How scary is each Random Basic Weakness? (Arkham Horror: The Card Game) 

I dunno, I think you are really undervalueing how bad Overzealous is by looking at the absolute best case scenarios. It is the only weakness that can give you two enemies. And a lot of Encounter deck enemies are scarier than a Detective or Acolyte, which you put on the same tier. Or this draws you into an enemy AND safe-or-suck test for 1 - 3 damage/horror. Or god forbid you need to deal with an elite enemy AND you get an Ancient Evils, which is possible in scenarios across most campaigns. I would never want this weakness, no matter the campaign.

I think overzealous is the only weakness that has caused us to straight up lose a campaign. So it's undoubtedly #1 worst for me.

I came up with my own basic weakness: Survivor's Guilt (Survivors Only) Forced - Place in your threat area. Action, Action - Discard Survivor's Guilt Forced - If a triggered ability causes you to succeed at a test you would otherwise have failed or prevent damage/horror that would have eliminated you, suffer one mental trauma and discard Survivor's Guilt.

Kleptomania was the econ card in my Patrice deck. Also Patrice got Flamethrower

Narcolepsy- falls asleep in the study and doesn’t wake up until someone burns down the house.. Also, falling asleep on the train as your carriage is pulled into the vortex.. Or being the designated driver in Horror in High Gear..

Kleptomania is fun as hell! It honestly should have been a rogue asset!

A better design for Doomed (and its companion cards) would cycle through not each time you draw them but rather would have them go in the victory display when you draw them and then you would cycle through them each time you are defeated while it's in the victory display.

I would much rather have amnesia than overzealous, personally. Overzealous is brutal... most often, you get it during upkeep... which means you now have a minimum of 3 encounter cards before your next turn. And if you actually draw into some surges.. it might be much worse than that. It can easily move the game from 'we're tempo-positive & winning' to 'we've lost'. Now, I am somewhat biased because I play 2 players, so Overzealous means we're looking at double our normal encounter card count at minimum (min. two overzealous draws and then your regular draw). I think drawing it during an action can be very rough too... exposing you to an enemy or end-of-round effect that you may not be able to get rid of. If I had both overzealous and doomed to choose from, I'm seriously thinking about how fast my character cycles their deck. Doomed is still technically worse because it can kill you, but until you die... it's a lot less likely to sabotage scenarios.

Our playgroup had a GOOD laugh when I randomly got Self-Centered. I'm infamously greedy and protective of myself in Arkham, so it fit perfectly for me. 😅

I got stubborn detective when playing Calvin Wright and let me tell you: It's rough

Haunted is a whippoorwill. Sudden realization

I had narcolepsy in an Amanda Sharpe deck. There were several turns in a scenario where I'd just start the investigation phase by falling asleep or in mid action by drawing it off unrelenting. It was even more awkward because I was our group's fighter.

This is a good one! Good threat analysis, I definitely missed a few subtleties with these. Like stubborn detective, very sneaky!

13th vision has one signifcant drawback compared to haunted apart from affecting everybody at a location which is it seriously hampers reducing test difficulties to 0 as now you can not just rely on avoiding the autofail, you actually got to get to a +1 result.

Justin perhaps you can rate the signature weaknesses since then the use case is a lot better defined than a basic weakness. Could be fun!

Amnesia letting you keep your best card completely takes the teeth out of it for me. Even if I get caught drawing it as my fifth card, draw actions basically turn it into a low-pressure "two actions to clear" weakness.

Narcolepsy demands respect. Final scenario with Winnie. Nimbled to the opposite side of the (circular) map. Drew Narcolepsy during upkeep. Lost multiple turns while the team made their way to me. Narcolepsy was one card out of probably 20 in the deck. The odds weren't 5% (1/20), they were 50% (either it happens or it doesn't). And it did.

It's so interesting to see the different opinions people have of playing the same game, what makes it fun! My style is so much more get specific things out on the field that I rarely care about hand destruction effects but overzealous destroys me everytime.

Kleptomania definitely sucks to get. Its gonna pop up 2/3 times and unless your constantly hanging around someone else you aren’t always going to be able to get rid of it the turn after you draw it. So it really sucks on big map campaigns, or for flex characters.

Wait, orher players can discard a weakness from my threat area?

I drew "Your Worst Nightmare" as my basic weakness on Kymani and just laughed for several minutes. It was such a laughably easy basic weakness for them.

I once got Stubborn Detective in my Calvin deck and I had no idea how to deal with it

I really like the Scarlet Keys weaknesses for being played with the Scarlet Keys investigators. They all play differently than what their class usually does that they are significant weaknesses for them. When my group did a 4 player Scarlet Keys we all picked the investigators from it and took the weaknesses from it. The Guardian can't fight, the Seeker doesn't play big hand, the Rogue isn't rich or taking extra actions, the Mystic isn't using spell slots and the Survivor isn't playing low on resources. I was playing Darrell, and if I drew Unprepared it stayed in my hand the whole time and turned off all my skill cards from having icons.

Honestly, Overzealous is the only one I just refuse to play with. (Well maybe the 'Doomed' chain too) If you draw it in upkeep you are now drawing 3 cards. Ive had it take multple games from "okay, Im doing pretty well so far" to "im screwed completely" Delve Too Deep gives you an experience point for just drawing one.

Could be interesting to make a video on techniques on how to mitigate certain weaknesses (or two split in basic and investogator-specific). Amnesia is less scary if you have Deny Existence. If you can take l3 Mystic and you don’t need to cycle your deck for your gameplan towork, then Itiaq can help mitigate Doomed (while it is still a basic weakness). If you can delay it 2 times, you have an ok chance at making ti through an 8-scenario campaign.

The Tower is one of the worst weaknesses for me. I tend to play a lot of no money skill decks. Early game this is on par with the asset weakness except it requires 5 actions to remove (4 resources + play action) and if you draw it at the wrong time it's worse than amnesia.

I'm currently playing a skills-centered Patrice deck, focussed on group support, but I drew Self-Centered. It's hilarious, but oh so crippling!

How me and my friends draw our random weakness is draw 2 from a pile that has 1 copy of all available weaknesses. You then choose one of those OR mulligan, setting those 2 cards and drawing a new card. You have to take the new card. If you get 2 painless ones you can just take one but if you get two nasty ones you can risk trying to get a nicer one by mulligan but maybe it will be even worse.

After having Diana blanked by Stubborn Detective, I no longer underestimated the card.

I played a game once where Stubborn Detective actually benefitted Preston

I feel seen on Kleptomania - all the shuffle back in weaknesses are awful because of how many draws they kill (eg compare Ursula and Monterrey’s signature weaknesses). You thought narcolepsy is bad at the start of TCU - how about an irreversible “take 1 horror”? Gave my guardian a mental trauma when it popped up setup round in 4p and then a rotting remains in first mythos, there was nobody to rob!

Can you imagine unspeakable oath, drawing this in the bottom of the assylum. I do not have to image that Been there as Minh :D Playing with new players the were about to leave the assylym and I had to convince them pretty hard to come back form me. Implying what could happen if I won't escape, and I really didn't want to build new character

Instead of building up to "lol you die" Doomed should instead just deal you 1 horror for each time it's been drawn over the campaign. Then you might be going into the final scenario with a basic weakness that deals you 5-7 damage. Most of the time that'll be equivalent to defeating you, but you can actually play around it.

Man I hate indebted. We Always get it as guardians

In general I tend to just randomize weaknesses till I get an interesting one for my character. Not one that will cripple and not one that will be a walk in the park.

I got Day of Reckoning as Mark once. It was pretty decent for me. My buddy playing Jacqueline however…

I got Unprepared in my Darrell Clue Drop Deck and we're playing on Hard. I haven't counted the times one skill icon cost me an action, a scavenge or burned my Resourceful and things like that but it always felt like sheit :/

Through the Gate is the WORST (ok, after the "You die" one...) weakness for me. It has the potential to destroy your entire deck by discarding one of your best card from your deck AND from play. And then you can still see this weakness if you cycle your deck (relevant in Yellow only ^^). It is frustrating as hell and will ruin a lot of games (but yeah sure sometimes it hits a "one of" card and does nothing).

hello i have a question about Doomed, and Accursed Fate by extension. It says to put the card at the bottom of the deck, but just to be clear, you are going to shuffle your deck anyway right ? like, before starting a scenario we always shuffle. Do i first shuffle then put the card at the bottom ? What if i mulligan, then it's gonna be shuffled anyway ?

I had the Tower in Minh and Winifred. Would have gladly taken the Devil over it in either case. I can see, that the Devil can be more devastating, because if you play a skill deck, you have an easier time to pay for the tarot weakness, than if you are asset heavy. But putting it two tiers above seems extreme to me. Somebody mentioned it on BGG some time ago: Reckless seems horrible in Amanda! You have to tuck it under her to get rid of it, because otherwise you butcher the "no other cards committed" clause. You might then succeed on an investigation with Flashlight, or take a turn off without any tests, and still have to return it to your hand in the next mythos phase.

In a 3 player game of Echoes of the Past, our Seeker gained access to the hidden library by themselves. The very next turn they drew Narcolepsy. There was no way for us to get into the hidden library since he had Mr. Peabody and he drew no enemies from the encounter deck so we legitimately burned 5 turns unable to progress in the scenario because we couldn't wake our Seeker

I abominate Underprepared. Survivor is my favourite class, I've played with this monstrosity twice now... never again. We play with the house rule that you can take Overzealous instead if you really don't want your basic weakness (thanks for the idea, Bryn!) and I'd Overzealous that thing on sight now. Unlike Amnesia you can't even recover from this with Nothing Left To Lose, because you can't get rid of it until you've got no other cards. I've had to throw away a Nothing Left To Lose in order to meet the conditions for Underprepared, talk about a "feels bad" moment.

Hey at 1:13:55, what ruling on Brand of Cthugha are you referring to?

Overzelous is the wrost of them all. It's can single handedly kill your scenario if drawn at the wrong time. I've died because of it, full health to 0 cause 3 encounter cards in a row early game just isn't gonna be nice. I'm not sure if any other weakness can straight up kill you in one go. So yea, probably the single worst weakness in game.

i have a question regarding some of these weaknesses. when they say to discard with a double action, would doing so provoke 2 attacks of opportunity from engaged enemies since it's using 2 actions? or is the discard a single 'instance' that consumes two actions, and would only provoke one attack?

Through the Gates should have been “I’m happy to get this”. If one or two cards really makes that much difference then you are building your deck badly. I guess if you lost a lightning gun or something it would feel bad but you should have a back up weapon. Also most of the time it isn’t any different from just not drawing your key cards during a scenario which again if that breaks your game you aren’t deck building well.

to ectoplasmic horror : in german its the same wording, so no help from another translation xD

I got amnesia with Lola (no taboo). It may have been the worst time I ever had playing.

Stuborn Detective was a match for Lola😅

you must have drawn doomed twice in a szenario to be killed in a 4 round campaign, or am i reading something wrong

They should add 2 cards, 1 mental trauma at deck creation = allows you to pick your weakness first 1 physical trauma at deck creation = allows you to pick your weakness first Wouldn't need to house rule or change anything

You made half a tier list. You are supposed to place things within each tier to rank against each other item.

You know what would be a mean old time… All-Doomed Edge of the Earth All-Scenario playthrough.. With extra rules - a) investigators are determined randomly, And only 1 of a class can be in play at any time.. b) if an investigator is ☠️, the replacement investigator for that player has to be a different class to the previous one for that player.. (or all previous if possible) 🫥 c) see d. d) did we mentioned “Doomed” All investigators have that “random”basic weakness at deck creation.. 🫣