Hey Guys,

I picked up the game because I'm a fan of Lovecraft and CCGs. After watching the tutorial, it seemed like a cool game me and my friends could get into. We like multiplayer games like Horrorclix and V:tes but are casual gamers. I have purchased the core set and the That Which Consumes pack.

The rules on multiplayer games suggest that each player have their own story cards. Is it possible to ignore this rule and use different tokens for each player?

Does anyone have additional tips or advice on running a multiplayer game?

Thanks,

Rakcoon

Our group plays multi-player CoC whenever we get the chance - it's a lot of fun, perhaps even more so than one-on-one. In our experience you absolutely do not need 3+ sets of story cards. In fact, we found this makes multi-player games unnecessarily confusing. It is far easier, and clearer to everyone involved, to simply use different colored tokens placed at a single set of story cards as you suggested. We use the counters made by FFG, and match up colors depending on the deck type each player is using (Silver for Syndicate, Green for Cthulhu, Red for Shub, etc).

As for any tips, I have two, though one is only a suggestions.

First, for a three player game I would plan on an additional hour of play. Your games may go faster, but our three player games generally take 1.5-2 hours.

Second - and this is only a suggestion - in games of 4+ players you may experiment with limiting the number of players who can block each other. We opted for only the player on your immediate left or right being allowed to block your characters at a story, similar (though not identical) to the predator and prey dynamic of V:tES. It can become increasingly difficult to break through several lines of defense to succeed at a story, which can bog a game down. Therefore, if you want to keep things moving along than this may be a good house rule.

Have fun!

P.S. A last minute idea for another house rule. You may declare that in order to block, a player must have a reasonable chance of inflicting some type of damage or succeeding in some manner (i.e. make a character go insane, wound a character, win the investigation struggle, stop his opponent from winning on skill, being able to play a beneficial card, etc).

This can prevent the first player who is legally allowed to block from committing his characters to defend a story and then not being able to stop the active player from winning a story card outright (and thus possibly the game) because he had no intention or capability to do so in the first place. This is only applicable when another player at the table could have prevented the active player from succeeding at or winning the story card in question, but was prevented from doing so because another player committed to blocking before him.

tokens - great! I prefer multiplayer games which was my draw to V:tes and also why I didn't stick with other CCGs (WOW, Magic).

Blocking - I really liked the predator/prey setup, espically in a 4 player game because it created in a sense an ally on the other side of the table. The only difference is that the winner in CoC is the first to 3 stories as opposed to V:tes where it's points.

Challenges - I don't like the idea of limiting who can block based on their resources because that determination includes what's in a person's hand. On the board a player may not have the ability to block but does so in their hand. Maybe there is something I'm missing but I don't see a way to deny a player a blocking attempt without asking them to, in a round about way, revel their hand.

Thanks so much for the feedback. I'm really digging this game so far, both for it's content and theme. Please keep the suggestions coming.

With regards to the "a player must have a reasonable chance to block" house rule, I understand the challenges of implementing such a rule. We don't actually use it in our group. However, I can foresee running into problems if one player opts to block when they have no chance of impeding the active player's success at a story, simply as a means to prevent another player from committing characters to a story who could reasonably block, or to allow a certain player to win the story card.

In multi-player games, opting to block but not being able (or wanting) to stop your opponent is a devious tactic that will allow a losing player to win a story card and thereby "catch up" to put more pressure on the current leader. It can also allow one player to remove a story card where they have no success tokens - but where another opponent has built up successes and is heavily invested and which are then erased when the story is won - leaving the player who ineffectually blocked in a superior position (and perhaps losing nothing but an insane character). These types of tactics can be detrimental to multi-player fun.

It's a tough call to make, and really comes down to your group's style. We play in a casual environment among close friends, so this isn't an issue for our gaming group. I'm brought it up because I can see it being problematic in open play.

Good Point. It's a problem we'll have to deal with as it comes up.

Perhaps one option is to always allow the player with the most success tokens at the story(ies) being threatened to block first? If that player passes then the chance to intercept proceeds clockwise per the standard rules.

Interesting idea, but you would need to cover the case of a tie as well (often it's a fresh story and nobody has tokens there).

So basically the one with (theoretically) the most to lose has the first responsibility. But, they may also be able to force others to defend for them by deferring the responsibility until the last guy capable of it has no choice - he either has to defend to his his detriment or lose the game. "Hey Bob, if you don't stop Frank at the story he's going to win this turn". "Um, yeah, but aren't I just doing your work for you so you can win instead?" "Maybe, but I'm not guaranteed to win if he's stopped. If you don't do it, you'll definitely lose. Now get in there and sacrifice your characters for my common good!"

Just saying, it's a problem I've witnessed in other games that use a sequential method of seeing who's going to stop the potential winner. If one player has already passed up his chance, you can't bargain with them, they're simply no longer eligible. Rational behavior dictates that preserving even a slim chance of victory is better than automatically losing, but there's a certain spite factor at being forced to hurt yourself to do it. It helps a lot when you can establish a scoring system that awards a reasonable 2nd, 3rd, etc.. place. That makes it harder to force someone's hand because not all "losing" is equal and if stopping the potential winner would make you slip in the rankings you can't count on another player doing it for you anymore.

In the case of a tie, I would suggest reverting back to clockwise interception per the standard rules.

I want to stress that this hasn't been a problem in any of our multi-player games - which are a blast to play - but it could become an issue depending on your group's playing style (or if you're just picking up a game with strangers at a store, for example).

On another topic related to multi-player games, because this format tends to take longer it favors some deck types over others. Rush decks tend to struggle a bit more, whereas decks with powerful characters do better, as can a deck with multiple Arcane struggles (though we play with black-border cards as well so this is easier to achieve).

Has running out of cards been a problem with multiplayer games?

During an especially long game we all came close, but otherwise no one has run out their deck yet (we're playing with 50 card decks). Granted, no one in our group has brought a discard deck to a multi-player game either. That might be an interesting strategy, though it might prove difficult to mill through 2 opponents' decks.

While our multi-player games do take longer, I wouldn't say that too many more cards are being played. The longer time frame is mostly from the extra story struggles and decision making that comes with adding more players, not necessarily because we're taking a ton of additional turns. Depending on the decks involved, I could see someone burning through a lot of cards - especially as you can throw down Events or trigger other effects even when your not the intercepting player - but I don't foresee it being a problem.

I should clarify something I wrote in an early post. Regarding this format favoring some deck types over others, I think rush decks can struggle because it becomes that much harder to plan on punching through 2 lines of defense and still have enough left in reserve to block. The fact that no one has a story phase on turn one, and that you have other players who can take up the slack in blocking, helps decks that need a little more time to get rolling.

After reading up on the Vampire CCG, the Predator/Prey thing sounds like a pretty good mechanic for a multiplayer variant. Shame that one hasn't been revived into a more friendly LCG-like format yet, most of what I read sounds like it was a good game. However, they seem to have had the opposite problem where the game was best with 4-5 players and not so good for 2.

Vampire - That is true. 2 player games were not as much fun as group games, expically when you add the voting mechanism. It was a great game but became too complicated and expensive for my taste.