6 hours ago, CSerpent said:

He could mirror Akachi, taking instead "Uses (Secrets)" and Science. That's a limited pool, but so has Akachi's been so far.

Edit: he seems like a pure scientist who has accidentally stumbled upon some spookier stuff, as opposed to Daisy who has delved much more deeply.

I could see this as well and would be a good take.

The reason I see him leaning towards spells is that in a lot of the older games, his abilities were varied, but he seems to have a focus on spells, gates (which are not in this game) and getting rid of monsters.

AHtBG: The ability to direct which monsters get removed from the board when he closes/seals a gate. No really great analogue here. he starts with a specific spell (Feed the Mind Find Gate) and 1 random of each item type (including an additional spell)

EH: Can use sanity instead of clues and can get rid of monsters at a gate. Starts with the spell Feed the Mind and nothing else.

ES: Gets spells when he resolves other world encounters. Starts with two spells.

EDIT: This is all conjecture, I could just as easily be wrong. Minh is kind of like her old incarnations in that she makes a very good support character. She just goes about it in very different ways in the card game (skills).

Makes sense. Admittedly, I'm not familiar with most of the Files characters outside of the bases for AHtBG and Elder Sign.

1 hour ago, Jobu said:

I could see this as well and would be a good take.

The reason I see him leaning towards spells is that in a lot of the older games, his abilities were varied, but he seems to have a focus on spells, gates (which are not in this game) and getting rid of monsters.

AHtBG: The ability to direct which monsters get removed from the board when he closes/seals a gate. No really great analogue here. he starts with a specific spell (Feed the Mind) and 1 random of each item type (including an additional spell)

EH: Can use sanity instead of clues and can get rid of monsters at a gate. Starts with the spell Feed the Mind and nothing else.

ES: Gets spells when he resolves other world encounters. Starts with two spells.

EDIT: This is all conjecture, I could just as easily be wrong. Minh is kind of like her old incarnations in that she makes a very good support character. She just goes about it in very different ways in the card game (skills).

Yeah, but I feel like they leaned into the EH ability to spend sanity instead of clues by lowering the resource cost on his revealed player card by 1. So more of a resource management approach. And I see a bit of a similarity between gates and encounters because in EH & AH, gates are sort of the timing mechanism whereas encounters can be (Ancient Evils/Arcane Barriers/etc). So him being able to control those is somewhat similar for a game that doesn't have gates. Not to mention he is an excellent seeker so has better control over the 'timing' of the act/agenda decks.

I wouldn't be surprised if he could use spells, but I'm honestly more interested in seeing the division between research and arcane horror be widened. I don't really want every researcher to be a spell caster, just like I don't really want every mystic to double down on clue gathering (they don't here, and I'm glad).

1 minute ago, Soakman said:

I wouldn't be surprised if he could use spells, but I'm honestly more interested in seeing the division between research and arcane horror be widened. I don't really want every researcher to be a spell caster, just like I don't really want every mystic to double down on clue gathering (they don't here, and I'm glad).

Yeah me to. To be honest I am hoping to see one of my favorites show up to do that. Kate Winthrop. But I suspect that will be a while so I wouldn't mind someone else doing part of the same thing.

To be fair, only Daisy is really mystical. Rex and Minh are not really mystics.

8 minutes ago, Soakman said:

Yeah, but I feel like they leaned into the EH ability to spend sanity instead of clues by lowering the resource cost on his revealed player card by 1. So more of a resource management approach. And I see a bit of a similarity between gates and encounters because in EH & AH, gates are sort of the timing mechanism whereas encounters can be (Ancient Evils/Arcane Barriers/etc). So him being able to control those is somewhat similar for a game that doesn't have gates. Not to mention he is an excellent seeker so has better control over the 'timing' of the act/agenda decks.

Great point.

13 hours ago, Khudzlin said:

What's safe to assume is that he'll be in a yet unpublished deluxe, not necessarily the next one, just like Marie.

Yes, thus, "we thought that with Marie, too." My money had been on Norman in a Cthulhu box, with a suspicion that Cthulhu would be the last of the four old ones featured in core to get his own box. But we'll see.

That being said, while I'm invested in Arkham, if Norman is pushed off indefinitely like Marie, I'm pretty much out on picking up any future LCGs FFG puts out. The lack of this kind of release is what attracted me to LCGs over CCGs in the first place.

13 minutes ago, BD Flory said:

My money had been on Norman in a Cthulhu box, with a suspicion that Cthulhu would be the last of the four old ones featured in core to get his own box.

Surely the Seeker in a Cthulhu box would be Amanda Sharpe? Norman's not really associated with any particular AO (except maybe Syzygy, but that doesn't count). Granted, there's no rule saying the investigators have to be related to the campaign (that was mostly the case with Carcosa, but not Core or Dunwich), but if I were to peg any investigators to particular campaigns, the first thing I'd do would be to make Amanda and Silas take a trip to R'lyeh.

Just now, rsdockery said:

Surely the Seeker in a Cthulhu box would be Amanda Sharpe? Norman's not really associated with any particular AO (except maybe Syzygy, but that doesn't count). Granted, there's no rule saying the investigators have to be related to the campaign (that was mostly the case with Carcosa, but not Core or Dunwich), but if I were to peg any investigators to particular campaigns, the first thing I'd do would be to make Amanda and Silas take a trip to R'lyeh.

Norman's an astronomer. If there's one Old One "the stars are right" is associated with, it would be Cthulhu.

There are certainly other investigators who would fit. Let's amend my statement to, "knowing that Norman is on the way, he's more appropriate to Cthulhu than Shub," which are what I expect the next two boxes to be.

4 hours ago, BD Flory said:

That being said, while I'm invested in Arkham, if Norman is pushed off indefinitely like Marie, I'm pretty much out on picking up any future LCGs FFG puts out. The lack of this kind of release is what attracted me to LCGs over CCGs in the first place.

I've started to come around on these. Sure it sucks for completionists that these are available only with the novella, but consider the alternative: an expansion of just replacement signature cards. To make that worth it, you'd need 30 investigators. Do we really want to wait 5 or 6 cycles before we get this new content? And it allows us to choose which ones we care about. I could care less about, say, Wendy's new cards; but these look interesting (depending on what his regular signatures are). Plus the bundling allows them to move a product that probably never would have sold otherwise - no offense to the authors, but game company fiction is generally passable at best.

1 hour ago, Network57 said:

I've started to come around on these. Sure it sucks for completionists that these are available only with the novella, but consider the alternative: an expansion of just replacement signature cards.

That's only one possible solution (and I agree, not a particularly great one).

Just off the top of my head, they could do a boxed standalone campaign, with 15 cards (give or take) dedicated to replacement cards for investigators who have appeared in the core and deluxe boxes we already have. At the Mountains of Madness campaign in a box with 5 replacement investigator sets? Sure, sign me up.

Do one of these periodically, in parallel with the deluxe/cycle releases, like LotR does saga boxes, and voila -- 5 or so replacement investigator sets twice a year (ish) about the same rate at which these seem to be coming out. Even at a slightly higher price point than the current deluxe boxes (I think?) these would weigh in at roughly the cost of two novellas for 5 investigator replacements plus scenarios, and at roughly the same rate of release per investigator.

That people keep saying, "Oh, we could never have these cards except if they came with the novella," is a failure of imagination.

1 hour ago, Network57 said:

Plus the bundling allows them to move a product that probably never would have sold otherwise - no offense to the authors, but game company fiction is generally passable at best.

Wait, you're using, "They can sell us substandard products that wouldn't support themselves in the marketplace unless they leverage these promo cards to drive sales to people who wouldn't buy the fiction," as a point in favor? That's not a good thing -- that's exactly the kind of marketing I don't want to see FFG pursue.

Though they aren't literary masterpieces, I actually do prefer them marketed the way they are because we get more lore about the investigator as well as new options for them. I see them as investigator expansion packs (and despite the books not being amazing, the quality is worth the price; hardback books are not cheap to produce). I appreciate that other people would prefer these cards release by some other means or packaged differently, but I am actually a big fan of these in general. The only thing I'm not a fan of is FFG's shipping.

Just wanted to put my two cents in. I read a lot though; if I had to pick 1 book a month to read, I'm not sure it would be one of these. However, I read enough that I can balance my diet of books with a bit of pulpy fluff. I like it.

4 minutes ago, Soakman said:

Though they aren't literary masterpieces, I actually do prefer them marketed the way they are because we get more lore about the investigator as well as new options for them. I see them as investigator expansion packs (and despite the books not being amazing, the quality is worth the price; hardback books are not cheap to produce). I appreciate that other people would prefer these cards release by some other means or packaged differently, but I am actually a big fan of these in general. The only thing I'm not a fan of is FFG's shipping.

I have zero issue with more lore. If the interest in fiction is there, and if FFG can produce it at sufficient quality to be sustainable on its own merits, great. That isn't what they're doing.

8 hours ago, BD Flory said:

Wait, you're using, "They can sell us substandard products that wouldn't support themselves in the marketplace unless they leverage these promo cards to drive sales to people who wouldn't buy the fiction," as a point in favor? That's not a good thing -- that's exactly the kind of marketing I don't want to see FFG pursue.

I don't agree with it as a particularly player-friendly idea, but it is a business decision that makes sense for a business. Chase cards are exciting and do drive sales of supplemental products like fiction. I do also agree that this violates LCG principles somewhat.

The reverse side of his card has been revealed on Facebook:

seeker cards level 0

mystic level 0 up to five cards

mystic level 1-5

neutral 0-5

deck size 30

Only level 0 seeker cards is a bit disappointing!

34 minutes ago, Daft Blazer said:

The reverse side of his card has been revealed on Facebook:

seeker cards level 0

mystic level 0 up to five cards

mystic level 1-5

neutral 0-5

deck size 30

Only level 0 seeker cards is a bit disappointing!

Pic for those of us without FB? This seems to really stretch the class distinction of the Investigators... Why make him Seeker if he can't upgrade Seeker cards? Is there any point to him not being Mystic instead?

It's such an odd choice. With such a high intelligence, it's sad that he can't use the Strange Solution or some of the other interesting investigation cards. I'm not sure about his inability to include lvl 0 mystic cards (at least not many) and the fact that he can only use lvl 0 seeker cards that will likely end up needing replaced is interesting but feels really rigid. I guess the perk is that he'll be able to get lvl 5 mystic cards eventually.

Also note that his normal Signature cards are listed here... Livre D'Eibon and The Harbinger (we can only speculate what those are).

That's really interesting. It gives him his own arc as a campaign progresses. He starts as a nearly pure Seeker, but as he gains experience, he becomes more Mystic. Neat design.

Did the alternate Jenny have the original signature cards listed on the back?

2 minutes ago, CSerpent said:

That's really interesting. It gives him his own story arc as a campaign progresses. He starts as a nearly pure Seeker, but as he gains experience, he becomes more Mystic. Neat design.

That's very true. I'm just not sure I like it, haha. I'm uncomfortable with an Astronomer that can't use an Encyclopedia, Scientific Theory, or Higher Education. Also would think he would be able to use Forewarned. And maybe Deciphered Reality.

1 hour ago, CSerpent said:

That's really interesting. It gives him his own arc as a campaign progresses. He starts as a nearly pure Seeker, but as he gains experience, he becomes more Mystic. Neat design.

Did the alternate Jenny have the original signature cards listed on the back?

Alt jenny does have the original signature cards on her back.

And yeah, neat design there. I like it. Its different, but not as complicated as say a Lola.

12 hours ago, Soakman said:

That's very true. I'm just not sure I like it, haha. I'm uncomfortable with an Astronomer that can't use an Encyclopedia, Scientific Theory, or Higher Education. Also would think he would be able to use Forewarned. And maybe Deciphered Reality.

It could be beaus in his story all his academic skills and knowledge have become nearly useless after stepping into a world of horrors and magic. This is an alternate version to mirror his state in the book. Most likely his "real" version will have different rules at least I think it might I have no idea. Do the alternates of the other cards have different deck building rules?

4 hours ago, Cold Iron1 said:

It could be beaus in his story all his academic skills and knowledge have become nearly useless after stepping into a world of horrors and magic. This is an alternate version to mirror his state in the book. Most likely his "real" version will have different rules at least I think it might I have no idea. Do the alternates of the other cards have different deck building rules?

No, that's what I was asking above. The alt-Jenny card had the exact same rules, including her normal signature cards.

Very odd, but interesting, deck-building requirements. I can't wait to test Norman out .

after some thought, I like his odd deck requirements, and would love to see a whole cycle of investigators with similar restrictions. Investigators to complete the cycle off the top of my head would be:

Tony Moran/Joe Diamond - Guardian to Rogue

Norman Withers - Seeker to Mystic

Rita Young - Rogue to Guardian

Diana Stanley - Mystic to Survivor

Silas Marsh - Survivor to Rogue

3 hours ago, Somatose Boy said:

after some thought, I like his odd deck requirements, and would love to see a whole cycle of investigators with similar restrictions. Investigators to complete the cycle off the top of my head would be:

Tony Moran/Joe Diamond - Guardian to Rogue

Norman Withers - Seeker to Mystic

Rita Young - Rogue to Guardian

Diana Stanley - Mystic to Survivor

Silas Marsh - Survivor to Rogue

I like this, however the change to class does not reflect all base classes. Perhaps Silas Marsh can go from Survivor to Seeker. He is seeking the truth behind his Insmouth origins.

I don't feel right about the Diana suggestion. She seems to be more profoundly mystic than anything else even if she is redeemed. I would hate to see her with only lvl 0 mystic cards.

If you want to go from Mystic to something, I would think maybe Dexter as he is very wary of actual magic since he found it. His evolved class would be tough to pin down though. Mabye rogue for sleight of hand and other escape tricks. Or possibly Jacqueline from mystic to survivor or even guardian as I tend to see her first and foremost as a psychic and could easily see her evolving into a 'protector' role or ramping up into survivor's fortune cards.