This seems a lot like Pathfinder adventures, where you can not change cards in your deck between games. Instead you keep on using what you have and make them more potent and dangerous by upgrading them to higher level versions. Interesting to see, if this game introduces same kind of loot system, where you can find new items (artifacts, i am looking for you) that you can use to modify your deck.

This seems so much more like Pathfinder than LOTR lcg that the comparison may be better to that game.

LOT lcg is traditional ccg type game, where focus is in deck building. The AH seems to be more like card driven rpg, where you gain XP and develop your existing features to better ones. No very little deck-building, but a lot of character development, by upgrading individual cards in you deck to more powerful ones. So you will have exactly same named cards in your deck at "level" 10 and you did at "level" 1. Only some of those cards have different abilities than it did have in the beginning. Maybe some minor changes, if there is loot/found/earned cards in this game.

Interesting to see, is also how long individual investigator can stay alive. Also how new investigator start the game. Let say that you have playing group of 4 investigator at "level" 10 and one die. What happens? In EH you start as "level" 1 character without any boons, but you can get the stuff that the deceased (mad or injured) character has collected, so you can get fairly good start. Is this possible or not in this game? Or is there some kind of "You can start 2 level below other characters" kind of system like Patfinder Adventures has? The long campaign style of game requires its own rules handling character kills.

Is there a level cap (level 6 in pathfinder adventures) or do all characters just become mad after a while, not depending on how "well" you are playing (very thematic to AH sure!) Those are the interesting questions for this game. IMHO There has to be some kind of end, or otherwise character dead is quite bad (the difference between new and old investigator become too great) and also it would been very big power creep in the long run.

My own ques is that all investigators just become mad at some point. You collect more and more powerful stuff and in the end those more powerful staff make you mad, or someone will claim your soul for that soul eating sword that you use to kill very big end game monsters. At least that would be thematic and also in scale of those cards that we have already seem from upper level.

We don't actually know for certain that you cannot modify your deck between adventures, do we?

I'm sure you won't be allowed to remove/change your weaknesses, Investigator, or their "must take" cards but you may be able to change cards in addition to just doing upgrades (and downgrades).

We don't actually know for certain that you cannot modify your deck between adventures, do we?

We don't, as far as I know.

Honestly, it would surprise me a little if this were a general rule. To me, it seems much more likely that in campaign play, you can modify your deck between scenarios, but if you want to be able to include the good stuff you've gained (by spending XP, earning items that get added to your deck in scenarios, whatever), you also have to take the bad stuff you've accumulated (insanities and crippling injuries, and scenario specific things).

Not being allowed to modify your deck between scenarios seems a little rigid to me. Even in-story, if one scenario is a creepy investigation where weaponry isn't of much use, but the next is the raid on the deep-one infested town, it only makes sense that your investigator might be all, "Guess I should throw this shotgun in my trunk (meaning deck)."

Obviously, it's a pretty easy house rule to implement, and they may have something in the rulebook about fixed decks as an option (likely with exceptions allowing for level-ups and new acqusitions, good and bad). But I doubt if it'll be the default.

I want less location clump and more deckbuilding for the investigator, rather than the scenario.

My only concern are the levelable cards. Looks like they reduce the overall card pool, since it's almost the same card with the same name.

This is an excellent point. It took us years for LotR to have a decent card pool.

I want less location clump and more deckbuilding for the investigator, rather than the scenario.

Agreed, those are my only two real complaints about LOTR. Fortunately early impressions seem to suggest neither of these things will be issues

My only concern are the levelable cards. Looks like they reduce the overall card pool, since it's almost the same card with the same name.

This is an excellent point. It took us years for LotR to have a decent card pool.

I think the playsets of 2 copies and the leveled up versions of cards will somehwat balance each other out, so I'm guessing the card pool will advance at a similar rate to other LCGs.

I think the playsets of 2 copies and the leveled up versions of cards will somehwat balance each other out, so I'm guessing the card pool will advance at a similar rate to other LCGs.

The rate should be similar to LotR LCG if lucky, and by no means similar to other LCG. Mythos packs should still have quest cards (and they take double the space now, as there are two different sets of them: acts for the players and agendas for the bad guys) and encounter cards, so the slots reserved for player cards will be at most 40, meaning 20 new cards to build decks with (which would bring the game into the same level of any other LCG), except investigators (and their minicards and exclusive ones) and the levelled up cards will take some of those slots, reducing the options for deckbuilding to something close to that of LotR.

That or Myhtos packs could take a completelly different approach and contain an investigator and the skeleton of his preconstructed deck (complimented by Core Set cards like neutrals).

It should be pretty similar to most LCG', Star Wars being the only odd exception due to the pod system. Assuming the Adventure takes up 40/60 slots, that would leave 10 new cards per pack, if the investigators only show up in deluxe expansions, which I would guess is going to be the case, since you only need 1 instead of 3 like LOTR. That is about 2 cards per faction, per pack. That's basically the same as every other LCG out there. Other LCG's may have a greater overall volume of new cards per pack, but when you break it down per faction, which is what actually matters, this will expand at the same rate. Granted, the potential 'level up' versions could reduce that a bit, though I think we are still a little green about how that all works with expanding the cardpool, given that we haven't a clue the proportion of cards in the core set that are leveled up versions.

I only just thought of this: perhaps the only player cards in the Mythos packs are levelled up versions of the core set cards. They can stack the higher-level upgrades in the later packs as you begin to be able to afford them.

Then the deluxes give us a new set of 'base' player cards, and their upgrades show up in the following cycle.

The deck-building aspect is the most elusive detail yet. It seems to me that deck-building consists of leveling up (by spending exp) the cards that are part of your originally constructed deck. It's not clear at what point, if ever, a person integrates entirely new cards. There's not been mention of how/when a player acquires new cards. I also wonder how replacing cards with entirely different ones works with regard to earned exp--is it just a simple one-to-one swap?

The chaos tokens are the only mechanic I dislike. It reminds me of the dice-rolling that PACG required, and I really hated that... leaving everything to chance and hedging a bet. The chaos tokens seem like a slightly clumsy mechanic every time you need to make a check.

I think the playsets of 2 copies and the leveled up versions of cards will somehwat balance each other out, so I'm guessing the card pool will advance at a similar rate to other LCGs.

The rate should be similar to LotR LCG if lucky, and by no means similar to other LCG. Mythos packs should still have quest cards (and they take double the space now, as there are two different sets of them: acts for the players and agendas for the bad guys) and encounter cards, so the slots reserved for player cards will be at most 40, meaning 20 new cards to build decks with (which would bring the game into the same level of any other LCG), except investigators (and their minicards and exclusive ones) and the levelled up cards will take some of those slots, reducing the options for deckbuilding to something close to that of LotR.

That or Myhtos packs could take a completelly different approach and contain an investigator and the skeleton of his preconstructed deck (complimented by Core Set cards like neutrals).

There's a lot we don't actually know, such as if new investigators will show up in the mythos packs or just deluxe boxes. Regardless, my point stands that playsets of only two cards and the potential to level up some carrds will somewhat offset each other in terms of how quickly the cardppool grows.

How is an investigator in each pack is too often? Do you know how many investigators out there?

6 investigators per cycle is nothing to sneeze at. Given that each investigator only has one signature card and one signature weakness, - they won't hurt independent card pool. To top it off, Investigators are key part of each deck, and the more of them there is - the more fluid deckbuilding options are gonna be.

That would be 11 investigators after the first cycle, 17 after the second, 23 after the third and 29 after the fourth assuming we don't get ANY in the deluxe expansions. One investigator per pack is simply too many too often for a game that only supports 4 players.

We will most likely get 2-4 new investigators per cycle+deluxe expansion.

Netrunner averages 3 per cycle, I think that would make sense here too.

I think there will still be a need to grow the investigator pool fairly rapidly.

Each player will only have a single investigator under their control, rather than up to 3 as was the case for LotR, and there is going to be a lot more restrictions on deck construction. Not all combinations of "sphere" are going to be available out of the gate (for example, Guardian + Rouge or Survivor + Seeker).

3 cards given over to a new investigator per pack may not be too much of a burden, particularly if the number of encounter cards per Mythos pack can be reduced by sharing more smaller sets provided as part of the Core/Deluxe for that campaign.

That said, maintaining a slow pace of investigators may nudge players into trying out more varied play-styles and I do kind of like the idea of introducing a full new cast of investigators with each deluxe box (particularly if/when events start to cross the globe).

Keeping in mind that they already have 48 investigators to draw from from AH (+ some additional ones added in the recent MoM v2). Assume a deluxe expansion comes with 2 investigator and one more investigator per pack. This means 8 investigators per cycle. This means they will be in the 5th cycle before they run out of the existing investigator pool.

Keeping in mind that they already have 48 investigators to draw from from AH (+ some additional ones added in the recent MoM v2). Assume a deluxe expansion comes with 2 investigator and one more investigator per pack. This means 8 investigators per cycle. This means they will be in the 5th cycle before they run out of the existing investigator pool.

5 cycles should mean something between 3 years and 3 years and a half, depending on whether they are able to mantain the one pack / month production pace or not. And I'm sure that in 3 years from now, new investigators will have been created for Mansions, expanding even further the actual investigator pool.

Even tho I don't see new investigators coming in each pack: the game is structured as a campaign, so that I'm expecting all the new investigators to be released in the deluxe box introductory to the new campaign. This will allow players to experiment new characters since day 0 of the campaign and not discover a "Fancy Character XY arrives in pack 5, let's start over the campaign" experience

Keeping in mind that they already have 48 investigators to draw from from AH (+ some additional ones added in the recent MoM v2). Assume a deluxe expansion comes with 2 investigator and one more investigator per pack. This means 8 investigators per cycle. This means they will be in the 5th cycle before they run out of the existing investigator pool.

5 cycles should mean something between 3 years and 3 years and a half, depending on whether they are able to mantain the one pack / month production pace or not. And I'm sure that in 3 years from now, new investigators will have been created for Mansions, expanding even further the actual investigator pool.

Even tho I don't see new investigators coming in each pack: the game is structured as a campaign, so that I'm expecting all the new investigators to be released in the deluxe box introductory to the new campaign. This will allow players to experiment new characters since day 0 of the campaign and not discover a "Fancy Character XY arrives in pack 5, let's start over the campaign" experience

Very good point.

The deckbuilding could easily blend both the ideas discussed. Pathfinder does this for their Organized Play runs. You unlock cards as you progress, and you build your deck for each scenario by selecting from unlocked cards.

Honestly, there HAS to be this level of flexibility. Otherwise you'll undoubtedly have people running into campaign scenarios that their decks can't handle, and they're stumped. You can't make people start over from the beginning - this was a serious mistake that Pathfinder made... character death was permadeath, and to compensate for that they made the game almost trivially easy. You literally couldn't die unless you chose to take that risk. Since I suspect we're going to be seeing the typical Cthulhu-ish difficulty levels, they have to give people the flexibility to adapt to new scenario challenges.