Buying advice for a newcomer?

By MadLarkin, in Arkham Horror: The Card Game

I recently bought Arkham Horror: The Card Game, and loved it! My question for those who have many hours in on the game and it's expansions is; which expansions are worth buying?

I know that FFG sells both the bigger box expansions and the blister card expansions, is there a specific order that's recommended? Any to avoid?

Thanks!

Look at the product page. After buying the core you want to buy the Dunwich Legacy and then the mythos packs. They all go in order to tell the story, if you skip around it will make no sense.

The next storyline is The Path to Carcosa but it's not out yet.

Edited by Meretrix

If you enjoy deckbuilding, your first purchase should be a second core set.

Outside of that, you can incorporate the scenarios, Curse of the Rougarou and Carnevale of Horrors, any campaign as side missions or play them standalone, so they're a good buy if you're looking for scenarios, but they don't have player cards other than a few you can add to a campaign deck as a result of the scenario. These scenarios are entirely self-contained, so you can buy them whenever you like.

The Dunwich Legacy and the available mythos packs form one cycle, which will conclude with the sixth pack when The Path to Carcosa deluxe launches a new cycle of 6 more packs. Each of the deluxe boxes and mythos packs includes player cards and a new scenario (2 scenarios in a deluxe).

The scenarios in each cycle form an 8 part campaign. You'll need the deluxe box to play any packs in its respective cycle, because the scenarios use encounter cards from the deluxe box. If you want to play the campaign, you'll need to play the packs in order, but you can also play each scenario in standalone mode, which requires only that mythos pack and the appropriate deluxe box.

16 hours ago, Meretrix said:

Look at the product page. After buying the core you want to buy the Dunwich Legacy and then the mythos packs. They all go in order to tell the story, if you skip around it will make no sense.

The next storyline is The Path to Carcosa but it's not out yet.

Thanks for the info. So I'm going to try to snap up the core and Dunwich. what order would you need to buy the other expansions in? So you think you could get away with having a decent game experience with only 1 core by the way?

You should get the mythos packs in the order they were published (especially if you want to play in campaign mode): The Miskatonic Museum, The Essex County Express, Blood on the Altar, and Undimensioned and Unseen (the next one being Where Doom Awaits). Each mythos pack has an order number, so it's easy. You can get the standalone scenarios (Curse of the Rougarou and Carnevale of Horrors) in any order.

I wouldn't play with only one core set, because I like having a more consistent deck.

24 minutes ago, Khudzlin said:

You should get the mythos packs in the order they were published (especially if you want to play in campaign mode): The Miskatonic Museum, The Essex County Express, Blood on the Altar, and Undimensioned and Unseen (the next one being Where Doom Awaits). Each mythos pack has an order number, so it's easy. You can get the standalone scenarios (Curse of the Rougarou and Carnevale of Horrors) in any order.

I wouldn't play with only one core set, because I like having a more consistent deck.

Awesome! Thanks. It seems 2 decks is the way to go.

2 cores, 1 of each deluxe and mythos

Just my personal experience: I own all the packs that have been released to date. I liked the scenarios in the Dunwich Legacy deluxe better than the ones in the core. If you didn't need a core for all the cards and components, I'd say skip it even! :D

I think if you liked the core set scenarios you'll love the ones after that. I was sorta on the fence about the game with just what was in the core. Glad I stuck with it.

I'm the nutjob that bought 4 core sets because I play solo a lot and wanted to be able to do any combination of investigators. You'll know if that's the path for you :)

With the current card pool, and especially with the Dunwitch investigators - you don't need 2 core sets. I would recommend getting Dunwitch box expansion first, and then follow the Dunwitch blister packs in order. You can come back to the Core set box IF you find some of the cards would be more useful in duplicate.

In LotR LCG you could skip around and buy only the packs that had cards you wanted, or quests you wanted to play. The Arkham LCG is more linear, so you would certainly want to buy them in order. The Carnivale and Curse of the Rougarou can be bought at any time, they are each a single stand alone quest only with no player cards.

4 minutes ago, shosuko said:

The Carnivale and Curse of the Rougarou can be bought at any time, they are each a single stand alone quest only with no player cards.

And they are both very good and a cheaper way to add a couple new investigations without committing to an entire cycle.

On 6/21/2017 at 10:52 AM, shosuko said:

With the current card pool, and especially with the Dunwitch investigators - you don't need 2 core sets.

Just so long as you're not playing a Mystic or Daisy. Starting with only one copy of Shriveling is pretty brutal.