Hi,

I only have the core set, the luxury expansions with order of the silver twilight and arkham secrets. Using all my cards, the faction of the order of silver twilight contains ca. 40 cards, whereas my other factions only have roughly 28 cards each. In addition the order of the silver twilight seems to be much more balanced than the other factions. Which asylum packs would you recommend to attain more balance between the factions? I am particularly interested in this issue, since I do not (yet) create my own decks to play competitively.

All the best,

Bearer of the Yellow Sign

In your case I'd recommend to get the cards from the 'Yuggoth Contract' AP cycle next. They do a very good job of focusing the other factions' strength. Since this cycle doesn't include any cards for the Silver Twilight you'll end up with an average of 15 cards for each of the other factions.

After that you can start buying the more recent APs which include a roughly equal number of cards for every faction, i.e. including the Silver Twilight.

Here's some more info on the different AP cycles:

Summons Of The Deep: Focuses on the Storyphase and the four struggles, each AP taking special focus on a single struggle. There is also some focus on Replacement Effects, which can be a bit complex at first. There are some extremely powerful cards in this cycle, but majority of the cards are a bit weak, at least in current meta. There are also some pretty complex cards in this set that deal with more obscure game situations and mechanics, making them useless in majority of situations. Art and feel of the set is great though....

Dreamlands: Dreamlands cycle gives more attention to various lesser game mechanics and introduces many new, more experimental cards into the game. Day/Night effects, tribal themes, Story card manipulation and Zoogs are all featured within this set and all kind of.... failed. Too many of the cards are way too complex and focus even more on obscure situations and mechanics than in SotD cycle to be really effective. Then again, they might prove really interesting in the future if the game ever brings in another cycle that focuses on strange fringe effects. On the other hand many of the cards in this set are ridiculously powerful, like the infamous but now obsolete Magah Bird. Hasn't been updated to 60 card format so not recommended.

Yuggoth Contract: More down to earth set than previous two, but still introduces many new themes within the factions. Mi-Go tribe, Support cards, Lunatics, conspiracies and serpents are all strongly featured within this cycle and while they differ from the raw basics of the game a bit, they still don't end up as too bizarre to use. The theme in this set is also, like on previous two, very tight and many cards refer to the backstory of the cycle. This is also the first AP cycle where slight power creep began to set in. Still not nearly as large jump in power level as next two sets. New Ancient Ones are also a nice plus.

Rituals Of The Order: Contains more Silver Twilight Cards than other factions. The main purpose of this cycle was to strengthen the basics of the factions rather than to introduce new elements. Many of the cards here are very simple and straightforward, but due to power creep many ended up as extremely powerful and caused an uproar within the community. Now time has shown that many of the cards that were first thought of as too powerful, weren't actually that broken. Thematically not as tight as previous AP cycles with only few cards referring to the storyline.

Then there are also the two AP cycles that are still progressing, one new and one consisting of reprints. Personally i would recommed also Yuggoth cycle as the first purchase, as it has a nice balanced selection of cards and does not include Silver Twilight. Also, the AP Shifting Sands from the new AP cycle is a good purchase due to the new Story cards that are awesome. After that just buy anything that sounds interesting one or two AP:s at a time + any new ones FFG releases, and soon you have a great selection of cards to build your decks from. And don't buy too many AP:s at once. When i got into this game i bought within maybe two months full Dreamlands and Yuggoth Contract cycles and few of the Summons AP:s, and was completely overwhelmed with all the new cards. Still having hard time sometimes to wrap my head around all the different cards and combos......

But yeah, hope this helps ^^

The Order of the Silver Twilight expansion was specifically released to launch the new faction, this is why it contains a disproportionate number of cards for that faction. Silver Twilight did not exist as a faction before this point, and they needed to create a big enough card pool to get them off the ground so they'd be playable.

So basically, every Asylum Pack prior to that expansion will be void of Silver Twilight cards and buying any of these will help balance out your card pool. In general, I'd start with Yuggoth Contract and/or Summons of the Deep. Dreamlands was a nice cycle as well, but as Shangfu pointed out it has not yet been reprinted in the 60 card format. I'd wait for that before buying any of these.

Which exact packs to get is up to you.

Shangfu said:

There should be a method of archiving or creating stickies for this sort of information. This is great stuff for new players to consider. Thank you for taking the time!

Dear All,

Many thanks for the information. This is exactly what I was looking for!

Dear Shangfu, your description of the different asylum packs is extremely useful. I was/am missing exactly this type of information in the official description of the asylum packs (products section)! (FFG seems to be often very scarce with information on the specialties/characteristics of asylum pack circles and individual asylum packs.)

Best,

Bearer of the Yellow Sign

I'd also like to strongly recommend to download and install Nyarlazobec's Deck Builder software:

eric.minet.free.fr/cocbuilder/dbdownl_en.htm

It's always quickly updated with all the new cards whenever a new AP is released and features very powerful search and filter functions.

Tokhuah said:

Hehe, could have written even more about the cycles, but was busy at work. But, writing these got me thinking if we should make some sort of Introductory thread that has all the basic info we have discussed here edited on the first post (Factions, pack cycles, links to strategy articles, deckbuilding rules, etc). Of course it should also be stickied and that might not be possible....

On most forums I visit, somebody is running it (moderator, etc...) and has the rights to make a sticky. So, you write up your post and then message them with the link requesting it to be stickyfied. I guess if we don't know anyone better to sent it to then we could use the rules query link?

If we're preparing such a thing I'd like to see a section with some rough rules of thumb for deck-building. ie - roughly 30 characters out of 50 cards, a mention of the resource curve to help beginners select appropriately costed cards, maybe some brief notes on each faction - strengths, how they might differ from normal in deckbuilding, etc... Cthulhu tends to be slower and has lots of destruction. Yog may run more events (spells) than typical and can build discard decks. Syndicate is typically rather fast and excels at exhaustion effects. Etc...

Sounds good. I have some free time later in the evening and could start writing up some stuff ready if we start this project.

What i would also like to read about more is the history of this game. What types of decks were popular during different seasons (CCG and LCG), was there some card or combo that caused heavy shifts in the meta, how the game and cards have progressed, etc.... But that is of course another project all by itself and i'm pretty sure no-one here would be foolish enough to start such a massive task. I also play warhammer and used to play MTG and both of those games have well recorded history and plenty of material to read online, and as CoC LCG is at the moment propably my favourite game, same kind of thing would be great also. But getting dangerously out of topic now....

Shangfu said:

chris-long.com/cthulhu/

These articles are a very interesting read and provide insight into when and why certain game elements were introduced (e.g. Loyal, Steadfast, and Transient) and what design mistakes were made in the CCG era.

Wow, thanks! Had completely forgotten that site! ^^