This is a personal, largely spoiler free (or spoiler-vague) review of The Nameless City fanmade scenario by bau for Arkham Horror the Card Game.
Based on the Lovecraft story of the same name, in The Nameless City investigators are exploring lost ruins hidden in the sands in the Arabian Penninsula. It finds a fun new way to introduce an exploration angle, but doesn't quite reach the heights that it's reaching for.
The Nameless City is a scenario that is very close to being excellent - the scenario starts with a variety of locations that have interesting powers that contain the clues and keys needed to continue. The encounter deck is slight with enemies during this second half - with both the act and agenda flipping leading to more being shuffled into the encounter deck. The second half presents an interesting riddle - three different ways to advance the act, each requiring something different from the investigators. It's a great idea, especially as what those three paths do isn't immediately clear, so it leads to a sense of discovery. This discovery ends up being a problem, however, in that some of the paths can lead to pretty extreme challenges you need to be prepared for, and there's no real way of guessing what leads to what. Once you choose, you're even locked in - one of them is an extremely difficult combat challenge, and another requires gathering clues from a 10 shroud location that's also investigated with willpower, while the third is just a fairly standard clue gathering from multiple spots. There's no real hint to which is which - and while groups might have an interest in pursuing one path over another based on their capabilities, there's no way to make an informed choice unless you've done the scenario before.
This overarching design isn't the only problem with the scenario. The most glaring and easiest to notice is the wording on the cards - it's generally poor, with some cards unclear, and all sorts of typos, tense mistakes, and grammatical errors strewn about. Most of the time you can figure out what to do, but it does stand out. The scenario also often requires things on the extreme end to complete - a Willpower (4) test that deals you horror and random hand discard is required to progress, and if you don't see it coming, you might not be able to handle it - especially if you had to use your Willpower commits earlier, on cards that deal your horror every round until you pass a Willpower test! There's also a treachery that attaches to your location and requires an action and an Intellect (4) or Agility (4) test to remove it, and if you can't, you can't leave your location. On the wrong investigators, it would be extremely easy to just be stuck somewhere with no way around it. Likewise, the potential boss encounter is devastatingly strong - but you can also do things that make the encounter much easier early, although the scenario is misleading, and even seems to suggest not doing those things until the boss appears, at no benefit! Overall this just leads to the scenario feeling like it lacks a level of polish that would be required to truly recommend it - a great idea is here, but there's enough places to trip and fall that a frustrating time seems just as likely as a good time.
With a 19 XP party, I found Nameless City to be a bit on the tough side due to heavy damage and horror from treacheries, but easy in other ways. The enemies were on the easy side - but I didn't take the combat resolution path, that has a boss monster that would have absolutely crushed my team. Likewise, I was fairly lucky at being able to handle most of the treacheries that bring the scenario to a complete stop, but a different group might just hit a complete roadblock.
Overall, The Nameless City is a scenario that suffers from a lack of polish - just a little bit of tweaking could lead to it being a great scenario, but there's just enough wrong with it that it merely ends up "alright".
Rewards
Scenario Cost: 2 XP
Potential XP Gain: 2-4 (locations) +1 (successful resolution or resign) +1 (The Monster of Sansan, in the encounter deck) +1 (Son of the Ruinstorm, in the encounter deck) +2 (Imdugud, if the demonic ritual is performed) OR +1 (Pocket Dimension location, if the Warpgate is opened) = 5-9 XP, or 3-7 XP after its cost depending on randomized locations and chosen resolution path.
During the scenario, there are multiple assets to find and keep.
The Forgotten Map can be found from gathering all the clues on one location and passing an agility test - it's a hand slot asset that gives +1 to Willpower and Intellect if you have 3 or fewer remaining sanity.
The Demonic Stele can be found at one of the locations, and is a hand slot asset that lets you gain resources by taking damage or draw cards by taking horror.
The Globe of Darkness can be found by opening the warpgate, and is an arcane slot asset that can be used for a single 3 damage attack before discarding.
The Priceless Statuette can be found by finding all the keys, and is an arcane slot asset that lets you treat symbol tokens as -1 tokens a limited number of times.