INTRODUCTION
My next review is Curse of the Dark Pharaoh, a small box expansion to the Fantasy Flight Games remake of Arkham Horror. This game and its expansions are based upon the works of the famous horror/Sci Fi writer H P Lovecraft. The Curse of the Dark Pharaoh is only a card expansion, and cannot be used without a copy of Arkham Horror. If you haven't got the base game yet, you might want start by reading my review of Arkham Horror (under the name "Arkham Horror: My First Review"), that way the following will make a little more sense to you!

OVERVIEW
The Curse of the Dark Pharaoh expansion marks the arrival of a mysterious Egyptian museum exhibit to the town of Arkham. With the exhibit comes a fresh surge in supernatural events and activities, and is seems that an Ancient One is once again stirring from its eternal slumber..Will a small group of Investigators be able to stop this new evil force?

COMPONENTS
The Curse of the Dark Pharaoh expansion adds 90 Other World, Mythos and Arkham Encounter cards to the base game, as well as 76 Investigator Cards (including new Allies, Spells and a deck of Exhibit Items). As expected, the quality of these cards (and the box they come in) equal the high standard of the other Arkham Horror releases.

GAMEPLAY
Whilst only a small contribution to the base game in comparison to the Dunwich Horror expansion, Curse of the Dark Pharaoh boasts several unique features. The most obvious feature is the addition of an Exhibit Item deck, 22 new items that can only be gained through encounters and events. Several of these cards are masks, which will allow the owner to gain the special ability of another Investigator for three rounds before the mask is discarded. For example, the Mask of Three Fates grants the wearer the special abilities of Sister Mary, Mandy Thompson or Carolyn Fern for three rounds once activated. Then there are a few powerful artefacts like the Spirit Vessel which adds 1 to the Toughness value of all monster trophies you own, or the Chime of Ra, which can be used three times to add +2 to all Combat and Horror Checks for the phase (you can use it all at once to add a rather good +6 if you want!). The most important of the Exhibit items is the Parchment of the Elder Sign, which you may discard as you attempt to close a gate. If you fail then the card is discarded with no effect, but if you pass you may use the parchment like an Elder Sign to remove a Doom Token from the Doom Track and seal the location.

The other new Investigator cards include a fresh handful of powerful allies, plenty of new spells and new Barred from the Neighbourhood, Benefit and Detriment cards. The allies are damn good, most of which provide +2 bonuses to specific skill checks rather then normal skill checks. For example, David Packard adds +2 to all Combat and Evade checks, as well as allowing you to draw a new skill when he joins you. The allies in this expansion also bring the total number of allies up to 23 if you have the Dunwich Horror expansion. This means you can have 20 allies per game and discard 2 every time the Terror Track goes up instead of the usual 10 allies and discard 1.

The spells are possibly the least exciting thing about this expansion. Despite the fact that there are a fair few new ones, they just don't seem to do alot more then those found in the base game and Dunwich expansion. Many of them seem to just allow investiagtors to use Lore to make other kinds of skill checks. This may be good for certain high-lore spell casters, but not great for the rest!

A number of the new Arkham Encounters can cause your Investigator to be barred from whatever neighbourhood they drew the encounter from. Taking a Barred from the Neighbourhood card means your investigator cannot wilfully enter any of the locations in that area until the Terror Track has risen. This can be quite frustrating at certain points in a game, such as not being able to get to a huge pile of clue tokens or getting caught in the street by monsters because you couldn't get to the safety of a location.

The Benefits and Detriments have a similar good/bad effect to Blessings and Curses in that they help or hinder investigators and are only discarded when certain situations arise. For example, if your Investigator gets the Benefit "Anointed", he or she can allow other Investigators to re-roll the dice when they fail to keep a Blessing. Likewise, if you end up with the Detriment "Wanted", the investigator must make a Sneak -2 check each time they get kicked out of a location as a reult of an encounter. If they fail then they get arrested!
Maybe the most entertaining (and scary) feature of this expansion is the Duel Colour Other World cards. These cards match the colour of two encounter symbols, fine as long as you aren't travelling through the Other World that matches both colours... But if you are travelling through R'lyeh, Plateau of Leng or Yuggoth beware! If you manage to draw the duel colour card that matches your location you stumble upon and must confront the Ancient One who dwells in that Other World! Yes, that means that you will have to fight Cthulhu, Ithaqua or Shub Niggurath all on your own! This adds an element of true Lovecraftian horror to Other World travelling.

The rest of Curse of the Dark Pharaohs theme is found in its new Mythos and Arkham Encounter cards. There are numerous Egyptian and biblical themed occurances such as plaugues of insects, sand storms and strange diseases which all help to highlight the weirdness bought on by the museum exhibit. The Mythos cards in this expansion contain more of the less common unstable locations too, meaning the frequency of gates opening increases across all locations and will subsequently lead to more Doom Tokens on the Doom Track. Another key feature of this expansion is that some of the Mythos cards have the message "no gates open this turn, but add two doom tokens to the doom track" instead of the usual gate symbol. One of these cards appearing at the wrong time can devastate a game, as the jump adds momentum to games against the smaller Ancients like Yig, whilst wrecking the chance of victory late on against bigger Ancients like Cthulhu and Azathoth. Having the bad luck to draw two of these cards in a game is crippling!

Lastly the expansion rules offer two different play styles. The "Permanent Exhibit" style involves mixing all the cards into the other sets as normal and playing with the new events and cards dispersed evenly throughout the game. On the other hand, the "Visiting Exhibit" style involves only using the Mythos, Encounters and Other World cards from the new expansion, delivering a more thematic game that is obviously a lot harder (more of an equal mix of opening gates, and the add two doom token cards WILL come up each game).

CONCLUSION
As with the Dunwich Horror expansion, price becomes an unavoidable factor in the decision to buy this game or not. I personally think that at £13 (around $26) this expansion is sadly a little over priced for what it is. The mark would be better at maybe £7-£10 ($14-$20). Despite this, Curse of the Dark Pharaoh is still a very good expansion. It adds a new theme to Arkham Horror and increases the difficulty to boot. It's just a shame that when compared to the other expansions those with limited funds would probably be better off saving up and buying the Dunwich Horror expansion instead (more investigators, more monsters, more Ancients, all more of the really good stuff!). Despite this, if you are a hardcore Arkham Horror fan you will definatley buy this expansion anyway and you WILL enjoy it. If nothing else, the immediate thought is more cards-longer lifespan! My final rating for this expansion is 9/10. This is a great addition to a brilliant game. If you like Arkham Horror you will also like this expansion.