I just recently got AHlcg. I am excited to play it for the first time this weekend. I tend to jump in head first to new games, so I bought a couple stand alone scenarios and Dunwich expansion , and Return to night of the Zealot expansion.

should I include the expansion investigator cards and player cards (items/spells/etc...) into our starting campaign from the start? Would that break the game, makings it too easy/ruining the story? If I can add more items/spells/etc... options into the game starting out, i feel it will make it more customizable. I’m just afraid I don’t know the mechanics well enough to make that decision myself.

I just started playing this as well and so far I have AH decks up to AHC 21 .

I have not opened any of those decks, just my two Core Sets and I am about to play The Devourer Below and probably the first scenario of The Dunwich Legacy this weekend.

I feel that I only want to use the cards that came with the previous sets first as I move thru the AH series and then add cards later as I open the new packs and then deck build.

I feel that it keeps the story that I am playing current instead of using cards that were NOT available when the older packs were released.

But that is me and I am still a noob at this awesome game.

The choice is up to you how you want to play.

You can decide to add new cards if you wish and it wont break the story.

It may make it easier.

It wont take away any of the challenge that Night of the Zealot will bring, IMO.

If you want a suggestion, I would NOT use the Return to Night of the Zealot cards in your first plays of the game so that you can learn the mechanics.

The Core Set was designed to be played as is when it was first released before any expansions came out.

When you do decide to use RTNOTZ , its almost like playing a completely different game as changes were made to the campaign and certain cards.

You can say that the Return To ...boxes are game patches, so to speak!

Just my opinion and welcome to the world of Lovecraftian Horror !

P.S. Remember to take a shower after you play, for you WILL feel guilty about playing a game based on the works of HP Lovecraft ! 😄

On 2/12/2020 at 2:41 PM, Creedmoor65 said:

Would that break the game, makings it too easy/ruining the story? If I can add more items/spells/etc... options into the game starting out, i feel it will make it more customizable. I’m just afraid I don’t know the mechanics well enough to make that decision myself.

It won't do anything to affect the story. I can't think of any cards that rely on story progression to make sense. Depending on how obsessive you are about the theme some cards may not fit, but generally it won't be a problem.

Difficulty-wise, there are definitely some stronger cards in later sets. The biggest risk can be that certain cards can, situationally, make certain scenarios easy. But you won't know those on your first pass through, so I wouldn't worry about it. If you're new then finding your right difficulty will have a lot more inputs than just the card pool anyway - you could be a player who struggles even with the more power cards and so prefer Easy, or you might rampage even with a limited card pool. You'll have to figure that out anyway, so include whatever you want to include and settle from there.

On 2/12/2020 at 4:41 PM, Creedmoor65 said:

I just recently got AHlcg. I am excited to play it for the first time this weekend. I tend to jump in head first to new games, so I bought a couple stand alone scenarios and Dunwich expansion , and Return to night of the Zealot expansion.

should I include the expansion investigator cards and player cards (items/spells/etc...) into our starting campaign from the start? Would that break the game, makings it too easy/ruining the story? If I can add more items/spells/etc... options into the game starting out, i feel it will make it more customizable. I’m just afraid I don’t know the mechanics well enough to make that decision myself.

The campaigns are designed to be played with decks built from all cards available past, present and future. Some people enjoy arbitrarily restricting build options by holding off on opening their Mythos packs until they play them. That's fine if that's how you want to play, but its not how the game was designed to be played.