As i saw some sales between players, i'd like to know if there are lot of players using CoC ccg cards to play ?

There are all CCg cards in lackey so i'd like to know if there is any interest to build deck ? i heard ccg decks was too powerfull so in 1 or 3 turn max all is over (same as magic with mox, black lotus and co ! )

I do not use them personally. They aren't legal, which means if I play them I'm not playing the same game as everyone else. Personally I value the ability to talk to others about my deck and strategies much more than having a little bigger card pool.

I've heard stories about cards like:

http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ7dkNREprK88e8KmA3B_yV_dlz75EGqTv0r5F-MYBwu5mWZrcRa01ruW73

being played first turn due to massive cost reducers, and Ancient ones powercreeping out of control, also benefiting from cost reducers. (LCG Y'Gollonac being one of the less OP ones of them…)

Doesn't sound like a good game to me… especialy when your opponents have such deck and you cant even get cards you need… didn't play it though.

i'm toying with the idea of playing with them. i mean, it's a casual playgroup, so why not? when tournament season rolls around again, i'll focus on LCG only. but the CCG cards have some cool, flavorful, fun cards. i just won a booster box of eldritch edition ccgs on ebay for 20 bucks so i'll see what those have to offer…

I have a small used set of the old cards that I bought on the super-cheap. It's interesting to go through and take a look at them. I find some of the characters to be a bit underwhelming, but many of the support cards, particularly some of the neutral supports, to be very interesting and quite powerful. I don't really play with them, however, because I do want to stay attuned to the current metagame.

I got into CoC only because I found the old CCG-era booster boxes online at fire-sale prices. At the time I just wasn't ready to commit hundreds of dollars to yet another card game, so buying several thousand black-border cards on the cheap was a great way to test the waters. The CCG has some neat cards in it that really help when designing theme decks (my favorite kind), so I'm glad I did.

Up until recently (when I decided to set up a regional tournament), most of my decks were a mix of black- and white-border cards, and they were a ton of fun to play. I know the general consensus is that the CCG-era cards are unbalanced and too powerful when compared with the LCG, so you shouldn't mix the two. I don't agree. In fact, I find the LCG cards are actually better overall - better cost, better abilities, better combos. We've battled all black-border and all-white border decks, and the black-border decks almost always lose.

It's true that the CCG had a ton of cost reducers that can make cards stupid cheap to play, but other than that, in my experience there's not much in the CCG that the LCG can't do, and do it better.

Also, one of the only ways to get the cool domain cards is to buy the old Arkham and Eldritch edition starter sets. That alone is a good reason to invest in at least some black-border cards.

There are two primary reasons for not buying/playing with black-border cards:

1) As dboeren said, if you like to discuss your deck strategies online, then stick with the LCG. Otherwise, you're really playing a different game than everyone else, and that can make it hard to solicit and offer advice on this forum.

2) If you want to play in tournaments (though there aren't many), then put your money toward the LCG.

However, if you're playing in a friendly environment and can find the black-border cards for cheap, I don't see why not. I bought a lot of them and don't regret it for a second.

piszcadz said:

I couldn't have said it better. Next spring I'll put them away and get back to some serious LCG playtesting for the run-up to regionals. Until then, why not build some nifty thematic decks that you couldn't otherwise create?

Ok thanks for answers.

You talk about balance in CCG and you just got some random boosters and starters? Most of the cards tend to be crappy commons it really doesn't make any sense talking about balance here, sorry. You talk about balance comparing what can be done with good combinations and experience, with limited card pool and not knowing combos balance will be completely different.

http://www.pvv.ntnu.no/~brill/cthulhuccg/?ed=Forgotten%20Cities

Just look at cards like
* Yig, Father of Snakes TTT cost 4 Action: exhaust to choose and destroy a non-Ancient One character with fewer T icons than Yig.

*Chaugnar Faugn, The Horror from the Hills TTA cost 4 Action: exhaust to choose a story. Add X success tokens to that story, where X is the number of insane characters your opponents control.

* Ithaqua, The Killing Cold TAAA cost 4 * Action: exhaust to choose a non-Ancient One character in any discard pile with fewer A icons than Ithaqua. Put that character into play under your control.

I wouldn't wont to play with cards like that. With all those cost reduction they can easily come turn 1. CCG losing to LCG yeah…

Having some black border cards for casual play shouldnt hurt if you just don't use the most powerful ones, especially as with this big of a card pool and rarity mechanic there should be a lot of underpowered but thematic cards.

Zephyr,

I take it your comment is directed at me?

I don't have a smattering of random boosters and starters. I own complete sets of Arkham Edition, Eldritch Edition, Masks of Nyarlathotep, and Forgotten Cities, as well as the AE and EE starters. I own 3+ copies of all the cards you stated (and you forgot another great one - Ghoul Khanum - which by the way is a "crappy common" as you put it). I am 100% aware of the deck possibilities using black-border cards because I've played with them.

While you can make some great black-border decks, and there are some splashy cards, all in all I've found that the LCG has better "foundational" cards, those that make up the backbone of a deck, and they are better (or more consistently) priced for what you get. Perhaps your experience playing with CCG-era cards is different than mine? I've played a lot of games with them in a total free-for-all environment, and in our games the white-border cards held their own.

But maybe you're right. Who am I? Apparently just some novice who doesn't understand good combinations or have any deck-building experience…

No offense, but i just ask about ccg interest because i manage to insert all black border into lackey.

No need to punch each other for this xD, it seams ccg cards have powerfull card (with cost reduction) and it maybe ruin the fun to play with it, but i don't doubt we can have pleasur to play some mechanics, depend if we ban some broken card !

I've been using German CCG cards to build four demo decks to get players interested in playing CoC. It's true that in the CCG it's a lot easier to get cost reduction, but at least my casual decks still don't strike me as overly unbalanced, even though they contain cards like Yig and Ghoul Khanum.

I prefer the LCG cards, but unfortunately, they're not available in German which makes it harder to generate interest.

Sorry, I got carried away.

I just don't see how first turn reapoff makes a fun game… first turn ancient one who places successes for insane also doesn't sound fun.

I jump to conclusions to fast.

Maybe I'm the one talking nonsense here… but still… how is this not broken?

In the very first set before any erratas, the rip off could be played first turn to devastating effect, but the card that allowed you to do that got nerfed and the combination broke. As far as Atlach-Na goes, I played against him once with a Syndicate-Agency deck and found that he wasn't particularly threatening. I think the metagame w/r/t/ insanity was slightly different back then though--maybe he would be scarier now. The CCG was more high-powered than the LCG, but almost entirely because a lot more powerful combos existed. The early days of terrible white-bordered cards were a reaction against that by FFG, I think.

GrahamM said:

The Rip Off is one of the few CCG-era cards that was banned from tournament/league play (there wasn't a restricted list at that time as far as I know).

The other 7 banned cards are all from Eldritch Edition, and are the faction-specific zero-cost rituals that reduce the cost of the next card you play (e.g. Rite of Passage).

.Zephyr. said:

The Rip-Off was banned. And if all factions have equally easy access to cost-reducers, then the game is _balanced_, not broken.

It's just balanced at a different power-level; or rather it encouraged a different kind of gameplay than the LCG does right now.

jhaelen, I couldn't have put what you said in better words. Are you sure you aren't slowly getting corrupted by the Dark Side?

Carioz said:

I think its only appropriate considering my posts.

Still how was this LCG meta like, this Yig seems crazy… so much destruction he was dead before he could do much? With any cards that can ready him like YGollonac it's targeted destroy pretty much everything for 1… LCG has better (as in "stronger") cards?

There were more options for destruction in the CCG, and every deck that I played and played against had a few solutions for cards like Yig. He was definitely a good card, one worth getting out, but he was by no means broken. He would undoubtedly be better if you were to introduce Yig and only Yig into the LCG, though.

Yipe said:

I love theming, too. I got a few starter packs from the CCG-era because I wanted the unique domain cards, and I got some nice black-bordered cards which seem to fit well with the LCG cards. Only common stuff, and sometimes in odd numbers (1 of some, 4 of others, times two starter packs). But the power level of the ones I got is nicely in line with the LCG. Being an LCG, the old boosters will probably have lots of unbalancing cards. I wouldn't even use a card like The Rip-off in my friendly games.

But mainly I just recommend a pair of old packs for the domain cards

+1 for domains

my friends have old domains and they're nice. I'm usually using story cards from some set i don't use. There should be some LCG reedition, maybe in some a big expansion. Using normal cards is not that good because (ignoring art value) its too easy to mix them with your deck.

I need to amend my previous statement:

Getting the CCG domain cards was a big motivator for me to buy the old starter sets. When first introduced to the game my opponent had domain cards to use, and I thought they were just a standard part of the game.

When he told me the LCG Core set doesn't come with any domain cards, I was shocked. Why not? They're just so evocative, after playing the game with them, how could I play without them? That started me down the black-border path. That and cheap, cheap prices.

For those of you who don't want to use black-border cards, but still want some neat domains, try these custom-made domain cards from Artscow:

www.artscow.com/share/Black-Bordered-Domain-Cards-3-sets-double-sided-dc85y12ae4bs

I've ordered a few sets and they're very nice. With a coupon, you can generally get them for $9.99 and free shipping.

.Zephyr. said:

The domain cards were initially the reason I started buying black-border cards. Only after I had a bunch of them, I figured I could just as well get some use out of the other cards and started buying a couple dozen starters.

Re: Domains:

I skipped the 'official' FFG domains altogether and just printed these out from boardgamegeek . I align to the side instead of to the front, so these made far more sense for me. I beleive they also look better than the FFG domains.