Death of Call Rise of Arkham

By CEOWolf, in Living Card Games

I'm profoundly curious I'm hoping somebody will hopefully elaborate the situation if they could?

Call of Cthulhu LCG has officially bit the dust yet in a way their trying again with same setting but diffrent mechanics and style. I was curious why do you think Call died and now FFG want to bring Lovecraft card game back with Arkham? I'm a bit confused as to why they wanna try again if the first game failed already.

I in no means saying I think their stupid or don't want to buy Arkham actually I'm quite enthralled by it and really wanna buy it but I just wanted to bring this up.

Edited by CEOWolf

I guess (and is just a guess since Im not a player and only read some stuff about it) that CoC was showing its age because it turned in a bit of mess and thus ending the game before the designers went insane. Same thing with Game of Thrones LCG 1st ed.

Start fresh was FFG option in both cases I think.

Edited by Kentares

Heh Lovecraft joke :P

And really? Too bad you never played CoC I hope someone has more in depth opinion (thanks fo reply though just you know much as I do more or less)

Edited by CEOWolf

CoC was a very different beast - much like AgoT, it evolved from a CCG into an LCG, carrying over a lot of mechanics and potential complexity and bloat. Also both games were never designed to rotate, so would have hit a point of too large a card pool.

Another complaint I'd also heard about CoC was the late introduction of additional factions, and the difficulty of balancing that against existing factions with larger cardpools.

Also, don't forget that CoC was a competitive game - perhaps FFG simply wanted another co-op LCG and realised that of all the settings they could easily choose from a Lovecraftian setting fit the bill the best - they've already done a lot of work here after all with regards to Arkham/Elrditch Horror, Elder Sign, Mansions of Madness etc. so I'd not be at all surpised to see art assets being recycled (for the record I have no problem with this).

Reasons for the death of CoC were abundantly given by Nate French in this article here . The game had a gazillion of expansions, and an organized play, and in the end it was a huge success. It just had to end its course because you can't keep expanding something without facing problems. A lot of errors were made during the evolution of the game, so that a new knowledge on how to deal with this format brought to life a new game.

I also think the popularity of LotR as a co-op game with solo play possibly inspired FFG to look around for another co-op/solo-LCG vehicle and thought that Mythos would fit well (which I think it likely does)

To have been at the World Championship often in the past, the attendance for that game was low, the lowest of all their LCG, so it didn't surprise me when they announced its end. The game was probably no longer selling due to its huge card pool and complexity.

It just wasn't as good a seller so it had to end. Simple as that. Matter of economics.

As someone who played the game for a reasonable duration and attended World Championships, I have a few ideas.

1. Balance issues. For a long time, there was an extremely powerful mill deck that got introduced by a single deluxe box. The deck did requires a competent pilot, but it didn't require any skillful deckbuilding, practically building itself. Playing against it was purely NPE. I won the Australian National Championships playing against someone who literally bought the deluxe box that introduced the deck and building it pretty much from that in the final. There were also plenty of absurdly powerful cards which came out late in the game (Rite of the Silver Gate being one of them).

2. Thematic problems. The game didn't really make any sense thematically. While individual cards did have good flavour, you basically had investigators and ancient ones working alongside each other to solve mysteries. It was a complete departure from any other Lovecraftian game.

3. The need for a cooperative LCG. Lord of the Rings is pretty popular, but the sheer size of the card pool causes entry into it to be intimidating for some, especially those who want everything immediately. It's also very clear that the designers have learned a lot since the early design days of LotR, and wanted to apply it to a fresh game that would create an entry point for new players. The Arkham Horror skin works perfectly for that.

4. No new players and poor playerbase. The year I went to worlds, I think we had a total of 10 or 11 players. We were relegated off to the side of the room and supervised by a single judge (who I thought was rather incompetent). I had more people at my local nationals (though not a whole lot more), and even then, most of the people in my local scene borrowed cards off other people.

Hope that helps!

Edited by theaficionado