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Arkham Horror: Stella Clark
Expansion of:
Arkham Horror: The Card Game
60m - 120m
1 - 2 Players
Ages 14+
Hand management games are games with cards in them that reward players for playing the cards in certain sequences or groups. The optimal sequence/grouping may vary, depending on board position, cards held and cards played by opponents. Managing your hand means gaining the most value out of available cards under given circumstances. Cards often have multiple uses in the game, further obfuscating an "optimal" sequence.
Hand Management
Variable Player Powers is a mechanic that grants different abilities and/or paths to victory to the players.
Variable Player Powers
Fantasy
Horror
14.00
€
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Kickstarter – Gamefound
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Kaizenoku
Sleeves: Player & Investigator Cards (Gamegenic Prime, Standard/Gray) Investigator Mini Cards (Gamegenic Prime, Mini USA/Yellow) Campaign: N/A
Mozzik
The Investigator Starter Decks, as a whole, are a brilliant product (and long overdue) making it easier to introduce new people to the game while also enticing long time players to buy them for the large influx of new cards. Or at least that's the idea. So how does Stella's deck do? Stella - The Investigator Stella is the only starter investigator without a five in any stat, and her spread isn't unusual for a survivor. However, Stella is defined by her ability - which strongly encourages you to fail once per turn (preferably during the mythos phase) to give you a bonus action. This makes Stella the rare survivor who can either pick up extra actions or get decent action compression (And she can sometimes do both) which feels really good. I like that it takes something that survivors were already known for (success through failure) and leans into it hard making it very clear this is a viable archetype, when newer players are often at a loss for what survivors are supposed to do. The fact that she's a new investigator in the Arkham Files and is a transwomen of color also makes her a big win for diversity. Stella - The Deck Stella's deck is in a good place. It has a few weak spots (The ongoing theme of a slightly poor economy for the starter decks for example), and some cards that are really lackluster (looking at you Oops) but the reprints are well chosen to synergize with her ability (and to show how a failed action can be as good, or better, than a successful one for her) and she's shockingly good at solo play, with easily enough tools to manage the clue load even as a two intelligence investigator. The net result is a deck that works well, but also clearly shows places it could work better with an expanded card pool and some deck building - which is where I think a starter deck should be. My only concern is that piloting Stella right can be fairly challenging, so a new player is likely to play her suboptimally while they learn how all her tricks connect together, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing. Her upgrades are a bit more hit and miss - a fair number are clear, linear, upgrades (Which is great), and we get our first survivor cards higher than level 3 which deserves special recognition (more on those in the next section). Unfortunately, a fair bit of the upgrade space is spent building an exile heavy playstyle which is something survivors have wanted/needed, but it doesn't have enough support in the starter deck to really come together and doesn't particularly synergize with the rest of what she's trying to do. The New Cards There are six reprints in the deck which is tied for the most reprints among the starter deck, though two of three of them (notably Take Heart) may actually be useful if you're supplying multiple decks at once. Ten of the new cards are new levels of old cards, which is on the upper end of the curve. The zero level cards bring us .18 Derringer, which is not only the rare weapon for survivors but also a fairly good and unique one too. Along with this comes Old Keyring (which instantly helps support a number of survivors clue struggles, particularly in solo) and A Test of Will(0) which is a fascinating downgrade. The rest are likely to be more niche if they see play at all. The upgrades also have some significant goodies - A Test of Will(2) seems destined to do good things, and the upgrades for "Look what I found!" (in particular) and Dumb Luck are both overdue and extremely good. Granny Orne(3) is an amazing ally and Lucky(3) is an incredible power bump to an already strong card. Which leads us to the first level 4 survivor card Chainsaw, and what a card it is - thematic, interesting, filling a much needed niche for high level survivor weapons, without being overpowered. The second, Quick Leaner, is a permanent that entirely changes the way you play (and also synergizes well with Stella) and is sure to reshape many survivor decks. Unfortunately, Déjà Vu (the first level 5 card for survivors) is a bit of a letdown as it's there to enable the exile archetype (through xp cost savings) but that doesn't change your game play really, and I don't think the cards are quite there yet - but it's a nice card to have floating around the card pool.
boleh
Stella is a very interesting investigator as embracing failures make me fundamentally change the way I build a deck and approach the game.