Hello everyone!

Using your vast pool of experience, what do you suppose is the maximum number of decent started decks (all lvl 0 cards) you would be able to make at this point using just 1 core but one copy of all of the other expansions and mythos packs.

I'm asking because that is what my collection currently contains, and I want to get some new people (my brother and possibly his wife) into the game, but we'd have to share my card pool and I'd like to include my significant other as well if possible. I'd like to aim for a 3-4 player campaign, but I'm not sure if I'd be able to do it and still give players a good first campaign experience.

Any suggestions for investigators that may make this more feasible? I imagine you would not want to cross class lines very much so that each investigator has solid leveling options without having to fight over cards.

Maybe the Dunwich investigators since they only really pull 5 out of class cards each? I'd like for them to be able to choose who they want, but I might need to restrict things to make the experience more enjoyable long-term.

Thoughts? Thanks.

If you use Mark and Akachi, they're basically mono-class, leaving room for a dedicated Seeker (Rex, probably) and then a Rogue or Survivor. Probably Ashcan since he can have a weaker deck in 4p. He's strong enough with his pet doggy.

Your main problem will be the Neutral Skills. Those are often in high demand.

I feel like my brother would be into Mark.

Would Mark, Jenny, Minh/Daisy, and Ashcan/Yorrick work out ok?

I'm a little on the fence about a mystic primarily because with only 1 core, I only have access to 1 card of the staple mystic cards (shirveling, drawn to the flame, rite of seeking).

I think you could make it work. Daisy struggles a bit without 2 copies of Tomes so I might avoid her. Minh will also help not having enough copies of the basic corebook skills as well.

I would do Mark, Jenny, Minh and Ashcan. Yorrick likes those utility Guardians that Mark does, but it is doable as well, at least better than Daisy.

You should have 2 copies of Rite of Seeking since I believe they came in Dunwich.

I would choose Mark + Rex + Jenny + Ashcan. I would avoid mystics and investigators with overlapping classes.

Dunwich investigators can take up to 5 off class cards, but hey really don't have to. Especially in 4 player setup, everyone can specialise to great extent.

Rex is so much better and easier to play than Minh or Daisy, that it will give your entire team much more of a breathing room.

Alternatively you could replace Ashcan with Agnes. She suffers a bit early, but is able to catch up effectively after getting some XP.

3 hours ago, player1329291 said:

I would choose Mark + Rex + Jenny + Ashcan. I would avoid mystics and investigators with overlapping classes.

Dunwich investigators can take up to 5 off class cards, but hey really don't have to. Especially in 4 player setup, everyone can specialise to great extent.

Rex is so much better and easier to play than Minh or Daisy, that it will give your entire team much more of a breathing room.

Alternatively you could replace Ashcan with Agnes. She suffers a bit early, but is able to catch up effectively after getting some XP.

Honestly, I'm avoiding Rex because I don't want them to get the sense that picking up clues is so easy. Rex can really speed up the tempo of the scenario, and I while I like him and do not think he is OP exactly, he does, imo, change the base rate at which act/agenda advance etc and they are brand new players. Out of the two, I'm likely to stick with Daisy because with only one core, Minh won't really be able to heavily invest in 'general' skill cards. But I haven't played Minh, so maybe she doesn't really need those cards?

7 hours ago, Soakman said:

Honestly, I'm avoiding Rex because I don't want them to get the sense that picking up clues is so easy. Rex can really speed up the tempo of the scenario, and I while I like him and do not think he is OP exactly, he does, imo, change the base rate at which act/agenda advance etc and they are brand new players. Out of the two, I'm likely to stick with Daisy because with only one core, Minh won't really be able to heavily invest in 'general' skill cards. But I haven't played Minh, so maybe she doesn't really need those cards?

That's a valid point, but without Rex getting clues might be too difficult. Especially considering that you are playing with 2 new players. Rex could counterbalance poor play choices made by newcomers. Other thing is, that although Rex will do his usual amazing job, others won't. With only 1 core they will struggle a bit in efficient fighting and supporting investigations (Only 1 Machete, 1 Lucky, 1 Look what I found. Only 2 of each Skill. Only 4 Flashlights... ).

What I am trying to say is that game with 4 players and only 1 core might be quite difficult (even on easy). Having Rex is one of the few ways (others are Mark and Pete) to compensate for that. In my opinion it is better to have him, than risk a disaster.

Minh - I think that skills are quite essential here and she also overlaps card pool with Ashcan Pete, so I would say no.

Daisy - She is ok , but lack of tomes hurts her quite a bit.

Side note - with 4 players you will probably run out of some tokens, but they can be easily replaced with tokens from other (Arkham) games.

While I have just started playing this game myself, so I have a different consideration to suggest when making your choice:
What will the new players consider to be "playing the game"?

Support isn't always a role players get into, and that could extend to clue gathering. If so, then you might be better off with you playing Rex, and setting everyone else up to just smack monsters around.

Of course if the other players think beating monsters up is gauche, then building them decks for clue gathering and parleying, while you build a super-guardian for yourself.

Especially to get new people into the game, I'd look to build for how they would enjoy playing first, and reserve a power combo for the experienced players to compensate, tweaking your available cards around that.

15 hours ago, Soakman said:

Honestly, I'm avoiding Rex because I don't want them to get the sense that picking up clues is so easy. Rex can really speed up the tempo of the scenario, and I while I like him and do not think he is OP exactly, he does, imo, change the base rate at which act/agenda advance etc and they are brand new players. Out of the two, I'm likely to stick with Daisy because with only one core, Minh won't really be able to heavily invest in 'general' skill cards. But I haven't played Minh, so maybe she doesn't really need those cards?

In 4p, if Mark kills for two, can't Rex investigate for two?

9 hours ago, SamWeiss said:

While I have just started playing this game myself, so I have a different consideration to suggest when making your choice:
What will the new players consider to be "playing the game"?

Support isn't always a role players get into, and that could extend to clue gathering. If so, then you might be better off with you playing Rex, and setting everyone else up to just smack monsters around.

Of course if the other players think beating monsters up is gauche, then building them decks for clue gathering and parleying, while you build a super-guardian for yourself.

Especially to get new people into the game, I'd look to build for how they would enjoy playing first, and reserve a power combo for the experienced players to compensate, tweaking your available cards around that.

My thoughts were to make a few decks and then let them choose and I'd take the leftover, but, yeah, good advice. Thanks.

8 hours ago, Network57 said:

In 4p, if Mark kills for two, can't Rex investigate for two?

I dunno, can he? Honestly as great as guardians can be, so far my two primary campaign experiences consisted of a support guardian, Rex, and Skids for Dunwich, and Sefina/Rex/Wendy for Carcosa.

Both have done fine (if you consider we played on normal and easy), but I guess I haven't seen how a guardian can really swing a game yet, whereas just playing Essex by itself seems to show how powerful Rex can be (in my experience, it's like day and night).

Here is the main problem choosing Rex, you have only one core so all the cards that boost intellect that are passive and consistent are only 1 copy of, mag glass and Dr Chris, and Rex base intellect is a 4, if you play on standard, not saying you should but, Rex will fail more often and is far less likely to reach two over to be useful, as the way everyone thinks. I have four decks built for starter games, Daisy, Jenny, Zoey, but now sometimes that is Mark, and Ashcan or Wendy, I would say stick with those. The problem with using any guardian is they have severe resource issues due to all their "good" cards costing 3+, Zoey mitigates this significantly, and as a new player wanting to play something and not being able to can be quite frustrating. And yes only have one copy each of the tomes "hurts" Daisy it doesn't hurt that bad due to her intellect being 5, which means with a standard chaos bag, in most cases Daisy will already be at a +1 to most locations shroud and stand a much better chance of actually getting the clue. Plus daisy is part Mystic meaning you get access to some of the really strong mystic cards like, Drawn to the flame and ward of protection. Also yes you only have two each of the main skill cards, so just give each character the skill card for one of their weak stats. Just my Opinion, I have taught many new players using the above combinations, just let the players pick what "style" of investigator they want, gather clues, fight monsters...etc.

I have all the sets and I'm still using a ton of proxy cards for 4 player. Whatever, we're fine with proxies. We're much less fine about FF being so scummy as to expect you to buy several copies of a game because they won't put a couple cents worth of "extra" cards in.

To this... those extra cards would cost extra 40... or more... They want to make money you know...

i would go to second core just so that you would get more those neutrals and make mystics playable, because mystics Are nice!

1 hour ago, Hannibal_pjv said:

To this... those extra cards would cost extra 40... or more... They want to make money you know...

i would go to second core just so that you would get more those neutrals and make mystics playable, because mystics Are nice!

Yeah, fair point. I really want the extra cards if I'm honest, but I just don't want to deal with all the extra encounter cards etc. I like only having one set, so there is no danger of them getting mixed together and me not knowing how many of each encounter is supposed to be in those sets. I also can't bring myself to just buy a core and throw the extra scenario and encounters away. :/

Two cores does mean you can pre build all of the core set scenarios though which does cut down on setup time, and also each encounter set has a number set in the bottom right, to tell you which card of the set it is and how many cards are in the set, so for example if you look at the ancient evils encounter card in the bottom right and it will have a number set as follows: 1/3, meaning it is card 1 of 3 the same is true for every encounter set.

1 hour ago, Soakman said:

Yeah, fair point. I really want the extra cards if I'm honest, but I just don't want to deal with all the extra encounter cards etc. I like only having one set, so there is no danger of them getting mixed together and me not knowing how many of each encounter is supposed to be in those sets. I also can't bring myself to just buy a core and throw the extra scenario and encounters away. :/

Weird predicament you are in there.

What i did was take the new box, keep the encounter cards in a rubberband in that box, removed the player cards and then closed the box and put it in the back of the closet.

Although I am pretty sure you knew that was an option and probably one you don't like. I get not wanting to throw it out, I can't bring myself to do that either.

14 hours ago, Soakman said:

Yeah, fair point. I really want the extra cards if I'm honest, but I just don't want to deal with all the extra encounter cards etc. I like only having one set, so there is no danger of them getting mixed together and me not knowing how many of each encounter is supposed to be in those sets. I also can't bring myself to just buy a core and throw the extra scenario and encounters away. :/

Sell the encounter cards. Lots of people like spare sets to keep all scenarios prebuilt.

Use the spare encounter cards as backs for fan-made print-and-play scenarios.

7 hours ago, Samea said:

Use the spare encounter cards as backs for fan-made print-and-plax scenarios.

That's probably the best idea yet.

It is kind of necessary for fan-made scenarios that include original encounter sets — otherwise it is pretty obvious which cards you draw next.

There are also lots of nice video tutorials about customizing (mostly M:TG) original cards and printing custom content on the front.

Decided to go with Mark, Jenny, and Daisy. Less than ideal decksl. Sure that they won't be amazing, but it'll be fun anyway. Our 4th dropped out but would likely have been a Yorrick deck.

I put together 5 decks with just core and the dunwitch cycle although they probably got weaker as I built them. The odd ball of the decks is probably Jim who I made into a full support for the most part loading him down with the first aid and the like from guardian.

We made it through Curtain Call.

<<possible scenario spoilers for Curtain Call>>

We ended up with 3 because one person had something come up. My Mark Harrigan worked surprisingly well, and the new player that used him pulled a combo I wasn't even thinking of when I built it. Our Daisy only had 3 health left and was in a room with a massive monster, and Mark was one room away. Luckily he had been saving his resources. He played down True Grit, moved into Daisy 's room, and threw the dynamit... IN HIS OWN ROOM. He soaked the 3 damage Daisy would have taken from the blast with his True Grit, took the other 3, and took down the massive monster, thus saving Daisy's life.

Daisy was having some difficulty in the scenario, but I think it was just the player who hadn't used a seeker before. He completely forgot he had a tome equipped (old book of lore) and never used it once.

Jenny did a bit of rearching, Leo DeLuca'd, and happened to end up in the lobby when the man in the mask spawned and immediately filled him with lead from her twin .45s and left the building. Lol.

On 5-12-2017 at 11:33 PM, Starbreaker1 said:

Two cores does mean you can pre build all of the core set scenarios though which does cut down on setup time

Setup time is not an issue in this game, it’s not like its board game namesake.