Arkham Incidents: Something Big: Review and Rewards

This is a personal, largely spoiler free (or spoiler-vague) review of the fan-made scenario Something Big, 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. Something Big revolves around the seeker ally Dr. William T Maleson, and his strange device that opens up the barrier between dimensions.

Something Big is a wild scenario that asks you to do unusual things right from the start. It's set up such that any investigator running clue drop cards (like Maleson himself) are going to have more to explore with its mechanics. It's a fun scenario, but has a lot to keep track of in terms of enemies, encounter cards, and locations.

The mechanics of Something Big are what really try to set it apart - the very first act has you placing clues on locations, instead of discovering them! It's a sci-fi physics experiment gone wrong, with each stage introducing some new problems, and turing some normal Arkham mechanics on their head, playing with clues and location flipping. The more you can interact with these, the more engaging the scenario will be, especially if you're running cards that place clues on your location, which can greatly change your strategy. Despite all this attention paid to clues, the monsters of this scenario are nasty, and demand strong responses before things spiral out of control. Even still, avoiding them with Maleson isn't necessarily the answer - as many of the treacheries are even worse!

As the scenario progresses, there gets the feeling of being a bit too much going on. The wording on the locations is awkward, and their suggested placement is counter-intuitive for how you're supposed to move between them. There's an additional, party-wide modifier that changes every single round and needs to be reshuffled to do so. Such things are easy to forget to keep track of, which is the scenario's biggest weakness - you might have cards next to the agenda, in your threat area, and your location all keeping you from performing certain actions at once, and it's hard to keep up. There's also the "problem" that the scenario really rewards having a strong Intellect investigator - of course, seeing as it's itended for decks that have a Seeker ally, that's not such a big deal.

With a 19 XP party, I found Something Big well balanced, although it certainly had a problem with enemies who could be avoided... until suddenly they couldn't be. The final stages of the scenario in particular felt quite difficult, and the random, party-wide effects can destroy your plans at any time.

As long as you can keep up with everything Something Big asks you to, it's a fun scenario with unique mechanics around clues and playing them on our location.

Rewards

Scenario Cost: 2 XP, but an investigator with Dr. William T Maleson in their deck pays 1 fewer XP.

Potential XP Gain: 5 (locations) + 1 (Convertgent Entity) = 6 XP or 4 XP (3 if your deck has Dr. William T. Maleson) after cost

In addition, if you complete the scenario by defeating the Convergent Entity, you earn the Dimensional Inductor card. If you instead complete the scenario through placing clues, you earn the Phase Reactance Gauge Card.