Do the faction symbols next to the card cost in the left hand corner mean anything? Some cards have them some do not.

Yes, these cards are called Steadfast. You will find the rules for Steadfast on page 12 of the Core rulebook, upper left-hand corner.

In order to play these cards, you must have X matching resource symbols somewhere on your 3 domains (X = the number of faction icons on the card). These matching resources don't all have to be on the same domain that you're using to pay for the card.

For example, http://www.cardgamedb.com/index.php/CoC/CoCCards.html/_/core-set/Undercover-Security-Core '>Undercover Security has Agency Steadfast 2. If you want to play Undercover Security, you first need to have at least 2 Agency resources on your 3 domains. Second, you must drain a domain to pay its cost as usual (in this case, with at least 1 Agency resource plus another of any type).

Note that it doesn't matter if the resources you're using to qualify for Steadfast are on already drained domains or not, or all on a single domain. They just have to be resourced somewhere across your 3 domains. Other than that, you just pay for the card as normal. It's usually quite easy to qualify for Steadfast, though it becomes trickier for 3 faction decks.

By the way, some cards have out-of-faction Steadfast requirements, such as http://www.cardgamedb.com/index.php/CoC/CoCCards.html/_/the-order-of-the-silver-twilight/lodge-barkeep-tootst '>Lodge Barkeep. This means you must have both Syndicate and Silver Twilight resources available to play this card.

EDIT: That's odd, not sure why the card links aren't working. Sorry about that. Perhaps this will work?

Undercover Security

http://www.cardgamedb.com/index.php/CoC/CoCCards.html/_/core-set/Undercover-Security-Core

Lodge Barkeep

http://www.cardgamedb.com/index.php/CoC/CoCCards.html/_/the-order-of-the-silver-twilight/lodge-barkeep-tootst

thank you!

My pleasure. How goes your foray into Cthulhu?

so far so good, my wife is enjoying it. We still have not yet started building decks. We have limited ourselves just to one core set. I am playing MU/Cthulhu and she is playing Hastor/Syn.

Two more games and we will add in another core set to the mix. After that SoA and Venice

Sounds great. I really like Hastur/Syndicate decks. That's one of my favorite combinations to play because something is always going on. With either of these two factions it seems you can't win through brute strength, so it falls to the bag o' tricks. Good times.