LCG News
Ah, finally! There it is, the announcement for the next cycle. And it’s one hell of an announcement. Not only do we know that we are going to Antarctica next, we also get news about Arkham LCG changing its distribution model!
This is just good news all around for everyone involved. To think that the days of having to chase mythos packs are finally over… i am very happy with that. And it’s cheaper in total as well. Glorious. Not to mention that Asmodee/FFG would not bother with such a step if they weren’t in for the long haul with Arkham LCG. So we can take this news as confirmation that the game has still a lot of gas in its tank.
As someone who focuses a lot on encounter design with how i think about the game, i am also looking forward to what the design team can do now. Making it so the campaign no longer has to adhere to a strict system of 1 Deluxe + 6 Mythos packs (each with their own set in stone card counts) is lifting off a huge restriction for the campaign’s design space. Anything from varying the number of scenarios to making some standout scenarios have more cards alotted could be possible now. Like… properly possible, not like that rather mediocre Heart of the Elders split from Forgotten Age.
It also means that the encounter sets can be designed much more freely now. I suspect that they will stick to a system like the existing one (a couple central sets that are repeated plus a few scenario specific ones) but again the amount of variation that can be put on top of that is large.
So yeah, this will be very interesting to see. Looking forward to getting to more info on the campaign, FFG did announce that a second article is coming up with a closer look. Can’t wait!
I am quite happy with the shown player cards as well. The investigators (Norman Withers, Lily Chen, Bob Jenkins, Monterey Jack, Daniela Reyes) are currently believed to all have similar class/sub class transitions to Norman Withers. This is interesting because those are fairly restrictive and allow for more power in the investigator abilities to compensate. I do enjoy playing Norman and what we got to see from Lily in the article is also looking fun. So this looks promising.
Not sure how i feel about the dual class cards. I wasn’t particularly feeling the old ones from TCU, but we’ll see. Could still end up being really good cards, no matter if they are hybrid or not. Something i enjoyed about the previewed cards is how many of them have investigator art on them. I for example really like seeing Sefina in the artwork of the Blur card instead of just another generic rogue (=some white dude in a suit). Having such a huge amount of cards dumped on the card pool is going to be intense. It’s comparable to when the investigator starter decks were released and those shook up the card pool considerably.
So yeah. Huge announcement. Huge anticipation. I like everything about this news so far.
Ancient Evils News
I didn’t post a news thing ever since i stopped putting out the Weekly Evils three months ago, so i figure i can use this opportunity to also give a sort of status on where i stand with the site right now. It’s been going pretty steady, the two article series that i worked on were well received and finishing them has been motivating as a result. Both Resurgent Evils (the series on the Return sets) and Best-Laid Plans (the campaign deep dives) are finished for now, covering all the released content. Well, finished until we get Return to The Circle Undone and Edge of the Earth. I am happy with how they turned out and will continue them in the future.
The individual scenario pages are still missing Lair of Dagon and Into The Maelstrom. Sadly the CardgameDB has not been updated by FFG yet and i sort of depend on them for the card images and names. I could scan my own cards but since they are german, that’d be of questionable value…
Until the CDB updates i don’t really have anything planned for the site, so we’ll see. To tread water, i have been updating some older pages, bringing some of the evaluations there in line with the more recent pages. Turns out that “Threat: Low to Mid” meant something quite different to me when i started doing this site than what it does now. Ajusted some things in response, but nothing that is really going into detail about.
Unless i suddenly get struck with an idea for a new article series, I might not post anything substantial for a while. But of course i will make sure to put up another news post when there’s more to say about either RtTCU or Edge of the Earth (EoE?). And once those are released, i’ll have plenty of content to write about again 🙂
Also, let me just mention real quick that Ancient Evils is having its one year anniversary in a week. It’s been fun, i am far from burned out and am still enjoying the game immensely. And as we just learned, the game is very healthy as well. So i feel confident in saying that for now there’s still no end in sight.
Until then! Cheers,
BK