Arkham Horror: The Black Goat of the Woods Expansion [Toy]

Black Goat of the Woods is a Shun-Nuggurath themed small box expansion for Arkham Horror. It comes with a new Herald as well as a Relationship mechanic, Corruption Cards and a new group called The Cult of the Thousand. The Black Goat of the Woods is in my opinion, the best small box expansion for Arkham Horror.

Pros

- The Herald "Black Goat of the Woods" is one of the deadliest and most exciting Heralds, mostly for it's ability to make monster rushes and gate openings harder. Gate openings now release an extra monster into the board (which can be annoying) and half the monsters released whenever a gate opens or a monster surge occurs must be hexagon so you must have harder monsters. Furthermore, monsters surges make the Ancient One awaken faster. These effects prevents what I call investigator momentum where investigators begin gaining power faster than the game can respond and then the game is almost guaranteed. Every gate opening is exciting and changes the momentum of the game.

-Played with Shub-Niggurath as the Ancient One makes is a definite must. She makes monsters tougher and increases the deadliness of the Herald. With investigators unwilling to spend monster trophies, this makes the game harder.

-Relationship cards are a good counter mechanic to the Herald. Often they boost your fighting ability or make it easier to get items.

-Some of the new spells are interesting especially when combined with the ones from other expansions. And as always, new encounter cards make camping at locations less feasible. Even if you don't play with the Herald, you should shuffle the investigator and Ancient One cards into your regular deck. When combined with cards from other expansions, this drastically changes the game.

-Difficulty cards are a definite must-try.

-This Herald is best played with more than 4 people both so gate openings are deadlier and you can deal with monster rushes.

Cons
-Like most small box expansions, most of the new mechanics are too diluted to really come into play. The Cult of the Thousand is a membership that is inadvisable because the events tend to hurt you rather than help. Even if you get a membership card, you tend to have very few encounters at places where the cult encounters matter, especially late in the game and with this expansion where you will be spending most of your time on the streets fighting or in other worlds.

-With the lessened effect of the Cult of the Thousand, the effects of Corruption Cards matter less. With no Cult encounters there is only one way to get Corruption Cards which is by defeating Hexagon monsters. This will happen fairly quickly and commonly. However the activation of the effects is fairly rare and the game rule to have investigators go through the "easier" corruption cards before the hard ones means that the Corruption cards are not a big worry. Without Cult encounters, it is very unlikely that someone will be forced to take a "hard" Corruption card

-The Herald's biggest effects can simply be house-ruled though with the decreased Hexagon monster count, this is difficult.

This is a expansion that advanced Arkham Horror players should definitely get. The new investigator and Ancient One cards can be combined with other expansions and shuffled into the regular deck to introduce new strategies. The Black Goat of the Woods is an interesting Herald. You can create other house rules to increase the effect of Corruption Cards and Cult memberships. I definitely recommend it.

If your games of Arkham Horror have become predictable and easy, this expansion will cure what ails you. The addition of the Black Goat herald makes the game easily twice as hard. You can use the new goodies without the herald, though, if you don't want to be on the edge of your seat all game. Also, there are rules for adjusting game difficulty, which is nice.

It'll take about one game to get the new rules down. Certainly it's worth the money and time to get new cards and items that make the game more interesting and versatile.

The base game rocks, and we've been picking up all the expansions since. This particular expansion, Black Goat of the Woods, adds some particularly fun and challenging aspects to the game, and we have enjoyed adding it into our decks. If you are a fan of the game, this is definitely one expansion to include!