Holy crap! We have a new faction! Does anyone else remember when I was suggesting almost this exact same thing maybe 6 months after the initial conversion to Asylum Packs? I even edited up some mock cards with a color scheme eerily similar to this. I'm going to look around to see if I still have any of them around to repost.

They are finally here! A 4th human faction to balance the sides.

You can read about it here: www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp

and here: www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_npm.asp

I am curious to see what other people think about this.

I hope they get better cards than the one spoiled...

I'm not a CCG veteran, but I like the idea, and thematically I think having a cult works great. It sure makes the expansion more interesting.

Looks like they spoiled three cards:

www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_npm_sec.asp

Not really sure what to think of all of this.

On the one hand, more options are always kind of neat.

On the other hand, it makes one wonder how this will work in a 20 card asylum pack format (if thats indeed what they intend on keeping in the future. I have reached a ceiling in what I am willing to pay for monthly expansions). Its definitely one more way to get the old CCG crowd back into buying the game to collect one more faction.

It also might be a hint as to what is coming for the new Lovecraftian game.

I hope it turns out to be a great idea. Time will tell.

So what happens to the existing Silver Twilight cards? Do they stay with their current faction or move to this one? If they're moving will there be replacement cards?

This is totally cool news. I, for one, am quite excited by it.

Holy cow! A new human faction?! That's great news. The only thing I don't like about it is that the borders are a bit too similar to neutral cards...

Well... put that tongue back in my mouth! The Characters have sweet come into play abilities and Investigate. One even has books for pOOn!!!

I likes 'em.

OMG, the "lodge" trait is going to be soooooooooo broken!!!

This is super excellent news! Great! I have no complaints. The faction symbol is a little weird, but the template is great. New expansion, three spoiled cards, new card types, new Lodge sybtype. Lodge Housekeeper is excellent art!

Just think where we almost were after Eldritch Arc and Dunwich Denizens ended. The game could now be a relic. But we cthulhu on!

ps. Cards with a title that later gets subtyped, like the Slavering Gug of old, don't change with the updated attributes. Old Silver Twilight Lodge joins the likes of Slavering Gug on the outside looking in on such changes.

pss. I know I'm going to hear about this, but. Not very community oriented to wish for fewer cards released because one can't afford the purchase. If a glut of cards is adversely affecting a game, that's one thing, but it must be near unanimous that we yearn for a larger card pool.

Agreed that it will be interesting to see how the distribution changes.

The Ritual one seems rather....ehh....if I understand it correctly.

You have to first put out 5 separate characters....and then sacrifice each of them to the Ritual card.... at that point (and assuming the opponent just doesn't play a Support-location destroying effect by then !)...you get to remove the tokens and put into play a character from your hand . . .

Um....only way this could possibly be good was if you stuffed your deck with tons of cheap 1 or 2-cost Cultist types...AND some big stuff like Cthulhu or Yog-Sothoth....got all of these in your starting hand (or shortly thereafter on turn 2-3).... and put out, say, 2-Cultists on Turn-1.

Turn-2 you put out the Ritual Card ? (cost-3) - Maybe a 3rd Cultist, if you are lucky. Umm...okay...now what...you have to contest some of the stories your opponent is likely gunning for (or starting to by now).....with crappy cultists ? Let's say you hold off your foe...and manage to put out the final 2 Cultists you need for the Ritual effect to take off ! Yay !

What is it now, Turn-4 or 5 ? ...so you get to sacrifice ALL your characters in play (5) - to put something else (bigger) from your hand into play..... The most this could get you is Cthulhu or Yog or something else with high cost (in theory)...and you have 1-character in play now....oooh...scary. What stops your opponent from playing A Single Glimpse, or Deep One Assault, or some other combo to your mighty character instantly ? And how long and how many other things had to go into this to get one big character into play (what, a turn or two sooner than normal ?) - ?

Maybe I'm missing something.....

What if you put Magahs and two one drops into play on your first turn. The Ritual action can eat all five at once, what with no exhaust.

"Ritual is a subtype of attachment and event cards"

Don't they mean subtype of support and event cards?

New cards? Sigil of the Order, Lodge Librarian, and Knight of the Outer Void

I for one am quite stoked for this. Can't wait.

johnny shoes said:

You completely misunderstood what I said.

I was referring to how one more faction will work in how asylum packs are now done. 20 cards split between basically nine factions makes the pickings slim. So they would either increase the card amount to perhaps 22 or some other arbitrary number and increase the price beyond $15. Or, keep the same 20 cards in triplicate and have slightly less variety dedicated to those prior factions which would otherwise get a bit more support over the course of a cycle.

Just interested and curious in how they would deal with this while expressing concern for a potential price hike is all I was saying.

Does that clarify matters?

Right - I see what you mean - Hellfury.... if they have 9-factions in a 60 card deck...and three of each card (to continue the format they have been doing for Yuggoth Contract).....then (if divided evenly) - you would only get 2-cards per faction with a spare 1-2 thrown in to reach 60-total.

And if they feel they have to heavily weight future AP's to get the Silver Twilight up to speed in terms of card-stock (with the other factions) - then who knows how many cards per AP will be ST ? 5-6 ? x3 = 18 ....so you basically could see 1/3rd of an AP all for 1-new faction...and the original ones might only get 1-2 cards for themselves. That is, I think, what Hellfury was saying.

- To JohnnyShoes - Okay...Magah's break everything, we know that now .... - but..absent that one card/creature - it seems like the Ritual would have to be really situational...to POSSIBLY get a single Ancient One out 1-2 turns earlier...but since you will have nothing else out with him...and your foes would have whatever they naturally would have to that point...it seems like a goofy / gimmicky kind of card to actually get it to work. Had they made it "sac 3-characters" - for the effect, I would be intrigued...but 5-seems like too much cost and TIME...for what would amount to 1-single card coming onto the table for your side.

Even if it's Cthulu, Lord of R'lyeh * - it'd be tough to see how you wouldn't be better off with 5-Cultists or other cheap guys PLUS him on Turn-6 (or 5 with Silver Twilight guys or Seekers of Mystery, etc).....rather than lose everyone...to maybe have him out Turn-3 or 4....alone. And that would be IF everything went right for you and you drew 5-cheap characters, the Ritual, AND your big guy ...all in your first 10-cards or so.....

Ah, I'm on board now with the point. I am going to guess that they will up the card count and keep the price point. We just leapt to $15 per pack and 60 cards. 66 cards is a flavorful number. I can't see less than 2 cards per faction. I do like that neutrals have taken a quantity hit. That's been a long time needed to up the faction count. Is 6 cards more really going to bring up the price? If so, projections from the last jump suggest around $1.40 more. I sure hope not. It'll start looking like $20 per AP, which feels high.

When I type from work (and I've written this before) I tend to write divisive statements. My bad. I'll work on it.

They don't even have the balance right on the factions they have out now and they are going to bring out a new one? Perhaps they should fix the problems that already exist before creating new ones. I predict this faction will either be extremely powerful or a complete waste of time...

How should the balance be different. I mean, with more cards. Sure.

If you mean years of too many neutrals, I agree.

Two of most factions and three of a couple, has grown to currently, four factions with three cards. Just the Captain and Cave Mouth were the only of their faction in their AP.

The way AP era began, you couldn't cut twenty cards into anything balanced. Much better now, but still a debate. It's too sophisticated a card game.

I remember, the thin trickle of cards for me was too small a sample to build theme. The 120 per cycle, small as 12 per faction, is recently better executed. Don't get me wrong. The wildness of the early AP cards was great - Audient Void, the many idiosyncrasys. But as each faction card pool...ok I'll say it...limped along, inspired change in that faction was not seen. The themes didn't mature. Times change. Core plus trickle eventually led to a current 690 cards, 350 of them reprints. We have a meta and champions and a dominant faction and problem cards and all the things a cool game should have.

Compare, say, six zoogs, four polar events, two undead, a few gugs, more dreamers, to older samples like: Fourteen out of 145 Masks of Nyarly cards were masks. Eighteen Artifacts were in 145 Forbidden Relics cards.

Since you've drifted to mention some of the older cards....get a load of this one I just read the text for !

Cthulhu , High Priest of R'lyeh

Cost: 7

Terror x2, Combatx2, Arcanex1 - Skill= 7

Villainous, Invulnerable

"All OTHER characters lose a Terror Icon."

"When Cthulhu is committed to a story, it gains " Action : Pay 1 to have all characters at this story go insane ."

-

That sounds pretty brutal ! Were all the old CCG-type cards that outlandish, relative to the ones we have in the LCG era ?

Look up Ghoul Khanum and cry...

Wow...I just checked him out !

Ghoul Khanum (Shub-Niggurath Character)

Cost: 6

2-Terror, 1-Combat, 1-Arcane

Fast, Toughness+2

Skill: 3

-

Response : After you win an icon struggle by at least 2-icons, put a success token on the story that Ghoul Khanum was committed (to).

Pretty brutal....as you could take 5+ success tokens in one go with this guy, completely claiming a story in that manner. The only thing that would be an issue (possibly) is his cost to play but there are probably plenty of ways you could get him in there using recursion spells, etc

It was Shocking Transformation that made the Ghoul Khanum who he was.

GK pulled in under the wire, with Ancient One stats, not status.

While you were at it, you'd play Hungry Dark Young and pull Nyarlathotep out of your butt.

But we digress. The New Faction is big news. And lots of spoilage.

The boxed set contains only 1 neutral card.

Could it be that the Asylum packs will also contain fewer or no neutrals?

If so this could allow for the space to add an 8th faction while not intruding upon

the count for the original factions. I like the idea of more cards per pack but I seriously

doubt that the AP card count will change. I have always been a proponent for fewer neutrals.

As far as the original Silver Twilight cards (Cthu), maybe you could consider them a splinter-group

that were fully taken under Cthulhus' sway. I would imagine they'll stay exactly as is. Maybe we'll see

another version of Carl? One of the articles said something about other advantages to loosing characters.

The newly spoiled 'Ritual' card may seem under-powered but consider the possibilities of the sacrifice for a token

may also trigger other benefits. Despite my initial resistance to the idea of a new faction these articles were written

very well, therefore I am now open to the potential.

Nothing much to add, except that the new Expansion looks great. No reprints. 65 all new cards. Three of each. The faction has its own website. It's out there, man. It's got moons and suns and signs on the template, a blue from beyond the wall. It's a dramatic seismic shift. Not some zoog icon. It's been seven factions for a decade.

The new crazy Yuggoth distribution with the neutrals in the middle of a seemingly arbitrary order may have been a harbinger of the new faction coming.