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You don’t need to tell us that some board games can get pretty complex. Arkham Horror is a great example of that complexity.
From the moment you pop open the box and examine all the individual pieces, you know it has to be hard to win. If you’re a beginner, it can be easy to get overwhelmed and confused, wondering how you even win in Arkham Horror.
That’s what we’re here for. Arkham Horror is, indeed, a difficult game, so we’re breaking down different components of gameplay for you in a series of posts. In this one, we’ll discuss how to win the game.
Not sure what Arkham Horror is? You can check out our basic explanation of this popular Lovecraftian board game.
How to Win in Arkham Horror
Despite having a steep learning curve, there are really only three ways your team of investigators can win in Arkham Horror:
- Closing all gates on the board.
- Sealing at least six gates with elder signs.
- Defeating the Ancient One in battle.
We’ll take a quick look at all the win conditions so you understand how to achieve them. Keep in mind that we are just looking at the base game – we will not be covering any additional win or lose conditions that are included in expansions.
Close all open gates.
Gates can open in various locations on the board every single round. This can happen during the Mythos Phase of the turn, or even occasionally during event cards that players draw as their investigator explores locations on the board.
Imagine these gates as openings into another dimension filled with horror. Monsters can come through and start roaming the unsuspecting city of Arkham.
One way to win is by closing those gates. To close a gate, the investigator must “explore” the gate by going through it, traveling through the dimension it’s connected to, and gaining a token showing they explored it successfully.
Then, once the investigator has completed exploration of the gate, they can make a Lore or Fight check against the modifying number on the gate. Success on this check closes the gate, but does not seal it. The player then takes a trophy showing they closed the gate.
Because the gate is not sealed, another gate may open at that same location later on. Think of it sort of as a band-aid fix rather than a permanent one.
If, against the odds, you manage to close all the open gates on the board, and you have at least as many gate trophies as there are players, you win the game.
Seal at least six gates.
Sealing and closing gates are two entirely different matters. Whereas closing a gate is just a temporary fix that could easily be undone at any point, sealing the gate makes it so another one cannot open in the same spot again.
Because sealing a gate is permanent, it’s harder to accomplish. There are two ways it can be done.
The first method is to spend five clue tokens. Clue tokens spawn on the map throughout the game based on what event cards dictate and during the Mythos Phase. Your investigator can claim clue tokens by visiting the location they spawned at.
The second way to seal a gate is with an elder sign. This is a one-of-a-kind item that can be used once per game if an investigator manages to get one. With an elder sign in tow, an investigator can head to an open gate and pay one sanity and one stamina (health) point to seal the gate.
No matter which way you use, an elder sign token gets placed in the location where the gate was sealed. Once there are at least six elder sign tokens out, you win the game.
Defeat the Ancient One in combat.
The final way to win the game is by entering battle against the Ancient One…and somehow winning. This is not the route you want to go, though, because combat against Ancient Ones can get extremely difficult. Chances of winning at this point are usually pretty low, so it’s better to try and win with the previous two ways first.
Unfortunately, it’s fairly easy for the Ancient One to rouse from their eons-long slumber. Your insanity-inducing foe might come crawling into Arkham if any of the following circumstances are met:
- There are too many open gates. (What constitutes “too many” depends on the number of players, so you’ll want to check the rules.)
- You’ve filled the doom track.
- The monster cup has been depleted, and you need to draw more monsters.
- You’ve reached 10 on the terror track and there are twice as many monsters in Arkham as the game’s city limit. (The amount of monsters that can be in Arkham varies based on the number of players.)
- All the Corruption cards have been drawn, and you need to draw another one.
- Another gate is opening, and all the gate markers have been used already.
How to Lose
Lose the fight against the Ancient One.
There’s really only one main way to lose the game: losing against the Ancient One in battle. When you compare it with all the ways you can win the game, it seems like it should be easier to win.
That’s definitely not the case, though. As you’ve seen from the previous section, it’s all too easy for the evil god to awaken, which immediately triggers a battle.
It’s worth noting, too, that some Ancient Ones have unique losing requirements. In other words, in addition to defeating you in combat, they have other conditions which, if met, make you instantly lose the game.
Wrap Up
Arkham Horror has a pretty steep learning curve. The ways to win are often hard to achieve, and you may find yourself losing more often than winning.
However, if you’re willing to take time to familiarize yourself with the rules, we think it’s absolutely worth playing. It does an amazing job of transporting you to the mist-wreathed streets of Arkham, where monsters possibly lurk around every corner and unnamed things might be watching you from shadowy alleys.
It’s incredibly detailed, packed with lore. Later on, we may take a deeper look at some other aspects of gameplay in separate posts, so stay tuned.