I'll receive all 5 of those today and wondering if some of you guys played the decks yet, and what did you think about 'em?
I'm personally excited about this line of products; I like deck building, but I much MUCH prefer playing the scenarios, so the less time I burn brain cells on deckbuilding, the more I have playing campaigns
I haven't been able to find any reviews on the new decks yet though.
Thoughts?
I have yet to play with them (they arrive tomorrow...) but they are very cool for the reason you state - while I am very, very into building weird and wonderful decks, some people I play with find the deckbuilding aspect very off-putting, so these decks should help the game hit the table more often. In addition, I have told myself I'm going to play using these decks as they are without mixing in other cards or taking them apart to create new decks a few times, for a bit of a change. Like a kind of Arkham Limited format!
My first thought was... "Wow, the new versions of Lucky and Look What I Found in Stella's deck just made Skid's parallel version (which was already great) even better !".
No opinion yet (am waiting for mine from Team Covenant), but I also plan to use them as is for some runs through some campaigns (Return to the Forgotten age is waiting as is another play through of the Dream eaters). While I don't mind deck building, the freedom to just use them as is (and then see how I evolve them) is very appealing.
I'm planning on maybe getting a friend to give the game a try who has never played it before. I'm not sure if it's something she'd be interested in, but she suffers from analysis paralysis sometimes and the deck-building would be overwhelming for her. But she's very interested in the narrative and challenge of trying something new to her. She thinks Carcosa sounds wonderful, so maybe we'll try to make that happen and she can pick whatever of these decks she wants.
Just taking a look through mine now - at first glance, having skimmed Nathaniel and Stella, it looks like the number of reprints varies by deck, but I need to cross-reference things to confirm.
New basic weakness in each deck is a nice touch.
I am loving Jacqueline, she is more interesting than she first appeared. There is a lot of synergy in her deck and she makes some older mediocre cards really good.
The decks all look like very cohesive, strong decks. Nathaniel fights and doesn't investigate, Harvey investigates and doesn't fight, and the other three generalize and can basically do anything, depending how they draw. They seem built close to what I've found to be a good philosophy: you can focus on one role, but you need at least a few cards that can do other roles. On paper at least, they all look pretty strong.
We got them today and yes, they are interesting. As I figured, there are some core set cards, some I would have expected, but others which are pretty typical in decks, absent. Not a single neutral card. I hope that wasn’t too big of a spoiler. Some of the variations and upgrades to old favorites are interesting though.
Harvey is a very hand size focused investigator, and I play so many cards, I think he would be challenging for me to capitalize on. I almost feel like he should have gotten a few extra cards in his deck size. Eventually, Versatile might actually be worth it with him.
Stella’s deck, which I was super excited about, had some very cool cards. Maybe it is just me, but I’m not sure they capitalized on her ability as much as I expected. I am interested in some analysis as to how to best make her work. I really wanted to take her through RttFA, but am not sure if she is the best bet.
I could go on about each of them, but the thing that they did was make it indisputable that they are straight up one class. Each has some pretty powerful cards, which will empower other investigators, (in some cases maybe a little too much), but since these guys are “experts” in their given class, it makes sense for their decks, that they were given that edge.
Edited by Mimi61
On 8/28/2020 at 3:08 PM, Soakman said:I'm planning on maybe getting a friend to give the game a try who has never played it before. I'm not sure if it's something she'd be interested in, but she suffers from analysis paralysis sometimes and the deck-building would be overwhelming for her. But she's very interested in the narrative and challenge of trying something new to her. She thinks Carcosa sounds wonderful, so maybe we'll try to make that happen and she can pick whatever of these decks she wants.
I’m taking Nathaniel with a 10XP deck built only from his cards to ‘Stop the Presses’ tomorrow. I’m curious to see how the decks play, and we haven’t used a guardian in the play test yet. I will say, after my crazy week, building a deck in minutes was kind of nice. My husband is taking parallel Skids. We will let you know if we sniff out a story, O mighty one.
Edited by Mimi615 minutes ago, Mimi61 said:I’m taking Nathaniel with a 10XP deck built only from his cards to ‘Stop the Presses’ tomorrow. I’m curious to see how the decks play, and we haven’t used a guardian in the play test yet. I will say, with my crazy day today, building a deck in minutes was kind of nice. My husband is taking parallel Skids. We will let you know if we sniff out a story, O mighty one.
Very exciting. I was wondering if I'd see a playtest or two from the new investigator decks.
On 8/28/2020 at 11:27 AM, Allonym said:I have yet to play with them (they arrive tomorrow...) but they are very cool for the reason you state - while I am very, very into building weird and wonderful decks, some people I play with find the deckbuilding aspect very off-putting, so these decks should help the game hit the table more often. In addition, I have told myself I'm going to play using these decks as they are without mixing in other cards or taking them apart to create new decks a few times, for a bit of a change. Like a kind of Arkham Limited format!
We are doing the same. I bought cheap deck boxes for each of them, to keep them intact and separated. We want to play them before we start infiltrating the player cards into other deck builds. I’m curious to see how the creators did in building a whole campaign upgrade process. I think they would play off each other well if played as simultaneous investigators.
That being said, I’m not sure how Stella’s deck would hold up in RttFA. I think maybe I should run her through Dunwich or TCU.
4 minutes ago, Soakman said:Very exciting. I was wondering if I'd see a playtest or two from the new investigator decks.
It seemed like a good call!
I do like that the decks come with a rules sheet, with a bit of linking story, and covering any rules from outside the core rules document, as well as providing the initial decklists for the characters in case you have filed the cards away - that's a very handy touch.
Don't do what I do when looking through Harvey's deck, and wonder if you're missing a card when there's only one copy of the 5XP Necronomnicon - I'm pretty sure that's because it is "Limit 1 per deck".
Reprints per pack, out of the 60 cards (as opposed to unique card count; more of a factor to experienced players than new ones, admittedly):
I did find that the 0XP versions of some existing cards threw me here, as my memory kept telling me we'd had them for a while when we hadn't. It was definitely interesting to see how the design team felt the "cheaper" versions of such cards should work.
The five new Basic Weakness options are a nice array, and tie thematically (and mechanically) to the Investigator they're packaged with, without being overly damaging and with a simple cost to get rid of them.
I'm not sure if I'd want to run any of these decks as built, but the Investigators themselves look interesting, and there are card options from each pack I see that I'm looking forwards to using with other Investigators - Zoe being able to do a Scorpion impression should be handy, for example, or Patrice playing a variety of interesting sounds on a Chainsaw...