So my friends and I have been thinking of playing CoC. We have been playing FFG board games for awhile s well as X-Wing. We all just picked up Star Wars: The Card game and love it. Can anyone suggest good factions, deck builds, and sets that would be good to strt with?

Hank said:

Welcome to the game! As per the usual LCG experience, you can get a feel for the factions just with the core set. I suggest reading dboeren's article over at boardgamegeek.com here: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/750355/basic-deck-building-for-new-players

He discusses the factions, and how to start deckbuilding. There are excellent resources to peruse cards on cardgamedb.com, so you can actually build a deck and see which packs you would need. IMO this is one of the easier LCG to get into unless you are getting in ground-floor with SW or Netrunner. It's also one of the deeper one's in terms of deckbuilding and gameplay strategy, simply because there are so many ways to blend factions together in a deck.

Have fun!

Welcome to the game!

The best place to start is to pick up the Core set, and if you want to go a little more I'd suggest Secrets of Arkham.

In the long term, if you like the game you'll eventually want a 2nd Core and start picking up some Asylum packs. One that you may want early is the Shifting Sands pack because it contains a new set of Story cards which are also the current Story cards used for Tournament play.

You may not know about this yet, but recently Call of Cthulhu has switched from doing monthly card packs to just doing boxed expansions every 4 months or so. The first box is out (Seekers of Knowledge) which is a faction box for Miskatonic. The second box was announced not long ago, it's a faction box for Yog. The rest of the factions are all planned, but we don't know what order. There may also be expansions based on other things such as specific settings or themes.

There's not really a "beginner's faction" or anything like that, you can pick whoever you like. Silver Twilight is perhaps a little more tricky but they were introduced later on so you won't be seeing them in the Core set. Most decks are dual-faction which gives you a lot of variety in mixing different combinations and deck designs.

Hello guys,

I'm new to the game too, owning just the Core Set an the Seekers of Knowledge Expansion. I really like the idea playing a mono faction deck (MU and/or Yog). Is this a wise decision? Will it work out with these two factions? I always read that the Cthulhu faction may be the only one which can be played effectively as a mono faction.

Please correct me if I'm wrong!

Mnemonaut said:

Any of the factions can be played effectively as a mono faction for casual play. But if you're going to try doing it at a major tournament then Cthulhu is a bit better at it at least today. In general, I wouldn't worry about it. I play mono decks here a fair bit and they can work really well. Also, with the new faction boxes coming out mono decks seem to be getting a boost.

Actually, we did a segment on the tradeoffs between mono-faction and multi-faction decks in episode 003 of the Elder Things podcast. Primarily you're trading off the size of your potential card pool (what cards are available to your deck) in return for easier resourcing and the potential to theme the deck more heavily. Note that "theme" here doesn't just mean looking pretty together or matching a story - it means that more cards can benefit from effects too. For instance, if you make a Deep Ones deck, then you get more mileage out of your cards that grant benefits to Deep Ones, and so forth for whatever traits are common to that deck. Some themes have more buffing cards than others of course.

Than I've to listen to your podcast anytime soon.