Elder Sign

RRP: £39.99
Now £31.95(SAVE 20%)
RRP £39.99
Expected Restock Date 30/04/2024
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Elder Sign, from Fantasy Flight Games, is a dice rolling and placement game that takes place at the museum of Arkham – standing at the threshold to another worldly evil that only the intrepid investigators can prevent. In Elder Sign players take on the role of investigators moving around the museum attempting to complete tasks in order to collect enough Elder Signs to close th…
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Awards

Great For Two

Rating

  • Artwork
  • Complexity
  • Replayability
  • Player Interaction
  • Component Quality

You Might Like

  • The game is tense and gripping, often building to a crescendo.
  • It’s dripping in theme.
  • Decent selection of Ancient Ones, investigators and adventures.
  • Nice gender balance of investigators.

Might Not Like

  • Artwork is quite frightening and sometimes grotesque.
  • Could have benefited from investigator minis or standees, and ink-drop dice.
  • When an Investigator dies, another one simply walks through the museum door.
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Description

Elder Sign, from Fantasy Flight Games, is a dice rolling and placement game that takes place at the museum of Arkham - standing at the threshold to another worldly evil that only the intrepid investigators can prevent. In Elder Sign players take on the role of investigators moving around the museum attempting to complete tasks in order to collect enough Elder Signs to close the way for the ancient one to destroy Arkham and the World. An investigator in Elder Sign can roll up to six green dice, each dice has symbols on them representing investigation, terror, lore and peril. These are then assigned the available tasks that are at the investigator's location, each time being able to re-roll after completing a task or discarding a dice if they were unable to. Fail too many times and the investigator will suffer some penalty such as losing health, sanity, items or having to place doom tokens on the ancient one bringing it ever closer to our world. Investigators can use items and spells to keep rolls, or items to roll the common item yellow die, or the unique item red die which has the wild card symbol on it to be used as anything! Beware, there is a clock that moves around after each investigator's turn and when it reaches midnight random effects will happen such as more doom being added to the ancient one or monsters coming out to thwart the Investigators hunt for Elder Signs. Each investigator has unique skills to aid the hunt, including being able to manipulate the dice or possibly, once a location has been successfully completed, changing the rewards that are granted; rewards can range from gaining clues letting you re-roll dice, gaining common or unique items, finding allies, or learning spells. Each investigator will have to work together and in some cases push their luck in order to overcome the approach of Shub-Niggurath, Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth or one of the other five ancient ones! Player Count: 1-8 Time: 90 Minutes Age: 13+

 

When I first got back into board gaming and joined a games group, one of the early experiences that is still clear in my mind is my introduction to co-operative gaming through the dice-based game, Elder Sign.

One of the group members suggested it and in the buzz of excitement I asked about the theme and someone told me it was from the “Lovecraft universe” and the “Cthulhu mythos” – I assumed that Lovecraft was the name of a film or comic book until I found out (when I got home through a quick Wikipedia search) that Lovecraft was in fact the name of an author who wrote most of his stuff almost a hundred years ago!

I also found out that the universe he created has transcended from his books into films, video games and pop culture. And on further examination I found that Lovecraft is a pretty ubiquitous theme in board gaming, with Elder Sign being a somewhat lighter/simpler introduction into the Lovecraft mythos than Fantasy Flight’s other offerings in the universe, such as Arkham Horror, Eldritch Horror and Mansions of Madness.

In keeping with Lovecraft’s stories, Elder Sign has a very dark theme and one can feel oppressed and strung-out whilst playing it (in a good thematic way of course!) The game takes place in the large ‘Miskatonic University Museum” in the fictional town of Arkham, Massachusetts, where between one and eight players take on the roles of investigators in a struggle to combat one of the Ancient Ones – hideous, giant, god-like monsters that dwell in the space between dimensions and would just love to have a party in our back yard!

The object for all players is to work together to seal the Ancient One away before it awakens. To do this, the investigators must undertake adventures in the museum in order to collect Elder Signs, which seal the dimensional cracks like a mystic superglue. If the Ancient One awakens, the investigators undertake one last epic face-to-face battle in the vain hope of defeating it before it consumes all in its path

Sorry about all the doom and gloom, but that’s the theme of this game and it really comes across well.

Night at the Museum

On a player’s turn they would typically move their investigator to an Adventure card and attempt to resolve the tasks on the card by rolling the custom dice. Tasks are completed by rolling symbols or groups of symbols (Investigation, Peril, Lore, Terror). If you complete a task on the adventure card you “dock” the dice on the card and re-roll your remaining dice, hoping to pass the other tasks. If you fail, you discard a dice of your choosing then roll again. After failing a task you can “focus” a die, which allows you to keep a die result for use on a later roll.

Winning an adventure allows you to collect the reward, which can include such things as Elder Signs, clues, spells, items and allies to help you in future adventures (including the use of the better yellow and red dice), but triumph may also spawn monsters. You also gain trophies for winning adventures and defeating monsters, which can be used as currency in the shop on the museum entrance sheet.

Losing an adventure can take its toll on your stamina and sanity – if you drop to zero in either your investigator dies and takes all their items to the grave with them – you’ll then take the role of a new investigator, who comes without any adornments.

While all of this happens the clock ticks, and at midnight Mythos cards can bring both immediate and lingering effects to the game, and the Ancient One casts its shadow over the whole affair with game-altering effects.

If you manage to collect ten Elder Signs before the Ancient One’s doom track is filled you win, but if the doom track fills first the Ancient One awakens and attacks – usually with harrowing and game-ending results.

Fun in the Gloom?

This game feels like it’s been doused in a bucket of theme, and the heavy, tense atmosphere is often punctuated by relief as your team completes adventures and sometimes shattered altogether by triumph if you manage to seal the Ancient One away and win the game.

Elder Sign is easily played solo, whether you decide to play as a single investigator or manage a team. Although I always have a bit more fun when playing with one or two others as you really feel the brinkmanship and share in the ecstasy and (more frequent) agony.

I wouldn’t necessarily recommend playing at the higher player counts of five to eight as downtime creeps in and rewards are spread thinner, and so does your chance of success.

Feel the Terror

The components are decent enough, although I feel the solid-coloured dice would’ve benefitted from less garish colour tones, or perhaps they could have looked into providing wonderful ink-drop dice (like the one in Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu).

Also, the little investigator tiles often get lost amongst everything and I feel the game would have benefited from them being Arkham Horror-style standees or even plastic minis – I have been known to substitute the investigator tiles with the investigator minis from Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu

My last little moan about the components are that the doom tokens can sometimes look a little camouflaged on the doom track, as they show the same hooded figure that they’re meant to cover up – there needed to be a better attempt at differentiation so you can see the current doom token status at a glance.

However, all of the above are aesthetic nit-picks and don’t impact or spoil the gameplay itself.

Final Thoughts on Elder Sign

I previously had a somewhat mild animosity of dice but I didn’t realise, until I played Elder Sign for the first time that these days clever game designers have come up with interesting mechanics to utilise dice in different ways (see Pandemic: The Cure, King of Tokyo, Sagrada and Sentient for some more examples).

While I don’t play Elder Sign as frequently as other games, this game has a permanent place on my shelf as I can’t imagine my collection without it. I even invested in the Omens of Ice expansion, which takes the adventure out of the museum into the wilds of Alaska – the wilderness theme sings to me!

Finally, I’d like to share my favourite memory of playing Elder Sign, which has to be when I played it with my eldest daughter in a log cabin in deepest darkest Wales – it felt so thematic. That day the icy winds of Ithaqua blew, but we gave our all and had victory snatched away by the jaws of defeat… Or something like that…

My family and I have always enjoyed playing board games. In the past, when My wife and I have visited my parents, who are both now in their sixties, we have often enjoyed a game of Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, or Cluedo. Last Christmas, that all changed. We almost blew my parents’ minds with a complex, elaborate, horror-themed game called Elder Sign.

My Father is one of the most reluctant gamers you could ever meet, seemingly content with a simple game of noughts and crosses or draughts. Elder Sign rocked my Father’s world. On no less than four nights, across that single Christmas period, I bore witness to him asking, with surprising intensity, if there was any way for him to get an extra dice roll, or if anyone else around the table had any special abilities to replenish his stamina. In playing Elder Sign, I had created a monster, by introducing My Father to a game filled with monsters.

Overview

It doesn’t get more epic than an intense showdown, with the ultimate Evil that is the monsters conjured by the mind of HP Lovecraft. The sense of foreboding doom grows in intensity, as you and your investigative colleagues get closer to either banishing the Ancient One or having to face off against them, in an almost unwinnable battle. Elder Sign is a great introduction to the world of modern gaming, as it is relatively straightforward, at every turn, whilst engaging even the most reluctant of player, with a solid story and a relatable horror theme.

With Elder Sign, newcomers will get an enlightening introduction to the notion of cooperative gaming too. If you are accustomed to the more familiar notion of fleecing your gaming companions of their hard-earned cash, when they land on a square that you’ve essentially been obliged to buy, simply because you landed on it first, then cooperative gameplay of Elder Sign will be a refreshing change.

Set Up & Pack Down

Some might say that the setting up of Elder Sign isn’t too harrowing. However, if like me and many others I’m sure, you glean some sort of sick satisfaction from setting up and then packing down a game, then I will instead say that set up isn’t too time consuming. It also only takes an average amount of time learning to play Elder Sign, unlike some other games. Let’s face it, it’s not really game night when three hours are spent trying to figure out the rules, before it’s time for your guests to depart in exhaustion.

Packing Elder Sign down is a totally different story. I’m not entirely sure what the Elder Sign’s developers expect you to do with player markers, sanity tokens, stamina tokens, Elder Sign tokens, Doom track tokens, clue tokens, monster markers, all the cards and all the dice, when the box has no partitions or slots. Of course, it’s not enough to put me off Elder Sign. I purchased some small zip lock bags to separate the vast range of different tokens before effectively chucking them into an empty cardboard box. Some semblance of storage organisation, would be a welcome addition.

Gameplay

Gameplay is fast-paced, which can be exciting as well as frustrating, when you accidentally make a hasty choice to play an Adventure card that you’re dismally underprepared for. Many a time I’ve found myself overly confident when placing my player marker on an Adventure card, only to find that I’m actually very low on sanity or stamina tokens, possess no extra dice rolls and one of the dice is locked, meaning I had a vastly reduced chance of resolving that specific Adventure card. This is often accompanied by combined disappointment and hilarity from my teammates.

I think one of the best things about Elder Sign is the variation in gameplay. It seems that every game is different, due to the vast combinations of Adventure cards, characters, and item and spell cards. I’ve played Elder Sign on my own and experienced deep despair, at my rotten luck with the dice rolls and my poor fortune with Item and Spell cards. In stark contrast, I’ve played with friends and family members, when absolutely everything has been going our way and we’ve felt invincible, in the face of the darkest demonic creatures the underworld can throw at us.

The pull of this Elder Sign is that, whichever of these outcomes you find yourself experiencing, it’s still thoroughly enjoyable. You never feel like giving up or sweeping everything off the table and on to the floor in a fit of rage, because the Elder Sign is designed in such a way that your fortunes can change literally on a dice roll or a card draw, and regularly does.

Summary

In essence, Elder Sign feels like an epic, without as much faff to set up or to learn. It’s engaging, even for your elderly Dad, who would normally rather fall asleep in front of a crime thriller. And it has a thrilling story, which gives you a sense of affinity to the characters and a very real urgency to save all of humanity from the unthinkable Evil of dark dimensions. A great game, Elder Sign is definitely one to have in the collection.

Zatu Score

Rating

  • Artwork
  • Complexity
  • Replayability
  • Player Interaction
  • Component Quality

You might like

  • The game is tense and gripping, often building to a crescendo.
  • Its dripping in theme.
  • Decent selection of Ancient Ones, investigators and adventures.
  • Nice gender balance of investigators.

Might not like

  • Artwork is quite frightening and sometimes grotesque.
  • Could have benefited from investigator minis or standees, and ink-drop dice.
  • When an Investigator dies, another one simply walks through the museum door.