Fantasy Flight Games have announced two shakeups to old, yet still quite popular, board games with Arkham Horror third edition and an expansion to A Game of Thrones: The Board Game. The new edition of Arkham Horror brings major changes to the game, like a modular board with double-sided tiles. Likewise, the Mother of Dragons expansion for A Game of Thrones is the first expansion that doesn’t simply add more scenarios—it adds two entire players, making a full A Game of Thrones: The Board Game table eight people. The announcements were made during FFG's yearly conference at Gen Con in Indianapolis.
Arkham Horror Third Edition is a revamp of the aging series, as has been the case in the past: The first edition released in 1987, then Fantasy Flight Games’ rebuild as a second edition in 2005. It seems like much of the fiddly manipulation has been streamlined, with things like fragile state tracking tokens and flexible statistics absent from preview images. The biggest change is the modular board, made up of double sided tiles that give the town of Arkham a different layout each play—it’s a welcome one for me, since there’s now some negative space to break up the board, rather than just stare at the monolithic block that was the prior edition.
Arkham Horror Third Edition might well be the last FFG design by Nikki Valens, who previously designed the excellent Eldritch Horror and Legacy of Dragonholt but left the company earlier this year. You can find a lot more details on FFG’s Arkham Horror Third Edition website.
However, I’m holding off final judgment on this new Arkham until we see if the best investigator, the hobo Ashcan Pete, makes a return.
The Mother of Dragons expansion for strategy game A Game of Thrones adds three big features to the game—the biggest changes to the 2003 game since its 2011 Second Edition and rise to popularity alongside the TV series. First, House Arryn, another competitor to the Iron Throne based in the turbulent middle of the board. Second, the eponymous Daenerys Targaryen, who starts on a second side board off the main board before, presumably, landing somewhere on the continent with her dragons. Finally, the expansion includes the Iron Bank, a way to get some of that precious cash you need so much—but at a significant risk. The expansion will also include a “vassal” system for handling nations in the game that don’t have a player at the table, an often turbulent factor in balancing a less than full run of the game.
You can read more about the Mother of Dragons expansion on Fantasy Flight's website.
It’s a lot of welcome changes to an older, widely played game. I do feel bad for this guy and his wooden Game of Thrones board, though he doesn’t seem that discouraged:
Oh hell yeah. Though I've literally just finished making a wooden aGoT board. How am I going to do an Arryn overlay on this! pic.twitter.com/sVB7R75mvcAugust 2, 2018
