Cardboard Corner: Ranking Arkham Horror: The Card Game Final Scenarios/Bosses

One of the best parts of video games is 'the final boss'. A true test of the skills you've learned, it's usually an over-the-top experience that feels great when you finally squeak past. Smartly, Arkham Horror: The Card Game has taken a nod from video games and implemented a final boss in all of its campaigns released to date—sometimes more than one. Let's see how they rank.

Three important things before moving ahead:

1. Warning-Warning-Warning: this article assumes you've played all the campaigns, so if you don't want any final scenario spoiled, wait to read.

2. With the exception of perhaps “The Devourer Below”, there is not a bad final scenario in the game. Whatever scenarios end up low in the ranking are still a huge amount of fun.

3. This is a live page. I will update it as campaigns are released and played.

Jumping right into things, from lowest to highest ranked, here is the list:

11. “The Devourer Below” (Night of the Zealot) – Hard, hard, hard, this is the core-box boss that plays more of an instructional role than gaming experience. It's intention is to teach players two things: 1) Arkham Horror can easily kick your ass, and 2) sometimes you need to ignore what seems the right thing to do in order to succeed. Skipping clue gathering and getting right into the fight, plus a little bit of luck, is the only way to take down this boss. This is the least enjoyable final scenario, and unless the designers drop the ball, it will always be. Educational, but lacking phases of narrative...

10. “Before the Black Throne” (The Circle Undone) - I know a lot of people like this scenario. For me, it seems more a pure board game than a narrative-driven, gaming experience. The setting laid out in grids, it feels forced, borderline cheesy, and I'm not sure it captures the mood/theme of the campaign, and not to mention it's just an iteration on The Dunwich Legacy's boss.  But it is a major challenge, and it holds a few tricks up its sleeve that provide Arkham players the unpredictable gameplay they are looking for.

9. "Congress of the Keys" - This is a hard scenario to locate on this list given there are so many setups, some better than others.  Also, it is one of the most complex in terms of mechanisms and gameplay.  (I don't doubt there are many groups who play this incorrectly first time through.)  But it is, if anything, highly thematic.  Like the Loki scenario in Marvel Champions "The Mad Titan's Shadow", here players must take random stabs at air in order to find where the substance lies beyond - a true invesitgation and fight with the horrors of the mythos.  

8. “Into the Maelstrom” (The Innsmouth Conspiracy) – Remarkable for being the first final scenario to not take players into the horror of the cosmos, “Into the Maelstrom” instead has players battling monsters in an underwater labyrinth on Earth. Thematically, it feels pitch perfect; labyrinths are a major motif of the campaign. But, damn is this one big, and difficult, and it does contain a touch of busy work that copies from other scenarios in the campaign.

7. “Shattered Aeons” (The Forgotten Age) – The Forgotten Age is one of my favorite campaigns. The final scenario, however, is not as good as other campaigns. But it's not the fault of the scenario. The difficulty spikes are so dynamic throughout the campaign that “Shattered Aeons” does not feel climactic. Given the difficulty is on par with several other moments, it does not leave the epic impression that some of the other escalations toward final scenarios do. It does, however, feel good to beat - this rollercoaster of a campaign defeated.

6. “Where the Gods Dwell” (The Dream-Eaters) – The central device of this boss battle is one of the simplest yet one of the most thematic in the game. The boss appears and reappears in the encounter deck. Like learning the results of a medical exam, the Mythos phase produces a bizarre feeling drawing an encounter card: you want to find out more, and you don't. You want to fight the boss to defeat the scenario, but you're likewise afraid he'll first defeat you...

5. “The Heart of Madness” (The Edge of the Earth) – To this point in Arkham Horror releases, all bosses had been proper bosses: an entity that the player could beat on with whatever weapon fell to hand (with variations, naturally). The miasma in this scenario is something entirely new. Creeping around the players, and feeling ever more stifling as the scenario inches toward its “doom” threshhold, it produces a proper sense of dread without ever taking physical form. I don't think this scenario would work as well as it does without the history of final bosses behind it, but it does, and it works extremely well.

4. "Fate of the Vale" (Feast of Hemlock Vale) - Mayday!  Mayday!  Mayday!  Not a Pacific navy attack, rather it's the way "Fate of the Vale" spins the campaign's threads of story into a streamer pole of doom.  As with another scenario later on the list, the manner in which the cards physically represent the "boss" drives home theme with an iron-tipped spike.  Love it - round and round we spin!  

3. “Dim Carcosa” (Path to Carcosa) – Quadrupling down on the existential horror that permeates the campaign, “Dim Carcosa” sees players heaping brain tokens onto their investigators in fistfuls as they explore Carcosa. All Arkham scenarios have a keen eye to setting and layout, and this is no exception. The verticality, both up and down, fits the story, and feels great exploring and uncovering he who shall not be named, the horror literally off the charts.

2. “Weaver of the Cosmos” (The Dream-Eaters) – As with "Fate of the Vale", I'm a sucker for the manner in which the cards physically represent the spider boss laying on the table. The fact that the legs move is just the eight cherries on top. Even losing is fun. I would be lying if I didn't say this scenario and those like it are one of the major reasons Arkham Horror is such a damn good game.

1. “Lost in Time and Space” (The Dunwich Legacy) – In “Lost in Time and Space”, players are required to close the portal which is threatening to swallow the world, all the while boss man Yog-Sothoth expands his power in multiple directions trying to kill you. The overall campaign is not at the top of my campaign list, but walking at the mysterious edge of the universe in this scenario as reality threatens to slip away beneath you feels extremely, thematically satisfying—the most satisfying in Arkham boss terms.

And that's that, the final scenarios/bosses of Arkham Horror: The Card Game. Some are indeed better than others, but as stated, they are all enjoyable and one of several reasons why the game is so damn good.