I think getting a random weakness at the beginning of the campaign and keeping the same one throughout the campaign would be the most logical.

To add to this, I think you will be adding weaknesses in between acts based on the horror still on your investigator

I think getting a random weakness at the beginning of the campaign and keeping the same one throughout the campaign would be the most logical.

To add to this, I think you will be adding weaknesses in between acts based on the horror still on your investigator

Yes, maybe not every time but you probably will accumulate more and especially if things go badly on a quest.

Basically because they seem to put extra effort on the campain mode. If feels unthematic that my investigator is amnesic this act and the next one he is paranoic instead. It kinda substract from the inmersion. Unless you keep adding weaknesses randomly after each act.

It sounds like you don't remake the deck between between acts of the campaign. The description for "leveling up" cards doesn't seem to say anything re-building the deck as a whole. It seems much more likely that once a random weakness is chosen when the deck is built, it stays in the built deck through the entire campaign.

Yep. It seems that you only build deck in the very beginning. After that you only gain upgrades to your deck. So if you make bad chooses in the beginning they will haunt you during the whole quest. But most probably it is impossible to make impossible deck. Just sub optimal. It may be as important what cards do you upgrade during the whole campaign.

This is a game where you pack your backpack and go for adventuring. Maybe you find some new artifacts during your joyrney, but if you leave home without your handkerchief, you have to manage without it... Nice consept actually. Real rpg feeling in it!

I would be surprised if you couldn't deckbuild in the middle of a campaign. You buy a new Mythos pack and you can't slot in the new cards? Doubtful. Maybe you can't change investigators, but everything else is fair game.

I'm gonna go with soullos on this one...Would have a hard time seeing them put out a bunch of new player cards and restrict you from using them.

That said, there could be some restrictions in place for campaign play. Something like you cannot change burdens (know that isn't the right term, but I cant think of what the disadvantages are called off the top of my head).

I'm gonna go with soullos on this one...Would have a hard time seeing them put out a bunch of new player cards and restrict you from using them.

That said, there could be some restrictions in place for campaign play. Something like you cannot change burdens (know that isn't the right term, but I cant think of what the disadvantages are called off the top of my head).

I think "weakness" is the term in this game. And I agree that it's likely they would carry over, but not necessarily the entire deck.

Similar to several posters above, at the moment I'm imagining a system similar to the LOTR Saga campaign mode and campaign pool. Negative cards you earn are added to the campaign pool and remain with you throughout the campaign. Upgrades that you earn or buy aren't available for deck building from the start but are added to the campaign pool and become available for deck building from there.

For instance, 'Anduril' is a 'boon' card that cannot used in non-campaign play. Instead it can be earned during the LOTR saga through a quest effect. It's a player card that goes in your deck and is a available for you to deck build with from the time you earn it and write it into your campaign pool.

Until we hear more, I am assuming character upgrades will work in a similar way in AH.

I'm really torn between this whole campain thing. From one point it seems logical that you shouldn't be able to change your deck completelly between acts, as it detracts from the inmersion and makes weaknesses and the XP system less relevant (and since they designed the cards to have up to 6 levels, it spunds like it should be important).

From another hand, it goes against the LCG system as we have known so far. Cards that are released in the packs couldn't be used inmediatelly (unless they are levelled up cards), and acts would have to be designed with that in mind, making them less flexible.

So maybe Mythos Packs will work entirelly different than how we are used to? The idea of them having an investigator with his preconstructed deck like Ashes expansions looks like a great idea to me.

LotR LCG shown FFG that there's a huge potential market to explore in those players that love board style games but don't like or know how to deckbuild (LotR is huge in boardgamegeek for example, where the other LCG are mostly unnoticed, but the deckbuilding aspect of it scares a lot of players that are interested on it. WHQ on the other hand was really successful among them). AH seems tailored to them with all the assisted deckbuilding mechanics it has (class restricted by investigator, mandatory cards, levelled up versions, limit slots for assets, double use of card so they are never wasted draws, etc) that seems specially designed to make deckbuilding a step by step easy process. If done right, this could perfectly be their way to introduce deckbuilding to all those boardgame players that were off put by it before, expanding their audience and increasing the chances that some of them would pick other LCG in time.

I'm really torn between this whole campain thing. From one point it seems logical that you shouldn't be able to change your deck completelly between acts, as it detracts from the inmersion and makes weaknesses and the XP system less relevant (and since they designed the cards to have up to 6 levels, it spunds like it should be important).

From another hand, it goes against the LCG system as we have known so far. Cards that are released in the packs couldn't be used inmediatelly (unless they are levelled up cards), and acts would have to be designed with that in mind, making them less flexible.

So maybe Mythos Packs will work entirelly different than how we are used to? The idea of them having an investigator with his preconstructed deck like Ashes expansions looks like a great idea to me.

LotR LCG shown FFG that there's a huge potential market to explore in those players that love board style games but don't like or know how to deckbuild (LotR is huge in boardgamegeek for example, where the other LCG are mostly unnoticed, but the deckbuilding aspect of it scares a lot of players that are interested on it. WHQ on the other hand was really successful among them). AH seems tailored to them with all the assisted deckbuilding mechanics it has (class restricted by investigator, mandatory cards, levelled up versions, limit slots for assets, double use of card so they are never wasted draws, etc) that seems specially designed to make deckbuilding a step by step easy process. If done right, this could perfectly be their way to introduce deckbuilding to all those boardgame players that were off put by it before, expanding their audience and increasing the chances that some of them would pick other LCG in time.

I am one of "those" people probably...I love LOTR and play it tons, but am a shameless net decker. While I love interesting combos and using interesting decks, I am much more interested in going through the adventures than tweaking my deck. While it can be fun just to mull through the cards, looking at art and finding good synergies, it really isn't my forte.

That said, I want to be able to build some (or at least take advantage of other people's intersting decks) and without a fair amount of deck building present I would wonder how the meta for the game would develop. It seems like it would be hard to keep a community going without that the discussion that comes from building and tweaking decks.

So I really don't know which side I'm on...it being a little toned down from LOTR sounds good, but not toned down too much.

(Have light deck building though, Chewie, but don't look like your trying to have light deck building. I don't know. Build casual)

As long as you still have to keep the weakness cards, I don't see being able to change your deck as making weaknesses or XP less relevant.

Also, just to point out - this is a coop/solo game. There is no tournament judge that will penalize you if you're breaking the rules. No matter what the book says, you can change your deck if you want to, and you can leave it the same if you want to. Everyone can play the game their own way if they feel like it.

Personally, I have difficulty imagining that they're going to come out with a bunch of new cards and have rules that you're not allowed to use any of them unless you start the campaign over again. That just seems baffling to me. Just keep the weaknesses, but modify anything else you want, makes more sense to me.

I don't see changing your deck as breaking any sort of immersion either. Let's say in pack 1 you are investigating a missing person and discover that the cult is meeting in a cave in the woods. Is it somehow unthematic that in the pack 2 quest you'd decide to bring some torches to light your way, or a compass to help keep from getting lost, stop by the library to arm yourself with more information about the cult (possibly represented in cards that give buffs or special actions), or maybe a revolver in case you run into some unsavory cultists? Imagining it as an RPG, my character would certainly do things like this.

As long as you still have to keep the weakness cards, I don't see being able to change your deck as making weaknesses or XP less relevant.

This was commented in the discussion, when people said picking weaknesses was going to be random, as it is something you shouldn't be planning for. If it is indeed random, then during the second second act you shouldn't be able to freely adapt your deck, as by doing so it would make the weakness less impactful.

Let's say, if I got the one that discards my resources, then I will want to fill my deck with low costed cards. If I can manage that (and with time, I'm sure we will), then what's the point of having the weakness in there in the first place? That's all moot if weaknesses are picked by choice, as the deck would be adapted to them from the start.

And regarding the XP system, why would I want to keep pushing for it if the levelled up card I'm trying to buy is going to be substituted by a new one next act? Why care about getting the experience in the first place then?

Also, just to point out - this is a coop/solo game. There is no tournament judge that will penalize you if you're breaking the rules. No matter what the book says, you can change your deck if you want to, and you can leave it the same if you want to. Everyone can play the game their own way if they feel like it.

You expressed that opinion before and I couldn't disagree with you more. If the game rules so you are not allow to tweak your decks in between acts, then cards and acts will be designed with that in mind. Skipping that rule to allow extra deckbuilding might make undesired combos or for less challanging and balanced experience. Sure, you can do that if it pleases you, there will be those that will, but at the same time, you need to understand that changing rules might not please everybody, having a TO judge involved or not doesn't really matter.

I don't see changing your deck as breaking any sort of immersion either. Let's say in pack 1 you are investigating a missing person and discover that the cult is meeting in a cave in the woods. Is it somehow unthematic that in the pack 2 quest you'd decide to bring some torches to light your way, or a compass to help keep from getting lost, stop by the library to arm yourself with more information about the cult (possibly represented in cards that give buffs or special actions), or maybe a revolver in case you run into some unsavory cultists? Imagining it as an RPG, my character would certainly do things like this.

Myabe in yours, but not in my RPG sesions. Characters are not allowed to unlearn a skill so they can buy another one instead if it's more useful for the scenario. Or they don't suddenly have a torch at hand when the last act they didn't have one. I keep my character with the stuff he had in the last session. I'm not allowed to overhaul him at will (or what would be the point of playing a campain then?).

Just to follow your example, so after the investigator searches the cave in the woods, he learns that the leader just escaped into the river. How do you justify that the investigator suddenly changed his torch for a waterproofed flashlight if he didn't bring it with him from the start neither had him found it while he searched the cave?

That said, I want to be able to build some (or at least take advantage of other people's intersting decks) and without a fair amount of deck building present I would wonder how the meta for the game would develop. It seems like it would be hard to keep a community going without that the discussion that comes from building and tweaking decks.

I don't understand how that can't coexist with the model I commented. Ashes follows the same system, each expansion comes with a preconstructed deck, and yet, deckbuilding exist. It's just that instead of having a set number of player cards put randomly together, you have the same number of them, paired to create a preconstructed deck that. Someone who loves deckbuilding will look at the cards and try to find synergies between the already existing pool/decks, while those that don't really care that much about deckbuilding can start playing with the new investigator and cards using the preconstructed deck.

I mean, I have like 30 AGoT decks in Thronesdb and I have only played a few of them in real life, as I can only bring one to each tournament. That doesn't stop me or many other players to keep designing decks as soon as some new and interesting cards show up. I don't see why that couldn't happen with AH even if they don't actually go through the whole campain to test them.

Also, I'm not sure about how that could affect the community. Arkham/Eldritch Horror doesn't really have deckbuilding (or any kind of customization), and yet they have great and active communities. People will just change their topics from decks to sessions (which makes sense, as how you play and the decitions you make in AH: LCG will have a great impact on the outcome, probably more than how your deck is built).

So I really don't know which side I'm on...it being a little toned down from LOTR sounds good, but not toned down too much.

(Have light deck building though, Chewie, but don't look like your trying to have light deck building. I don't know. Build casual)

I would prefer for them to stick to one of those sides.

A lot of people seem to use house rules in LotR, I'm just pointing out that they can (if they choose) do so here as well. Nobody is forcing anyone to do anything. Since we don't know how it actually works in the rules, how about we wait and see instead of just arguing?

Regarding RPGs.. None of the examples I gave involved characters unlearning skills and then spending their skill points to learn new and different ones. What I said was that during down time (like times when the characters are able to go home, etc...) they are often able to visit the store, library, and so on. If your RPG characters are so hard core that they never sleep or stop to restock supplies that's fine. No, you cannot make a flashlight magically appear, but fortunately nobody claimed you could. I'm viewing each chapter of the campaign as having some separation, you seem to view the entire campaign as being a single marathon with no stops. Maybe it depends on the particular campaign, who knows? Again, it seems pointless to be argumentative about it when all we have is speculation.

Regarding RPGs.. None of the examples I gave involved characters unlearning skills and then spending their skill points to learn new and different ones. What I said was that during down time (like times when the characters are able to go home, etc...) they are often able to visit the store, library, and so on. If your RPG characters are so hard core that they never sleep or stop to restock supplies that's fine. No, you cannot make a flashlight magically appear, but fortunately nobody claimed you could. I'm viewing each chapter of the campaign as having some separation, you seem to view the entire campaign as being a single marathon with no stops. Maybe it depends on the particular campaign, who knows? Again, it seems pointless to be argumentative about it when all we have is speculation.

Yep, a lot of what makes sense is going to be decided by the level of abstraction in the game, which we can only guess at right now. If it's the kind of game where the scale is always the same, and/or scenarios in a campaign are hard-linked like acts in a play rather than episodes in a TV show, sure, having some new item appear between scenarios might not make sense.

On the other hand, if the scope of the game is somewhat flexible, where in one scenario a location might be a room in a mansion, and in the next scenario, a single location card might represent an entire town as investigators criss-cross Lovecraft country, there's a lot more room to have deck adjustments make narrative sense.

Besides, "I just drew this flashlight off the top of my deck in the middle of the dark woods!" isn't really that much different from "Hey, there's a chance I'll draw a flashlight in this new scenario because I added it to my deck!" There's going to be abstraction either way,

This was commented in the discussion, when people said picking weaknesses was going to be random, as it is something you shouldn't be planning for. If it is indeed random, then during the second second act you shouldn't be able to freely adapt your deck, as by doing so it would make the weakness less impactful.

It depends a bit on what specific weaknesses do and how they're gained (which I assume will sometimes be random and sometimes specific to scenarios/investigators/whatever), but if a weakness forces you into playing a different deck style to accommodate it, I'd say it's done its job.

As a side note, don't we already know that investigators begin only with the weakness that's specific to them in their deck, and anything else gets picked up in play? I thought we gleaned that from some preview or demo video or something.

Anyway, real people compensate for their own weaknesses in all kinds of ways, sometimes healthy and sometimes not. Not that I think this should be a simulation (or a full-on RPG, because it's not, even though it draws on some RPG ideas).

Let's say, if I got the one that discards my resources, then I will want to fill my deck with low costed cards. If I can manage that (and with time, I'm sure we will), then what's the point of having the weakness in there in the first place? That's all moot if weaknesses are picked by choice, as the deck would be adapted to them from the start.

File under tastes vary. I mean, let's say this weakness is called, "Addicted to LCGs," and you lose resources each turn because you're spending them on useless cardboard instead of flashlights and firearms for your Lovecraftian adventures. Whether you literally can't play the high cost cards out of your deck but are forced to continue the campaign with them, or you're allowed to adjust your deck so it includes no high cost cards, the ultimate effect is still that a certain presumably powerful cards will be effectively out of reach. The difference in practice being whether you're stuck drawing cards you can't play in the game, or if you just have to rely on less powerful, lower cost cards.

Neither of those is more or less realistic at the level of abstraction we accept when, "bringing a valuable tool on an adventure" means, "putting it in your deck and hoping you draw it when you need it."

And regarding the XP system, why would I want to keep pushing for it if the levelled up card I'm trying to buy is going to be substituted by a new one next act? Why care about getting the experience in the first place then?

It's pretty easy to imagine a system where you're allowed to modify decks between scenarios, provided you have the same number of upgraded cards. So you're not spending XP to get that level 2 shotgun, you're spending XP to have a level 2 card slot, which could be anything.

Just to follow your example, so after the investigator searches the cave in the woods, he learns that the leader just escaped into the river. How do you justify that the investigator suddenly changed his torch for a waterproofed flashlight if he didn't bring it with him from the start neither had him found it while he searched the cave?

That sounds like two locations in the same scenario to me, not separate scenarios. Which still doesn't solve the problem of drawing that waterproof flashlight off your deck just when you need it, but that's the nature of LCGs.

In LotR, Boromir doesn't suddenly become the Steward of Gondor while he's chasing orcs through the woods or whatever. He was the Steward of Gondor at the start of your adventure. You just didn't have the card in your hand.

I do agree though that whichever way they go (or have gone, at this point) will have a significant impact on how cards are designed. So all we can really do is keep our fingers crossed that they've made design choices that support the style of play we each prefer.

It depends a bit on what specific weaknesses do and how they're gained (which I assume will sometimes be random and sometimes specific to scenarios/investigators/whatever), but if a weakness forces you into playing a different deck style to accommodate it, I'd say it's done its job.

As a side note, don't we already know that investigators begin only with the weakness that's specific to them in their deck, and anything else gets picked up in play? I thought we gleaned that from some preview or demo video or something.

Nope. They start with two.

Two weaknesses? A party of investigators will be like an American police procedural then.

I'm wondering how the sphere restrictions will work in terms of deckbuilding. I'm guessing since there are five spheres that the restrictions might be character specific. Since having two spheres like with Roland and Wendy would leave a sphere out, or mean an odd double up on one sphere.

Nope. They start with two.

Ah! Thanks for that.

Looking at the Investigator cards above it looks like everyone will get a primary and a secondary class. I though I had read that each of the investigators will correspond to a class. It seems like there will be Guardian, Seeker, Survivor and Rogue classes. Does anyone know what the remaining class is?

thanks

Looking at the Investigator cards above it looks like everyone will get a primary and a secondary class. I though I had read that each of the investigators will correspond to a class. It seems like there will be Guardian, Seeker, Survivor and Rogue classes. Does anyone know what the remaining class is?

thanks

Mystic is the fifth class.

By the looks of it each will have a primary and a secondary class. At least in the core set. No doubt this mix will change in future releases.

I must say, Roland is a bit dim-witted. Yeah, Cthulhu probably isn't going to be in your little book bub. Sorry bout that.

Ha. As an ISTJ, I'm actually drawn to his character. The way they wrote that indeed isn't very flattering for him, though.

As for deckbuilding in campaign: let's make some math, shall we? Each Mythos pack will come with 60 cards; if the adventure part of the pack is about 36 cards (not so impossible considering there's an entire scenario to introduce), this leaves out a total of 24 investigator cards.

6 packs of 24 investigator cards means a total of 144 investigator cards, which probably means 72 unique cards coming in double copy (triple copy? Did they say how many copies of a card are allowed / deck?). 72 unique cards that are to cover 6 different spheres (5 proper spheres + neutral sphere), i.e. each sphere will probably get 12 new cards over the campaign. These cards certainly include higher level cards to improve your decks. So, maybe there will be 3 or 4 (if any) level-0 new cards / sphere arriving over the course of the whole campaign. I don't see these cards bringing the need of a complete deck re-edification (thinking of scenarios like Rhosgobel in LotR where you need heal, and so on) over the campaign

LotR uses a 30/30 split for comparison. 2x copies per deck. So if Arkham Horror uses the same split and there's a new investigator + their unique card in every pack that means 14 more new cards for your deck @ 2x per pack or 84 per cycle. Anyway, it's in that general ballpark. What we don't know that's new is how common the upgrade cards will be and what percentage of a card upgrades should "count for" in terms of deck building variety. It's less than 100% because you can't use them freely. Is it more like 50%? 75% We won't really know for a good while until we have a better idea how much XP you earn per quest which will in turn dictate how many upgrade cards you can put in. If you earn a good amount, then the upgrade cards could be available for most of a campaign. We don't know how long a campaign is either or even whether all campaigns are the same length.