Preamble

The purpose of this blog is to document the discussions surrounding rules questions in Arkham Horror: The Card Game. It seeks to record various interpretations, the reasons behind those interpretations, any queries submitted, any conclusions drawn, and any consensus reached.

But why?

The first deluxe expansion for Arkham Horror: The Card Game - The Dunwich Legacy - was released in January of 2017. With it came the Rogue skill pictured above, Double or Nothing.

What this card is meant to do was clear enough - it lets players gamble by raising the difficulty of the test in exchange for a bigger impact. Instead of discovering one clue, you can discover two! Instead of dealing one damage on an attack, you can deal two! It is a wonderfully thematic card, playing into both the Rogue faction's go-big-or-go-home identity and the back of a restaurant card room theme of The House Always Wins, one of the scenarios that came with The Dunwich Legacy.

Then the rules questions started

Those rules questions deserve their own post, but Double or Nothing still holds the reputation to date as one of the most problematic cards. Nevertheless, it got its own entry in the February 2017 update of the FAQ. A few rules questions still remain, but the FAQ entry was mostly effective and prompt.

Yet many more questions remain unanswered. Are story assets player cards or encounter cards? Where are event cards while they are resolving? Can you activate Fieldwork when moving with Duke's Investigate ability and immediately get the bonus? If Diana Stanley shoots an enemy with .45 Automatic (2), when can she trigger her ability to put the weapon under her card (and does it matter if that enemy has Retaliate or if the attack succeeds)? How does Double, Double work? Most recently, does Track Shoes' ability activate before or after Passenger Car's? The list goes on and on.

Most of those questions have been submitted through the Fantasy Flight Rules Questions form, some of them many times. However, a conclusive answer eludes us still. These questions surface from time to time, often to much debate. Each time they are debated, duplicate queries are submitted and little progress made, leaving the players frustrated and the game's staff swamped.

That is the motivation behind this blog. By documenting the prominent discussions surrounding oft repeated rules questions, I hope to  provide a starting point for future debate, or at least an accessible reference to past arguments. By documenting the conclusions drawn and consensus reached (if any), I seek to provide a suggestion for how the rule can be interpreted in the absence of official ruling. Finally, by documenting any queries submitted and who submitted them, I aim to reduce the load on the game's developers and hasten official responses to those queries.

Welcome to Crack the Case.