I bought the Core set awhile back and finally got a chance to play a few games last night. I've got some questions...

1) Can you put neutral cards on your domains to use as resources?

2) Can you play "events" at any time, pretty much?

3) When a card has a cost of "X" is it possible to play this card at zero cost? There's a resurrection-style card that brings back characters from the discard pile, and some characters have a cost of zero, so can you play this card on those characters?

4) I'm familiar with the "resource match" thing about paying for cards, and I'm aware that some cards have a requirement for the resource match of more than one of that type of resource. I'm fairly certain that this is designated by having two (or more) symbols next to the title of the card. So, there's a Cthulhu card that has this - two Cthulhu icons next to the title - but this card has a cost of zero... so why would it have this requirement? It doesn't cost anything.

Tangent said:

4) Regarding resource matches there are two special cases:

a) Loyal cards: To play a card with the Loyal keyword, the domain drained must include at least as many resources of the card's faction as its cost indicates. Note that transient resources only count as one card for this purpose.

b) Steadfast cards: These are cards with the little icons in front of the cards' title you've mentioned. To play one of these cards you must have the indicated number of resources anywhere among your domains. It is not required that the domain you drain to pay the card's cost includes them.

You may want to search the Rules document for Loyal and Steadfast to look at the exact rules text.

Ahhh... I see. The card that I was referring to in number 4 has a cost of zero but is Steadfast for Cthulhu. I checked out the rules for Steadfast combined with your explanation and I get it now. Thanks a lot!

Are there any restrictions on the number of neutral cards you can have in a deck?

There are no limits on the number of neutral cards you can put in a deck. I have an all-neutral deck that I play in fun, friendly events.

but, you want to make sure that you have enough faction cards in your deck to make sure you have the color matching resources you need! If you go with lots of neutrals, you probably don't want to bring Loyal cards with you, for example.

Awesome.

Which player has priority when a phase starts to use actions? Or any other card?

Tangent said:

jhaelen said:

Ok, so the active player drains a domain to play a character card. The opposing player then gets a chance to play actions, then back to the active... right?

Can you play actions during/in-between struggle resolution?

If the answer to that is no, how important is it that the active player notifies his opponent when he's moving into the start of the story phase, but hasn't committed any characters to a story yet?

Tangent said:

I think you will get benefit from the chart on page 13 of the rule book. This shows the timing sequence of things that can happen. The white boxes represent a time when Actions may be taken, and indeed, they follow the logic of Active player takes an action, then passive player(s) get a chance, and back and forth. Passing does not remove you from future opportunities. In the operations phase, bringing a character into player counts as though it were an action.

During the story resolution, there is no opportunity to play Actions. You can see that in the green box on page 13.

When we play, we always say something like "I'm going to Story Phase now" so that if the other player(s) wanted to do something int he Operations Phase, they know it is about to end. Also because there is an Action window before characters commit to stories, we want to make sure everyone has a chance to take an action if they want.

If you don't acknowledge the start of a new phase, there could be some confusion... "Oh, wait, I wanted to play something before you did that..." which interrupts flow and can cause misunderstandings ("You only said that because you saw me do this...")

That makes sense. I used to play Magic quite a bit, and it was always one player stating his intention to attack with a creature and the other player would SHOUT WAIT! and then say, "Before you do that..." But, in CoC, there seem to be more cards that are dependent upon the phase of the game to be played.

Playing a card is not necessarily an 'action'. If the active player plays a character or support they still maintain priority to take an 'Action',

at least that is my understanding and the way our local league has always played it.

jhaelen said:

Hybrid said:

That is not correct. If you look at page 13 of the Rule Book (the timing diagram), in the Actions box of the Operations phase it states:

When the Active player plays a character or support card from his hand, it is considered taking an action.

Thus the passive player(s) have an opportunity to take actions after each character or support card is recruited during the operations phase.

I stand corrected and appreciate it. We have been confused by discussions of a difference between 'Action' and 'action'.

This revelation will have considerable impact on play and our players will be happy to play the game as it was intended. : )

Thanks!

No problem. It does give the passive player a nice window of opportunity... Like when Magus Arcanis killed my Mage Known as Magnus just after I brought him into play. Smart move on his part, and nothing I could do about it.

When two players meet to play a game, who decides which stories are in the story deck? And there are always 10 cards in that deck, right?

Well, if it is going to be an "official" type of event, you would use the most recent set of stories. Currently there are 12 stories, which came out in The Shifting Sands. Older sets (Core Set, Arkham Secrets) had 10 stories.

In friendly events, use whatever you'd like. Sometimes we play with all 32 stories mixed up, sometimes we even use the older stories from the previous incarnation of this game (when it was a CCG).

Ah, ok, that's cool. I'm assuming, then, that none of the newer stories make any of the older stories obsolete?

In a formal setting, the new stories completely replace the old ones - you only use the newest set.

In a friendly setting, well, whatever you like!

Well... if by obsolete you mean better and/or more interesting then yes. If you mean unable to use then no.

I did mean better and/or more interesting. What makes them better?

Tangent said:

I wouldn't say they are better, just different. In the end, it's all a matter of opinion. Some players in my group prefer them over the story cards from the Core set and Secrets of Arkham expansion, and some do not. A few member of our group even like the old black-border story cards from the CCG-era best, so it just depends.

The new set of 12 story cards from The Shifting Sands AP were designed to be more "executable". The designers felt that the Core set and Secrets of Arkham story effects were perhaps too harsh, and that few players were choosing to resolve their effects upon winning a story card. The effects of the new story cards are more limited in scope (though some can still be devastating under the right circumstances) to encourage players to enact them more often.

Hmm... I see. And I think I agree. In the couple of games that I've played, I almost never wanted to actually execute the text of any of the story cards, and most of the time I found myself going after the most harsh card just so that my opponent couldn't get it and use it.

Tangent said:

We used to play with the houserule that you had to enact the card effect. Made things a bit more tactical as you had to cherry pick which stories you went for in case you gave an advantage to your opponent or screwed yourself.

We've played a fun version where not only do you have to enact the story, but the cards are facedown so you don't know what it is that is going to happen. Very fun, albeit a tad chaotic.

That sounds fun! But yeah, it just doesn't seem like I would ever want to execute the card's ability... the oldest stories, anyway.