G'day everyone -

Recently jumped into the game and so far, I'm loving it. I've started up a new core set campaign (with a plan to work our way through the full Dunwich campaign once core is complete) with a few friends, four of us in total. We each started with one of the recommended starter decks (Roland, Wendy, Skids and Daisy) - we've just finished the the first scenario, and we each have some experience ready to spend. As the other players in the group aren't as familiar with deckbuilding and CCG / LCGs in general, I'll likely be taking responsibility of spending each players XP and upgrading their decks.

Looking for some general advice here on how to proceed. Should I stick with cards only available in the core set at this stage? If I jump ahead and use cards from the Dunwich cycle (I have access to every pack released) am I likely to either confuse players, give away spoilers or generally mess up the campaign narrative? Any specific recommendations for each of those characters, or general ideas on how I should proceed? We'll be playing with a full sized group most sessions and although we're more interested in the narrative, is there any approach I should look at in order to prepare for the horrors ahead? I'm wary about hamstringing us with poor upgrade choices.

Any tips you can share would be appreciated. Thanks in advance everyone!

I tend to just use cards available in the current campaign set.

The character cards in Dunwich don't spoil anything. I'd use all the cards available to you when making you upgrades. There's no reason to limit yourself!

Player cards won't give away spoilers, so if a card fits, feel free to use it. As it is, you're already hamstrung by using starter decks.

Zero reason to limit yourself. All zero level cards are intended to be available for initial deck building. The XP cost system is their built-in restriction system.

I might also add: Don't be frustrated if you struggle with the next scenarios (depending on what difficulty you play at). With the pre-built decks and with just getting into the game, the second and third scenarios from the core are tough. I remember being like "this is impossible".

I would consider playing through the core once and then, when everyone is familiar, make custom decks with the entire card pool and then run through the core again (the core set is a good way to see how well the decks work)

Given that you are four players, I would def consider taking the entire card pool because there are limited options with just the core to make four decks (or do you own 4 core sets?)

Great topic. Everything discussed above is spot on, I'd say, and worth paying attention to.

For specific upgrade paths, you've got a bit of a choice. You can look at what's working well in each deck, and seek to enhance that, or you can look to shore up weaknesses. You could also develop in a pattern where one player looks to make expensive purchases, while other player go for simple purchases incrementally improving the strength of their deck. On this: the factions each interact with experience slightly differently. Some rogue cards (marked exceptional) can cost higher than the max 5xp (there's a 6 cost and an 8 cost one). There are no survivor cards that cost more than 3xp. So that's worth bearing in mind as you plan to improve the decks.

From personal experience - and I appreciate this is entirely subjective - here are two or three cards I've found work well in each of the investigators you mention:

Roland: pathfinder (he loves the movement), beat cop II (it's so potent!), brother xavier (protecting the whole party!)

Wendy: lucky II (so neat), cat burglar (what's that, you want me to face enemies?), will to survive (possibly the strongest card in the game)

Skids: hot streak (money for days!), switchblade II (surprisingly potent, especially paired with other boosts), leo I (1 cost reduction goes a long way), oh SHIZ, I can't forget police badge II either! So useful for Skids!

Daisy: encyclopedia (she loves tomes), higher education (she loves cards), cryptic research (cards for all!)

There are so many delights within the higher xp cards, so it's definitely a case of trying things out and seeing what works for you and your friends! Enjoy!

My standard package for Roland in standalone mode (9xp) is 2x Beat Cop (2), Stand Together (3) and 2x Pathfinder (1).

just be aware that the chances of ffg retesting released campaigns using cards released post release is very low. Therefore you could be making the campaign easier.

also each campaign is likely (I suspect this but may be wrong) to be tested just using that campaigns cards and the base set cards as otherwise ffg would be making it more difficult for new entrants. Again potentially making things easier

finally IF the above two statements are true then you could get similar cards released in each campaign that fulfill broadly the same purpose and using all these could allow you to have an easier time.

naturally if that is what you want then go for it or if you have 1 base and a limited card pool but these are good reasons to not use every card allowing the above assumptions are correct.

@Matrim I don't see any way your first point wouldn't be true. I'm not sure about your second point, though it makes sense to playtest using mostly cards from the campaign's cycle, since those cards have to be tested, too.

It would be very strange not to test a new cycle's cards with older cycles' scenarios, especially early in a game's life when there aren't five or six cycles worth of scenarios to grind.

We can otherwise guess that there's certainly a mix of playtest methods, at least internally, much like the core box was tested with just the starters and with constructed decks. I'm sure new cycles are tested with a mix of decks built from core and that cycle only, as well as from a pool of all cards.

Really, the most important thing to balance is player cards against one another, as scenario difficulty is adjustable, and campaigns are flexible enough to allow for more and less difficult scenarios. The other thing to test would be if any cards outright break scenarios -- not just making them easier, but making them trivial via some shortcut. I think it's pretty unlikely that playtesting doesn't look across all player cards for this.

I'll be the first to say that my opinion of FFG's testing, both internal and external, is pretty low. But even I have a hard time thinking that they don't test cycles with cards from earlier sets. You can pretty clearly see this in LOTR, as a number of mechanics are pretty clearly aimed at certain early power cards.

Going back to test every cycle with the new cards... probably less so. If nothing else, gotta have a little power creep to keep people buying cards But that's what difficulty levels are for, right?