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The Path to Carcosa is one of the best campaigns in Arkham Horror LCG, offering a fantastic link to the King in Yellow short story and is the campaign I'm currently on a run through as I write this. It used to be you would have to buy the deluxe campaign box followed by a number of mythos packs to allow you to get all the player cards and campaign to play through the whole experience, however now these have repackaged into investigator and campaign expansion boxes, one for each full cycle meaning you now no longer have to spend ages tracking down that final mythos pack which has been out of stock for months on end and you can pick and choose which investigators and narrative experiences you want.
So while the Path to Carcosa campaign is one of my favourites offering a brilliant story that anyone could play after the core box alongside some of the best scenarios the game has to offer, how does this investigator expansion stack up against its narrative counterpart? Inside we have 6 new investigators ready to face the horrors ahead of them, 1 for each class and a neutral investigator.
Of the new investigators, Mark Harrigan is one of the best investigators in the game, he provides a great skill boost, good card draw and is a formidable fighter. Sefina has a brilliant opening hand ability and a strong statline which makes her really fun to build around. William Yorick benefits from having a wide pool of cards, and so although might not shine if this is your only campaign expansion, once you own more cards he becomes a lot more versatile, although the same can probably be also said of Minh and Sefina. Akachi is a shaman who gets extra spell charges making her great for a fight, and Minh works better in higher player counts where her ability can best play off other players being at your location. Lola Hayes is a bit of an enigma being a neutral investigator, making her a bit of a puzzle to build and play with that could either go horribly right or horribly wrong. I’m yet to play with her so I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether it’s an auto fail or an elder sign symbol.
On the card front, there are some staples that make it into an awful lot of decks, Resourceful for example being one of my go to Survivor cards in every deck I build. In fact if you want to build a Survivor, this is one of the best investigator expansions to go for, offering cards that will probably be in every deck you play through every campaign. As well as being great for Survivors expansion also really benefits Mystica and Rogues, and over these three classes Test of Will, Ward of Protection and Lockpicks which are just all standout cards backed up by a treasure trove of great cards with not a lot of filler.
If I was to pick holes in this box though, the cards added for Guardian and Seeker aren’t as strong as some of the other investigator expansions although Eureka and Logical Reasoning are good for Seekers and the .45 auto and Stick to the Plan are pretty strong however there are a fair few duds to counteract these.
If you’re new to the game, I would say that both the Dunwich Investigator Investigator Expansion and the Path to Carcosa Investigator Expansion are a must for all players, although of the two I would probably get Dunwich first or buy both at the same time . They both provide so many staple cards that are a core part of the deck building across all classes. The investigators in here are all interesting to play with and can work well across many of the campaigns, with some of them being some of the best available in the whole of Arkham Horror, and Lola being particularly unique in her deck building. Some of the player cards might seem skewed towards certain classes, so if you’re building just a Seeker or Guardian you might feel a little short changed by the player cards. Overall though, this is a must have product if you’re falling into the Arkham rabbit hole and if you’re getting into the game, pairing this with the Dunwich Investigator Expansion along with the respective campaign boxes will give you hours up hours of content to explore that will take you far beyond what the core game box offers.
