With all the cards out now, is it necessary/recommended to have two Cores? My friend said that that is the only way to get two machetes for instance. But can you substitute a baseball bat (or other melee weapon) or is a 2nd machete a necessity? Rather, are there enough "neutrals" in the core, that you'll want some extras for your friends?

Whilst I am a completionist, I'm OK with not having a full set because this is a non-competitive game if that makes sense. Also, I'm not trying for repeats in classes for a party.

Thanks in advance.

I doubt I will ever not recommend two cores to new players. Even taking aside the encounter cards or cards you wind up with "spares" of, you get more player cards in a second core box than you do counting both copies of each player card in a deluxe. If you care about deckbuilding at all, a second core is the way to go.

As far as substitutions, often the answer will be no. Each investigator has unique deckbuilding restrictions. Out of the core box, for example, two characters can play machete and two characters can play baseball bat, and none of them can swap one for the other in their deck.

Necessary? No

Recommended? Depends on who you ask

It is the only way to get two machetes, no way around that, but their are other weapons in the packs and deluxe boxes available to substitute.

I would buy a core, play the game and decide for yourself.

I never bought a second core (for any LCG for that matter), but thats personal preference. I prefered to use the resources to buy packs instead.

2 hours ago, BD Flory said:

If you care about deckbuilding at all, a second core is the way to go.

But apparently I don’t care about deckbuilding, so what do I know?

13 minutes ago, cheapmate said:

But apparently I don’t care about deckbuilding, so what do I know?

I'm still relying on a 2nd core for a 2nd copy of a few cards in my deck. I might substitute some of them, but not all.

I'm with cheapmate, it's not necessary, and personally I don't recommend it although there are others who would. But again, my opinion is that I just don't understand the drive. And I especially do not recommend a 2nd core set for new players.

Presume you have 1 core set and $40 in your pocket. You could get a Dunwich box. You could get a Carcosa box. You could get 2 mythos packs. Or you could get a second core set.

Getting the second core set far and away gives you the least flexibility in terms of deckbuilding, not the most. Why wouldn't you want new cards instead of ones you already have? Why wouldn't you want new adventures to play instead of the ones you already have? For this reason, I only recommend a 2nd core set to players who are very serious about the game *and* already have 1 copy of everything else.

Now I admit there are some nice cards in the core set that would be fun to run 2 of. But there are a lot of duds as well. Who needs 2 copies of Opportunist? Who needs 2 copies of Barricade? Are you dying for a second core set Survival Instinct? Not to mention all the cards in there that have enough copies already (emergency cache for instance). I would rather play with the nice cards in the other boxes instead. Keep your 2nd core cards, I'll take everything from Miscatonic and Essex county instead. Those packs have some real all-stars, like Delve to Deep, Charisma, Deduction-2, Stand Together, Painkillers, Brother Xavier... Pathfinder. and if you're thinking "but dude, if I just buy those 2 mythos packs I won't be able to play the missions without a Dunwich box!" True, true. But you won't be able to play new missions out of a second core box either, now would you?

Or, you could content yourself with getting 5 new characters and some nice cards in either Dunwich or Carcosa boxes, and be able to play those missions right away.

Thanks for the swift responses guys!

Yeah, I think the rephrased question is "2nd Core or 3x Mythos"?

I've played with a friend and he has 2x Core + 1 Of... since I'm doing the initial plunge, I think 1 Of everything should be sufficient. I'm not familiar enough with the game to know if something in the core is an absolute money card.

Also, if my friend has the print-on-demand adventures, are there investigator cards in those packs as well? (e.g., as a group, do we need a 2nd set of them?). Thanks again.

14 minutes ago, IceQube MkII said:

Also, if my friend has the print-on-demand adventures, are there investigator cards in those packs as well? (e.g., as a group, do we need a 2nd set of them?). Thanks again.

Nope, the PoDs contain only encounter cards (including story cards), so the only one you might want more than 1 copy of as a group is Labyrinths of Lunacy (which isn't out yet), and only if you want to play epic mode (which allows up to 12 players).

16 minutes ago, IceQube MkII said:

Thanks for the swift responses guys!

Yeah, I think the rephrased question is "2nd Core or 3x Mythos"?

I've played with a friend and he has 2x Core + 1 Of... since I'm doing the initial plunge, I think 1 Of everything should be sufficient. I'm not familiar enough with the game to know if something in the core is an absolute money card.

The exception of course being if you are supplying the cards for more than 2 players, a second core is still crucial.

I personally prefer two cores, but I wouldn't recommend a new player buys two out of the gate.

Just buy the core, play a few games and see where you want to go from there. Its not like you can't buy them later. If you wanted to buy a second box, I would recommend Dunwich.

1 hour ago, awp832 said:

Presume you have 1 core set and $40 in your pocket. You could get a Dunwich box. You could get a Carcosa box. You could get 2 mythos packs. Or you could get a second core set.

Thats a very good point.

I have 4 cores and thinking of getting 4 more...

On 11-10-2017 at 7:57 AM, Hannibal_pjv said:

I have 4 cores and thinking of getting 4 more...

Why would you ever need 8 core sets?

On 10/4/2017 at 6:07 AM, awp832 said:

I'm with cheapmate, it's not necessary, and personally I don't recommend it although there are others who would. But again, my opinion is that I just don't understand the drive. And I especially do not recommend a 2nd core set for new players.

Presume you have 1 core set and $40 in your pocket. You could get a Dunwich box. You could get a Carcosa box. You could get 2 mythos packs. Or you could get a second core set.

Getting the second core set far and away gives you the least flexibility in terms of deckbuilding, not the most. Why wouldn't you want new cards instead of ones you already have?

A second core set copy will give you 80 new player cards to play with in deck building. No other $40 expenditure on the game will give you that much. e.g. Dunwich Legacy for $30 will give you 40 new player cards. if you look at level 0 only cards, Dunwich looks a bit better (58 vs. 34), but the core set is still the better value.

8 minutes ago, cfmcdonald said:

A second core set copy will give you 80 new player cards to play with in deck building. No other $40 expenditure on the game will give you that much. e.g. Dunwich Legacy for $30 will give you 40 new player cards. if you look at level 0 only cards, Dunwich looks a bit better (58 vs. 34), but the core set is still the better value.

Except for the fact that a second core doesn't give you 80 new player cards, it gives you 80 duplicates, which is significantly less exciting than new cards.

And a second core set will not give you the excellent beginning to the Dunwich campaign.

25 minutes ago, cheapmate said:

Except for the fact that a second core doesn't give you 80 new player cards, it gives you 80 duplicates, which is significantly less exciting than new cards.

And a second core set will not give you the excellent beginning to the Dunwich campaign.

Exciting or not, it gives you a lot more deckbuilding flexibility. If you are interested in building strong decks or having a lot of deckbuilding options, a 2nd core is essential. If you mainly want novelty/variety, I agree it's not the best choice.

Despite owning all the expansions, I only bought a 2nd core because we're planning a 4 player game.

10 hours ago, DMG said:

Despite owning all the expansions, I only bought a 2nd core because we're planning a 4 player game.

I actually thought this was missing from the discussion until I got to the end.

When it comes to playing with more than 2 players, I gather 2 cores are almost necessary, even when owning lots of expansion material?

3 hours ago, hallonapl said:

I actually thought this was missing from the discussion until I got to the end.

When it comes to playing with more than 2 players, I gather 2 cores are almost necessary, even when owning lots of expansion material?

You might be able to technically put together more than 2 with the extra expansion material but the overlap in card choice is gonna be a huge pain. A specific example is the basic neutrals like flashlight or emergency cash, there's a good chance everyone's gonna want two copies and there's only enough to outfit two decks that way. And unless you go all Dunwich investigators or similar deckbuilding restriction investigators who primarily only use one class, there's gonna be overlap in cards you want/need in the five classes.

Question if 2 plays are running from the same set of cards. Do you specifically 2 of each expansion or is 1 enough for both players?

15 minutes ago, starrius said:

Question if 2 plays are running from the same set of cards. Do you specifically 2 of each expansion or is 1 enough for both players?

Depends on what you mean by "enough."

The expansions give you two copies of each card, which is the number you can legally play in a single deck. If you're supporting more than one deck out of a collection, you'll want to play investigators of different classes (including secondaries), and may occasionally need to discuss who gets to play which cards for some neutrals or investigators who can dabble in many classes, but it shouldn't be too much of an obstacle.

If you want each player to be unrestricted in their deck choices (except by the rules), then no. A single copy of each expansion isn't enough for that. Each player would need their own copy.

On 12.10.2017 at 8:27 PM, cheapmate said:

Why would you ever need 8 core sets?

I keep a quite a lot of decks prebuild... and often run out of those level 0 cards.

On 5-12-2017 at 9:25 PM, Hannibal_pjv said:

I keep a quite a lot of decks prebuild... and often run out of those level 0 cards.

That is rich people problems right there.

On 11.12.2017 at 5:47 PM, cheapmate said:

That is rich people problems right there.

Just a working man with no life

I personally feel like a 2nd core is much more valuable if you play a lot of mystics or expect to build multiple decks for players that don't have their own set.

I don't have a 2nd core and never wanted one UNTIL I was trying to get 2 other people to try the game and realized that I had to make complicated decks with less than straight-forward tactics.

They still work fine on easy, but it's much harder to build decks for multiple people.