During their most recent InFlight Report, Fantasy Flight Games announced The Drowned City, a new expansion for Arkham Horror. Since its 2016 release, Arkham Horror: The Card Game has stood at the top of the hobby as one of the best cooperative games out there. Nine cycles, five starter decks, and many standalone scenarios later, it continues to be not only relevant but exceedingly popular.
The Drowned City: What We Know
So far, we don’t have a ton of concrete information on The Drowned City. We know that it will be the 10th cycle since Arkham Horror’s release. It’ll follow the same format they’ve been using since the Revised Edition of the core set in 2021. As such, an investigator expansion will be released, followed shortly by the campaign box. Compared to the previous method of breaking it up into a deluxe expansion and six scenario packs, consumers save about $10. The announced timeframe for The Drowned City is “early 2025,” which should mean at the very least that we can expect it before summer rolls back around. And that’s about all we know about the upcoming cycle, other than the fact that it will involve Cthulhu.
Since it bears repeating, The Drowned City will finally be putting Cthulhu, the most recognizable figure in all of cosmic horror, into Arkham Horror. In some respects, it’s surprising that it has taken this long for them to feature the big guy since he’s so central to the Mythos. On the other hand, though, it’s easy to understand that they wanted to hold onto that trump card for a special occasion, and it seems that Arkham Horror’s 10th cycle is exactly that. During the announcement, FFG’s VP of Strategy Jim Cartwright stated, “Some said that Cthulhu would mark the end of the card game, this couldn’t be further from the truth,” and indicated that the game would be continuing for the foreseeable future.
As far as what the title of the new Arkham Horror cycle refers to, it seems almost definite that we are talking about R’lyeh. Cthulhu has always been associated with the sunken city of R’lyeh, both originating from the same H.P. Lovecraft story, “The Call of Cthulhu.” It stands to reason that the narrative of the campaign will somehow bring the investigators to explore the halls of R’lyeh. As the city is canonically at the bottom of the South Pacific, it’s undoubtedly going to be an intriguing adventure.
Setting Expectations
We can expect certain things from the new content, even if we don’t know the exact details yet. The promotional image used by FFG shows that they will be sticking with the new release model: an investigator expansion and a campaign box. Although there have been exceptions, most likely there will be five new investigators, one for each of the five classes. Most investigators are able to multiclass, though, so it remains to be seen what interesting dynamic The Drowned City will have for us there. From past cycles, we know that there will be about 128 different investigator cards, which include the investigators and their signature cards. Most cards will have two copies since that’s the deck limit for most cards in Arkham Horror.
FFG has shown in the past that they like to introduce new mechanics to new cycles, and The Drowned City is unlikely to be an exception. As far as what it might be, we most likely cannot even hazard a guess. There’s always the slim chance that they will revisit some of the past mechanics, such as myriad or bonded cards, but they seem somewhat averse to retreading ground like that. Further exploration of certain keyword archetypes is always possible, and there are almost sure to be a couple of new ones.
How the campaign will shape up is somewhat of a mystery. While the releases used to be predictable, with cycles having eight scenarios (sometimes with a hidden extra one), FFG has gotten a little experimental with every campaign since they changed the release format. We could potentially have fewer scenarios with each one much larger in scope, or another highly nonlinear campaign like we saw in The Scarlet Keys. There’s a tremendous amount of design space within Arkham Horror, so we can’t truly be sure what’s coming until the game hits our tables.
Looking Forward
Although we most likely have at least six months to wait, there’s no shortage of Arkham Horror content to keep us busy. Diligent players may want to revisit some old favorites while they wait, or maybe their group is still trying to get through The Hemlock Vale. Those of us who are less diligent could, of course, use this as motivation to dust off their collection and get caught up. Regardless, no matter how you play, this is going to be an exciting time for all Arkham Horror fans.
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