|
I suspect it isn't up to the designer, they get a budget or a product scoping on the companies schedule presumably? They might go to a two a year schedule or one every 8 months rather than 12 months when all the reprints are done, they likely consider those as releases on par with new ones right now even if they are of less interest to folks who've been playing since the start. Gets more people into the ecosystem and invested, etc.
|
#
?
Nov 28, 2022 21:08
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 7, 2024 15:43 |
|
|
It's impossible to say anything without knowing what the actual bottleneck in FFG production capacity is though. Like for sure they are still making money on each expansion or they'd have discontinued the LCG rather than appoint new designers. So more campaigns would mean more money for them*. Yet they don't put out more, so it means they lack capacity of something to get that done and don't consider it worthwhile hiring extra capacity. Could be an editor, producer, graphic designer, art director, product manager or whatever else you find in the credits at the back of the book noone reads. It's actually least likely to be the designer imo. *within reason, there's a limit to what the playerbase can reasonably be expected to spend per year obviously, but I don't think they're anywhere near that
|
|
#
?
Nov 28, 2022 22:00
|
|
|
It's also completely reasonable that they wanted to see how the market reacted to the new distribution method with EotE (and TSK) before planning any new products, and with lead times being what they are in this industry they may have only just begun preparing the pipeline for new stuff (and I'm sure the re-packaged older content is being produced by a lot of the same staff as any new products). As for quality, yeah MJ will be a hard act to follow, but the only other credited designer on EotE is Jeremy Zwirn and I believe he's still working on AH. And MJ had this to say about TSK: quote:So Scarlet Keys was actually such a sprawling project, we had four different people work on it. I worked on it. Jeremy Zwirn worked on one scenario for it…and actually helped a lot with the player cards. Aaron Haltom worked on…a lot of the player cards, and also was responsible for the initial foundational design for like three scenarios, and Duke basically stepped in and ran those scenarios through development along with most of the campaign structure. Duke began as an intern on TIC and was largely responsible for A Light in the Fog, and MJ pushed for him to be added to the team and he's now the lead designer.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2022 00:57
|
|
|
Looks like the Forgotten Age format repackage will be coming in February.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2022 19:00
|
|
|
I was thinking of picking up a couple of the pre-built starter investigator decks for my wife and to use to play though Path to Carcosa. Any particular combo people would recommend, or just get whichever two look fun?
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2022 22:54
|
|
|
Funzo posted:I was thinking of picking up a couple of the pre-built starter investigator decks for my wife and to use to play though Path to Carcosa. Any particular combo people would recommend, or just get whichever two look fun? Jacqueline and Stella are top tier, not just of the starters but in the game overall. Nathaniel Cho is good but boring; some less-boring options for him exist with a full collection. Winifred is good even if more recent Rogues have stolen her glory; plus her actual deck is an unfocused pile. Harvey Walters is good but his weakness is brutal. You won't get anything out of him you can't get by playing Daisy instead.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2022 23:56
|
|
|
Harvey is great when you pair him with someone who can absorb damage like Tommy. Or in a large group he can use the forbidden tome to wick that damage away. Stella and Jaqueline are very good in Carosa, Winnie would be very bad because of her low willpower; rogues also don’t have a great way to heal direct damage and horror.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2022 03:09
|
|
|
Is willpower super important in Carcosa? I didn’t think it was; I have a Winnie deck queued up for my Carcosa playthrough next month.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2022 03:24
|
|
|
I was lucky enough to pick up Jacqueline's deck for our blind Carcosa run. Can confirm had a great time.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2022 03:52
|
|
|
Anonymous Robot posted:Is willpower super important in Carcosa? I didn’t think it was; I have a Winnie deck queued up for my Carcosa playthrough next month. It does a ton of horror damage. She's weak to horror due to how fast she cycles her deck and self inflicts additional horror.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2022 04:19
|
|
|
Hmn…any recommendations on a complement to Dark Horse Minh Cluever/Shotgun Mark, if Winnie is a poor fit? Working with Core, Dunwich, Carcosa, Edge, and Circle. Also have Stella and Jacqueline.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2022 18:13
|
|
|
Jaqueline works with every other investigator.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2022 18:19
|
|
|
Jackie with a scrying mirror would be a mega combo with Minh.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2022 18:48
|
|
|
Bring more fight spells than clue spells probably cus Mark wants to preserve the shotgun ammo for when it counts if possible. Sefina would also be good.
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2022 14:02
|
|
|
Yeah, I’m planning on bringing Azure Flames and having Wither available for trash.
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2022 14:33
|
|
|
Speaking of Carcosa, we played Echoes of the Past for the first time last night and boy the reputation of that scenario felt pretty well deserved, I hosed up the setup a bit but even with the extra action we were supposed to get in the first turn I don't think that'd have made the difference. Somehow felt like the scenario where we moved around barely at all and did the least stuff but also took us the longest any scenario has taken so far. Been a real thin campaign on the experience front, think we got 4 in the first scenario, the lead got 3 and the rest of us 2 in the second scenario and then we got 2 in this one. Rough times and I'm a bit worried this scenario specifically has made people dislike the game quite a bit.
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2022 15:02
|
|
|
Next is the The Unspeakable Oath, right? God, I hate that one card from The Unspeakable Oath.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2022 11:09
|
|
|
It is indeed, I suspect it'll be a few weeks before people feel ready to play it again given the other nights outcome and Christmas near but I've heard only good things about that scenario so I'm hoping it'll put people in a better mood and pull them back into the campaign, we really enjoyed the other two scenarios. I think Echoes and U&U from Dunwich are my least favourite ones so far along with the 3rd one in the starter.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2022 11:23
|
|
|
I just skip echoes of the past. There’s not even a way to redo it to make a good without changing agenda and encounter cards. Same with U&U.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2022 16:20
|
|
|
Golden Bee posted:I just skip echoes of the past. There’s not even a way to redo it to make a good without changing agenda and encounter cards. Same with U&U. Hmm I think if we/I ever replay Carcosa, I'll probably be better prepared so I'd want to give it another go despite my rant. I think of my impressions of the other campaigns, the only other scenario I've heard as many complaints about are Wages of Sin from Circle Undone, U&U and Essex County from Dunwich, the latter of which we didn't dislike and we haven't played Wages of Sin yet. Hopefully that plays out and those are the only ones that really stick in our craw. thebardyspoon fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Dec 11, 2022 |
|
#
?
Dec 11, 2022 18:28
|
|
|
Finished The Scarlet Keys last night. The final scenario is overly complicated but other than that, it's great! Not sure if it beats out Edge of the Earth but its real close. The Keys let you build your deck in unique ways (well, some of them do, others are just kind of there). I built my Charlie Kane deck in a way that would normally be an absolute disaster, I'd regularly run out of resources even when I started with 3x Easy Mark in my opening hand. Looking forward to replaying the campaign with knowledge of which scenarios to hit early for the Good poo poo.
sirtommygunn fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Dec 11, 2022 |
|
#
?
Dec 11, 2022 18:30
|
|
|
Wages of Sin has a really fun concept but the difficulty tuning is way off.
|
|
#
?
Dec 11, 2022 19:42
|
|
|
Anonymous Robot posted:Wages of Sin has a really fun concept but the difficulty tuning is way off. Very much so. TCU (and TFA) have a couple of interesting high concept scenarios that suck in execution.
|
|
#
?
Dec 11, 2022 20:07
|
|
|
Essex express it’s fine if you do a few things: Add victory 0 to ancient evils — shuffle out the save or die location.
|
|
#
?
Dec 11, 2022 20:30
|
|
|
sirtommygunn posted:Finished The Scarlet Keys last night. The final scenario is overly complicated but other than that, it's great! Not sure if it beats out Edge of the Earth but its real close. The Keys let you build your deck in unique ways (well, some of them do, others are just kind of there). I built my Charlie Kane deck in a way that would normally be an absolute disaster, I'd regularly run out of resources even when I started with 3x Easy Mark in my opening hand. Looking forward to replaying the campaign with knowledge of which scenarios to hit early for the Good poo poo. I've only played two scenarios so far but in the second scenario in Marrakesh I managed to pick up the flower key that just gives me free healing on the whole team super consistently which just seems like it is absolutely gonna be way overturned when paired with Vincent's healing ability. Haven't had a chance to play it so it's still theory. Everyone has trauma from in the thick of it so turn 1 I can heal everyone and give them a copy of on the mend. The flip side of healing enemies doesn't seem bad at all considering I'm running him as a fighter and how often will that matter anyway. Just an actionless heal every other turn with extra payoff just seems extremely strong in a deck that was already doing pretty good.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2022 02:29
|
|
|
So I kind of just got handed 8 fucktillion cards. Loving the game, but due to how I got the cards I'm kind of scrambling to figure some stuff out. 1). How can I figure out what expansions I have? I know that should really be a very easy question, but I basically have an enormous box of very neatly sleeved and indexed cards, plus a stack of rulebooks. I don't have any guarantee that the stack of rulebooks is correlated with the box of cards except that they came from the same friends and when asked if they were related to each other I got a firm, "Sure, probably." Considering they also didn't send me the tokens, I'm skeptical even though they're otherwise very neat. The box of cards is incredibly neat and tidy, but it's organized like a master index because they played the game for long enough to buy all these expansions so it's basically what you'd want for deckbuilding, not for learning. (I'm not disparaging my friends. They're much smarter and nicer people than me and they sent me a gently used board game because one of them just happened to get kind of tired of the lethality and they had too many games anyway. The tokens are on the way and I just am keeping track of health/sanity/resources with paper and I wrote a program for the chaos tokens. Their mixed Hannuka/Christmas care package from me should be there on Monday at the latest, I had to wait until I got around to making Christmas cookies before I could send it.) 2) I've only played two scenarios with the boring rear end Thumbface McTrenchcoat guy they suggest in the core book, but very soon I'm gonna get sick of monkeying with his deck and want to start from scratch. I think I can figure out some strategies pretty easy, but I don't really know where to start. I even want to explore, but I'm not sure if there are some that are better to start with or if it's truly wide open. Any I should avoid at least? Is there a difficulty curve between the different classes? Just going by reading the cards with no larger knowledge I've learned that :
3) Am I misreading some of these cards or did the designers do a bad job and allow full recursion to be a mechanic? Things like Stick to the Plan and Ever Vigilant (might be loving up that name) allow you to root through your deck and pull out other cards like a reserve hand, but Ever Vigilant is a Tactic, which is the kind of thing you can get with Stick to the Plan. There must be something stopping me from chaining 10 of those back and forth such that if I pull 1 I get them all and the entire rest of my deck, in either my starting hand or a bunch of little mini hands scattered around me. The game is too clever to break that easy. Am I getting the rule wrong or is this blocked by other reasons or...? Hopefully this wasn't too hard to read. I know it's incredibly ramble-y. I'm pretty excited about this game. I really only meant to do a quick solo turn or two to make sure I have the rules down, but it just sucked me in. Came back out of happy game haze hours later to a mostly dead fire and absolutely gasping for a smoke.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2022 03:42
|
|
|
Easiest place to start when checking what you have in your collection is to see what investigators you have and compare them to the sets on arkhamdb (https://arkhamdb.com/search). Investigators are only in the big box of each cycle though so if you want to make sure you have cards from the scenario packs you'll have to check for specific cards from those sets. Chances are if you have one card from a set you have all of them.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2022 03:50
|
|
|
Xiahou Dun posted:So I kind of just got handed 8 fucktillion cards. Loving the game, but due to how I got the cards I'm kind of scrambling to figure some stuff out. Looking at the investigator characters and comparing them to this list is probably the best place to start with that? That list is sorted by set, and lists the set each card comes from at the bottom of its text box. Chances are very good it will match with the stack of rulebooks, but who knows, random cards might have been lost. Overall that site, ArkhamDB, will be very useful; it has lots of community decklists you can check out for ideas on how to build, and most player cards have FAQs and a bunch of strategy comments for them. Xiahou Dun posted:2) I've only played two scenarios with the boring rear end Thumbface McTrenchcoat guy they suggest in the core book, but very soon I'm gonna get sick of monkeying with his deck and want to start from scratch. I think I can figure out some strategies pretty easy, but I don't really know where to start. I even want to explore, but I'm not sure if there are some that are better to start with or if it's truly wide open. Any I should avoid at least? Is there a difficulty curve between the different classes? No particular difficulty differences between classes. If you're looking for easy ones to build to start with, generally anyone with 5 intellect or 5 combat will be pretty straightforward - at least in multiplayer. The game is hard fully solo, though, so if you can play multiplayer or even just run two characters at once that will be a much more manageable introduction. Xiahou Dun posted:
That's a promo version of Silas that came with a novel, along with some "replacement" signature cards for him. The investigator card is just the regular one with unique art, but the replacement signatures, "Nautical Prowess" and "Dreams of the Deep" are actually different cards. The book would have come with a little rules sheet explaining how to use the replacement cards, but that's the sort of thing that could easily be lost. Xiahou Dun posted:3) Am I misreading some of these cards or did the designers do a bad job and allow full recursion to be a mechanic? Things like Stick to the Plan and Ever Vigilant (might be loving up that name) allow you to root through your deck and pull out other cards like a reserve hand, but Ever Vigilant is a Tactic, which is the kind of thing you can get with Stick to the Plan. So basically yes, you're misunderstanding those cards - which is very natural, because the game's rules are super complicated! For example, Stick to the Plan is a "Permanent" card that never goes in your deck at all, it just gives you a one-off ability when the game starts to set up a reserve hand. There are a lot of keywords like that explained in the rules reference, and it's easy to get very confused ideas about what cards do if you don't look those up when you see them - especially if you're being overwhelmed with many sets all at once. NRVNQSR fucked around with this message at 04:06 on Dec 12, 2022 |
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2022 04:03
|
|
|
Xiahou Dun posted:Just going by reading the cards with no larger knowledge I've learned that : Yorick is indeed loving rad and is an absolute beast. Definitely a top tier investigator. Enemies do not go into the victory display unless their card explicitly says that they do, generally by having a victory point value listed. When you defeat them they just go into the encounter discard pile. Once per scenario, Yorick's unique card lets you remove a particularly annoying enemy from the game by putting into the display, rather than the discard. The extra XP that it generates is just the cherry on top. However, his main strength is just through pure card recursion creating value. Jazz wizard is interesting and does some neat things. Just be aware that he's pretty low tier in terms of investigator power. I'm not saying don't play him (I'm a big believer in playing what looks fun and making dumb thematic jank. I'd never even think twice if someone at my table decided to play him) just be aware. Silas is an investigator in the Innsmouth expansion, and he does indeed basically just look like Aquaman. From your description though, I'm guessing that it was the alternate version. There have been several investigators who were available as promo cards attached to tie in novels. The actual investigator cards for them are functionally identical, just with alt art. They also came with alternate unique cards/unique weaknesses though. They also generally have been released long before they become available in a regular campaign expansion.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2022 04:32
|
|
|
Roland is pretty great, he might be the best character for solo because he perfectly let’s both things you need to: kill enemies and get clues. And there are a lot of great ways to play them now that cover his weaknesses. Each card should have a logo and the number in the bottom right. That tells you the campaign.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2022 13:12
|
|
|
Haven't got to play this one yet, but regarding Dunwich Legacy: should I just play the vanilla version of it first, or does the Return to -box make it a better experience from the get-go? I got the new core set cheaply second hand and it included the old Dunwich expansion box, so I'm going to buy the rest of the cycle anyway, just wondered should I A) bother with the Return to -box at all, or B) buy and use it straight away. I'm sure I'll have a blast with the game, but there is so much stuff about how parts of the original Dunwich are kinda bad, that I'm somewhat hesitant with it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2022 17:11
|
|
|
It depends on how much you're going to play imo. If you think you'll play a lot and want to appreciate what the Return To expansion added, start vanilla. Though Dunwich is probably the campaign that benefited from the Return To box the most (the other strong contender is The Forgotten Age), and the original campaign has an issue where you *must* bring someone who has or can get a high Intellect stat or you will likely get hosed. If you think you'll just play through every campaign just the once or maybe twice, I'd recommend going straight to the Return To.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2022 17:32
|
|
|
If you play the Return To first, use the Arkham Cards app so you don't get confused which encounter sets to use. The app is great in general but it really streamlines setup.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2022 17:37
|
|
|
If you think you'll want the Return To eventually, get it sooner rather than later because they aren't reprinting them anytime soon, if ever. I used some of the return to cards in the initial vanilla Dunwich playthrough on the recommendation of some of the community for the reasons Orange Devil said, because they fixed some minor problems with the base campaign. So my friends elderly father overheard us playing Echoes on Thursday and wants in on our next campaign (also indirectly confirming that they do want to continue playing, phew), he apparently used to DM their D&D games when they were kids and went to a board games club and stuff so should pick it up reasonably quickly. We've done Dunwich and are midway through Carcosa and Forgotten Age so if you had to pick a campaign after the latter to be someones first which would you pick? Sorta feels like they're all about as complicated and have a rep for being difficult in different ways, maybe Edge of the Earth or Innsmouth are the ones I've heard generally recommended as early campaigns after Dunwich? thebardyspoon fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Dec 12, 2022 |
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2022 18:43
|
|
|
Thanks for the answers! I propably can't resist the Return to Dunwich for the great way to store the campaign anyway, so maybe I'll get it straight away. They have those still in stores here. I don't expect to play the campaign that many times overall, so the added value of seeing the changes won't be that great.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2022 19:16
|
|
|
thebardyspoon posted:Sorta feels like they're all about as complicated and have a rep for being difficult in different ways, maybe Edge of the Earth or Innsmouth are the ones I've heard generally recommended as early campaigns after Dunwich? Edge of the Earth gets a good boost because it's available in the new investigator/campaign box format, so it's easily accessible But more than that, it's just legitimately good, probably the fullest/most fleshed-out campaign of any of them to date The story and setting are fantastic, there's a ton of replayability, and I personally think that the story ally mechanic makes it feel real to the players in a way that other campaigns don't quite ever hit It's probably also the campaign with the least complicated mechanics addition, frost tokens are new, but way easier to insert into your internal rulebook than say, flooding mechanics from Innsmouth or the dual-campaign crossovers of Dream Eaters
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2022 21:27
|
|
|
Golden Bee posted:Roland is pretty great, he might be the best character for solo because he perfectly let’s both things you need to: kill enemies and get clues. And there are a lot of great ways to play them now that cover his weaknesses. I don't actually hate-hate him, I'm just sick to death of "white dude federal agent in a fedora and trenchcoat" as a Lovecraft protagonist. It doesn't even really fit with the genre.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2022 22:07
|
|
|
I own all the campaigns, in fact I think I own everything from the game apart from Labyrinths of Lunacy and Barkham Horror, so it's more just a case of picking an order to play them in.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2022 22:19
|
|
|
Omnicrom posted:Very much so. TCU (and TFA) have a couple of interesting high concept scenarios that suck in execution. *eagerly awaits OP's reaction to The Boundary Beyond in TFA*
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 00:34
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 7, 2024 15:43 |
|
|
drat, how annoying. The insert for Return to Path to Carcosa isn’t sized to allow you to fit all the encounter cards for the set, requiring you to devise your own spacer to keep the cards from rattling loosely around in the box.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 19:28
|
|