Arkham Horror: Winifred Habbamock

Board Game Geek Reviews

1. 9 out of 10

   Bayushi Sezaru

   Arkham Horror: the Card Game is an awesome crossover between RPG and card game, thriving in atmosphere character development. After four years of releases, with countless expansions and a mature and complex card pool, deckbuilding can be a daunting task, especially for newcomers to the game. Fantasy Flight Games conjured a great idea, stealing it from its own Marvel Champions: five ready to play decks, each own sporting a brand new investigator, a majority of new cards, and even a small pool of experience-cost cards to play the deck in campaign mode. This is one of these five decks, and it’s a great addition both to veterans and beginners’ collections.

2. 9 out of 10

   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 Winifred's deck do? Winifred - The Investigator Wini is the second five agility investigator (And first rogue) with a very clear focus on heavily committing skill cards. This is a unique identity among rogues, isn't mechanically complex, and clearly supports the rogue playstyle of doing big flashy things - or falling on their face. I also like this as something for new players as it's an aspect of the game that's easy to initially overlook. She's easily my favorite of the new investigators and a clear win for diversity as well. Winifred - The Deck Wini's deck is a bit of a mess. For one thing, rogues are (nominally) the resource faction yet she has a grand total of Sneak By for economy. This would be (maybe) acceptable if she had a ton of skill cards so her curve was low, but instead her deck focuses on events that she just doesn't have the resources to play and a grand total of three skills (aside from her signature), and Daredevil is a tutor for one of those other skill cards (Never mind that Daredevil also has a terrible hit rate since once the two copies of Opportunist and Anything You Can Do, Better are gone it can only hit on agility - I frequently wanted to use it for a combat check and would just wiff). The good news is you can toss all these events for their icons (Which is suboptimal, but works more or less) and her raw power makes her a good generalist, particularly with access to lockpicks(0). The bad news is throwing away all those events like they're (bad) skill cards feels bad and I don't think that's good for a new player - but it will teach them to look at cards as resources that way. It gets a bit better with upgrades as Lucky Cigarette Case(3) makes her absolutely sing and Chuck Fergus single handedly makes her event heavy deck make sense. Overall, she succeeds despite her deck and I worry new players won't enjoy the way it teaches you to play, even if it's teaching good gameplay. The New Cards There are six reprints in the deck which is tied for the most reprints among the starter decks and none of which you're particularly likely to want spares of. Ten of the new cards are new levels of old cards, which is on the upper end of the curve. For experienced players there's a lot to love in the zero-level cards, Lockpicks(0) finally being a starter card for clue focused rogues, the Mauser C96 is a very solid starter rogue gun and Lonnie Ritter... well, maybe Innsmouth will give her something to do that makes sense. Leather Jacket also deserves mention not for being a good card, but for being a fast asset and the first rogue body slot. Pilfer is very expensive but fills a new niche (Looking at you Rita), Sneak By is decent (And fun with Chunk), Nimble is downright amazing, and Daredevil(0) basically saves you two xp on Daredevil(2). The upgrade cards are a bit more of a mixed bag, most of the event upgrades are ho-hum at best (Again, Chuck makes them far more viable) but Daring Maneuver(2) redeems that card nicely, Manual Dexterity(2) is likely to find some homes, Lucky Cigarette Case(3) is board-line broken and Chuck Fergus opens up some entirely new archetypes.

3. 10 out of 10

   dylpickle

   Fantastic character, with some awesome cards. She is brilliant to play, well-rounded and rash and exciting. She is exposing my girlfriend to the excitement of playing a combo character with fantastic ease.