Regarding the CoC games advertised on the FFG's holiday sale, is it sufficient to have a single starter set to play this game?

Sorry if it's been asked before, but since forum speed is an issue, I can't consult archives...

My answer's yes, sort of, if you are playing socially and seeing if you like the basic feel of the game

It's playable, and will give an introductory handle on the rules, but you'll have a fairly poor shadow of what the game is really like when you start adding to, and customising, your decks. If you can, I'd recommend scraping up a little more cash and adding a bunch of boosters...

Well, the boosters aren't really necessary, you want the Asylum packs of fixed cards. Organized Play is going to limit the build to Asylum packs to keep the ground level.

However, the sentiment is dead on - the starter set gives you the feel of the game and you can play it and have fun! As you add more choices through Asylum packs (or boosters) you can tweak your deck and get more effects and synergies amongst the actions/characters/supports. Eventually you will find that deck building becomes half of the fun!

TheProfessor said:

Quite right if you are starting now, especially if you are interested in tournament play under the current rules, the new box set and the Asylum packs are the way to begin - but I'd assumed (maybe wrongly!), since the OP was asking about the FFG 'sale', they were looking at the older starter sets rather than the Asylum packs.

put the netural ,shub-niggurath and cthulhu factions together for the best bet you have for a deck out of the starter box

While I'd say the starter box is good enough to get going, I don't feel that it offers a great play experience. Having a deck full of single-copy cards makes it very hard to play with when compared to other card games. All the players in my adventure league have voiced this same opinion, and wish that the were two copies of everything to get started. However, that said...the decks can start gaining a lot more consistency with the addition of cards from the Asylum packs.

I've found that when helping players build decks, three to four packs are necessary to provide enough cards to the wanted factions. So the price ends up being almost the same: one starter and 3 packs, or two starters is the way to go.

I keep seeing the term "Boosters", is this in reference to boosters from the ccg or something I overlooked.

Also on that note, are the ccg cards able to be mixed in or no?

The CCG has differnet backs and a black border. This means you will need to use opaque sleeves to play with a mix of the two types.

We bought on Core set, then ramped it up to x3 of each card with the original black boardered versions recognizing the white bordered versions as the MRP or "legal" text of the cards. We currently have 90% of the Core cards at x3 and most of the ones we do not we would not ever need full playsets anyway. We have agreed to just get x1 of each Asylum Pack and deal with the mixed rarity as part of the game. This is a perfectly good and relativly inexpensive way to collect the cards if you do not plan on getting into a more competative level of play (3 areas in the US and maybe a handful of Cons).

IMO CCG's typically have 300+ different cards in their Core or base sets for good reason. Deck diversity. We are quickly moving into the first 6-8 asylum packs for this reason.