The Boundary Beyond Review
Having finished your errands around Arkham, you head south once again. You have unfinished business in the jungle. But before you can get there, you’ll be given a glimpse of the fate that will befall the Earth if you don’t succeed. Given how we’re playing, I’m not sure it’s looking good for you all. Sorry about that.
It’s a calm night in Mexico City and Ichtaca decides she’s spent enough time chatting with Alejandro’s old associates and decides a little magical intervention is in order. This does not go as planned, unless I missed the comments on Tripadvisor about terrifying amorphous entities floating through the sky. Best go have a wander round.
The Explore mechanic returns here with a cunning twist, which I’ll discuss in the spoiler section. It unfortunately depends on a series of rules spread across different places and we slipped up pretty bad at first. They are all there if you read the full explore rules carefully, so hopefully you’ll avoid our mistakes! It’s a lovely thematic mechanic though, exactly what I adore about Arkham Horror The Card Game.
Unfortunately the scenario does little to push the overall story forward. Merely serving to once again confirm that taking the relic was a bad idea, and we need to get to the jungle as soon as possible. Well, stop making us do intervening scenarios and we will!
The challenge of writing an action story is to make the action scenes count. To give them a sense of purpose within the overall narrative. Lightsaber fights in Star Wars aren’t just set pieces, they are character moments (in the good films anyway). The same should be true of each scenario in a cycle. These are fun stand alone missions to play, but they are failing to give us much narrative drive forward…
Rating: Crossing Over
Player cards
You got mad skills, bruh? Then I guess you wouldn’t need the extraordinary number of skill related cards in this pack… but since this is Arkham I know you’ll appreciate them. Let us start, arbitrarily, with the survivors.
Survivors get two experience demanding cards: Cornered and Try and Try Again, again. Try and Try Again was already available for a mighty 3 experience, which was a bit steep. This slightly weaker version only costs 1 at the expense of a limited number of uses but, really, 3 uses is still a quite reasonable number, especially with the reduced cost. Cornered is another cool card, turning any card you choose to discard into an Unexpected Courage which is almost dangerously good, to the point of being too tempting! There’s nothing quite like being Cornered with Madame Labranche.
Hatchet Man seems perfectly reasonable for helping deal with tough enemies so long as you or a nearby friend is packing a ranged weapon. High Roller just gotta keep rolling! Once you start winning with this card, you’ll never want to stop which is both extremely awesome and terrifyingly risky. That’s gambling for you.
Mystics are Enraptured by their new card this pack… puns! No, Enraptured is a pretty nice card, giving you an extra Shrivelling hit or Rite of Seeking search which is a very useful thing to have in such decks. Recalling the Future is going to be less consistently rewarding but statistically will work some wonders over the long term, offering you some nice protection against that chaos token that will cause you to fail by two.
Quick Study makes me feel… uncomfortable. I don’t like giving up clues even for a +3, and there’s not much use for this card in a Seeker deck. But there is a use in Roland Bank’s deck! Drop a clue to get +3, kill the monster, gain the clue back! Bing bash bosh. Boomerang clues are in. Perhaps I’m missing the True Understanding of this card, but the ability to use this card is entirely dependent on the scenario itself, and having this card in hand at the time. And it’s a nice reward! But I can’t see myself taking this card.
Take the Initiative is a delightfully thematic skill card, and pretty damn sweet to have on hand too. 3 ‘?’ symbol is amazing, you just need to… take the initiative and play it as early in the turn as possible. Which is a slight disadvantage but one that will be easy to work around. Being Well Prepared also sounds like a very nice option. Especially when combined with Physical Training! Its cost, in terms of both experience and resources is not insignificant, but probably correct!
Finally, we have 2 entire cards in this pack that are not focussed on skill tests! Second Wind is a perfectly dependable card that will hardly set your world alight but a quick heal and card draw for 1 resource seems perfectly nice to me. So long as you can find turns you don’t start engaged with monsters. Truth from Fiction is as good as your secret-based deck play and… the potential isn’t really there yet. Not for the cost, given the typical rewards. But as with all these kinds of cards, new cards in the future could change it all.
Spoilers
Worlds collide in the Boundary Beyond! Reinforcing the idea that time is the plaything of these entities and their relic, current Mexico City is merged with its ancient forebear Tenochtitlán. The scenario’s twist to the explore mechanic captures this transformation wonderfully: new locations (or rather, the ancient ones) enter by covering the corresponding card of the existing city. This results in a patchwork of different time periods, a sense of gradual transition, shock effects when the new locations appear, and further changes the connections between locations, forcing on the fly changes to plans.
The set’s encounter cards take full advantage, giving you the choice between losing ancient locations or taking some other hit. The second act challenges you to find all the ancient locations and clear them of clues so this can be quite painful. But this is a challenge, not a requirement. The end of the second agenda completes the transformation regardless, shifting you into an entirely different phase. The second act’s challenge is rewarded in experience points for each location you do manage to find and clear. It’s an unusual take. Neat for skillful players to try to rush things forward, but also potentially encourages players to sit tight and prepare for the final act? Or makes your actions there somewhat meaningless.
The final agenda reveals who is to blame for this strange attack on Mexico City and its none other than… that random woman (Alejandro’s critic) you just met in the opening text to the scenario. A not entirely unpredictable twist. But more disappointingly, one that hasn’t had time to build up, nor has room to grow. You’ve only just met this woman. And at the end of the scenario she is dead or trapped in the Boundary Beyond? I suppose that doesn’t preclude her from returning with a vengeance, this is Arkham Horror, but I haven’t got that sense from playing the scenario.
It really feels like the writers are missing a trick with not giving enemies the opportunity to develop. I know Arkham Horror pursues this sense of mystery, with opponents whose motivations are both weirdly unknowable and, at the same time, basically about summoning the elder-god-of-the-week. But a strong antagonist is a powerful thing for a story, as was so clearly demonstrated by the man in the pallid mask from the Path to Carcosa cycle.
The closest thing we have to a recurring enemy is the Harbinger who slithers into this scenario halfway through but, being a non-chatty snake, doesn’t exude a sense of desire beyond beating you up. It’s a recurring obstacle, not a character. Even Dunwich Legacy did a better job of establishing a strong narrative drive: rescue your associates. We are now halfway through The Forgotten Age and all we have is the sense that removing the Relic was a bad idea because bad guys want to do something with it. The opening was strong but since then it has felt like we are being thrown into scenarios for scenarios sakes. They are fun and challenging! But lacking a strong overall narrative.
We see some impacts of our earlier choices at the start of the scenario. The degree of success in the Threads of Fate will tweak the opening text and potentially improve your starting situation by a resource or two. If you thought you might need to bring fuel for the trip to the jungle then, well done, you’re playing this Supplies game better than I am. Seriously, it’s a wild stab in the dark every time.
The more interesting impact is the change in the enemies you’ll face according to the makeup of the chaos bag, which in turn will have been influenced by your choices and successes in the preceding scenarios. If you’ve been earning Ichtaca’s trust, you’ll have extra cultists in the bag. If you’ve been tight with Alejandro, the snakes will be out to get you. It’s almost like you’ve been picking sides in this conflict.
These are the kinds of impacts I really appreciate. It makes a big experiential difference to the scenario, but it also has thematic implications, deepening the mystery surrounding the two characters you’re allied to. Let’s hope something comes of this later on…
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