1 hour ago, Hyperjayman said:

As someone who wants to get second copies of one-of cards in the core set, but not have to buy a second core set if not needed do theses have reprints of those one- cards in them?

Basically no, although there are a few exceptions (see the list below Vicious Blow and Deduction off the top of my head).

If you want second copies of core set cards you’ll still need to buy a second box.

Edit: the reprinted core set cards are:

• Guardian: Physical Training, Dodge, Vicious Blow.
• Seeker: Deduction.
• Rogue: Switchblade, Opportunist.
• Survivor: Rabbit's Foot, "Look What I Found!".

I've played Jacqueline/Winnie and Nate/Harvey. I took the two investigator combos through the first two scenarios of each of the two Dreameaters campaigns. Two handed felt fine for both combos.

Jacqueline feels like she played fine out of the box. Her chaos bag rigging is really powerful, and it really helped Winnie as well. If she gets Arbiter Of Fate out she feels so powerful. Her weakness shuts down her investigator ability but you just need to wait it out so its less impactful that other weaknesses (like Harvey's particularly harsh weakness). Azure Flame and Clairvoyance feel like great next step cards form core set mystic deck. In the one pack you basically get a Mystic use willpower for everything spell deck online. At level 0 Jacqueline felt just fine. When she leveled up it just felt like incremental advantage rather than bolstering some big weakness in the level 0 build.

Winnie's deck at level 0 felt under powered, but after leveling up (I picked Dreameaters because of the accelerated XP gain) she is actually a real good monster management investigator. I will say Winnie's prebuilt deck sometimes makes it hard for her to capitalize on her investigator ability. I can't always throw two cards into a skill check without running her hand into the ground. She might be better paired with Harvey in that respect. Daredevil pretty much always found Anything You Can Do, which felt nice. Opportunist and Switchblade in the level 0 deck felt bad and they were upgraded ASAP to something more useful. Winnie was my favorite deck to play out of the box. Followed by Jacqueline.

Nate/Harvey struggled a bit more. Harvey seems real powerful and straightforward on paper, but he actually was the hardest to pilot in my experience. His weakness that piles damage on him based on his handsize is devastating. You really need to play with that in mind all the time. Though if you are shy to get his hand size up you really nerf his deck so it's a real balancing act. If I was gonna tinker with his deck it would be to try and mitigate how squishy he can be when that weakness comes up. Translating Forbidden Tome takes so long. I still haven't done it. Occult Invocation felt like a great spell. Vault of Knowledge was real cool since Harvey was always investigating and Nate needed help keeping his handsize up. When he levels up Mind Over Matter helped since by big issue was passing Agility tests with Harvey. Sometimes you just gotta and he had few ways to do it.

Nate was fun to play, but also maybe the most focused. He only had a few very restrictive ways to investigate. So if monsters weren't on the board he didn't feel like he was doing much to help other than drawing and setting himself up. Luckily being paired with Harvey meant he got setup fast and Harvey has more than enough investigator capacity in his deck. When enemies were on the board Nate was super fun to play. It felt nice to throw out things like Counterstrike, One Two Punch, Dodge, Get Over Here, Clean Them Out and run circles around enemies without a gun down. I really liked that thematically. Though he needs to keep his hand up for this to work so if he wasn't paired with Harvey I wonder if he would have been less good. To be fair Nate/Harvey were going up against the Waking Nightmare side of Dreameaters and that is the more difficult side. I feel like both decks really were not built for solo at all. To go a step further I think they would be way better in a 3, 4 player game considering just how focused they are on doing their certain things. If I had played Nate in a 4 player game I think he would have felt much better since most of the time there would be something for him the engage and fight on the board.

I haven't tried Stella yet.

Just curious if your Nathaniel got his boxing gloves out. I think that goes a long way in helping his hand management but I haven’t played it yet.

10 hours ago, Hyperjayman said:

As someone who wants to get second copies of one-of cards in the core set, but not have to buy a second core set if not needed do theses have reprints of those one- cards in them?

Was looking to see if any sites had the deck lists but couldn’t fine any yet.

I'm pretty sure you're out of luck. The reprints are cards that I'm pretty sure were already doubles in one core set, like Physical Training and Vicious Blow. I remember Milan being a one-of, and he's not in Harvey's deck at all. If they release .pdfs of the pamphlets that come with the decks, there are decklists on those.

32 minutes ago, SGPrometheus said:

I'm pretty sure you're out of luck. The reprints are cards that I'm pretty sure were already doubles in one core set, like Physical Training and Vicious Blow. I remember Milan being a one-of, and he's not in Harvey's deck at all. If they release .pdfs of the pamphlets that come with the decks, there are decklists on those.

Every class-specific card in the core set is a one-of. Every neutral card is 2-of, except Flashlight, Knife and Emergency Cache, which are 4-of.

Not including signatures, weaknesses, etc.

2 hours ago, Soakman said:

Just curious if your Nathaniel got his boxing gloves out. I think that goes a long way in helping his hand management but I haven’t played it yet.

Yes, Boxing Gloves is pretty key. But if you are using just his deck, pretty much everything is duplicated, so finding stuff he can use right away is pretty easy.
William Yorick is currently going through RttFA, using a Spirit heavy deck with Boxing Gloves.
We created a card long ago, called Favored Tool (3 Exceptional) Neutral, campaign mode only, permanent. Trait ‘developed’. We hardly ever use it, because we have so many other things we want to use the XP for, but William decided it was worth it for Boxing Gloves.
You may declare one item asset in your deck as your Favored Tool when you purchase it and record it in the campaign log. You may not change your tool during the campaign. During set up, it is placed under your investigator card and it is drawn as part of your opening hand. (So no search to get something like Astounding revelation and no extra card in your opening hand, because it doesn’t stay under your investigator).

On 9/2/2020 at 6:18 AM, Eldan985 said:

I occasionally like the cheesy side. We've had the Dreamlands now, for high fantasy, and Innsmouth is going to get back to a bit more classical Lovecraft horror, so I think it's time after that for another globe trotting pulp campaign.

What I'm saying is, I'd like to see Monterey Jack.

Yes Please!

I had a tiny hope that they would break rank and put him into RttFA, since he is mentioned in the initial set up.
The next Campaign doesn’t sound from what I can gather, as a natural place for him to be released either.
Maybe a Novella? He has a great background for a good story.

I am also waiting for Lily Chen, and haven’t seen hide nor hair of her either.

11 hours ago, Hyperjayman said:

As someone who wants to get second copies of one-of cards in the core set, but not have to buy a second core set if not needed do theses have reprints of those one- cards in them?

Was looking to see if any sites had the deck lists but couldn’t fine any yet.

I don’t know if you have Amazon or even would want to use points, but we got our (actually, I’m embarrassed to say third copy) of the Core set with points and spent about $3. If that is an option for you, it’s a way to get copies without breaking the bank.

1 hour ago, Mimi61 said:

Yes Please!

I had a tiny hope that they would break rank and put him into RttFA, since he is mentioned in the initial set up.
The next Campaign doesn’t sound from what I can gather, as a natural place for him to be released either.
Maybe a Novella? He has a great background for a good story.

I am also waiting for Lily Chen, and haven’t seen hide nor hair of her either.

God, I want both Monterey Jack and Lily Chen so badly. They're both among my favorites. With Innsmouth probably being a more focused campaign, I'm hoping the next involves a lot more global exploration. For the most part, we do seem to be alternating between those between campaigns a fair bit. NotZ and Dunwich were pretty localized, followed by the more global Carcosa and TFA. Since then we've been going back and forth with TCU (localized in Arkham), Dream-Eaters (all over the place), and Innsmouth.

Both Monterey and Lily seem like they'd be well suited for that kind of globe-trotting campaign. Maybe get Norman tossed in there as well and finally give us an At the Mountains of Madness inspired campaign. I kind of pictured Monterey Jack as a Rogue anyway to differentiate him from Ursula and Leo, though Trish taking the Rogue/Seeker slot kind of threw my expectations for a loop.

On a side-note, kind of unusual that we got back-to-back Mystics in the novellas, isn't it? Still, I'm hoping production on the novellas ramps up. I enjoyed the Dexter novella, probably one of the better ones. In general, part of me kind of hopes that every investigator eventually gets a novella of their own (as well as a parallel investigator like Daisy and Skids), but that's kind of wishful thinking, isn't it?

I paired up Nathaniel and Harvey, and found they played very well together. Funny that the two out of the five I was least excited about turned out to be (for me) the best out of the box experience.

I'm still more excited about the others for actual deckbuilding, though.

3 hours ago, Annette Soleil said:

God, I want both Monterey Jack and Lily Chen so badly. They're both among my favorites. With Innsmouth probably being a more focused campaign, I'm hoping the next involves a lot more global exploration. For the most part, we do seem to be alternating between those between campaigns a fair bit. NotZ and Dunwich were pretty localized, followed by the more global Carcosa and TFA. Since then we've been going back and forth with TCU (localized in Arkham), Dream-Eaters (all over the place), and Innsmouth.

Both Monterey and Lily seem like they'd be well suited for that kind of globe-trotting campaign. Maybe get Norman tossed in there as well and finally give us an At the Mountains of Madness inspired campaign. I kind of pictured Monterey Jack as a Rogue anyway to differentiate him from Ursula and Leo, though Trish taking the Rogue/Seeker slot kind of threw my expectations for a loop.

On a side-note, kind of unusual that we got back-to-back Mystics in the novellas, isn't it? Still, I'm hoping production on the novellas ramps up. I enjoyed the Dexter novella, probably one of the better ones. In general, part of me kind of hopes that every investigator eventually gets a novella of their own (as well as a parallel investigator like Daisy and Skids), but that's kind of wishful thinking, isn' it?

We know what’s next though, and it doesn’t sound like a Global Exploration, but maybe it is. At first glance, it doesn’t seem like an obvious Monterey or Lily expansion, but plenty of investigators don’t fit the mold of the expansion they are released in. So there is hope.

The War of the Outer Gods is actually a standalone, Epic Multiplayer-compatible scenario akin to The Blob that Ate Everything, it seems that some retailers got the wrong end of the stick.

It was officially announced as such in the FFG In-Flight Report about a month and a half ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10qOUFfWU4g&feature=youtu.be&t=1491

16 minutes ago, Allonym said:

The War of the Outer Gods is actually a standalone, Epic Multiplayer-compatible scenario akin to The Blob that Ate Everything, it seems that some retailers got the wrong end of the stick.

It was officially announced as such in the FFG In-Flight Report about a month and a half ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10qOUFfWU4g&feature=youtu.be&t=1491

Good to know. I found that on a British game site a couple of months ago. Thanks for clarifying. Maybe we will have some Mountains of Madness coming our way later next year.

2 minutes ago, Mimi61 said:

Good to know. I found that on a British game site a couple of months ago. Thanks for clarifying. Maybe we will have some Mountains of Madness coming our way later next year.

Well, my wish (Innsmouth) has already been granted. I'm still holding out hope for Masks of Nyarlathotep Saga Campaign, or a Shudde M'ell campaign, but I think that's less likely. Mountains of Madness seems like a decent bet!

Assuming FFG's plan is to introduce all of the current investigators into the LCG, and assuming we don't get a second wave of starter decks, we'll be getting at least two more campaigns before the game's lifespan concludes. Possibly three, depending on whether or not they either introduce new investigators again or make more neutral investigators like Lola.

We still need a Shub-Niggurath campaign. She's the only Ancient One who had an Agents encounter set in the core that hasn't been the primary focus of a campaign yet. But I anticipate that a Shub-Niggurath campaign would be very Arkham-centric, much like TCU. As for a second Ancient One to be the main focus of a campaign... there are plenty of options, but not all of them are well known or popular. Part of me suspects that Ithaqua will be the other major Ancient One that makes an appearance in an upcoming campaign. He's been prominently featured in almost every Arkham Files game to date. And in fact, aside from Shub-Niggurath, is the only AO from the AH2E base game that hasn't been prominently featured in the LCG yet. Shudde M'ell is another possibility, but I do agree that it's less likely. Both would be solid candidates for a globe-spanning campaign though, but I'm leaning toward Ithaqua, because I foresee that being easier to somehow tie into an At the Mountains of Madness inspired campaign.

I really don't expect to see Nyarlathotep getting his own campaign, simply because he was already the focus of the Dreamlands side of the most recent campaign. But I can't entirely rule it out. But personally, I'd only see FFG doing this if the plan was to have the game's final campaign be some kind of massive, multi-AO adventure that ties everything together somehow.

Personally though, even if they do run out of new investigators to add into new campaigns, I'd be happy for the game to continue on for years to come. We'll eventually reach a point where we have so many investigators to choose from (we're almost there as is) that adding new ones will either result in a lot of rehashing of certain ideas, or an inevitable power creep. Neither of which are ideal. But we're less likely to hit that point with new campaigns quite as soon, since there's always new ways to tweak the gameplay mechanics to up the difficulty and keep things interesting without rendering any investigators completely irrelevant.

1 hour ago, Allonym said:

Well, my wish (Innsmouth) has already been granted. I'm still holding out hope for Masks of Nyarlathotep Saga Campaign, or a Shudde M'ell campaign, but I think that's less likely. Mountains of Madness seems like a decent bet!

Same. Innsmouth was what I have been waiting for, though I’m still holding out hope for the Innsmouth campaign you wrote. It sounds like such an interesting way to tell different sides of the story.

12 hours ago, Soakman said:

Just curious if your Nathaniel got his boxing gloves out. I think that goes a long way in helping his hand management but I haven’t played it yet.

Both times it was midgame when the gloves came out and it did help, but until it came out he struggled. He definitely needs a critical mass of fight events so that's worth keeping in mind if you are building a Nate deck from scratch. He does have 2x gloves and Randall in thew deck to help fetch em, but if I was building him from scratch I'd consider Prepare For The Worst just to make sure they come out early game. My experience is probably an outlier and/or I probably could have mulliganed harder for the gloves but it did feel like his deck wasn't flowing properly without them out.

48 minutes ago, phillos said:

Both times it was midgame when the gloves came out and it did help, but until it came out he struggled. He definitely needs a critical mass of fight events so that's worth keeping in mind if you are building a Nate deck from scratch. He does have 2x gloves and Randall in thew deck to help fetch em, but if I was building him from scratch I'd consider Prepare For The Worst just to make sure they come out early game. My experience is probably an outlier and/or I probably could have mulliganed harder for the gloves but it did feel like his deck wasn't flowing properly without them out.

Yeah, the base Nathaniel deck absolutely wants Boxing Gloves in play ASAP. I would hard mulligan for the Gloves or Randall every time.

If changing up the deck a bit, you could certainly take Prepared for the Worst, but it would be pointless - half a Wild icon - once you have your gloves, unless you pack Mk.1 Grenades I guess. A single copy under Stick to the Plan is a good, uh, plan. Or if you include other Item cards and Emergency Cache, a Backpack might be a good way to search out the Gloves without becoming obsolete.

Also his weakness unless you use some effect that gives you an extra fight takes at minimum your whole turn to deal with which is in my opinion a pretty harsh weakness. Nate should have no problem knocking Tommy out but each time he came up it felt like such a time sink. If you built the deck to do lots of ping damage with things like Beat Cop and/or Guard Dog it's probably less an issue, but in the prebuilt I threw One Two Punch to the Tommy fight just to get at least one action back.

It sounds like I'm being harsh on Nate though I did actually enjoy playing him. He was just hyper focused. That said I love that they made a Guardian that feels so different. If you are playing to his ability then the usual "Good Stuff" Guardian deck doesn't really work for him. At this point I think that's what I want to see from new investigators and I think he is designed really well. I just don't envy the person who tries to solo with that deck when they pick it up. Playing him with the Harvey prebuilt for two players was definitely the way to go since it definitely kept his hand fed and it meant Nate really never had to worry about getting clues.

So I think I decided on Nethaniel and Winnie on Forgotton Age

10 hours ago, phillos said:

Also his weakness unless you use some effect that gives you an extra fight takes at minimum your whole turn to deal with which is in my opinion a pretty harsh weakness. Nate should have no problem knocking Tommy out but each time he came up it felt like such a time sink. If you built the deck to do lots of ping damage with things like Beat Cop and/or Guard Dog it's probably less an issue, but in the prebuilt I threw One Two Punch to the Tommy fight just to get at least one action back.

Assuming you can hit every attack, 3 actions to get rid of it isn't terrible - 2 action discard is standard for weaknesses, and it's mild compared to Roland's Cover Up, for example - but there's also the fact that you need to deal with it - you can't just leave Tommy hanging around for a few rounds unless you can evade him somehow, because he hits hard. I've yet to see him come up at a bad time, but I imagine drawing Tommy while having to deal with multiple enemies, or a boss fight, would be really debilitating.

If you're doing the classic combat-only Guardian plus investigation-only Seeker duo, there's the additional problem that dealing with Tommy is entirely Nathaniel's problem, but in the 3-player campaign I played alongside Tommy (I was playing as Joe Diamond), it was nice to have a couple of generalists around to help - I could punch Tommy once before I left to do other things, making life easier for Nathaniel. Plus, the fact that he only takes 1 damage from every attack makes it a bit easier for other players to contribute - a hit for 1 damage from Wither, or using Mind over Matter or Mind's Eye to punch, or Spirit Athame, or whatever else, is just as effective as a shot from the flamethrower and saves Nathaniel an action. Particularly nice with incidental damage like Alice Luxley or Agnes' investigator ability.

1 hour ago, Allonym said:

Assuming you can hit every attack, 3 actions to get rid of it isn't terrible - 2 action discard is standard for weaknesses, and it's mild compared to Roland's Cover Up, for example - but there's also the fact that you need to deal with it - you can't just leave Tommy hanging around for a few rounds unless you can evade him somehow, because he hits hard. I've yet to see him come up at a bad time, but I imagine drawing Tommy while having to deal with multiple enemies, or a boss fight, would be really debilitating.

If you're doing the classic combat-only Guardian plus investigation-only Seeker duo, there's the additional problem that dealing with Tommy is entirely Nathaniel's problem, but in the 3-player campaign I played alongside Tommy (I was playing as Joe Diamond), it was nice to have a couple of generalists around to help - I could punch Tommy once before I left to do other things, making life easier for Nathaniel. Plus, the fact that he only takes 1 damage from every attack makes it a bit easier for other players to contribute - a hit for 1 damage from Wither, or using Mind over Matter or Mind's Eye to punch, or Spirit Athame, or whatever else, is just as effective as a shot from the flamethrower and saves Nathaniel an action. Particularly nice with incidental damage like Alice Luxley or Agnes' investigator ability.

That's fair. It's just a three action tax minimum. I guess I just meant to say its at least a 3 action tax that you must deal with (even Nate doesn't want to take 2 damage from Tommy too often and Nate's prebuilt isn't great at Evading). Harsh is probably the wrong word since it's not difficult to deal with and there's not a huge downside. Very taxing is a better descriptor. You just gotta deal with it and if you fail any of the three tests that must be made it gets progressively more taxing.

That said that feels very thematic. It does feel like Tommy and Nate are slugging it out.

Where to buy investigator decks? Its shame that you cant even buy 'em normally without preorders.

You can buy them normally, many shops had them, but they seem to have sold out almost everyhwere before they even released. Presumably, there will be a reprint soon.

On 9/8/2020 at 5:01 AM, Phaed said:

So I think I decided on Nethaniel and Winnie on Forgotton Age

I'm currently running both of them through Return to the Forgotten Age. To force myself to get the best feel for them I am sticking to just the cards that came with each pack. So far I just finished The Doom of Eztli and it's been interesting.

Nathaniel definitely plays different from other guardians (as expected) and manages to do better than I would have expected when he doesn't have his boxing gloves (which has been most of both games so far). Grete is much more useful than I'd thought she would be.

I've put Wini as primarily the clue gatherer and that's proving to be a challenge since she only has the level 0 lockpicks. Since I want to keep them I tend to really lean into the "succeed by 2" for her - the problem is that she doesn't have a lot of intellect icons, so I end up using here wilds. Fortunately she does have the level 0 streetwise which is awesome. Pilfer is proving to be more useful than I thought and I plan on upgrading it. When combined with Chuck Fergus I expect here to both recur the upgraded pilfer but also get it played at a cheaper cost. Of course, i need a lot of XP to get there.