I've finally got a friend who's got an interest in trying this out, but I've always been "just a collector of the pretty cards." So my question is, between the Core Set and the two Asylum Pack sagas (and maybe Secrets too), can I just forget about the black-bordered CCG? Or are there some cards that haven't been reprinted that I should consider having handy off to the side (or something)?

This is probably too early in my CoC-ness for me to be asking this question, isn't it?

Giving up on Arkham, are we ?

I never played the ccg version, so can't comment on that side of things, but I've gotten around with just the lcg stuff (Core and 10 APs, Secrets to be added).

I have a huge stack of both CCG and LCG. For casual play, just pop them into sleeves and go. We find it's a lot of fun to mix in some of the crazy, over powered, sometimes just plain silly CCG cards ... especially the story cards. One CCG story card allows each player to draw 10 cards! Its fun.

But for tournament play, they are not legal.

Off the top of my head (ie: away from deckbuilder at work), I'd say there remain 1,000 black border cards no longer LCG legal.

200 LCG cards (155 core, 40 expansion) are reprinted.

We allow mixing and matching of the old cards and the new. It's the same game however you look at it, and it adds to the game to use old cards as well.