Hello! This is an entry in a series of articles where I will go over all of the playable investigators in the Arkham Files universe and check out their backstory as well as how they have been depicted over the years, both lore-wise and mechanically.
Hank Samson is a farmhand that is commonly depicted to be a very simple man. He’s big, brawny, and can rip the wings off a byakhee with his bare hands, but when it comes to book-smarts he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer. He is typically quite bold, doing things first and asking questions later (or not at all) but overall he’s a tough cookie. He is commonly depicted with one mission: Finding his ‘Pa’.
Now, a common element of his character is that he is typically depicted as not particularly comprehending the evils and horrors he is facing, he just does not consider it. This is an element that is actually directly from the Call of Cthulhu tabletop roleplaying game (which was affiliated with Arkham Horror from the very beginning up to, and including, the 2nd edition). The following is an excerpt from the 7th edition rules for Call of Cthulhu:
If an investigator loses 5 or more Sanity points as the consequence of a single Sanity roll, they have suffered major emotional trauma. The player must roll 1D100. If the result is equal to or less than their Intelligence (INT), the investigator fully understands and comprehends what has been seen and goes temporarily insane (for 1D10 hours). If they fail the roll, their mind is closed to the horror and they remain sane (for now).
https://cthulhuwiki.chaosium.com/rules/sanity.html
This means mechanically the higher your intelligence, the more likely it is that your character would actually understand what is going on and its implications on the world, the universe and everything. Your character actually comprehending the horrors of the universe is enough to send them into a vicious spiral of insanity.
If Hank Samson were a Call of Cthulhu character, his Intelligence stat would be very low. He would not, at first, understand the horrors of the universe around him until it bites him and/or it starts doing unnatural things the longer it is around. Eventually, all investigators would crack and understand just what they’re looking at, or understand just how little they know.
Arkham Horror: 2nd Edition
His first appearance was in the Innsmouth Horror expansion pack. He is depicted as fairly balanced, albeit with a much heavier focus on fighting and movement rather than spells and clue-gathering. His unique ability mirrors what was mentioned previously, where he would only take horror damage from an enemy if the enemy attacks him, to which then he would make a horror check if it actually deals him sanity damage. If he is not physically hurt, then why should that weird animal-creature-thingie be so scary?
Hank’s backstory in this game focused on how he is not very clever (exact words used are “He wasn’t stupid, exactly”, I must emphasize, which is awfully mean) and he had an encounter with a large buzzard. After blasting it with a shotgun, him and his Pa went to Arkham to visit Miskatonic with the corpse to see what the deal was, but then both the corpse and his Pa went missing. Now it was up to good ol’ Hank to figure out what’s going on.
His personal story is very simple: Find his Pa. Uniquely enough, you can actually find his Pa in the game! Finishing his mission finds Pa Samson at the Train Station (spending 5 clues there) and gets him as an ally, buffing his weakened stats. Hank does not understand why his Pa was in the situation he was in, nor would he care. Hank gets his Pa back and that’s all that matters.
Eldritch Horror
Hank returns in Under the Pyramids, this time much more clearly built like an absolute truck. His total sanity is very low, but balanced out by his passive ability of being able to just skip horror checks if he does not take damage (which is a very potent ability). His action is to just discard enemies without having to do an encounter with them, which is also similarly very strong
A decent Observation value also lets him get clues that well. His primary weakness is a lack of ability to do spells with a low Lore stat and low Influence would make shopping for items more difficult (although we already know you have Charlie Kane on the board for that)
His starting item is a Sledgehammer (sharing art with the LCG) which just buffs his Strength even further.
His backstory is largely unchanged from his previous appearance, except removing the parts about his intelligence (which is a change for the better). He is far more of a straightforward hit-first-ask-questions-later dude who just wants to get the job done, knowing full well that others would be too chicken to do it. In his backstory, his eldritch encounter with a large winged beast was now specified to be in in Texas. He cracked its skull open nonetheless (with a maul now instead of a shotgun, that’s hardcore), but then heard his Pa went missing somewhere in Dallas and went to go find him cause “Hank Samson ain’t afraid of anything, and he aims to find his pa.” What a trooper.
His personal story is the same as before: Find Pa. The reward for the mission also claims to find Pa, but does not reward an ally of Pa Samson and instead just stat buffs and a new passive ability to shrug off more damage from Monsters (which, to be fair, is pretty great). The consequence of failure is pretty rough, giving you Injury conditions 1 to 1 to the damage you take for the rest of the game. Ouch.
Elder Sign
Hank joins the dice throwing extravaganza in the Omens of the Deep expansion pack and is one of the few investigators in the game to start with a Skill. Considering how much of a point the 2nd edition of the game made about how he was not much for thinking, this is rather unusual. Regardless, his ill-named passive ability from 2nd edition returned, although it also allows him to take less damage (in Elder Sign known as stamina) in addition to taking less horror.
For the longest while, this is his last appearance in the Arkham Files games.
Mansions of Madness
He did not make an appearance in Mansions of Madness.
Arkham Horror: 3rd Edition
Also absent.
Investigators of Arkham Horror
Spoilers regarding Hank Samson’s section in the Investigators of Arkham Horror book.
Hank’s story in the book is rather interesting as we had already seen it before. It is a retelling of his Arkham Horror 2nd edition story, where he is on the farm with his Pa where he finds his cattle getting slaughtered by a big winged creature, which is promptly slaughtered by a blast from Hank’s shotgun, and then Pa Samson calls up his contact in Miskatonic to see about identifying whatever the beast may be. The story fast forwards slightly to Hank taking a quick detour in Dunwich to get some gas and shells, passing some iconic sights like Sentinel Hill, before he continues onto Arkham.
This depiction of the story adds two details. Throughout various points in the tale, Hank sees whippoorwill all around. Whippoorwill are birds that tend to hang around when death is about to happen, which Hank was kind of aware of. The second detail added was the implication that Hank’s ancestors had their roots in Dunwich, which was previously unexplored. Fortunately, Dunwich roots do not have too many negative implications compared to Innsmouth heritage unless your last name is Whateley (which is brought up by name by Pa Samson, with him warning his son to not to mess around with the Whateleys, so we’re good there).
I will always highly recommend the Investigators of Arkham book for anyone who is a fan of the series, but I especially liked this story because it is fun to actually see Hank and Pa Samson interact with one another as well as see his backstory come alive like it does here.
Arkham Horror: The Card Game
As of this writing, his investigator expansion (Feast of Hemlock Vale) has yet to release. However, we do have access to his investigator cards (that’s right, plural), signature and weakness. We are only missing the back of the card, which includes his deckbuilding and backstory here (which is usually unchanged from the Eldritch Horror depiction except without mentioning specific locations due to the card game having less of a focus on requiring characters to start all over the world).
Hank joins the club of being one of few investigators to sport a mighty 5 in his combat (the first Survivor to do so), but his health and sanity is very low. He also shares the printed ability that Tetsuo Mori has where he can take damage/horror from others at his location. You might be thinking, “How could an investigator who has less health and sanity than Carson Sinclair be a soak for the team, what are those game designers thinking!”, then I must redirect you to the reaction trigger on his card. When he dies by damage or horror, he can instead heal everything and swap his investigator card to his second Resolute form, like a Marvel Champions villain!
One of them (his Assistant form, left) balances his stats out and gives card draw on taking horror (of which he can take more of). His other variant (his Warden form, right) improves his Willpower and Combat stats by one (giving him SIX Combat!) and resources on taking damage (of which he can take more of). This second life comes at the cost of neither forms being able to be healed from here on out (note: moving damage/tokens off of of him does not count as healing which is important for his signature to work (click to see it).
Although we don’t see his card back, we do know he is still out there looking for his Pa from his signature weakness, aptly named “Where’s Pa?” Very interestingly enough, the card art depicts the scene described in his Eldritch Horror backstory where he bashed a winged creature with a maul (the sledgehammer is in the art!) His signature also reinforces his EH characterization of him being the tough guy who’s brave enough to protect all the little guys (cause if he won’t, who will?)
Overall Thoughts
Although Hank Samson’s depiction and characterization has been tiptoeing a very fine line in 2nd edition, the updates they made to his character in Eldritch Horror has improved him substantially to be far more heroic and fun. He’s just a nice guy who’s heart is bigger than his head. He throws the first blow before thinking about the consequences. He’s the shield that can
I cannot imagine what his deckbuilding could look like since it feels like all manner of tanky Survivor deckbuilding has already been taken. Guardian-Survivor, Survivor-Guardian, Guardian 0 Survivor 1-5 (the ever-beloved Daniella deckbuilding). Spirit cards are also extremely thematic for Hank since he has a lot of spirit, but Survivor Spirit was already taken by Calvin Wright. What is he going to have?
Current bets are on the Tony Morgan/Carson Sinclair ‘pick a secondary class’ style deckbuilding with Seeker being the choice not there (which fits his characterization since he’s not particularly much of an clue-getting type). Whatever it may be, it’ll surely be interesting to go along with his strange and frankly frightening ability, requiring you to time when your death comes so you rise like a phoenix (only to get hit by something like a poorly timed Grasping Hands).
The Barnaby Files 
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