Sorry if this is a double post but none of the old topics seemed to discuss this...

So basicly I was wondering wheter you familiarise yourselves with the new expansions by suffling the new cards:

a) on the top of each deck, or

b) with the old cards?

I just got the King in Yellow and it left me wondering which way would be more interesting. Adding them on the top of the decks would mean that they will be played surely but it also means that there wouldn't be any suprises left for another games. I haven't even checked all the core cards yet and we've been playing it over an year now.

Depends on the expansion, really. The 2 "big box" expansions are meant to be shuffled in the base game. I guess it's true for Black goat of the Woods as well. That doesn't necessarily mean to always shuffle all your expansions that you own into the base game, some players prefer to add only one or two max to the base game, to avoid dilution.

Now, for Curse of the Dark Pharaoh and King in Yellow, I heard it's a good idea to play them separatly, as "visiting exhibits" if I remember the term right (their respective rulebooks tells of how to play them separatly of the base deck), so to get the most flavors out of them. Although it's fun for the first few games, ultimately they more often than not end up shuffled into the base game's cards as well

I tried "Visiting Exhibit" when I first got Dark Pharaoh, and had a lousy game. From thenafter, I always shuffled everything together. When Dunwich came out, I didn't even try to "see all of Dunwich first" and just mixed them all in too. Discovered quite a few things after that:

1) I didn't like Dark Pharaoh at all. But that's another thread entirely.

2) I prefer not to spoil a new expansion too quickly. I was able to drag out the "reveals" of Dunwich for weeks, as opposed to burning through them in a few games, as I did with Dark Pharaoh (accelerated by "Visiting Exhibit"). I will never scan a "new" deck right out of any box (well, not more than 3-4 cards anyway).

3) Mixing expansions together tends to breed trouble. The "Dilution Factor" seems to be more of a personal choice of playing style, but the fact that every expansion only plans with the Base Set often produces conflicts that have no answers (the old Rift-in-a-Vortex gambit). Some like this trouble...I do not.

When King in Yellow suggested I stack its cards on the TOP of almost every deck...seriously?...I thought that sounded ludicrous. What about Elder Signs? Or simple Withers and Mists of Releh? Or just the basic Mythos cards, the ones that clear a neighborhood, or dump two monsters in the streets? I wasn't sure I wanted THAT MUCH "concentrated" Hastur. But I violated Rule #2 up there, determined to try it. Sure enough, my first game gave me Investigators with a lot of starting Common Items, and everyone had a Gladius. I played four turns and was severely annoyed with the complete lack of (I guess) "normal" Arkham cards to blend with all this Carcosanity. I quit, started over (shuffling everything together), and had a fantastic first game.

Kingsport and Black Goat have been shuffled into the rest since their first games. (Not always together: I stand by the "One Board Expansion and one Card Expansion at MOST" playing style.) There are still a few Kingsport cards I haven't seen, because "another one that I haven't seen" keeps popping up from time to time, and I bet I've barely seen half of Black Goat by now. Plenty of surprises still to come.

I kind of have fun mixing them in, that way I get more variety across games, and have more games with "new stuff," popping up in them.

Do you want all your chocolate at once, or do you want to make it last

Yep. We tried the "exhibition style" and it sucked. We didn't have a fighting change even in the beginning. From now on we'll shuffle them.

We tend to play only one expansion at a time. All cards are mixed into their respective decks except the Mythos and Other World cards, they are kept separate from the Base Game cards. In other words you have two piles of Mythos cards and 2 piles of Other World cards.

As part of the upkeep phase the first player rolls a die. A 1-4 result means we use the Base Game Mythos and Other World cards, 5 or 6 then the expansion cards are used for that turn.