Here's a question. Will these include short stories? None of the other Deluxe Expansions did, but I thought these were a fun part of the Asylum Packs.

ssjevot said:

Good question, I hope so too.

When I see characters like Umr at-Tawil, I already know about it from the stories "The Silver Key" and "Through the Gate of the Silver Key" (Basically it is an incarnation of Yog Sothoth who is sympathetic or at least ambivalent towards the plight of Randolph Carter).

But when I see characters like "Brette Wulffsen" I am not sure if it is a character from the RPG or if it is an entirely new character created for the game and would like to know more about what is going on with the story arc/theme of the set which it is a part of.

I'm particularly happy with the announcement and the new format. I've not been playing Miskatonic much and this might be the occasion to get serious about it.

What I'd like next is a Syndicate expansion. It's one of the weakest around though I love playing it.

A good change, but I am already getting nostalgic for the walk home from the game store holding a new pack. It used to be once a week (at least!), then down to about 6x a year, and now down to about 3 with a box to wonder over instead of a pack. After the current cycle the Cthulhu packs are finally dead, and thats a landmark for an old black border gamer like me. So ultimately this is a further step in the (right) direction from the point of view of making the game less of a collectible market, but when this first happened it had a different context. The game was renamed as a Living Card Game and it felt indeed that it had come alive more in the new format. The scene with rares had become stagnant and exclusive. So the cut in quantity of cards was ok with me, but the loss of quantity of cards with this change doesnt feel the same. I guess times are hard and all and the lower cost is going to help a lot of people and draw in many more new players, which is cool too. But I feel the draw for new players wont balance out the loss of nearly 100 cards from the annual pool.

I was a bit worried when I heard the first rumours that there'd soon be an announcement regarding the future of CoC.

But this actually makes me quite happy. I always considered a complete cycle of 6 APs as one release, so now I'm actually getting updates more often. And although it's fewer cards over all, that's easily compensated by the tighter theme.

Hellfury said:

Good point, so really it's just a cost reduction and not a significant card reduction. Even better

ssjevot said:

I hope they do, I always enjoyed reading the stories. In fact, I wish they'd turn some of these story arcs into full length novels sometime. Since they've spoken about having expansions based on particular themes I am hopeful that they might come with small booklets to help set the tone of the box.

What other goodies might be in there? I'd love to see some faction tokens show up eventually for instance, or just about anything else faction related, remember those resin house cards for A Game of Thrones? We're saving money already, so I'd be happy to raise the box price a few bucks if it means getting some bonus stuff inside.

A couple of points:

* This is the only LCG this is happening to, despite it not being the oldest.

* Counting Star Wars and Android:Netrunner, that makes 6 LCGs to produce expansions for.

* AGoT has been much more popular than CoC. LotR is still new and shiny. SW and A:N are not yet released. Not sure about W:I.

* A lot of people have admitted not keeping up with all the cards.

This all suggests to me that they haven't been making as much money on CoC, so they want to cut back on the releases so that people will buy more of each expansion they do release. (This makes sense if people have a fixed budget to spend -- doubly so if that money has more LCGs to compete for it.) So, I think this is a sound business decision for an LCG with lackluster profits. If the new format causes more new players to enter, that's a bonus!

dboeren said:

Is there a way to contact FFG to let them know we care about the fiction? They may not know people actually enjoy it, because I'm not sure where you're supposed to give feedback.

karat said:

this is arguable. COC was the first to have fixed 40-cards-packs, though it was not called LCG back then. jiust a minor note …

anyway: i also like the new way. as one who has just a few occasions to play per year, its even perfect.

ssjevot said:

Doesn't FFG read and answer his own message board ?

plasticXO said:

They read. But they do not answer. Mostly because they do not have a dedicated web person to sift through various forums. Everyone else is busy, you know, actually working.

But they do indeed read these forums.

If you want an answer, then you go to the bottom of any page on this site, and I do mean bottom.

Then click "Contact". Suddenly, a magical realm of communication is opened up.

Hellfury said:

I personaly think that observing their own board is a real job. Just to feel how the community responds to the company's choices. And I don't think aswering is a waste of time either, it's just a choice for a company to communicate with its fans.

And why so much sarcasm anyway ?

Reading and responding to all the forum threads takes time, and FFG seems to feel that the amount of time this takes wouldn't produce as much benefit as having that same person do development work. That's all.

I've BEEN the forum community guy for a game before, and it does take a fair bit of time and effort. Once you're visible, people demand your presence on all sorts of threads, it's difficult to pick and choose where to reply. Also, you need to be very careful what you say because even casual comments will be interpreted as someone as official company statements/promises. It's tricky ground.

So, while they are almost assuredly at least skimming the forum content to be aware of significant threads, I don't fault them for not hiring a full time forum response guy.

You're right, it's a really tricky ground.

And I share all your statements, I don't fault them either, it's their choice.

To get back on track on the real topic, I find the art of the cards revealed so far really stunning ! The quality of the art is an important part of the flavour of a game, and CoC never disappointed so far.

plasticXO said:

I agree, the new cards we've seen look very nice. Overall, I have always thought that Call of Cthulhu has the best art of any of their LCGs but lately it's been particularly good. Luckily Netrunner also looks pretty good to me since I'll be collecting that too.

Also, it's about time Atlantis showed up Hopefully with the new Lost Civilizations we'll see more legendary places like Lemuria, Mu, Plains of Leng, Hyperboria, Irem, etc… as well.

And with five new Ancient Ones as well, I wouldn't mind if Ithaqua finally made an appearance. This is going to be an exciting time…

dj2.0 said:

I understand where you're coming from, but for every one of you, there are probably ten people who are active players but way behind on expansions (that would be me), and a hundred players who are saying "I'd love to play, but wow, that's a lot of cards to catch up on".

It's a classic dilemma for games with lots of expansions. Keep cranking them out to keep the most avid fans happy, or try and keep the total size of the game under control so new players have a chance to catch up? They've been through this with Magic: The Gathering, with Advanced Squad Leader, with virtually every RPG series and miniatures system out there. It's not an easy decision, but I think FFG is going the right direction by trying to keep it under control.

For really hard-core gamers, well, this isn't the only LCG out there. If you're missing the trip to the game store, try adding in The Lord of the Rings, Warhammer: Invasion, A Game of Thrones, and (soon) Netrunner, and there will be plenty of trips to the game store.

dboeren said:

I suspect that FFG probably considers the Silver Twilight expansion to be a dedicated expansion for them, so I would not expect to see another for several expansions yet.

ST admittedly still has fewer cards than the other factions, but they have picked up cards at a disproportionate rate over the last couple of cycles. But beyond that, even though they don't have the same card count, they still have some very good cards that have seen a lot of action in recent tournaments. With ST decks placing in regional tournaments, I think it can be argued that they're competitive at the moment, despite the shortage of cards.

Following Miskatonic, I would think that Syndicate would be up next for an expansion, or possibly Agency. Both factions just haven't seen as much play recently as the various monster factions. Of the monster factions, Hastur would probably be the next one up; Cthulhu is certainly doing fine, and both Yog and Shub have been seeing a lot of play in top decks, so I think they're doing OK as well.

plasticXO said:

No sarcasm was intended at all. Apologies if any was detected.

Runix said:

They're competitive, but:

1. They don't seem well suited yet for a mono-faction deck yet, even if they make a very solid supporting faction.

2. All the dual-faction decks you see with Silver Twilight tend to look pretty similar on the Silver Twilight side. More choices would open up more variety and eventually themes. For instance, I've been wanting to try a Sorcerer based deck with Magnus Stiles sometime but there just aren't enough Sorcerers, much less affordable Sorcerers, to carry the theme.

For the older factions I can build multiple different themed mono-faction decks. Deep Ones and Serpents. Mi-Go and Dark Young. I'd just like to see Silver Twilight start having similar options.

Anyway, I'm OK with Syndicate being next as I like them too, but I hope we don't have to wait too long for a nice Silver Twilight expansion.

dboeren said:

Those two factions are the ones who are in the most dire need of power adjustment (for Syndicate and H.O.S.T.) and card pool enhancement (H.O.S.T.).

Sad times if something else gets attention first, other than super sweet thematic sets of course.

I could murder a Shoggoth for a some Dreamlands supplementation (not the asylum packs, but further expansion of the ideas found within that cycle) and some actual stories within a box. Too much stuff in the Lovecraft literary catalogue to devote so much time to 98% Chaosium RPG related stuff.

More canon, less RPG background please.

I think we can expect a human/monster pairing for these expansions. So we get Miskatonic at the end of the year, and then my guess is Hastur or Yog-Sothoth, then Syndicate (following the idea that thye "just released" a ST faction expansion) and the other side of Hastur/Yog. Then Agency followed by Shub Niggurath. Then Cthulhu followed by Silver Twilight.

I suppose you could insert a thematic based box after each human/monster pairing.

I'm personally all for this!

I've started to feel burnt-out having to keep up with the game on a monthly basis. I always wait until the end of a cycle, then just buy all of the packs at once. I've long felt that fewer, larger releases would be more appealing. I imagine that entry will be less intimidating for newbies now as well. I hope that all of their LCGs follow suite. If so, I will probably dive into their re-imagining of Netrunner if so. The burden wouldn't be as hard to carry if multiple LCGs were released as such.

Hellfury said:

No hard feelings Hellfury

DevNull said:

For regular players I think that a bigger expansion will also send decks in many different directions at once. With the former packs and only a handfull of cards per factions, decks could only bend slighlty and slowly. With 55 cards available at once, a lot of new strategies may emmerge immediately.