Fantasy Flight Games latest expansion for the Arkham Horror board game is now available. Arkham Horror: Under Dark Waves moves the horror to the New England coast, a place of pallid locals and strange lights beneath the surface of the tumultuous waves.

Under Dark Waves // Fantasy Flight Games

In this new large box expansion, your investigations take you beyond Arkham to the other ill-fated towns of Massachusetts. Two new double-sided tiles bring Kingsport and Innsmouth to vibrant life, while new mystery spaces invite you to travel beyond the city’s borders to locations like Devil’s Reef and the Strange High House. Eight more investigators arrive to join your party, ranging from a drifter like “Ashcan” Pete to a letter carrier such as Stella Clark.

It’s undeniable that these investigators have their work cut out for them with four entirely new scenarios pitting them against the horrors that lurk beneath the ocean waves. With over 150 encounter and event cards, alongside new assets, monsters, conditions, and the terror mechanic, Under Dark Waves boasts a vast undersea treasure trove of content, pulling you into some of the Cthulhu Mythos’s most compelling tales.

Arkham Horror Under Dark Waves

With four new scenarios—the same number of scenarios that came in the Arkham Horror Core Set—Under Dark Waves brings a massive amount of replayability to the game, challenging you to travel across Massachusetts, from the city of Arkham to Kingsport and Innsmouth. You may be shivering in the ice-cold winds wrought by cruel Ithaqua or facing an onslaught of Deep Ones sent from Y’ha-nthlei to corrupt the surface world. Whether it’s terrifying moon-beasts, squamous deep ones, or accursed dreamers, you’ll face new dangers in every scenario.

There’s more to these scenarios than just new waves of monsters, however. Since your very first games of Arkham Horror, your investigators have had to contend with doom building up in the neighbourhoods of Arkham. If you’re unable to ward the doom building up around the city, the consequences could be devastating, and with the addition of Under Dark Waves, there may be new consequences in the form of terror tokens and terror cards.

Terror represents a neighbourhood becoming overrun with madness and fear, and in certain scenarios, you’ll have to contend with a terror deck unique to that scenario. Terror can accumulate from increasing doom in a neighbourhood or by drawing a new terror mythos token, and when terror spreads, you’ll take a terror encounter card and place it on top of your neighbourhood’s encounter deck. Before you can have any of the encounters within the deck, you’ll first need to face your fears with a terror encounter.

Another fantastic expansion for fans of Lovecraftian horror and with as much depth added into the expansion as the core game by itself investigators will find themselves for a long time to come. Once you start into the Innsmouth triangle though be careful that you don't develop that local look.

BArkham Horror // A Joke Too Far

The board game is not alone in receiving a new expansion, I couldn't leave without mentioning the new scenario pack for Arkham Horror: The Card Game

The fur will fly in Barkham Horror: The Card Game – The Meddling of Meowlathotep! Inspired by the 2019 April Fools article, this 100% real, playable standalone adventure for Arkham Horror: The Card Game gives players the chance to step into the role of canine investigators hot on the trail of a catspiracy. Dogs all across town report seeing strange, unnatural cats prowling around Barkham, and each day more and more pigeons are going missing. You’ve picked up the scent of something big, and once you sink your teeth into a story, you just can’t let go. Perhaps if you investigate the areas of Arkham most plagued by these sightings, you can root out the cat‐monsters that dwell within and save your hoomans, your city, and the world.

In the lockdown world of 2020 perhaps this is the expansion we needed and the humour will stop us from diving off the cliffs at Kingsport as we seek to stop the chanting.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn