6 minutes ago, Tarliyn said:

That is still more than an average LOTR pack gave for player cards.

Cant speak to AH

True, but LOTR (and arkham) packs also had scenarios. Here we are buying them seperately. Kind of apples and oranges there.

32 minutes ago, Supertoe said:

The release rate will indeed be significantly slower. The cardpool that you deckbuild with will only be getting maybe 40 new cards (assuming 16 hero and 4 reprints).

I'm sorry, but this is a very silly argument. New heroes are arguably going to have the most punch when it comes to play variation. Excluding new heroes from your count of the card pool is completely ignoring why the size of the card pool actually matters.

10 minutes ago, Buhallin said:

I'm sorry, but this is a very silly argument. New heroes are arguably going to have the most punch when it comes to play variation. Excluding new heroes from your count of the card pool is completely ignoring why the size of the card pool actually matters.

New heroes have punch with play variation, but not deck variation. Most decks are gonna look veryyyyy similar for the first year of the game.

15 hours ago, Supertoe said:

New heroes have punch with play variation, but not deck variation. Most decks are gonna look veryyyyy similar for the first year of the game.

Seems doubtful given that every new hero introduces a new card pool for an aspect.

18 hours ago, Supertoe said:

New heroes have punch with play variation, but not deck variation. Most decks are gonna look veryyyyy similar for the first year of the game.

Like they every other card game. It’s a by product of having a small card pool to draw from. Once the card pool grows, more varied decks show up.

3 hours ago, Hyperjayman said:

Like they every other card game. It’s a by product of having a small card pool to draw from. Once the card pool grows, more varied decks show up.

Exactly, I agree with that. But what people were saying was that the card pool with grow slower than most games, it will take longer to get more varied decks.

I am in favor of reprints (assuming that they make up only 1-5 cards per pack). Beyond the improvement in accessibility, there is another benefit that is worth mentioning.

I played a lot of Netrunner (RIP), and I liked to play a variety of different decks. However, it can be a pain to constantly tear down and rebuild those decks, so I tried to have about 3 different Runner decks and 3 different Corp decks built at any given time. However, I did not have enough of the staple cards to have that many decks built, even though I owned multiple core sets. So, I had to trade cards between those decks, which could be a headache to keep track of. I had to make little note cards that said which cards needed to be taken from another deck. If I could have bought more copies of the most common staple cards (e.g. Hedge Fund, Dirty Laundry, Daily Casts, etc.) for a reasonable price, I would have done so gladly. Some people bought the champion decks for just that purpose.

For people who want to have multiple decks built and ready to go at a moment's notice, it is a boon to own more than a play-set of the staple cards. I would actually be willing to pay slightly more for packs with reprints than for packs without. Thank you, FFG.

And please do not throw away your reprints--another gamer may want them.

Is the player card pool growing significantly differently to other games?

Dunwich Legacy cycle in Arkham:

Deluxe - 24 cards

Mythos packs: 13, 12, 11, 11, 14, 12

Total: 97 new player cards.

Marvel:

Let's presume a cycle is 2 scenario packs (0 player cards) and 4 hero packs. And we don't know enough about Story boxes so let's ignore them for now.

A hero pack: The Cap pack product page says it contains 17 Leadership cards + 8 neutrals (and doesn't mention the other Aspect cards, but I think there's one of each?) so that's 28 new cards per Hero pack, minus 1-3 reprints. So roughly 25 new player cards per hero pack x 4 packs = roughly 100 new players card + story boxes

So it's the same level of growth or actually larger?

That would be true if it is 4 hero packs and 2 scenario. My guess though is 2-2 or 3-3 based on what we've seen so far. And it's probably 3-5 reprints if they believe it is so necessary.

16 minutes ago, Supertoe said:

That would be true if it is 4 hero packs and 2 scenario. My guess though is 2-2 or 3-3 based on what we've seen so far. And it's probably 3-5 reprints if they believe it is so necessary.

The current release schedule is:

core

Scenario

Hero

Hero

Scenario

I’m willing to bet we’ll see 2 heroes between each scenario - it definitely makes sense for there to be 4 heroes (1 for each aspect) each cycle...

7 minutes ago, FearLord said:

The current release schedule is:

core

Scenario

Hero

Hero

Scenario

I’m willing to bet we’ll see 2 heroes between each scenario - it definitely makes sense for there to be 4 heroes (1 for each aspect) each cycle...

Yeah it could be:

Scenario

Hero

Hero

Scenario

Hero

Hero

Story

24 minutes ago, Supertoe said:

That would be true if it is 4 hero packs and 2 scenario. My guess though is 2-2 or 3-3 based on what we've seen so far. And it's probably 3-5 reprints if they believe it is so necessary.

LCG cycles have 7 products, so I imagine it'll either by 4 heros (one per aspect makes a ton of sense) and 2 scenarios, or 3 of each + one story box

1 minute ago, jonboyjon1990 said:

LCG cycles have 7 products, so I imagine it'll either by 4 heros (one per aspect makes a ton of sense) and 2 scenarios, or 3 of each + one story box

Only LotR and AH. It works that way because both those games need to frontload encounter cards in boxes so the packs with single scenarios can be played. In competitive LCGs (which were the first released), boxes are not part of any cycle, because no frontloading is necessary (it's all player cards even for asymmetric games like A:NR and SW). MC doesn't need frontloading either, because player cards and encounter cards are separated in hero packs and villain packs rather than being mixed together. We can't even be sure there will be cycles in MC.

28 minutes ago, jonboyjon1990 said:

Yeah it could be:

Scenario

Hero

Hero

Scenario

Hero

Hero

Story

This seems most likely to me, depending on what kind of content the story boxes end up giving us...

11 minutes ago, Khudzlin said:

Only LotR and AH. It works that way because both those games need to frontload encounter cards in boxes so the packs with single scenarios can be played. In competitive LCGs (which were the first released), boxes are not part of any cycle, because no frontloading is necessary (it's all player cards even for asymmetric games like A:NR and SW). MC doesn't need frontloading either, because player cards and encounter cards are separated in hero packs and villain packs rather than being mixed together. We can't even be sure there will be cycles in MC.

There’s always cycles, even if they aren’t as obvious - they have to be designing the pool of cards at the same time, and the printing contracts with their suppliers will be structured that way.

Regardless of how it comes out in the end, I think we can all largely agree that FFG will be designing, printing and shipping packs in blocks of 6, just as they have done before. We know a 'block of 6' contains at least 2 heros and 2 scenarios. So it's either a 3-3 split or 4-2. And one Hero per Aspect makes a lot of sense.

I took another look at Capt America and I really do think he will be an insanely good and highly versatile hero.

While the base heroes work with all aspects, I think they are "best" with 1.

And while he may also have a "best" aspect, I think Capt America will be highly competitive with all 4.

Protection: Shield+armor is 4 def, and his ability allows him to ready after his is exhausted from defending. Combined with retaliate from the shield, this looks super strong.

Aggression: +1 atk synergizes with the ready ability and Capt America does not seem to have a ton of offensive cards and this would shore up that weakness nicely. Probably the weakest of the 4, but still decent.

Justice: +1 thw is extremely good value and with his ready ability, he could thwart for 6, which is very good.

Leadership: Has less synergy with the ready ability but has a lot of synergy with Steve Roger's ability. Need to know his signature ally to properly evaluate, but assuming there is good synergy with the leadership ally support cards, then this will be a good choice also.

5 hours ago, jonboyjon1990 said:

Is the player card pool growing significantly differently to other games?

Dunwich Legacy cycle in Arkham:

Deluxe - 24 cards

Mythos packs: 13, 12, 11, 11, 14, 12

Total: 97 new player cards.

Marvel:

Let's presume a cycle is 2 scenario packs (0 player cards) and 4 hero packs. And we don't know enough about Story boxes so let's ignore them for now.

A hero pack: The Cap pack product page says it contains 17 Leadership cards + 8 neutrals (and doesn't mention the other Aspect cards, but I think there's one of each?) so that's 28 new cards per Hero pack, minus 1-3 reprints. So roughly 25 new player cards per hero pack x 4 packs = roughly 100 new players card + story boxes

So it's the same level of growth or actually larger?

There are multiples of cards.

There are 15 non-Cap cards in the deck. Plus 3 or 4 other cards.

And then the 10 Cap cards.

On 9/16/2019 at 5:56 PM, Supertoe said:

New heroes have punch with play variation, but not deck variation. Most decks are gonna look veryyyyy similar for the first year of the game.

This is a forest-for-the-trees problem. Deck variation is a component of play variation, and play variation is what matters. You'll see far more variety from new heroes, which effectively give 4 completely new deck options, than you will by having a few more cards for each aspect.

Now, if players aren't willing to touch that variation... well, honestly, that's on them, and certainly not a failing of the game or release cycle.

12 minutes ago, Radix2309 said:

There are multiples of cards.

There are 15 non-Cap cards in the deck. Plus 3 or 4 other cards.

And then the 10 Cap cards.

Huh? The pack contains 60 cards total.

15 of them are Captain America cards. 5 of them his nemesis. Then 1 identity cards. That leaves 39 other cards total in the pack.

I suppose what isn’t clear is if those numbers from the product page are total number of cards, or number of cards different by name

While that is true, there is a difference between play variation and depth of deckbuilding. Some people play these games to dive into a deep player card pool and discover synergies and combos to either optimize the deck or make it serve some theme. Usually that isn't a satisfying experience until the player pool grows to a reasonably large size. I believe that's the disconnect here. Sure you can take Aggression and slot Spiderman in or replace him with Cap and get two different play experiences. Though that's not entirely satisfying from a deck building perspective since it's really just arbitrating one change to the deck.

Some people are looking for that experience. Some people are fine with just play variation like you describe. People play games for different reasons. We'll eventually get both experiences serviced in this game. It's just a matter of time and cards.

Add: also in regards to the speculation on the distribution method for this LCG I'd caution against assuming a pattern based on past products. The L5R community was pretty shocked when that game was repeatedly experimented with in this regards. They are not afraid to shake up the release schedule. Also they just announced that they would be changing up the way LOTR and AGOT are both structured in the future rather than end either of those lines definitively. So we are seeing alot of shake up in the LCG world from FFG.

2 hours ago, jonboyjon1990 said:

Huh? The pack contains 60 cards total.

15 of them are Captain America cards. 5 of them his nemesis. Then 1 identity cards. That leaves 39 other cards total in the pack.

I suppose what isn’t clear is if those numbers from the product page are total number of cards, or number of cards different by name

They are cards by different name. Set numbers are always unique.
When cards are in encounter sets such as Cap or Cap's nemesis, they also have an Encounter Set number.

We know there are 9 distinct Cap cards plus Cap (Cap's Shield 9). Then 10-11 distinct Leadership (Falcon 11), and 4-5 distinct Basic cards (Honorary Avenger 25). Then we have the Obligation (26) and 4 distinct Nemesis cards (Zemo 28). That leaves 3, maybe 4 distinct cards of other aspects (Expert Defense 32, Follow 33).

There are total 15 Cap cards plus cap. 17 Leadership, 8 basic in the deck. 1 Obligation, 5 Nemesis, and 12 other cards. Plus a single divider card that likely has the Cap intro deck list on it.

There are 33, maybe 34 distinct cards in the pack. -9 from Cap and set, -5 from Obligation and Nemesis, for 14 total. That leaves 19-20 distinct cards.

It's worth mentioning that we just got another thread trying to play multiplayer Arkham Horror with 1 core so these reprints and the single core requirement will be addressing that reoccurring question. It comes up often in Arkham forums and new players not familiar with the format get pretty put off by the redundant core set purchases.

On 9/11/2019 at 3:43 AM, Supertoe said:

Also, let's be totally honest. What percent of people are going to be playing decks right out of the box, not own the core set, and refuse to deckbuild? That's gotta be a really, really small percentage. In exchange, the majority of your fanbase is hurt by that. Not cool FFG.

There alot of casual player, don``t` forget them . it's an easier sell; here pick up, unbox, play.. boom. easy, easy. lemon squeezy

4 hours ago, zwara81 said:

There alot of casual player, don``t` forget them . it's an easier sell; here pick up, unbox, play.. boom. easy, easy. lemon squeezy

I agree that there are casual players. But how many of those same casuals will not own a core?