Arkham Horror: The Card Game – Devil’s Reef

Within this Mythos Pack, you’ll find the next scenario of the tangled campaign unfolding around the events of The Innsmouth Conspiracy. You’ll flashback to your voyage out to Devil Reef three weeks prior—exploring the islands rumored to be haunted by terrible powers, and where you suspect the Esoteric Order of Dagon is hiding something. With the game’s first vehicle-driven scenario and an assortment of new player cards for every class, Devil Reef is a gripping next chapter in your unfolding tale of rising tides and encroaching madness.

Captain of Your Own Ship

Your investigation has led you to the scattered islets of Devil Reef, each pocked with tidal tunnels and opening a path to unfathomable depths below. If you’re going to make your way easily between these islands, you won’t want to swim. In fact, choosing to swim from one Ocean location to another will take your entire turn. No, travel between between these scattered islands will require a vehicle.

Aboard the Fishing Vessel, Silas and Amanda travel across the choppy seas around Devil Reef.

In Devil Reef, you and your fellow investigators each start the game inside a Fishing Vessel (Devil Reef, 178). This small and trusty boat is Arkham Horror: The Card Game’s first vehicle, and it offers an excellent way to transport your entire team. As a free action, investigators can embark or disembark from a vehicle at their location, and when that vehicle moves, all investigators on the vehicle move along with it. The Fishing Vessel in particular, can move between connecting Ocean locations, such as the Salt Marshes (Devil Reef, 172) or the Hidden Cove (Devil Reef, 170) for a single action. And just as importantly, while you’re in the Fishing Vessel, you can treat your location as unflooded—a rare point of solid ground in the midst of the ocean.

Sooner or later, you’ll have to dive into the depths beneath the reefs. The Esoteric Order of Dagon is hiding something here, and perhaps you’ll find it among the Cyclopean Ruins (Devil Reef, 176) of Y’ha-nthlei. You’ll need to find the cult artifacts represented by these key tokens if your investigation is going to be successful, but these tidal tunnels and ocean depths are crawling with deep ones, and even your Fishing Vessel will soon be beleaguered by The Terror of Devil Reef (Devil Reef, 164b).

Twisting the Tides of Fate

As you search for evidence of a cult’s misdeeds and you find the memories of your own experiences warped around you, the Devil Reef expansion lets you twist and shape the tides of fate itself by manipulating the chaos bag.

The Innsmouth Conspiracy gives you an inherent way to nudge the chaos bag with the addition of bless and curse tokens—tokens that can give you a boost or a setback, though you’ll need to draw another token for the final result of your test. As you might expect, Devil Reef offers more cards that support this theme, but instead of simply adding more tokens to the bag, they allow you to use those bless and curse tokens for unusual effects. Radiant Smite (Devil Reef, 153) can directly channel bless tokens into skill boosts and damage, making this a powerful Spell for Guardians. Alternatively, the Seekers may cast their own Spell with Gaze of Ouraxsh (Devil Reef, 155), a card that taps the curse tokens in the bag to deal damage to your foes.

Some cards in Devil Reef verge even farther into the arcane, however, allowing you to change the course of fate itself. Manipulate Destiny (Devil Reef, 162) lets you either damage an enemy or heal yourself, depending on which token is revealed. Third Time’s a Charm (Devil Reef, 161), on the other hand, lets you cancel a chaos token twice during a skill test, drawing a new token instead! When you need to succeed (or fail!) at a test, the Survivors can make sure you find the chaos token you need.