Board game expansion review: Dunwich Horror Expansion

Year of release: 2006
Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games
Number of players: 1-8
Suitable for: Age 12+ to adults

Arkham Horror is a beast of a board game. Inspired by H.P Lovecraft's "Cthulhu mythos", this is one of the most thematic board games on the market. Until 2012, the publisher has released 4 big box expansions, and 5 small box expansions. Dunwich Horror, is one of the big box expansions.

Description:
Inspired by H.P Lovecraft's classical horror story, "The Dunwich Horror", this board game expansion add another section of play area, the village of Dunwich, to the game. This expansion also introduced many new features to the base game, promising to add more replay value while increasing the difficulty. Let's have a look at this expansion in detail.

Game Components:

This expansion comes in a box that's the same size as the original Arkham Horror board game. It is a fairly large box. Inside the box, there is a new expansion board representing the village of Dunwich, 8 new investigator sheets and makers, a rule book, 152 investigator cards, 4 new ancient one sheets, new Arkham location cards, Dunwich location cards, 28 new monster tokens, and many other tokens.

Artworks on the cards and tokens are inline with artworks from the base game, beautiful and appropriate to the theme of Cthulhu mythos. The village of Dunwich is represented by an expansion board (to be added to the board from the base game). The basic game play uses the same rules as the base game, with a few new features. Luckily, the new features do not make the game more complicated, which is a good thing because the rules for Arkham Horror (the base game) are already complicated and heady.

Gameplay:

The layout of the board is pretty ordinary, but it is highly functional. To travel to the village of Dunwich, players have to travel to the Train station on the board of the base game, and spend $1 to travel to Dunwich. One of the most interesting aspects of this expansion, is the introduction of a new "mini" boss. The infamous Dunwich Horror from Lovecraft's original story. This is how it works: On the board, there are "vortexes". Whenever a monster moves into the vortex, players need to add a "Dunwich horror token" onto the track. When the track is filled, the Dunwich Horror awakes and appears. The Dunwich Horror monster is a very tough monster to defeat, and can only be defeated in a single combat with a single investigator. Another thing is, when The Dunwich Horror enter the game, whenever it activates it has the chance to add to the doom token on the ancient one's sheet. In other words, when you play this expansion, the game becomes a lot harder because there are more areas to cover, and Dunwich Horror makes the ancient one wakes up really quickly if you don't keep the number of monsters in Dunwich under control. This means, not only do the pace of the entire game is a lot faster than the base game, but also give players a very good reason to visit the Dunwich village, to keep the number of monsters in the village under control. Adding a lot of dynamics to the game.

This expansion also adds 8 new investigators. These investigators are welcoming additions to the game, requiring players to use different tactics to approach the game. However, some investigators are definitely stronger than others. Fortunately, there are no power creeps in these investigators and they are quite balanced.

Another new feature included in this expansion, is the introduction of madness and injury cards. In the base game, whenever an investigator looses all of his/her sanity, or stamina points. He/she has to discard half of his/her possessions, and move to the hospital or the asylum for recovery. In Dunwich Horror, a new feature is added. From now on, when an investigator looses all of his/her sanity or stamina, he/she can draw a madness card or an injury card instead of loosing half of his/her possessions and moving to the hospital/asylum. However, the madness and injury card also prescribe permanent, negative impact to an investigator. And if  a player draws the same card for the second time, his/her investigator is devoured and the player will be out of the game for good.

Dunwich Horror expansion also added a lot of new item cards to the deck. Some of these items are very powerful, and they are interesting additions to the base game. My only complain is, after you incorporate the expansion into the base game, every card deck is a handful. Not only that, the number of components used in the game is increased dramatically. This means the set-up and pack up time is extended to at least 40+ minutes in total. This propels the total play time required for Arkham Horror, to almost 3 hours on average!

What I think about the game:

Learning curve: (8.5/10) - New features are introduced in this expansion, requiring a few new rules. Fortunately, they are few new rules, and they are also very easy to learn. I only had to spend 10 minutes to read through the rule book to understand how the expansion is incorporated into the base game.

Components/Production quality (7.5/10) - Artworks on the components are beautiful, and very fitting to the theme. Like other board games released by Fantasy Flight Games, the quality of the components are very good. The add-on board of Dunwich village does not look spectacular and its layout do not appear to be particularly intriguing , but the game play makes up for the flat looking layout design.

Game play: (8/10) - The introduction of Dunwich Horror as a "mini boss" is an excellent feature to the game play. It certainly speeds up the pace of the game by a noticeable amount. Arkham Horror's trademark is the vibe of "impending doom", and this expansion just furthers this vibe! The introduction of madness and injury cards are interesting, I think they are great additions to the game but personally I do not find them to be essential components to the game. New investigators added more replay values and offer a variety of tactics to play this game. The new ancient ones and new monsters are fairly hard to beat (a lot tougher compared to the base game). Overall, I like the game play in this expansion, because this expansion injects a variety of dynamics into Arkham Horror.

Replayability: (8.5/10) - With new monsters, ancient ones, investigators, and all those new items and location cards, if you incorporate this expansion into the base game, the replayability of Arkham Horror will be increased by a sizable amount. 

Thematic factor: (8.5/10) - This expansion is highly thematic, players are immersed into the world of Lovecraftian horror, and will constantly feel the sense of urgency thriving on waves of impending dooms, keeping them on the edge of their seats.  

Overall: (8.2/10) - Dunwich Horror expansion is a very good addition to Arkham Horror board game. It added new game elements that sped up the pace, and increased the dynamic of the game. I own 3 Arkham Horror expansions (the other two are Kingsport Horror and Innsmouth Horror). If you are looking to acquire a big box expansion to expand your Arkham Horror board game, I would recommend getting Dunwich Horror expansion first.