I just purchased the LCG Core Set and would call myself a novice Call of Cthulhu player. I have some experience with a variety of older CCG's. My question is to some veteran Call of Cthulhu LCG players. I have been reading through the forums here and I am starting to wonder if I am going to have problems putting decks together if I don't have multiple copies of certain cards? Are multiple copies of the same card critical to deck building? I purchased the LCG Core Set for my interest in the theme and playing for fun as opposed to fierce competitive play. I think most of my enjoyment for the game will come from putting together decks with a theme and using no duplicate cards. I am sure I can do this successfully as I have done it with others games and I have supplied all the decks. However, will this plan mean that if I take such a deck out to play at any sort of public event I will be hopelessly outclassed and ground into oblivion as any opponent I play rides some uber card to victory?

Probably will lose to better decks, yes. If there weren't good reasons to put multiple copies of a card in a deck (higher consistency of receiving cards you want to use, repeated use of said cards, etc.) then they wouldn't do it in the first place, obviously.

Maybe you can find someone who wants to play Singleton somewhere, but as far as normal formats go, you probably want at least two core sets if you can swing it.

It's also much harder to play a mono faction deck without more copies of single cards, due to limited cardpool.

Thank you Amante. I appreciate the advice, especially after I reread my opening post. I think I sounded a little snarky there. I have to confess I am a little bitter about some of my past CCG experiences, but I really want to give FF's LCG format the benefit of an open-minded and sincere try. So thanks again. I will give the second core set some serious consideration if I go out into the wild.

It depends a lot on how competitive your games are going to be. If you're planning to play in tournaments, etc. you'll definitely want to get three copies of every card. If you're just playing casually against friends, you'll do fine with a single copy of every AP.

Depending on whether you regularly play with a group, you could also trade (or loan) cards between yourselves if you're using different factions. Three players with one Core Set each would do the trick.

Of course, if everyone wants Cthulhu all the time, that wouldn't work - but it would also lead to some pretty boring games.

You can make a group of 4-6 people and buy 3 core sets and 3 AP's monthly. That way you can build a decent deck for everybody and buy the products cheaper. Players may choose a facion and do a league like deck improvement. I'm trying to do this in Brazil.

Good Games!

Pooling a few sets together and having people share cards seems like a reasonable idea too. I just read the organized play pdf and it has some interesting ideas for managing card pools. Each player starts with a core set and a copy of Asylum pack 7 and one other Asylum Pack #5 or greater. I'm not sure why the 5 and up limitation is important, but I'm sure there is a reason. It appears that players choose a primary faction and an allied faction. The allied faction can change between matches, but the primary faction the allied faction and neutrals are the only legal cards for a player's league deck. After a match players are allowed to voluntarily make a single 1 for 1 cards trade that must be recorded with the league. It sounds like league play doesn't include any duplicate cards to start unless your allowed to take Asylum pack 7 again as your second Asylum pack choice. I have not been involved in any league play so I might have some incomplete information here, but it sounds like a promising system for someone looking to avoid lots of identical cards in his game decks.

The reason for specifying Asylum Pack #5 and later is that this pack marked the transition from "Black-Border" to "White-Border" cards. Although plenty of people play "Legacy" or "Mixed" decks, rumour has it that in short order the only tournament-legal decks will be "White-Border" only. Which only includes the Core Set and Asylum Packs #5 or greater. As noted, the organised play leagues are already "White-Border" only.

we´re 4 guys in our regular play group and we just got the core set 3 times and every pack 3 times, too. each of us decided for a single "main" faction and about one or two "secondary" faction. until now, the only car dwe´d like to use more often is eldritch nexus ^^

jhaelen said:

So, basically, if you're not talking about tournaments, casual play decks can be easily built with two Core sets and one Asylum pack for each player and still be entertaining? Given that most of my gaming buds (boardgamers) probably wouldn't buy the cards, I'd have to provide their card pool.

Actually, I'm in a sort of grey situation: I've got 1 Core set and 1 each of the Asylum Pack of the Julia Brown saga, so I can play 3X of the cards which are given 3X in the packs (only). So, I'm not condemned to mono deck, but neither have everthing 3X availability... Not exactly competitive, but I think it can be OK, for my "casual gamer" purposes

michel3105 said:

That's exactly what I'm doing. Highlander-style FTW!

Actually, when introducing someone new to the game it's beneficial if can you can skip the deck-building phase. If you don't mind that both players cannot pick an identical faction two players can even play with a single core set. That's still quite a few possible combinations and an excellent way to get to know the cards.

In the next stage I simply added cards randomly from the APs. While this means an increased luck factor, it may also be a positive thing because it means less savy players can have a good chance of winning if they're lucky. Imho, it's totally okay to play that way casually.

In the final stage I'd prepare decks using what I have available from my card pool of one core set and one of each APs.

Imho, only after a new player is seriously hooked, she'll start wanting to have her own cards and do some deckbuilding. And then you can pool or trade cards if you want to increase the strategical element.

For what it's worth, I'm doing this same thing. I picked up the starter and a couple APs at GenCon, threw together a deck (Hastur/Yog-Sothoth) and am expecting to get trounced at my FLGS. Hopefully they'll take pity on me and offer some deckbuilding tips—or better, some spare cards from their collections!