Hello,

I'm curious: Will there be more story cards in the two upcoming expansions? Any news on that?

Thanks.

Mnemonaut said:

It would be interesting to see a new rule for drafting or mixing story cards. It seems they have taken the approach of designing story sets, but I could see being able to bring your own story deck, and then mixing and drafting with your opponent's story deck at the beginning of each game, providing more interesting "custom" interactions between your draw deck and your story deck.

You bring five or six story cards and your opponent does the same? I like it! The only reservation I might have is would it deemphasize Conspiracies in which so much continued focus has been placed? I don't think it would be a problem. I see no sign of a new story card set even though we are overdue. Perhaps we will see a Dreamlands reprint box with new stories? Yeah I know, wishfull thinking. Siigghhh…

I don't think we'd see new story cards in a faction box, but a setting box like Venice would be a pretty good place to put them. If they were actually in Venice I expect we'd have heard something, but maybe the next one?

So far the pattern has gone: Human faction, Mythos faction, Setting (with equal releases for all). That's a pretty good system I think, releasing the expansions in sets of 3 like this and the setting boxes are natural places to concentrate on mechanics which would include new story sets.

When I used to run tournaments we said that each player brings their own story deck made up with their choice of stories (still 1 of each max), and games were played best of three with each getting to play their own stories (random roll if game went to third play). It worked very well and made the games much more interesting.

I don't know about you guys, but I'd like to see a new "Core Set II" with new story cards to mark an addition of a set rotation format (need to support both full and limited sizes).

Plus perhaps, if people really prefer it… lay out 4 story cards at the start of the game. 2 from each player would be easier to push for each player bringing their own story cards.

Core Set II is a horrible idea, at least while FFG insists on requiring purchase of 3 for a playset

bitraven said:

So the only thing that makes it a horrible idea is that you assume they'd make you purchause 3? Just curious as thats not where I expected the wrath to come from.

Is what they did for Netrunner acceptable? 3x of most cards, 2x of some and 1x of a couple unique cards?

Not saying thats what I'd like to see. What I would like to see is an updated rulebook with some minor rule and effect changes to allow for a better multiplayer experience (which switching to a "bring your own story deck to the table" altertion would go a long way in accomplishing this). 54 card decks for each faction (16 unique faction, 2 unique neutral per deck) with a proper 2 - 4 player board.

Since we now have people in charge that understand what it means to have consistant wording… It would be nice if they had a clearner slate to work from while simultaneously encourge player growth. Not sure how you guys feel, but with a card pool this large and this confusing and this hard to come by makes it rather difficult to bring in new players.

Magnus Arcanis said:

If the goal is bringing in new players, using a distribution like Netrunner's for a follow-up or companion core set would be great. I found playing Cthulhu with the core set alone pretty unsatisfying -- though I powered through and built up a card pool to construct decks.

On the other hand, I've only ever played Netrunner with the default core decks and have had a much more enjoyable "out of the box" experience. That box feels like it was designed to very playable by itself, probably based on feedback from previously published LCG core sets. It's not great for amassing the 3x playset of everything, but makes the game so much more approachable for newcomers and those who want to play casually.

I wish that Call of Cthulhu had such a solid selling point in its own core box.

DrFaust said:

Sadly it's true.

The Call of Cthulhu core set is very old. When it came out, they were still inventing what an LCG was, nobody knew the best way to do things. In the years since it came out FFG has learned some things, that's all. Nothing to do with the games themselves.

Personally, I prefer Cthulhu's 1x method over Netrunner's. I've got two Netrunner boxes and now I'm effectively being asked to pay the price of a full box for 11 cards - everything else in the box is basically trash. You might say, you'd have had to buy 3 boxes of Cthulhu anyway - but the point there is that I'd have a lot more playable cards (because they're all different) instead of a bunch of useless duplicates.

But, I can deal with it. Netrunner's distribution makes it easier to bring in new casual players, even as it kicks the completist players squarely in the jimmies. It's a fair trade.

Anyway, they're addressing things now with the faction boxes. It's going to take time, but asking people to buy a core plus a faction box that costs less than a second core to get a good start with their chosen faction seems reasonable to me.

More stories or customizing stories sounds good and would bring some freshness into the game, so I'm all for that too.

One thing I'd really love over a Core Set II and a rotation, would be a Core Set I (2013): we all know that the Core Set, as it is, has two main problems.

The first one is it is pretty awfull from a beginning gamer point of view. Seriously, playing it with the "mash two factions at random" system, coupled with the 1x of every card creates some unwieldly decks (case in point, how many threads have popped out in the past over all the forums on how such situation wield to wierd games?) and somewhat unsatisfying games.

The second one is that it is terrible from a competitive player point of view: most cards in there are either uninteresting or "straight-to-the-binder-forever" surpassed or plain underpowered. And to boot, once you buy 3x Core Set you have little incentive to look at it again.

What could work could be doing incremental Core Set. Let me do an example. Let's assume (for argument's sake) that Keeper of the Golden Path is surpassed (either due to Brood of Yig being available or whatever, let's just assume it). Now in the Core Set I (2013) there appears a version of the Keeper of the Golden Path with a completely different text, and let's assume it is more interesting or synergic with the current meta. You can obviously play either version but the caveat is: the card you have in play works as its text is. If you have the Core Set (2009) version you are stuck with 2 cost TT skill 3 cultist villainous. If you have the 2013 version you can use its new and supposedly better text.

This allows to reprint the Core Set with a new, more "ready-to-play" composition, it makes each following re-issuing of it interesting for competitive players too, preserves cards which are deemed worthy (let's say Hungry Dark Young stay unchanged through all the reprints); it's actually less work than a new core set, as you have to pinpoint just the "Nate-******-this-up" cards and work with them. And you give everyone the new stories which seem to be a very asked for commodity.

Carioz said:

Carioz said:

I'm with jhaelen, this is a horrible idea.

First of all, there is very little difference between printing a new version of Keeper of the Golden Path and just printing a new character with a new name. It prevents you from putting more than 3 total copies in your deck (which you're pretty much claiming is moot because nobody would run the "bad" old version) and creates unnecessary confusion because we have to do more disambiguation to tell what version of a card is being discussed. And, cards already play as their text says, what's supposed to be new about that? Why go to extra trouble to gain pretty much nothing useful?

Secondly, you're proposing that it would be a good idea to issue a new Core set that's mostly the same but has just a few updated cards. So, in essence, you think long time players would lke to pay $80-120 for three more Cores just to get a few different cards to complete their collections. I can assure you, we would not.

Third, and least importantly, your example is chosen poorly. Brood of Yig and Keeper of the Golden Path are similar, but neither one is strictly better. Brood of Yig has an ability and the additional Serpent keyword. Keeper of the Golden Path has one extra Skill. It might be true that in most situations you might prefer Brood of Yig, and you certainly would in a deck based on Serpents of course, but it doesn't 100% replace the earlier card.

Oh well, there goes my idea :-)