This last weekend Jeremiah and I had an opportunity to break out the shiny new Kingsport expansion for the Arkham Horror board game. If you’ve followed my blog you know that I enjoy this game quite a bit. It’s set in the H.P. Lovecraft Cthulhu Mythos universe, where you play investigators based out of 1920s Arkham, Massachusetts. There you have a gun-wielding, spell-slinging good time trying to rid the world of all manner of beasties. In the process you are trying to close all the gates that lead to other worlds. If anything gets too far out of hand then the big nasties wake up and you’d better say your prayers because they eat bullets on their cereal in the morning for extra iron.

The Kingsport expansion brings the town of Kingsport into the game, which is a coastal town a short train ride from Arkham. It’s a rather sedentary place, but all nature of unsavoury things can still happen there. The expansion adds some nice effects to the game. There are the moving rifts, which are tears in the fabric of the universe. You don’t want them around because if they stay around for too long Bad Things Happen. There’s a nice assortment of new monsters to fight, though I for one would rather not like to run into a Leng Spider on my Saturday stroll through the park.

The Kingsport Head is also in the game, including the dreaded Strange High House in the Mist. I also like the new Epic Battle cards, which changes the manner in which way the final battle takes place. It’s a nice change and can easily fit in with the rest of the game, even if you don’t use the Kingsport expansion. I quite liked some of the new characters as well.

The more I play Arkham Horror the more I appreciate that it really is a form of RPG with a board. The game is extremely thematic and you don’t necessarily care too much if your hat is handed to you at the end, albeit rather rumpled and torn. The experience is all worth it.