I have been considering AH LCG for my ESL youth group. The language will be on the difficult side, but I am confident that via my explanations there should be no issues. Our group consists of 4 players, including myself.

I have read that in order for this game to play 4 players, two core sets is required. I have no intention of doing that. I would just rather search for something else that doesn't require this. I don't much desire the deckbuilding aspect as the others won't have the time to consider the decks. I would just supply them with premade decks. And also, I kinda feel like having all the OP cards in every deck kinda spoils the fun of the game being difficult.

Well, my question is. Can I actually make 4 decks with one core? if not, what if i just bought the Dunwich for now. (expansions afterward)

Also, with 4 players, do the players still only get 6 actions per round? How does the game scale for 4 players?

Thanks guys. Chris

Easy first: Each player gets 3 actions per turn. So with 4 players you'd have a total of 12 actions.

I've played with 2, 3, 4, and 5 players, and find it scales well to any game size.

You really can't support 4 players out of a single core. There just aren't enough cards - I think there are 96 total player cards, you'll need 120. Dunwich won't add enough either. You might get there by buying packs, but many of the new cards in the packs are XP cards that you can't (technically) start with in your decks.

Getting the second core makes for better deck experiences, IMHO. There aren't really any crazy-broken cards, and the game is still plenty challenging even with full deckbuilding. Even if you think so, increasing the difficulty covers that pretty well. The difficulty scaling is pretty solid, and provides a wide range of play experience.

If you're absolutely set against buying a second core, I think you're out of luck.

Thanks Buhallin.

This is solid advice. I was under the impression that the second core was mostly for the ability to deck out the decks.

3 hours ago, Ceahorse said:

Thanks Buhallin.

This is solid advice. I was under the impression that the second core was mostly for the ability to deck out the decks.

It's that too, but each core can support 2 players.

You get the best of both with the second core though, as you get both more robust decks and the ability to build for 4 players.

Usually the game scales well except for those scenarios with ancient evils. When my group of 4 plays the last scenario of the core campaign, we kept drawing ancient evil and the act/agenda also keep reshuffling the encounter discards back into the deck.

I am an ESL teacher also, and this would be a challenging game to teach. As others have said, you would need the 2nd core to be able to make 4 decks, but you will have to not only teach game text, and mechanics, but there is the story aspect as well. I can see great pontential in this as an ESL teaching tool, but would be weary at the same time. The story (horror) aspect may be inappropriate to some, as well as the complexity. I suppose it would have more to do with where you are teaching it and the grade level you would be teaching it to.

On ‎9‎/‎25‎/‎2017 at 11:30 PM, DarkFate said:

Usually the game scales well except for those scenarios with ancient evils. When my group of 4 plays the last scenario of the core campaign, we kept drawing ancient evil and the act/agenda also keep reshuffling the encounter discards back into the deck.

Ancient Evils is part of what makes it scale well. It's one of several cards that are more punishing at the higher frequency caused by drawing several encounter cards a turn.

The ability of the encounter deck to hit you with stuff like that more often, and combo with it, is a necessary balance against the ability of multiple investigators to make more economic use of their actions than a single investigator who has to do everything.

I don't buy it. If it scales well then the difficulty should be the same whether 2 or 4 players but in this case the scenario is easier with 2 players.

42 minutes ago, DarkFate said:

I don't buy it. If it scales well then the difficulty should be the same whether 2 or 4 players but in this case the scenario is easier with 2 players.

That's a nonsensical standard.

A single investigator doesn't even play the same at different player counts, much less entire scenarios. That doesn't mean the game doesn't scale well.

They are simply difficult in different ways. I can think of at least two scenarios with ancient evils that are generally easier with more players -- Blood on the Altar and Where Doom Awaits.

The assertion that Devourer is more difficult with more players shouldn't be taken as a given either. More players are significantly more capable of doing well in Masks, which reduces your starting doom and mitigates the problem of advancing to act 2 (which doesn't inherently scale for player count at all), and also means you're more likely to be able to "assign" the various woods locations to investigators suited to them, as well as keep combat-focused gators on patrol during act 3 while the investigators focus on completing the act.

On the other hand, if you don't win via Act 3, things thereafter are significantly more punishing for more players, due to the way that particular enemy functions.

I mean comparing a 4 player to a 1 player, you get 4x the actions for a X4 chance of drawing ancient evils. I am not really seeing the lack of scale.

I have gotten the whole Cultist, Cultist, Ancient Evil, pop situation and it sucks. But I still got the 4x actions.

The only issue you can have when playing 4p is that you cycle through the encounter deck at a faster pace and thus specific cards you might not want to see ever in your games are destined to appear. Also, cycling through the deck means you see all of the deck in one game, and thus there could be (beware: could, it's extremely dependant on what you're expecting from a game) a bit detracting from the replayability of the scenario. Apart from that, the game scales well. Not perfectly, because perfectly is impossible, but scales very, very well.

One additional point on the original post: character progression is entitled by higher level cards, and different cycles allow for building very different decks (Carcosa's out, and it's pretty evident how cards from that box are opening different roads) so, even if the initial investment of 2 cores could suck, in the end you're just investig to create a base from which you can really have *a ton* of fun in the future. Going with 4p is awesome because you're allowed to have 4 different decks based on 4 different spheres and man you have a ton of options covered (I generally play 2p or 2H, but I never turn down an opportunity to play 4p)

In my opinion ancient evils is one of the pulls out of the encounter deck that I actually want to see. It's not often that I'm going to lose on time but to some other reason.

The other scaling factors in the game are of course the number of clues that you need which is on a per player basis.

But I don't disagree with the game seeming a little bit easier with four players. I don't think it's relative to the actions but the extra flexibility that you get between all the characters is quite helpful.

Total anecdote here, obviously, but the best I've ever done on Midnight Masks (perfect run) was with two players.

On 29-9-2017 at 9:52 AM, Julia said:

The only issue you can have when playing 4p is that you cycle through the encounter deck at a faster pace and thus specific cards you might not want to see ever in your games are destined to appear.

Which is part of the fun. Seeing the look on one of your friends’ faces as he or she draws that Dark Young Host or an Abduction is worth it alone.