My gaming group has finally finished the Dunwich cycle after playing off and on since it first came out. In the meantime we have collected all of the subsequent cycles. Now we are wondering what the general consensus amongst the player base is when it comes to best practices for staring new cycles for the first time. When starting a new cycle (in this case Path to Carcossa), do you all generally pick from all investigators that you own or only the ones that were available at the time PtC first came out (so you exclude all the investigors from Forbidden Lore). Also, do you allow yourselves to build decks from every card that you own, or do you play more in a “legacy” format in which you only add the cards to your library from the scenarios as you “unlock” them? And finally, do most of you start new cycles with fresh decks and experience 0 investigations, or do most of you carry over your investigators from the previous cycle with all their accumulated cards, experience and trauma?

I realize that ultimately it’s up to us to decide on how we want to play the game, but we are curious what the rest of you do when beginning a new cycle.

I think most people play in chronological order of release, so that cards (including Investigators, Player Cards, and Basic Weaknesses) from future packs and cycles unlock as you get to them, at least for the first play through.

And hey, if you got out of Dunwich without being horribly scarred with mental and physical trauma, no reason you can't keep going. If they've racked up too much mileage, though, I think most people hit the Reset button.

I'm a member of a club (we are 12 players of AH LCG). Our consensus is to play with everything you own. I have everything but didn't play Carcosa and Forbidden Lore yet but when i will do i will play with my whole collection in mind.

We: Use whatever investigators we have access to,

Use whatever cards we have access to when deckbuilding,

Always start new campaigns fresh, and never carry over investigators from previous campaigns.

I would play with everything especially if you don't have infinite amounts of time to play. Just use what you want and what would be the most enjoyable for the group. Maybe later it might feel more thematic to play with restrictions.

We always play with all the cards at our disposal at the time we start the campaign (we usually start a month or two before the final scenario comes out so we don't have month-long gaps in between sessions).

We have traditionally done our first run-through with investigators that came out for that set. For other play-throughs we use whoever we like, usually someone very different from the first characters.

We have carried over investigators before through to new campaigns, but since you always take minimum 2 trauma from finishing a campaign, those investigators have never lived all the way to the end of a second campaign. But this is very much in keeping with the flavor of the setting. Direct contact with Elder Gods should never be something you can truly totally recover from.