Arkham Incidents: Too Noble: Review and Rewards

This is a personal, largely spoiler free (or spoiler-vague) review of the fan-made scenario Too Noble, part of the Arkham Incidents collection by The Beard for Arkham Horror the Card Game.

The Arkham Incidents are a collection of scenarios set around Arkham, each involving an iconic ally of a difference class in their story. Too Noble revolves around the guardian ally Tetsou Mori, and his investigation into a body mutilated at the police station. It's a straightforward scenario that hides its mechanical simplicity with a fun flavorful coating.

Too Noble provides a fun hook, and a twist on common mechanics to execute it. It's not immediately clear how the scenario is meant to work, but once it does, it becomes a delightful little reveal. It's unlikely to work its magic multiple times, but even without it, the scenario flows smoothly. Beyond the flavor dressing, the most interesting challenge is in the locations - with the Victory ones having particular challenges to investigating them, while the non-Victory ones even having benefits to help gather clues on them.

Mechanically, there's not a lot to make Too Noble stand out. It's one of those scenarios that plays as standard Arkham - and is plenty enjoyable for doing so. It doesn't put too much pressure on any one point, with many of the encounter cards offering choices in drawbacks, even if it's just deciding to abandon a location or what cards to lose. The hardest hitting encounter cards all delay the investigators rather than hurt them - even the most common enemies are more of a risk of eating up actions than doing real damage - leading the scenario's doom clock to be the biggest threat for most of it.

Everything about Too Noble works well, although the climax of the scenario can be a bit awkward - there's a clue resolution and a combat resolution, but the clue resolution can be failed, and once it is, further clues don't particularly help. Of the two methods, the clue resolution feels more engaging, as there's more things to keep in mind than just attacking a mid-power, high health monster, but it also leaves the fighters with not as much to do overall in the scenario - which feels bad, in one designed around a guardian ally!

With a 19 XP party, I found Too Noble to be just about right, although maybe on the easy side - it could likely be played early in a campaign without too many problems - and while it offers a lot of XP for a standalone, much of it is blocked by more difficult to investigate locations, which will be easier to deal with at higher XP totals.

Too Noble is a nice little scenario that makes up for its simplicity with a strong flavorful theming, and while it may not be worth playing repeatedly, is absolutely worth trying once.

Rewards

Scenario Cost: 2 XP, but an investigator with Tetsuo Mori in their deck pays 1 fewer XP.

Potential XP Gain: 5 (locations) + 1 (Abominable Host) = 6 XP or 4 XP (5 if your deck has Tetsuo Mori) after cost

In addition, if you complete the scenario by defeating the mutated officer, one investigator may gain the Inscribed Nail asset. If you instead complete the scenario by rescuing all of the officers, one investigator gains the Command Essence asset.