"I do not know whether dread or adventurous expectancy was uppermost in me as I changed trains in Boston and began the long westward run out of familiar regions into those I knew less thoroughly."

–H.P. Lovecraft, The Whisperer in Darkness

All aboard! The Essex County Express is now available for Arkham Horror: The Card Game!

The second Mythos Pack in The Dunwich Legacy cycle, The Essex County Express sets you upon the fast track to terror with its thrilling new scenario. Whether you play it as a standalone adventure or as part of your The Dunwich Legacy campaign, The Essex County Express threatens to shatter your sanity as interdimensional rifts appear in the sky, train cars are ripped from the tracks by unseen forces, and otherworldly creatures crawl, slam, and ooze their way into your passenger car.

This train ride isn't for the feint of heart, and if you hope to survive it, you'll need to think fast and act faster. As the train is ripped apart and your fellow passengers panic all around you, your primary goal is to race as fast as you can to the Engine Car. You have to get the train moving and get as far away as you can. It's your only chance of escape and survival.

But there's no telling what you'll find when you rush from one car to the next. The air is charged with an eldritch energy. Unnatural creatures have boarded the train. The rails are falling apart, and you're stuck on board!

A series of randomized train cars ensure your adventures aboard The Essex County Express are always full of surprises, and you'll want to take full advantage of the expansion's new player cards to steel your nerves and address the challenges that rise to meet you on your hectic dash toward tthe engine.

Magic to Fight the Madness

In our announcement and preview of The Essex County Express, we've already seen some of the pack's exciting new player cards.

Permanents like Relic Hunter (The Essex County Express, 157) and Charisma (The Essex County Express, 158) open up new paths your investigator can explore over the course of your campaign—provided you survive your train ride.

Stand Together (The Essex County Express, 148) introduces new tactics for cooperative play.

And other cards—like Deduction (The Essex County Express, 150)—allow you to invest your experience directly toward your pursuit of the truths that lie buried beneath the game's many layers of mystery.

Still, the game's experience system doesn't just allow you to swap out the tricks you've already mastered for new ones; it also allows you to improve upon some of the skills that you use time and time again.

In the Arkham LCG®, your deck defines you. It's all your skills, talents, and assets given physical form, and as you gain experience over the course of your adventures, you can use that experience to "level up" your deck. And by spending three experience, you can upgrade your Core Set Shrivelling (Core Set, 60) to the new, more powerful version you'll find in The Essex County Express.

This new Shrivelling (The Essex County Express, 154) costs the same number of resources and yields the same number of uses, but it grants you two additional points of Willpower toward your test, making investigators like Agnes Baker (Core Set, 4) and Jim Culver (The Dunwich Legacy, 4) absolute powerhouses in combat, especially if they're gaining extra Willpower from a Holy Rosary (Core Set, 59) or their Arcane Studies (Core Set, 62).

This is important to note because you won't have time for failure aboard The Essex County Express. You'll need every spell—and every bullet—to strike true. You'll need to keep your eyes open for every object and insight that might help you get moving. You'll need to be better and more effective than you have been up until now… And if you succeed, you'll come away wiser and stronger than ever.

Stay on Track

It won't be an easy task, but if you survive your journey, there's still a larger mystery waiting to be solved. Why did a rift suddenly appear in the sky? What were the creatures you fought on the train? How—if at all—were these events connected to the disappearance of the professors you seek?

There's a great deal of mystery still ahead of you, but you need to stay on track to get there. Step one: survive your train ride to Dunwich!