This is a personal, largely spoiler free (or spoiler-vague) review of the 'Tis the Season fan-made scenario by Frying Tonight for Arkham Horror the Card Game.
In Tis the Season, a shopping frenzy has overtaken Arkham right before christmas. The investigators need to fight against the madness by spreading holiday cheer, but they better watch out - because Santa Claus is coming to town. It's a goofy, fun scenario sure to bring on lots of laughs, although it can be a bit overcomplicated.
The big thing that makes Tis the Season work isn't the mechanics, but the humor behind it. Filled with references and jokes raging from christmas classics to Die Hard to Fairytale of New York, the scenario will have your entire group ominously chanting "you better watch out". This wouldn't be able to carry a scenario on its own, though, and instead the scenario has a fun task to it - clues are needed to be spent to unlock tasks at different areas, and those tasks have you do a wide variety of things - like killing mobsters to make those beaten up by them in St Mary's Hospital happy, or making skill tests to survive a shift at Velma's Diner. These are fun and well themed, and make a good focus for the scenario.
The scenario's other focus is its "Naughty" and "Nice" mechanic, where you're given a flippable card representing if you're naughty or nice. Certain things will make you go from one to the other - or heal or deal sanity if you're already in the appropriate state. Certain enemies and tasks can be handled more quickly in a way that makes you naughty, or punish you further if you're already naughty and others will reward you and make you nice. Juggling this state is an important part of the scenario - and there is a benefit to smaller parties to help them deal with it.
The naughty or nice rules, combined with the last mechanic, are where the scenario starts to have some of its problems. As the agenda progresses, global cards come into play that punish you for doing certain things - usually failing certain kinds of tests. While these can only trigger once per round (as they exhaust), they're still a lot to keep track of as they pile up. Combined with cards that might not do anything until someone finally becomes naughty, and aloof enemies that hang around, there can be a lot to keep track of at once - to an almost overwhelming degree. It's possible to just power through it, but mistakes are pretty easy to make. The only other quibble with the scenario is that it's very easy for the ending to feel anticlimactic - it's very possible for the final enemy to be in a state where it's death is gaurenteed, but turns still need to be played out to get to that point.
With a 19 XP party, I found Tis The Season at a good difficulty level. The enemies aren't too challenging (but can be very threatening if allowed to build up), although the final ancient one can have some pretty terrifying stats. For a larger party, having a variety of different strengths is a must, due to the variation in the tasks involved.
Overall, Tis The Season is a fun scenario that can get a little complicated, but is still absolutely worth playing. I highly recommend making a White Elephant event for it - make goofy decks for your friends, and try it out!
Rewards
Scenario Cost: 3 XP
Potential XP Gain: 3 (locations) +1 (Toy Black Market, in the encounter deck) +2 (Santa Claus) +3 (successful resolution)= 9 XP, or 6 XP after its cost
In addition, on a success, each investigator adds a card costing up to 3 XP with a trait corresponding to one of the locations they had completed the task for, ignoring deckbuilding restrictions - or just 3 more XP.