Hey all, innsmouth is one of my favourite settings in Lovecraft, but I’m a bit concerned about possible bloat with the latest expansion.
when FFG put out the sub-par at best Masks of Nyarly expansion for Eldritch Horror, the cards and bits of the game reached the tipping point for me.

Now with the bless/curse mechanic, I’m concerned the same thing is happening with the LCG and hoping you can allay my fears.
Having more bits is one thing, but having investigators whose abilities require you to use those bits (eg Sister Mary) is another. Means if you don’t want to use bless/curse, no sister Mary. Or other player cards that play with bless/curse, so the expansion becomes less appealing even though I like getting new investigators and like the setting.

how has bless/curse been to play with? I’m assuming it’s here to stay from now on, so future expansions will also have it. Wondering if this is my exit...

I had similar misgivings, but ...

We just played a session of Blob using Mary and Trish. Mary was a lot of fun, and her impact on the bag made a big difference for Trish too.

I'm not so sure that it's "here to stay" for future cycles. Keywords are one thing (although haunted seems to have vanished after TCU), but the need for the bits suggests that this bit of "bloat" is peculiar to Innsmouth. If it's a hit, maybe future cycles will have their own tokens for the bag. (A token mechanism could have been used for Doubt/Conviction in Carcosa, or for Yig's Fury in Forgotten Age, for example.)

Doubt token = -2 to Willpower tests, +2 to Intellect tests, in other tests treat as skull

Conviction token = +2 to Willpower tests, -2 to Intellect tests, in other tests treat as cultist

4 hours ago, Krysmopompas said:

how has bless/curse been to play with? I’m assuming it’s here to stay from now on, so future expansions will also have it. Wondering if this is my exit...

MJ and Jeremy said on a live stream that bless and curse will be confined to this cycle for the foreseeable future because of the need for the additional tokens in the deluxe box, which they can't/don't want to do every time. Therefore, they are going all in on it with the player cards because they don't expect that they will be able to use it on any cards in future cycles.

I can't comment on how it compares to Masks because I don't own Eldritch Horror, but if you don't like the added fiddliness and mental overhead of dealing with bless and curse tokens then you could consider skipping this cycle and jump back in for the next one.

As for whether the bless/curse mechanic is sub-par, I think it may not be apparent until the cycle is complete. Perhaps it might be best to wait until the whole thing is released and see if it is worth buying for the quality of the story and scenarios? I think the first two are strong but we'll have to wait and see if the quality remains high throughout.