I have the Lord of te ring LCG game and the Arkham Horror LCG game,

I n both games it is necessary to buy another core for a full game experience.

Why FFG does not sell the full game?

Or why FFG sell us a expansion pack for the base game, so we can complete it, not buying another base game?

thanks

Why FFG does not sell the full game?

Because LCGs are not boardgames in which you get to buy it once and play with any number of players. LCG are expandable card games (with a fixed model) that expect their players to keep buying stuff for new cards to adapt their decks. The game evolves with the meta, and each player is supposed to own his cards. The "full game" is only achieved after all the expansions are released and the game dies. Asking players to buy a second core if they want extra cards fits right in the CCG/LCG model philosophy. Players are free to decide how many of each card they want. Having full playsets of every card is not mandatory, but sure helps with the deckbuilding, which is the main focus of those games (keep adapting your decks to the meta).

The reason why AH:LCG was not released as a boardgame, however, evades me (other than there are already plenty of Lovecraft boardgames already). It doesn't embody what CCG (deckbuilding to adapt to a meta) and makes the cycle system confusing as you need to wait a month to know what happens next. Your characters are left in standby mode due to how deckbuilding works between scenarios, unless you keep track of everything, freeing the cards to be able to play again. I doubt most of the boardgamers that bought into the game will keep up with the releases after a couple of cycles are released. The investment asociated with an LCG is huge compared to other games like Eldricth Horror or Mansions of Madness.

to add on to what xchan said above, you asked "Why does FFG not sell the full game?" The number of actual cards that can go in a core set is more or less fixed--any more cards and you have to go above the $40 price. About 230-240 cards.

If the core set consists of 3x of every card, then you get up to 77-80 cards by title. That isn't enough for a full game. Having a larger number of cards by title, even if the core set can only provide you one or two, provides a much richer and varied design space.

"why FFG [doesn't] sell us a expansion pack for the base game, so we can complete it, not buying another base game?" Because, that would be an additional product that retailers would be expected to stock whose sole purpose is to undercut sales of the flagship product. There already exists a product that lets you get additional copies of cards that come in the core set: The Core Set . Printing some other product with the same cards in would be entirely redundant, an additional expense to the company, retailers, and distributors, and you're still buying more product , so it would not significantly reduce the cost to the consumer over simply buying another Core Set.