https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2018/10/12/the-circle-undone/

Your thoughts?

It looks like my hopes for a Silver Twilight-themed cycle have come true, even if they might end up just being the bad guys.

And anyone who liked the idea of Diana Stanley, rejoice!

In the write up they said that Dark Instinct starts in your hand, but that isn't anywhere on that card. Probably on the back of her investigator's deck building requirements.

I think it's safe to assume that we will see Tarot cards for each of the factions, each with their own effects, which will probably all share the "If this is in your opening hand..." clause.

Also, more reference to the old Call of Cthulhu Card Game, as the flavour text of the article reads...

" Nathaniel Rhodes has just been elected to the senate, spreading optimism among the city’s most upstanding members, and tonight, Josef Meiger of the Silver Twilight Lodge will be holding a charity event."

Which refers to... http://www.cardgamedb.com/index.php/CoC/CoCCards.html/_/the-order-of-the-silver-twilight/senator-nathaniel-rhodes-tootst

and http://www.cardgamedb.com/index.php/CoC/CoCCards.html/_/denizens-of-the-underworld/josef-meiger-dotu

The text also implies that the campaign will be set in Arkham itself rather than sending the investigators elsewhere. This might mean that we will see the more Arkham-bound investigators such as Harvey Walters , and the political theme might give us Charlie Kane . The mention that "witches and strange rituals have been heard on the lonesome hills around Arkham" might be a reference to the Witch Cult of Keziah Mason, so I would not be surprised to see one of the scenarios taking place in The Witch House.

I don't know how I feel about Diana Stanley yet. The fact that she has awful Willpower until she gets built up puts me off - I'd much rather have Akachi Onyele, still have an Agility and Fight of 3, and come out with 5 Willpower right from the start. Having said that, it seems like her ability is worded very broadly - "Cancels or ignores a card effect or game effect " to me means even Hypnotic Gaze cancelling an attack, or Counterspell cancelling a chaos token. The fact that you can then use those effects later on with her unique asset is pretty awesome - who wouldn't want to use Counterspell 4 times a game? If she can pair with investigators who can get started early on to cover her while she sets up, I think she could be solid. Speculation on her deckbuilding restrictions is welcome!

12 minutes ago, Allonym said:

The mention that "witches and strange rituals have been heard on the lonesome hills around Arkham" might be a reference to the Witch Cult of Keziah Mason, so I would not be surprised to see one of the scenarios taking place in The Witch House.

Brown! Freaking! Jenkin!

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I don't know how I feel about Diana Stanley yet. The fact that she has awful Willpower until she gets built up puts me off - I'd much rather have Akachi Onyele, still have an Agility and Fight of 3, and come out with 5 Willpower right from the start. Having said that, it seems like her ability is worded very broadly - "Cancels or ignores a card effect or game effect " to me means even Hypnotic Gaze cancelling an attack, or Counterspell cancelling a chaos token. The fact that you can then use those effects later on with her unique asset is pretty awesome - who wouldn't want to use Counterspell 4 times a game? If she can pair with investigators who can get started early on to cover her while she sets up, I think she could be solid. Speculation on her deckbuilding restrictions is welcome!

My guess is she gets cards with "cancel" effects, the way Carolyn gets "heal horror" cards.

I also think that despite starting with 1 willpower, the fact that she is built to essentially buff her worst stat makes her a solid character all around. She has a very stable 7/7 health/sanity spread and 3's accross the board except will, which could end up being I think a base of 6? And that's without items like the Rosary.

We're looking at a 6/3/3/3 character with no health/sanity penalties that regularly cancels game effects!

To me, that seems beastly! The fact that events like ward of protection are fast means that she can likely ramp up her will multiple times in a turn. The only limiting factor to her power is that you need to include several cancellation effect cards, which means you will have less room for heavy hitters like shriveling 5 (if she can take it) and other assets, but she looks DANG good to me!

15 minutes ago, Soakman said:

The only limiting factor to her power is that you need to include several cancellation effect cards, which means you will have less room for heavy hitters like shriveling 5 (if she can take it) and other assets, but she looks DANG good to me!

I actually like this, and expect that we'll start to see more investigators like this, Carolyn that theme to specific game effects. While it may annoy people who just want their favorite investigator to be all-around awesome, I think it's going to be good for the game that different investigators will reinforce different playstyles.

The Willpower ramp will be interesting, but I think there are enough cancel options to power her up fairly quickly. It will depend a lot on her deck restrictions, as cancellation effects are rather broadly spread across the classes - Mystics only have 3, one of which is Level 2 only. But I also think it won't be a real hindrance even if the ramp is a bit slow. Her other stats are solid enough to contribute as an off-whatever until she gets ramped for her spells. Certainly faster and easier than Calvin.

21 minutes ago, Soakman said:

I also think that despite starting with 1 willpower, the fact that she is built to essentially buff her worst stat makes her a solid character all around. She has a very stable 7/7 health/sanity spread and 3's accross the board except will, which could end up being I think a base of 6? And that's without items like the Rosary.

We're looking at a 6/3/3/3 character with no health/sanity penalties that regularly cancels game effects!

To me, that seems beastly! The fact that events like ward of protection are fast means that she can likely ramp up her will multiple times in a turn. The only limiting factor to her power is that you need to include several cancellation effect cards, which means you will have less room for heavy hitters like shriveling 5 (if she can take it) and other assets, but she looks DANG good to me!

I think you're right that her potential power is really high, but evaluating investigators in terms of their maximum stats is often a bad way to look at it (like looking at Calvin Wright in terms of having 5/5/5/5). It means she'll be pretty useless early in the game (unless her deckbuilding requirements make it easy for her to leverage her other stats - and a base "3" isn't all that impressive by itself), and some scenarios come out swinging - you'll have a hard time in Essex County Express, for instance, if you have to wait several turns before your willpower is good enough to get anything done. Plus, all those cards you're using to ramp up are cards you need in addition to the core mystic cards of Shrivelling/Rite of Seeking/Mists of R'lyeh etc. - i.e. you'll have to get a wide spread of cards in order to both buff your willpower and make use of it.

Having a relatively low Sanity for a Mystic is a problem as well because lots of Mystic cards hit Sanity, and her unique weakness also targets sanity - and if you get it late game it's a potential 5 San loss (or sacrifice of willpower as an alternative). It also makes Arcane Research a lot less attractive.

A further issue is that her effect encourages her to use Cancel cards just to buff herself - for instance, her unique cancel event is really strong, but you're probably going to want to use it very early - it would be lovely to cancel a horrible enemy or an early weakness draw but there'll be the tension to use the card for the bonus even if you're wasting it on something that isn't really worth cancelling. Plus, if you don't draw your Ward of Protection and Counterspell etc. early you're gonna be in hot water - bad draw is already a Mystic weakness and it looks like it'll be exacerbated on Diana.

You can get out her unique asset and re-use the cancel effects at a later point (the strong cancel should be played early just for the willpower, and then later in the game you can re-play it to save your bacon), but when you do so you're sacrificing the willpower boost. On the other hand, getting to use your cancel abilities twice over is really powerful, if she can keep up the economy to play them - she may not need to have strong stats if she exerts huge amounts of control over the game - between her unique event and 2 copies of Ward of Protection (5) you can cancel 6 drawn enemies without reshuffling. Economy is a major weakness for mystics, however - it looks like her design exacerbates the vulnerabilities that mystics already have to deal with.

I think it's really cool design and I love anything that encourages that kind of tough decision-making - and I hope her deckbuilding is equally interesting.

Worth remembering her Elder Sign lets her pull a card back into her hand too. Obviously not something you want to rely on, but it does help the "Spend it early to gain WP or hold for that perfect cancel." Burn it early, build up WP with everything else, and get it back at some point THEN hold it for the perfect cancel.

You make excellent points, and my perspective will probably also be affected by the fact that I typically play easy/normal with at least 3 players. Often, on our games, we have time for an investigator to ramp up because there are others who've got your back.

While I can understand that 7 sanity is 'low' for a mystic, it's not low in terms of the average, and you can typically take sanity hits to allies as well if needed (or the rosary, etc).

I think the biggest issue for Diana is that unlike Calvin, your progress with her willpower does not carry over between scenarios. This means that there are not strategies for deck building such as bringing a flashlight in scenario 1 and 2 until you're able to ramp your will faster and then replacing them with rite of seeking. You will have to rely on your other attributes early on in each game. For me, 3's are perfectly usable for tests, but again, you might want to consider cards like perception in addition to cards like guts.

I also don't think it's going to be that difficult to get the cancel effects rolling early with tools like Arcane Initiate and a solid mulligan, but this is based on nothing short of luck I suppose. And despite perhaps wanting to hold onto a cancellation card, (in my head) if you can cancel anything, you're already one-up from where you'd be otherwise.

I don't think she's going to be OVER powerful, just simply powerful.

And I can probably see a deck (depending on restrictions) where she only makes use of testless mystic cards and mystic cancellation effects while relying on actual weapons and flashlights etc instead of the mystic toolbelt for her actions. Ramping her will will still save her from treacheries and that's just a result of building a good cancellation deck. Her statline overall will still be higher than most investigators and you aren't risking the sanity loss of a botched shriveling for example.

The challenge/fun with her will be:

1. You need 3 cards under her to get to a decent 4 will power base. You need to be there to start using Rite of Seeking, Shrivelling etc. This may mean that you won't want to put these cards in her deck.

2, You also need cards that allow her to use that higher will. This means you need a lot of card draw (you need the normal cards and the will boosters)

3. All in all I am thinking she will be a fun deck building challenge.

4. I want to see her deck building options. Heck she may not be allowed to take spells for all we know.

Okay, so hear me out here. This will be the Dreamlands cycle.

Dreams in the Witch House. Witches are associated with Nyarlathotep. Nyarlathotep is associated with the Dreamlands.

And for some extra conspiracy-theorizing: The Ace of Swords is in the Invocation article. XVIII the Moon is in this article. Both were also in the Dreamlands expansion for Eldritch.

Edit: I've actually been wondering for a while if it was possible to build a low-will mystic. Mostly ignoring the "use will instead" cards.

22 minutes ago, Jobu said:

The challenge/fun with her will be:

1. You need 3 cards under her to get to a decent 4 will power base. You need to be there to start using Rite of Seeking, Shrivelling etc. This may mean that you won't want to put these cards in her deck.

This is true for starting out, but gets a lot less so as you get the more expensive spells. They include large enough bonuses that you could reasonably start making tests at 2 WP, which is fairly automatic for her.

25 minutes ago, Jobu said:

4. I want to see her deck building options. Heck she may not be allowed to take spells for all we know.

I suppose this is possible, but I'd be really surprised. I don't think it would fit her character at all, or the Mystic class. It would also make her will ramp rather contradictory.

49 minutes ago, Eldan985 said:

Okay, so hear me out here. This will be the Dreamlands cycle.

Dreams in the Witch House. Witches are associated with Nyarlathotep. Nyarlathotep is associated with the Dreamlands.

And for some extra conspiracy-theorizing: The Ace of Swords is in the Invocation article. XVIII the Moon is in this article. Both were also in the Dreamlands expansion for Eldritch.

Edit: I've actually been wondering for a while if it was possible to build a low-will mystic. Mostly ignoring the "use will instead" cards.

I pray that we're finally going to get a version of Carolyn that does not result in signature weakness induced table flipping. It sounds like a good cycle to have someone who can handle horror mitigation.

7 minutes ago, Soakman said:

I pray that we're finally going to get a version of Carolyn that does not result in signature weakness induced table flipping. It sounds like a good cycle to have someone who can handle horror mitigation.

That's why you take 2x Alyssa Graham, and 2x Calling In Favours to find her! Yeah, To Fight The Black Wind is absurdly rough, I can't imagine they really understood how punishing it is.

On the flip side, Diana's unique Event can cancel weakness cards as well, and with Diana having Sanity and resource issues, Diana and Carolyn would make a good team...!

1 hour ago, Eldan985 said:

Okay, so hear me out here. This will be the Dreamlands cycle.

Dreams in the Witch House. Witches are associated with Nyarlathotep. Nyarlathotep is associated with the Dreamlands.

And for some extra conspiracy-theorizing: The Ace of Swords is in the Invocation article. XVIII the Moon is in this article. Both were also in the Dreamlands expansion for Eldritch.

I'd be disappointed if that's the case, there's already so much to work with for the Silver Twilight Lodge and for dealing with the lore of Arkham itself.

Likewise, the Dreamlands really deserves a full and focussed cycle. More fantasy themed and lots of weirdness, rather than just a place for the last few scenarios of a cycle.

19 minutes ago, Allonym said:

That's why you take 2x Alyssa Graham, and 2x Calling In Favours to find her! Yeah, To Fight The Black Wind is absurdly rough, I can't imagine they really understood how punishing it is.

On the flip side, Diana's unique Event can cancel weakness cards as well, and with Diana having Sanity and resource issues, Diana and Carolyn would make a good team...!

Something else to note that I didn't point out earlier is that Diana's reaction ability actually lets you draw a card and gain a resource once per phase, so each time you cancel an effect, you get a resource back, which basically pays the costs for those wards of protections.

1 minute ago, Soakman said:

Something else to note that I didn't point out earlier is that Diana's reaction ability actually lets you draw a card and gain a resource once per phase, so each time you cancel an effect, you get a resource back, which basically pays the costs for those wards of protections.

Oh I completely missed that (can you blame me? That text box is very busy)! That makes her effect a lot more attractive, as it mitigates the additional problem of needing double setup.

I'm not sure I see her as a spell caster. I think she'll use cancels early to pass her Willpower style encounter checks, then late game she'll just straight up use her raw willpower to resist them, recycling those cards occasionally with the Elder Sign to help the group. All in all, the effect seems to make her practically immune to much of the encounter deck nastiness while embodying the flavor of her character.

For some reason, seeing as she's a Reformed Cultist, I just don't see her flinging doom on her Blood Pact and wasting monsters with Shriveling 5. There's enough cancel effects in each class (more in Survivor than the others, but half of those Exile) that we might be seeing a Norman or Carolyn type Mystic here - limited access to Mystic cards, but nearly unlimited access to a different class or category of cards.

2 minutes ago, Iuchi Toshimo said:

For some reason, seeing as she's a Reformed Cultist, I just don't see her flinging doom on her Blood Pact and wasting monsters with Shriveling 5.

I wouldn't have expected it from Father Mateo either, but...

18 minutes ago, Buhallin said:

I wouldn't have expected it from Father Mateo either, but...

The characters are different philosophically, which is certainly a facet of the Arkham Mythos that keeps me intrigued.

Mateo's having a crisis of Theodicy. The better questions for him is, "Why is God allowing me to do these things? Where are the limits that cause God to step in?"

On the other hand, Diana's actively seeking to leave that life behind her. The case could be made that she already knows some of the techniques already...

25 minutes ago, Iuchi Toshimo said:

On the other hand, Diana's actively seeking to leave that life behind her. The case could be made that she already knows some of the techniques already...

I'll need to go back and re-read her story, but it seems like she's more opposing the cult than trying to get out. And it wouldn't be Lovecraft if people weren't making bad choices about the tools they'll use...

Has anybody an idea which cycle is meant by the name of this new expansion?

6 hours ago, Raahk said:

Has anybody an idea which cycle is meant by the name of this new expansion?

As in, what's the name of the campaign going to be? I think it's safe to assume it will be simply "The Circle Undone" - each of the Arkham campaigns so far have had the same name as the initial Deluxe expansion (Dunwich Legacy, Path to Carcosa, Forgotten Age). In addition, the product description states "[the] first two scenarios of The Circle Undone campaign".

The LOTR LCG has cycle names that are different to the deluxe names (e.g. "The Grey Havens" started off the "Dream-chaser" cycle), so perhaps that's what you're thinking of?

I’m assuming what @Raahk was asking was the relevance of the Circle in the title itself. While there may be a famous ‘Circle’ which it would be unwise to undo, I’m not aware of one specific. Any Lovecraft/CoC scholars out there aware of anything?

If not, I suspect it’s just a reference to the common use of the term circle in magic. ‘The circle must not be broken’ type quotes are fairly common, so it could reference a ritual or spell that has gone awry.

Equally, like The Magic Circle, it might relate to a metaphorical circle (of trust, or secrecy, whatever), suggesting maybe a betrayal, or traitor, presumably within the Silver Twilight Lodge. Maybe even Diana!

The last obvious one is a circle of events. Maybe a ritual needs to be completed every year, or a sacrifice, whatever. But if one such event were to be disrupted, or missed, the circle would be undone! Possibly a placatory ritual is required at regular intervals to keep some Great Old One from awakening, but this pattern has been broken, and so the GOO is awakening, and the players must repair it.

Those are the most logical explanations for the campaign name, but the designers have probably come up with something completely different!

Oh right, "Circle" not "Cycle". I getcha.

Yeah your analysis is on point.

Thinking about Diana as the traitor, I wonder if there'll be special setup instructions or flavour text for her, like Lola in Carcosa...