I recently watched Team Covenants new episode explaining all the current expansions from Arkham Horror LCG (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exsu7PHApDU&frags=pl%2Cwn).
It's meant for new players who are curious about the game to orientate themselves and understand the structure behind the releases.

In this video, they mention that there is some kind of power creep between the three main expansions and they specifically recommend starting with the first one ('Dunwich Legacy') in order to manage the campaigns. They think that with buying the core set only and then directly jumping in for instance 'The Forgotten Age' it would be too hard of a challenge.

I played the core set now a couple of times (mostly solo) and think about investing in one if the expansions. However, 'The Forgotten Age' is the most intriguing one but now with this video, I'm kind of holding back because I don't want my story experience to suffer from my frustration not be able to manage the campaigns.

I would appreciate if some people with more game experience share their thoughts about this. Is there indeed a power creep? Won't the cards in 'The Forgotten Age' not be enough to compensate this potentially?

I'm going to have to say no: thus far, there is not power creep in this game. At least not as I usually hear it defined. There aren't any cards that are just strictly better than other cards. Like how Grizzly Bears in MtG is strictly inferior to Nomadic Elf and many other cards. There is no metric, no argument no matter how weak, where you can say that Grizzly Bears is a better card.

That doesnt happen in AH LCG. What does happen is that there are more cards, and as you get more cards, and you get more options, the general strength of the decks you can build from those cards increases. That's a simple function of adding cards to the card pool.

Early in the game (release-wise), character decks were extremely limited by the existing card pool. As the game has progressed, it is feasible to build a deck from only 1 class (Guardian, Seeker, etc.). As the player card pool expands, there may be a thought among the developers that they can start opening up the throttle - giving the players greater challenge.

A pretty good litmus test would be to try one of the first 2 POD (print on demand (stand alone)) scenarios, Curse of the Rougarou or Carnevale of Horrors. Those are harder than the ones in the Dunwich campaign (mostly). Most people have a loosing track record for Curse of the Rougarou (fewer wins than losses). When some of our veterans on here played the deluxe for The Forgotten Age, they had a similar win percentage.

I think that the TFA deluxe would be enough to determine if you wish to pursue the campaign. You're right to be interested in it, it's great.

Each deluxe has 5 (or 6 for Path to Carcosa) investigators and 2 scenarios, plus twice the player cards as a normal Mythos pack. They're not the worst investments, and each gives you a feel for what lies beyond.

You can also drop the difficulty of the game.

If you're doing fine in the core, I say go for it. If you do and end up having a rough time on a given scenario, start a post on here and our more knowledgeable players will give you pointers.

It looks like it's at the 7 minute mark in the video.

it can definitely be said that even with a full card pool, each campaign so far has been harder than the ones before. But that doesn't mean they're unplayable without past sets.

It can be hard for long-time players to evaluate how essential past cards are because we take them for granted. I've been saying that it would be helpful to the community if some veterans of the game tried playing cycles with only cards from the core and the cycle (I'll be happy to try it once I get all my existing campaigns done).

Just as an experiment, I threw together a few decks using only two cores and The Forgotten Age cards

Leo Anderson
Agnes Baker

I haven't tried these, but that Leo one is very similar to the one I started my blind TFA run with. He did pretty well until getting perma-killed in the fourth scenario, but that was because of a dangerous player card that I chose to acquire earlier, not the scenario.

So it's very possible to go straight to Forgotten Age and have valid decks.

On the other hand, Calvin Wright builds tend to look very similar to each other, with cards that are largely from Dunwich and Carcosa. So not every TFA investigator will be easy. But he's pretty advanced to play anyway. And then again, I haven't built Calvin using all the TFA mythos packs, and I know there have been some good ones for him.

I just thought I'd offer my unique-ish perspective. My wife and I started playing with just a Core Set about three months ago and have since played through nearly every available scenario. This is important since we've been building decks with essentially the full card pool and without any sort of card prejudice. We have played through the scenarios in order, with mixed success, but only the one blind run each. We have been killed in a 12 player Labyrinth game, though.

Forgotten Age (FA) seems tougher than either Dunwich or Carcosa, but not tougher than the last Core set scenario. In my limited opinion, FA is harder because the token bag is just utterly frothing with horrible nastiness and the objectives have been less transparent. (Looking at you, Boundary Beyond.) There is also a luck element to the supplies the group purchases, but role-playing what you think your character would bring has worked out shockingly well.

Basically, I'm not seeing Power Creep in scenario difficulty, at least at the Standard difficulty. If Dunwich is the base line, I feel Carcosa is a little easier and FA is a little harder. We're enjoying the FA challenge so far. Would I recommend FA as the first deluxe box purchased? I mean, sure. Please buy more of this game. You'll have a very unique perspective, too.

23 minutes ago, awp832 said:

That doesnt happen in AH LCG. What does happen is that there are more cards, and as you get more cards, and you get more options, the general strength of the decks you can build from those cards increases. That's a simple function of adding cards to the card pool.

1

I guess that is my point. Will the strength of my deck with my limited card pool be sufficient enough to for the newest expansions?

10 minutes ago, Duciris said:

A pretty good litmus test would be to try one of the first 2 POD (print on demand (stand alone)) scenarios, Curse of the Rougarou or Carnevale of Horrors. Those are harder than the ones in the Dunwich campaign (mostly). Most people have a loosing track record for Curse of the Rougarou (fewer wins than losses). When some of our veterans on here played the deluxe for The Forgotten Age, they had a similar win percentage.

...

If you're doing fine in the core, I say go for it. If you do and end up having a rough time on a given scenario, start a post on here and our more knowledgeable players will give you pointers.

2

I did play the Carnevale of Horrors twice or three times. The third time I and my friend got very close to beat it. Working through the core set so far is fine I believe, I played with Roland mostly. The final monster in the third scenario is still a challenge but you can always throw in Lita and call it a day.

43 minutes ago, CSerpent said:

Just as an experiment, I threw together a few decks using only two cores and The Forgotten Age cards

Leo Anderson
Agnes Baker

...

So it's very possible to go straight to Forgotten Age and have valid decks.

1

Thanks for the encouraging words and preparing the decks. I probably will come back to it once I got the TFA expansion.

Looks like my worries were for nothing and I should just get the expansion that I favor and start playing!

5 minutes ago, Iuchi Toshimo said:

Forgotten Age (FA) seems tougher than either Dunwich or Carcosa, but not tougher than the last Core set scenario. In my limited opinion, FA is harder because the token bag is just utterly frothing with horrible nastiness and the objectives have been less transparent. (Looking at you, Boundary Beyond.) There is also a luck element to the supplies the group purchases, but role-playing what you think your character would bring has worked out shockingly well.

Basically, I'm not seeing Power Creep in scenario difficulty, at least at the Standard difficulty. If Dunwich is the base line, I feel Carcosa is a little easier and FA is a little harder. We're enjoying the FA challenge so far. Would I recommend FA as the first deluxe box purchased? I mean, sure. Please buy more of this game. You'll have a very unique perspective, too.

1

That gives me a perfect reference and a good idea of what to expect. I struggled with that scenario in particular for a long time but it is doable!

If you find FA too difficult, you could set the game mode to "easy" until you build up a reasonable pool of cards.

I agree with others that the Forgotten Age is the toughest campaign so far. Me and my group had ‘successful’ resolutions to all but one scenario in our blind play through of the first two campaigns, and so far in FA (not including City of Archives which we haven’t played yet) we have only got ‘successful’ resolutions twice! But that might also be because we’re trying out tricksier characters and deck builds, or we might just have not anticipated how differently you’re tested in FA.

However, and I cannot stress this enough, AH isn’t all about getting the best outcome every scenario. While our characters have had a miserable time of it this campaign, we’ve still really enjoyed the ride! So if FA looks like it floats your boat more than Dunwich or Carcosa (quick shout out for Carcosa, which is my favourite so far) go for it!

Having played further into TFA now, I'm back to say that it is really hard in true solo. I don't think I'll ever play it with less than two investigators from now on (I used to do two handed solo a lot but prefer the lonely feel of true solo).

3 hours ago, CSerpent said:

Having played further into TFA now, I'm back to say that it is really hard in true solo. I don't think I'll ever play it with less than two investigators from now on (I used to do two handed solo a lot but prefer the lonely feel of true solo).

2

haha great - I just bought TFA this weekend! Anyway, I'm looking forward to giving it a try, regardless.

Haven't noticed a power creep. TFA does force you to rethink the way you play the game though, so I agree Dunwich Legacy is the best big campaign to start off with.