I'm new to the Call Of Cthulhu LCG. I've just bought the core set, and have been looking through the cards. Love the look of them, and can't wait to have a go at the game.

Having gone through the cards and sorted them out into factions, I seem to have an odd card which is out of sequence. I wonder if anyone can confirm whether it's correct?

Card F23, which should be a part of the Miskatonic University faction is printed as an Agency faction card - "Steve Clarney". Having sorted all the cards into their factions, this means that all factions have 20 cards except the Agency was has 21 (including F23) and Miskatonic University only has 19 (missing the card that should be F23).

Is this right? It seems like to play the game using either of these factions would give a player a one-card advantage or disadvantage.

Yeah I'm pretty sure Steve Clarney is Miskatonic. Not sure if this misprint is common or not in the new release.

Holy Mackeral! Steve Clarney is all blue! Our first defector! Drop out. Fink. Go trade your tuition for some ammunition. The soldier of fortune apparently never really cared for the knowledge in his findings, but only that danger raises all value. The gun in his right hand won over the telescope in his left. Who gets the artifacts he discovered stored in the M.U. Zoological Museum? Is his pass still good? Holy Jim Jefferts. MU got Liebermaned.

And Anthropology Advisor! you remember the guy. 3 cost MU combat. rare. beautiful. lower investigator cost by 1 no limit. and all investigators (any faction) gain investigate...well his skill went up from 2 to 3. his icons went from C to CAI. Now there's a classic chase rare gone obsolete with a spank. Good bye black bordered EE R35.

This is how it used to look like originally:

ccggamez.com/index.php

Can't believe "Indiana Jones" is Agency card now?! WTF?! Thanks for pointing that out, slypimpb.

Good catch. I hadn't spotted that. Any chance FFG will give us an official answer if its correct or an odd misprint?

The_Big_Show said:

Recent experience shows FFG hates talking to their customers, so I would not expect them to comment on that.

Max Wax said:

Having seen how the card used to look originally, it's a got to be a misprint. It must be more than coincidence that the card is numbered in the Miskatonic University faction.

If FFG acknowledge it as a misprint, anyone know if they'd be likely to issue a replacement card?

I'm guessing its a misprint, though I'm surprised that they don't keep the original card on a PDF somewhere like other companies do.

I've checked it, and the official answer is:

"Yeah, it's something we'll have to correct with future printings, for now the Core version of Clarney will have to be played as an Agency character. Errata-ing a card's faction is too much to remember, and too disjointing, IMO."
- Nate

I would say you can choose for yourselves, though. It'll be corrected in later printings though. Now for a Cthulhu with a nice Yog border...

Ok, so they will correct it in future printings. Does that mean those who buy it until then are stucki with a lame card or do you think FFG will actually send everyone else a fixed version?

"Yeah, it's something we'll have to correct with future printings, for now the Core version of Clarney will have to be played as an Agency character. Errata-ing a card's faction is too much to remember, and too disjointing, IMO."
- Nate

Now, errata or not, this would be one of the situations which would need a really good development team to solve: future printings will need to be very well designed to not cause confusion.

But, I have to say, an Agency's Clarney isn't too bad fluffwise: after all he is an adventurer and not a professor (like O'Donnel), and was involved in the recovery of the Fire of Assurbahnipal, another Agency card.

But see Marius, now Mr. Ngambe is stirctly worse than Clarney, after all ...

Marius said:

Well, at least it's an official answer. But not a great one! As someone has pointed out, if it's to be corrected in future printings, then can we claim a free replacement card?

Also, the idea of playing Clarney as an Agency character seems to give anyone using the Agency faction as part of their deck an advantage being 1 card up, and anyone using the MIskatonic University a disadvantage being 1 card down. If I'm reading the rules right, if a player has no cards remaining in his deck during the draw phase of the game, then he is eliminated. This means a player using the Miskatonic University faction in their deck will run out of cards one card quicker than the other player, and two cards quicker than a player using the Agency faction. The can't make for a balanced game.

As Nate says, it's too much to remember, and too disjointing to errata a card's faction, so it seems to me like a fundamental flaw in the balance of the game to leave the situation as it is. I suggest we should call for a replacement card to be printed, and then we can at least get on with playing the game the way it's supposed to be.

Come on, this isn't this important : The Core Set is something to help the newcomers to start the game ... Once you get AP's, no problem for you if you wanna play 50-cards decks.

Yes, they normally should reprint this ... But I doubt FFg has the time and the will to do so ... Whjat shock me most is the perspectove a future AP will host 1 (or 3!!) Steve clarney instead of new cards ... That threatened me most !!

I find the Clarney card quite nice, in bleu ... . After all, he's a soldier of fortune ... And blackwood can hire him this time, no problem for me !! ANd he's linked to Asshurbanipal's fire, so, why change it ???

I'd rather have a Miska promo send to those who want ....

It was done on purpose. Now that Miskatonic is missing a combat character, they'll have to turn to Coach Grabowski, making him seem semi playable and less lame.

Come on, this isn't this important : The Core Set is something to help the newcomers to start the game ... Once you get AP's, no problem for you if you wanna play 50-cards decks.

Well, as usual it depends on which expectation you bought Cthulhu LCG with: if you bought it for boardgaming fun, as a standalone game the absence of balance in the starting decks could be pretty much troubling (I guess).

Carioz said:

This is troubling to me. I expect better quality control, especially on a product like this. If the core set has this big of a mistake, I can hardly trust that proper care will be taken in the future.

I agree with Kobu: FFG makes premium games which are not inexpensive. Fixing this mistake should be a matter of principle for FFG.

Mentioned before, it doesn't bode well for the core game if the solution is to just play the misprint as given: this should throw off the finely tuned balance we expect of good game design. Or at least FFG should act like that's the case.

For a "casual game", where decks are built by selecting factions, handling the mis-print shouldn't be too bad: when no-one is playing The Agency, then remembering Agency means Miskatonic is not difficult. If one player is playing Agency + Miskatonic, then I can imagine game balance is not too badly off by playing Steve Clarney as an Agency card. It's only a mess if you have Agency vs Miskatonic. FFG could suggest an Agency card (in addition to F23) to be dropped to rebalance the factions, both players with 46 cards.

But this should only be necessary until FFG can make a corrected version available.

For the serious players, the misprint can be banned, or allowed to stand, depending on how it affects the metagame.

The LCG format is similar to a boardgame with expansions; FFG must have made this transition thinking it would sell to a broader customer base while still supporting fans who deckbuild and enjoy the CCG. The base set should provide a fun Lovecraft-themed casual gaming experience on it's own (even if it's very different than the CCG), and, ideally, the expansion packs should be of interest to casual (those who don't get into it enough to design decks) as well as serious players.

FFG could offer plenty of simple support for casual players, such as balanced deck lists that can be built with the core set and one or two Asylum packs (even offering up a backstory to flavor the lists!). Bridging these players to "enthusiasts" with incremental introductions to deck building could also be cool: something like starting with 3 factions and discarding 10 cards of your choice or drafting cards from Asylum packs or a myriad of other official variants to be offered up on the web site.

In my humble opinion FFG should just say that Steve being an Agency card now is exactly how they wanted it and cut all the discussion and problems this way.

It's not a big deal relly, especially that you will most likely want to combo your Agency with Miskatonic anyway (for Anthropology Advisor) and there's a lot of cards that can go into your deck instead of Steve (like Mr. Ngambe for example, depends if Willpower or Fast is more important for you but even without him Agency has 2-3 characters with Willpower which is quite sufficient).

Perfectly viable stand-ins for Steve:

Mr. Ngambe - Investigator, Fast + cancels toughness (doesn't cancel toughness on YOUR guys).

Thomas F. Malone - more expensive and worse icons but more skill and outright kill are nice.

Kirby O'Donnel - cheap and nice buffer/debuffer.

If there were a problem with New Clarney, it would be for MU, not Agency. He's the only 3 cost MU (besides Yog steadfast Learned Astronomer) with willpower. For core players who do not have old MU Clarney, the weakest faction just got dinged.

johnny shoes said:

Yes js you've hit the nail on the head. The real problem is MU gets even weaker!

It would be a shame to be forced to play MU with Agency limiting

the potenial pairings of the Core Set. Personally I think Agency/Shub

is the best pairing of the Core Set, lots of nasty suprises.

Hybrid said:

Actually the best pairings in Core Set (including the last two asylums) are:

Agency - Miskatonic (great synergy here with MU providing spyglasses, agency combat and the only way to lower the character cost - Anthropology Advisor)

Hastur - Shub-Niggurath (also awesome, hastur providing some control and shub providing decent characters)

Yog-Sothoth - Miskatonic (it always worked well)

Hastur - Syndicate (it may seem odd but it can actually work with a lot of cheap characters that can do various things, ultimate gameplay control with disrupts, insanity and exhaustion)

Miskatonic University never really did well on their own. Sure they have a lot of books and spyglasses but tentacles and skulls come before them which can screw the things up. They do however work well in a pair with some other (preferably fast - which means not Cthulhu or Hastur) faction.

Can't edit the post above any more...

By "spyglass" I actually meant "magnifying glass". Sorry about this mistake, was **** tired when I was writing the above post.

Investigate Icon is the term the game uses.

I read what was said about this ... and I'm sure we need to take a break, play the core set this way and then start to complain if there's any problem. But don't say Miska is a weeak faction, as there's something negligated : the events miska's char use are far better than a lot of others factions.

Take a look at seduction of the tomb, breakthrought or binding. You need'nt have strong char to win and makepoints !! So I'll try the core set this way. In case there are problems, may it'll be a time to whine. FFG must have done it in a serious manneer , so give the society some credits and try to play it this way ...

BTW : This wasn't meant to be agressive. As I already have some problems with my english elocution, I'll be sorry to bother anyone...

Good post, Prodigee. Your English is just fine.

chick