

[@mydemon]

Amazing videos as always. However I beg of you, please leave the cards for a little longer that one or two seconds... It's too fast to read! Possibly leave them for a little while, until the next card maybe?