As some may have noticed in my other "new player" post... my brother and I are just now picking some stuff up to get into the CoC LCG for casual (though competitive) play between just the two of us (i.e. we don't play tournaments or anything).

I decided to start off with two copies of the Core set - as I got a great deal on them ($20 apiece - yippie!).

With that good price in mind, I figure I'd grab a few Asylum Packs as well... so I'm coming to you all for advice of which to buy.

The Ancient Horrors and At the Mountain of Madness ones stand out as stand-alone APs (gotta love the original Lovecraft AtMoM story, no clue how the AP itself is heh ...and I can't seem to find a list of which five ancient horrors are in the Ancient Horrors set - I'm curious though).

Then there's the Summons of the Deep line. (would be a decently expensive purchase to grab all 6 at once... and have no clue which I'd grab if it was only a "get a few" purchase).

Aaaaaand of course there's the newer Dreamlands set (less to get as it's not all out yet, but still have no clue what's in it).

Which would you suggest purchasing and why? ...of course I'd like to improve the actual play experience, but as a Lovecraft fan I'd also like to just get more "cool stuff / creatures / characters / etc" that I might recognize from his works (though I'm sure most sets would have that to one extent or another heh).

I've found a few sites that seem to have pretty much everything (spread out, but still)... so what would you suggest?

well buying ap packs is very individual as to how you play and what theme/cards you want, but the ancient horrors is my favourite just as its all monsters,lol.

i allways say just buy the packs you like the sound of most.

Problem is I can't find any info on them beyond the quick blurb on sites selling them... so it's kind of hard to even have a clue of what might be in them heh

Welcome Aedon! Download the deckbuilder. Carefully install the images to the right folder then unzip them). You will have the wikipedia of the game and all the beautiful images and all the calculus you will ever dream to compute. Now you get to choose which cards you must have.

http://eric.minet.free.fr/cocbuilder/index_en.htm

Dreamlands is turning out pretty nice. That cycle is easy enough to collect and will be current for some time. Power card Sledge Dog is in the now rarer Mountains of Madness (gotta get three packs for eight dogs needed in a deck).

The purchase of three cores has turned out, in my pointed opinion, to be both the rarest of occurences and thus the weakest element of the new format. Even with the money and will to put down $110 for three cores and a play set, almost all still opt not to. Think of the waste of all the bulky extra stuff you don't need laying around. Should you seek out others to give these nice shells of the game to? Charge money? Or are you too much of a collector that you know you'll keep the beautiful packaging then have to deal with changing your system of collecting to shoe horn them into use? One play set is a reasonable financial investment. Outweighing that, owning three cores is just silly.

Well, this is kinda all going with my initial purchase which makes knowing which cards (as seen in a builder) might be the most beneficial to pick up... that's why I was hoping for a little suggested advice - for a good start.

UPDATED/modified question:

I got two Core Sets on the way now... as well as the Ancient Horrors & At the Mountains of Madness APs.

Beyond that (hopefully good purchases heh)... what would you suggest as my next purchases?

- The whole Summons of the Deep set

- The whole (up to what's out now) Dreamlands set

- Some specific mixture of the two (individual APs in the sets)

I've pretty much found sites with all of them available... so availability isn't an issue (right now.. for the future, who knows).

Any suggestions appreciated.

As things stand, I at least plan on grabbing the Secrets of Arkham set when it comes out.

Aedon said:

I'm rather new to the game as well and I too have noticed the deck descriptions on the FF website about the expansions are not as helpful as they could be. It would be nice if they were a bit more descriptive about they type of cards in the decks. Mind you, this is true of a lot of boardgame publishers. GMT makes fantastic wargames but you read about them on their website and it's 90% talking about the historical conflict the game is about and 10% about the actual game.