I didn't pay this any mind last Friday when it was announced, but what exactly is so interesting in the fifth cycle's deckbuilding? They're designating an entire live stream to it.

• Will we see all 5 investigators?
• Will we discover the meaning of Myriad?

I'll be watching. Last time they did this they did Joe, who was already announced at the time. I kinda expect them to make a Luke deck, but it would be pretty cool if they spoiled an investigator on the live stream. New investigators are always the most exciting reveal. Give me Bob Jenkins Matt! I wanna play AH:TCG while doing a Roger Sterling impression

Correct me if I'm wrong but I seem to recall Bob's story taking him to the Strange High House in the Mist in the Investigators Of Arkham book. That wouldn't be out of place in a Dream Cycle release. Maybe I'm getting him and Ashcan mixed up. I do recall Ashcan's story brought him to Kingsport. It would be pretty cool to see more Kingsport stuff since that hasn't really been explored yet. I gotta go back and read Investigators again. There's just too many stories in there to retain them all in one reading.

2 hours ago, phillos said:

I'll be watching. Last time they did this they did Joe, who was already announced at the time.

Wait, didn’t we do Joe?

If our videos are so good they get mistaken for official FFG livestreams then we will take that compliment!

The Arkham Chronicle Gang

You are correct. It was your video where Matt and the other employee built a Joe deck. Then they did a Circle play through on their channel, which confused me. Did they spoil anything in that video?

Yeah, I was just thinking 'hang on, weren't Matt and Brooke on Arkham Chronicle?!' so I'm glad the AC gang were here to clear that up.

As for me, here was what I thought might be a reasonable hope: an article this week, announcing another investigator, as we've not had any articles in nearly a month, followed by a deckbuilding session for Luke Robinson and A.N.Other investigator next week on the stream. But if we don't get an article this week, all bets are off, and who knows what they'll do next week! Personally speaking, I can't imagine they would build five decks for five new investigators, simply because they'd probably wind up revealing so many new cards, and if anything, it seems the approach to marketing Arkham Horror in recent months has been less is more (no pack release articles, fewer cards announced, giving cards to community commentators to announce).

There's an outside chance that Dream-Eaters introduces global deckbuilding rules (can't take assets into dreams, or something similarly strange - or changing up the costs to 'dream up' assets and so on), in which case, 'Dream-Eaters deckbuilding' as a stream topic could include a) talking through those rules, b) some examples, and c) building a deck for one investigator taking that into account.

@Duciris to answer your specific questions: I'd be really surprised (and delighted) if we saw all five investigators announced. I wouldn't be too surprised if Myriad was explained, maybe in passing. If we see a Luke Robinson deckbuilding session, it would be cool for it to involve Open Gate, which might lead to an explanation of Myriad.

So that's where I'm at with expectations, hopes and dreams...

They're probably afraid to hint at too much in any preview articles after the chaos and confusion caused by the multiclass card introduction.

For you foreigners it's the 4th of July (the American Independence Day) here tomorrow, so I'm not expecting announcements for the rest of the week. Bummer. I was hoping for more.

How did I forget about this!? (I mean, I know the answer (I'm at work & also have real life issues) but still!)

They also stated in the live stream that there will be no Arkham Horror LCG announcements during the In-Flight Report at GenCon.

Crystallizer of Dreams. (with bonded Guardian of the Crystallizer)

Tony Morgan

Quote

2 [Will], 3 [Intellect] , 5 [Fight], 2 [Evade]

9 [Health], 5 [Sanity]

Criminal. Hunter.

You may take an additional action during your turn, which can only be used to engage or fight an enemy with 1 or more bounties on it.

[Elder Sign] effect: +2. Place 1 bounty on Bounty Contracts.

Bounty Contracts

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Asset.

Permeant. Tony Morgan deck only. Uses (6 bounties).

REACTION: After an enemy enters play: Move 1-3 bounties from Bounty Contracts to that enemy, to a maximum of that enemy's health.

Forced - After you defeat an enemy with 1 or more bounties on it: Move its bounties to your resource pool, as resources.

Tony's .38 Long Colt (Signature Asset) x2

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Asset - $3 - [Fight], [Intellect], [Wild] Item, Weapon, Firearm [Hand-Slot]

Tony Morgan deck only. Uses (3 ammo).

REACTION: After you play this card, you may play another Tony's .38 Long Colt Long from your hand at no cost.

ACTION: Spend 1 ammo: Fight. You get +1[Fight] for each bounty on the attacked enemy. This attack deals +1 damage. If this attack defeats an enemy with 1 or more bounties on it, place 1 bounty on Bounty Contracts.

Tony's Quarry (Signature Weakness)

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Asset - 4 [Strength], 3 [Health], 1 [Evasion] w/ 1[Damage], 2[Horror]

Humanoid. Monster. Deep One.

Spawn - Location farthest from Tony Morgan.

Aloof.

Forced - After Tony's Quarry enters play: Place 1 doom on it. Then, place 1 resource on it (from the token pool), as a bounty.

Crystallizer of Dreams - Rogue

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Asset - 1$ - 1[Will] Item. Relic. [Accessory slot]

As an additional cost to put this card into play, you must search your bonded cards for 1 copy of Guardian of the Crystallizer and shuffle it into your deck.

REACTION: After you play an event: Attach it facedown to Crystallizer of Dreams instead of discarding it (to a maximum of 5 attached events). Attached events by be committed to skill tests as if they were in your hand.

Guardian of the Crystallizer - Bonded Weakness

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Asset - 3 [Strength], 3 [Health], 3 [Evasion] w/ 1[Damage], 1[Horror]

Monster.

Bonded (Crystallizer of Dreams). Hunter.

Prey - Investigator with a Crystallizer of Dreams only.

Guardian of the Crystallizer comes into play exhausted.

Forced - If there is no Crystallizer of Dreams in play: Set Guardian of the Crystallizer aside, out of play.

I'm already dreaming about Crystallizer of Dreams Sefina.

I can't decide if I think the Crystallizer is worth it or not.

8 minutes ago, Buhallin said:

I can't decide if I think the Crystallizer is worth it or not.

Probably only in really heavy event decks. The bonded enemy only focuses the person with the card (unfortunately it will still be a 'dead draw'). But remember this is a rogue card and the enemy appears exhausted. If needed, you could just use a sneak attack followed by a coup de grace. Both of which are events which would then go under Crystallizer to commit to someone else's attacks later.

Or if you're survivor Tony or someone like Wendy, you can just waylay it.

Or a Seeker rogue could take a couple discs of itzamna.

4 minutes ago, Soakman said:

I'm already dreaming about Crystallizer of Dreams Sefina.

It'll be nice for the double-icon events, which Sefina wants a few of, such as Swift Reflexes and maybe Uncage the Soul, Decoy, Narrow Escape, and maybe the double combat icon events if you follow your guardian around. And it's nice for the wild icons on Ward of Protection/Deny Existence as well. But I don't see it being exceptionally good for Sefina as it won't work for The Painted World and she isn't as focused on pure agility as, say, Finn, and she often doesn't need to commit for evade tests if she's using Suggestion. Unless you're building around Agility with an Ornate Bow, of course. Additionally, Sefina has a lot of great options for accessory slot cards that already boost her will.

For all rogues, I think the big problem is that I don't see it being better than Lucky Cigarette case - I'd far rather draw more cards which I can either play or commit than be able to commit cards after playing them - it's greater flexibility and will be more consistently useful.

Though, I suppose even single-icon cards are now more valuable to commit if playing with Taboos, as rogues can't as easily pick up Streetwise for on-tap boosts. I'd have to play with it before making a judgement.

I mean, the thing is also that you can commit the cards to other players' tests as well. In someone like Sefina, you'll have willpower pips to spare to give your friends a helping hand against the treacheries they might not be able to handle.

I'll grant you that she'll probably want a Rosary or something to boost will, but I wouldn't mind getting relic hunter to run both.

When I run Sefina, I run a ton of events. Yes, you can't use it with Painted Worlds, but there are so many other targets. I think it's massively good because when you commit, you aren't losing actions or anything. It's just simply getting more for each event in your deck, and if you are running 10-20 events, that is a LOT. And because it's Sefina, you'll be more likely to see a crystallizer in your starting hand.

EDIT: Outside of Sefina, I think it's still a decent card. It's not going to synergize well with Wendy though because she wants the events to hit her discard deck most of the time.

46 minutes ago, Soakman said:

I mean, the thing is also that you can commit the cards to other players' tests as well. In someone like Sefina, you'll have willpower pips to spare to give your friends a helping hand against the treacheries they might not be able to handle.

I'll grant you that she'll probably want a Rosary or something to boost will, but I wouldn't mind getting relic hunter to run both.

Sure, but then, you could just as happily commit the card you draw with Lucky Cigarette Case. I think I'd rather just draw more cards and be able to either commit them or play them than get a limited double duty out of my existing event cards, regardless of how many I'm running. The effect certainly looks like it could be potent, don't get me wrong, but I don't think it's good enough when you take into account the other options as well as putting a pretty nasty additional weakness into your deck.

Though, again, it's just theory for me right now - I haven't played a rogue since the Taboos (in fact I haven't had enough Arkham in general recently).

The possibility that I think could really have legs is the idea of Crystalliser + Relic Hunter + Grisly Totem (either version): So far that's possible on, what, "Ashcan" Pete, Rex Murphy, Wendy Adams and Ursula Downs (and I guess Lola), and I think you could pull off some really fun shenanigans there. Particularly with the Survivor version if you're taking a test you know is going to fail. Commit a card from the Crystalliser, maybe use Drawing Thin to make sure you fail, then when you fail pull the event back to hand with the Totem to use round after round.

Oh God, it's another way to infinitely recur Will to Survive!

1 hour ago, Soakman said:

Probably only in really heavy event decks. The bonded enemy only focuses the person with the card (unfortunately it will still be a 'dead draw'). But remember this is a rogue card and the enemy appears exhausted. If needed, you could just use a sneak attack followed by a coup de grace. Both of which are events which would then go under Crystallizer to commit to someone else's attacks later.

Or if you're survivor Tony or someone like Wendy, you can just waylay it.

Or a Seeker rogue could take a couple discs of itzamna.

Certainly it can be dealt with, but the cost in doing so can be dramatic. It's really nice at 1 resource, but 4 resources, two actions, and two cards play if you Waylay it? What other places could you use your Sneak Attack?

And sure, it comes into play exhausted, but the vast majority of the time that's going to be during the Upkeep phase, which means you're going to start with it engaged with you and active. That can hose entire turns.

It's a gambling card, which is very appropriately Rogue-ish, but it's a fairly large gamble...

I mean, you could also just take a catburglar or simply ditch it when you want to get rid of the enemy by playing another accessory. Keep in mind that just because the bonded enemy gets shuffled into your deck doesn't mean it's going to be drawn. I don't think its as bad as all that, but it would warrant some testing. I do love the flavor of it though and it's at least a card worthy of consideration.

We could also pair it with Ikiaq, which I wouldn't scoff at taking in a Sefina deck either.

1 hour ago, Buhallin said:

It's really nice at 1 resource, but 4 resources, two actions, and two cards play if you Waylay it?

If you waylay it, it would just be one action (unless you're counting playing the crystalizer, but you may not even draw the enemy) as it comes into play exhausted, so there's that, and they waylay would be placed under the crystal as a 2 pip agility card to commit again later.

11 hours ago, Buhallin said:

And sure, it comes into play exhausted, but the vast majority of the time that's going to be during the Upkeep phase, which means you're going to start with it engaged with you and active. That can hose entire turns.

In the Upkeep phase cards ready before you draw a card from your deck, so you do get a whole turn to deal with it. Even so, a 3/3/3 enemy is not something that I want to see in my deck. As a Hunter, you'll likely as not have to deal with it at some stage unless you draw it during the last one or two turns of a scenario. I really like the mechanics and theme of the Crystallizer/Guardian pair. If you can find a way to drop the Crystallizer then the Guardian leaves you alone, having served its purpose.

15 hours ago, Soakman said:

It's not going to synergize well with Wendy though because she wants the events to hit her discard deck most of the time.

Really? I think it's incredible with Wendy once you get Relic Hunter. Play an event, then Crystallize it. The event is no longer going to your discard, so the Forced effect on Wendy's Amulet is irrelevant. Later, you can commit the event to recur with the Amulet. That lets you play, commit, and recur almost any event once you have both accessories, and gives you almost perfect control over the top event in the discard. Plus, Crystallized events are immune to her weakness.

Obviously, the event's icons make some better at this than others, but that's always been the case thanks to her amulet. You might have trouble with Sneak Attack (since you can't commit it to the evade test that makes the enemy vulnerable), and any event with just Will icons will be tough to reliably discard, but there are plenty of events that work wonderfully with it. In particular, anything with an intellect icon is easy to get in the discard, and anything with a wild icon is especially useful. You can use Alter Fate on a nasty treachery, and when another nasty treachery comes up, commit it to literally any skill test and use it again. You can use Swift Relfexes to evade an enemy, commit it to that same evasion, and then give yourself another bonus action while Skids cries in the corner. You can do ridiculous things with Will to Survive, but I'd wager good money that'll be mutated into "Remove ~ from the game" or even "Max once per game" by the time Dream-Eaters comes out.

Very good points about Wendy. I hadn't considered that the committed cards would then hit her discard pile, which of course they would. As you noted, the biggest challenge would be getting cards committed if you wanted to recur them while there may not be a valid target to commit them to. That being said, the crystallizer ability is a reaction which means that if you wanted to, you could just dump the even in your discard pile if you knew you would need it back immediately.