Threads of Fate Review

You escaped the jungle and its slithering denizens and returned home, to the quiet comfort of Arkham. What a relief. But wait… this an Arkham Horror Card Game review. Which means… *knock knock*

Eztli warrior Ichtaca has arrived at your door and, aside from expecting room and board, demands your assistance in retrieving the artefact you liberated from the ruins. Only it seems to have gone missing. And, for that matter, so has your guide and resident Eztli expert, Alejandro. Troubling. Which, in Arkham, normally means cultists.

But apparently that’s not enough for you to worry about. Ichtaca has her own questions for the people of this town and you’ll need to help her out too. Yes, there are many threads within this appropriately named scenario and that is represented by 3 separate act decks. Yeah, I bet you thought 1 was normally enough trouble!

Each act is its own little story playing into the greater narrative but since you may take any or all routes through the scenario, no path provides ground breaking insights. Instead your choice of which threads to pursue will be carried forward to as yet unknown outcomes. This does result in a scenario that feels more like a checklist than a story, and one that certainly lacks a climax. But it also feels unique to have this much choice in how you prioritise your investigation.

There is a ton of options for how this scenario plays out too. Each of the act decks supplied is more than double the size it needs to be, giving you something like 4 paths through each of the 3 decks. Some of this is random card choice, some the result of your choices in previous scenarios in the campaign, or in the intro text to this one. Honestly the great map of routes through this campaign is becoming impressively intricate.

Threads of Fate is a scenario that prizes gameplay challenge over story progression. You won’t learn anything you couldn’t have surmised from the opening text, but you will influence factors further down the road. The exciting question at the heart of this scenario is how much can you get done. It does away with the traditional binary option of success vs failure and really opens that up to multiple degrees of success, each of which will help or hinder you in some form or another. That is interesting, and makes for a real change of pace, even if I know I prefer story revelations over gameplay challenges.

Rating: Stringing You Along

Player cards

The closest thing to coherence amongst the player cards this set comes in the form of some permanence in the Seeker and Mystic decks, neither of which require experience, and both of which boost your future deck development. The smarmy chap on Shrewd Analysis lets you advance two of your unidentified seeker cards for one you investigate which is great for going in hard on those unusual cards. Arcane Research is possibly even better, dropping the experience cost of spells you upgrade. An almost certain take for Mystics, if you can deal with the mental trauma of including it.

Their other new cards, Persuasion and Counterspell, are both pretty cool too. Persuasion lets you convince humanoid enemies to get back in the encounter deck, even elite enemies will be evaded. It’s persuaded me! Counterspell lets you ignore an annoying token draw which, I don’t know if you’ve played much Arkham Horror, but tends to happen ALL THE FRIGGING TIME. It might not be quite as versatile as Time Warp, but you don’t have to re-draw either so there’s certainly an argument for this one.

The Guardians get two pretty great cards. Scene of the Crime is simply superb! Hoover up them clues, boy! For a faction that sucks at picking up clues most of the time, this is one of the best clue grabbing cards in the game! Marksmanship is also really cool, letting you snipe an enemy from afar, and even bumping up the damage. It is a bit situational and costs an XP though so not quite as awesome as visiting the crime scene. Man, some investigators we are. We only just thought of going to the crime scene.

Survivors have some good options here to. Perseverance lets you dodge that one big hit at the end of the game, and it’s also a big pile of heads if you need them. Stunning Blow, meanwhile, stuns those big bads who are always such a nightmare. The ones with a pile of health per investigator. This helps you auto evade them after hitting them, saving you one full action when you need it most. The Rogue cards seem… fine. Fence is expensive for the amount of Illicit cards in the game currently, but might get better soon. Lucky Cigarette Case could be pretty good with some more succeed by 2 support. It’s great for Rex Murphy! But we’re not quite there yet for others.

Spoilers

Thread 1 – The Relic

Someone appears to be after the relic! Depending on your choices during the preceding interlude, the relic will either have been on display in the museum (watch out for hunting horrors…) or in the care of historian Harlan Earthstone, resulting in two different paths through this thread. The museum path opens up a new location – the Eztli exhibition which must be searched for clues. According to the random card you discarded, you may bump into the culprit himself, or determine someone from the Town Hall had taken it, resulting in you doing a little bit of breaking and entering yourself.

On the Harlan path, you find him, dazed and confused, wandering Easttown. Again, by chance, speaking to him may reveal that he had hidden it in the Curiositie Shop, or he may suddenly attack you. In which case, he had possession of the relic all along.

Both paths split random card draws into disconnected realities. In one Harlan is cursed but has possession of the relic. In the other he had hidden it before the bad guys got to him. You will only experience one reality when you play, but these different, parallel universes exist, the smallest change bringing about different challenge. The Threads of Fate refers to more than just the multiple investigations.

Thread 2 – Alejandro

This thread starts with an identical construction to the first. Depending on whether you choose to report his disappearance to the police you’ll get the police station location or, instead, Alejandro’s rather dapper friend Henry Daveau. Once again, this bystander may end up attacking you or, once again, send you in the direction of the Town Hall (you clearly can’t trust politicians). The police may be helpful or utterly useless on random chance which may be a dig at the local constabulary in the author’s area. Regardless, it plays out much like the relic thread. Except it seems to dismiss the aspersions I made against Alejandro’s character last review…

Thread 3 – Ichtaca

Would you believe it, the first act cards of thread 3 offer a character (Maria DeSilva) who may or may not attack you, and a location which, would you believe it? Leads to the Town Hall.

The threads combined

I think there are two thematic things they are trying to do here. One is the idea that anyone you meet could immediately turn on you. Just how deep does the conspiracy go? Meanwhile the constant recurrence of the Town Hall connects the disparate threads together. But only if a certain combination of choices and random draws come together. Otherwise the only real coordination comes via the presence of the Brotherhood enemies in the encounter deck. More likely this scenario will feel like three separate scenarios taking place in one city.

Whatever you do you get one single resolution which, I have to admit, is rather disappointing. The more important outcome is the set of key phrases you end up collecting, which might have some impact further down the line. In the Boundary Beyond, its impact is rather minor overall. This only contributes to the sense of this scenarios relative unimportance. Though it may yet prove to be hugely impactful.

What is interesting from a replay perspective is how the scenario encourages you to spread yourself thin. Many of the card affects will be worse if you’ve completed any of the threads. So naturally you want to work through all of them at together but, of course, what if (when) you run out of time? That sets up the perfect tension surrounding how to approach the scenario that will never not be interesting. Mechanically, this structure works wonderfully, even if it loses out on the story driven focus in comparison to more traditional scenarios.

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Our copy of Threads of Fate was provided for review by Asmodee UK. You can pick up a copy for £14.99 RRP from your local hobby store.

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