This is a personal, largely spoiler free (or spoiler-vague) review of the Cyclopean Foundations custom campaign by The Beard for Arkham Horror the Card Game.
In Cyclopean Foundations, the investigators get dragged into a conspiracy to awaken Cthulhu from his slumber. Starting with a mystery of a simple robbery, the scope of their adventures widens and widens until they travel halfway across the world to the place that R'yleh will emerge from.
If there's one thing that can describe Cyclopean Foundations, it's "smooth" - the campaign is well written, without any real hitches. The polish is clear - the story text is well written, the mechanics are well formatted, the scenarios flow with no confusion. This feels like it could be an official campaign - likely slotting in somewhere before or after The Forgotten Age. And importantly, Cyclopean Foundations delivers people what they want - Cthulhu!
The story of Cyclopean Foundations is fairly straightforward and to the point. The best part of it is the beginning - with multiple investigations and a conspiracy to unravel, it's got a good hook and little details that help spark the imagination. By the later half of the campaign, the story takes a backseat - the conspiracy is revealed, the perpetrators are uncovered, and there's nothing more new to find out - it's all about stopping the plot at that point. This is unfortunate, as the early scenarios have a very nice play pattern to them, where as you're trying to solve crimes, you get small blocks of story text to go with each of the tiny achievements you need to do. It's nothing major, certainly, but it's better than the usual "remember that you (whatever)" with nothing further. There's also a decent amount of text here, but it feels well written and never particularly overwhelming, and for a campaign with a heavy focus on architecture and conspiracies, going into the details is appreciated.
It's hard to call out a specific thing as great about Cyclopean Foundations, which sounds like a condemnation, but it's not meant to be. The entire campaign is of an overall, high quality - there's very little in the way of peaks and valleys to call out, which makes it difficult to talk about!
The primary new mechanic of the campaign is "Non-euclidean" - a keyword that triggers whenever you move from a location. Early in the campaign, it's used sparingly, as you get closer to whatever weird magic is at play, but it becomes more and more common as the scenarios progress. The complexity of its uses also ramp up - starting as a curiosity, moving into punishment, and eventually becoming the major thing you're planning around and even the source of major puzzles. It's a neat, easy to adjudicate effect that can lead to some interesting decision making. Besides that, there's not much in the way of weird mechanics - everything used is things we've seen before, but often in new ways and combinations. It's a perfect way to explore what's possible in the Arkham ruleset without completely inventing something new.
It's hard to pick a favorite scenario from the campaign - while I've heard that people like scenario 5, scenarios 3 and 6 were standouts for me, as a lovely mixture of varied goals and interesting challenges. Scenario 3's little mystery with scattered clues, and scenario 6's unique victory conditions (which get randomized every time!) stand out as the bits I'll most remember from the campaign. One thing worth noting is this campaign loves to use the "do all your can" scenarios - you can argue that over half are like that, although most of them have a clear victory point and then a little extra to pursue. If you like that kind of challenge, there's plenty of it here.
Cyclopean Foundation's weakest scenarios aren't necessarily bad, but may cause frustrations. Scenario 1 is especially rough when it comes to fighting - it has the most lopsided "combat potential needed : XP ratio" out of any of the scenarios, especially as the enemies don't really grow in strength through the rest of the campaign. This isn't necessarily bad, but it might lead to bad feelings for players who can more easily get frustrated. Scenario 4 has a similar hitch - there's a need for packing a lot of action compression in a very limited window that's also somewhat randomized - the game doesn't punish you (or at least, not punish you too badly) for not having it, but it can take you by surprise. Again, not bad, but potentially frustrating if you're not willing to deal with some unfairness. The last quibble is with the finale - it has a compelling twist on the mechanics that it feels like the entire campaign was leading up to. Unfortunately, it ends up turning much of the scenario into a puzzle - for the particular action you want to do, there's likely to be a "right way" to do it, and it's about finding that right way across multiple different cards. The finale is still fun, and the puzzle doesn't take particularly long to "solve", but it still took me out of the scenario a bit.
I always take a moment to comment on how often I was confused or overwhelmed by rules or found them unclear. That simply didn't happen here - the only time I got confused was my own fault, because I mixed up a reaction trigger with a forced trigger - and that's absolutely on me. There was also no point where I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of effects going on. The campaign does make use of persistent encounter cards that will affect the entire party, so that's something to watch out for and make sure you keep track of. If there is one issue, it's that the times when the campaign asks you to remove all cards of an encounter set from the encounter deck is a bit annoying, but it's not like that's a game breaker.
Overall, Cyclopean Foundations is a solid campaign that feels like it could be an official one. There's a great focus on a specific mechanic and the way it can be used, varied locations, and, most importantly - it's got Cthulhu!
More on Cyclopean Foundations:
Cyclopean Foundations: Spoiler-Light Review