Update Note
This was originally written in January ’26, before release of chapter 2 and without having some of the details we have today. I have rewritten parts of this page in May, in particular the parts about possibly getting a chapter 1 campaign or two since we now know more about how to make them work without a chapter 1 Core Set.
Intro
I’ve been asked a couple times now about what my advice for new players would be, where would they start if they wanted to get into Arkham LCG? Is it even worth starting now?
I have two Buying Guides on my site, an older one that covered all of Chapter 1 and the content within and is not really realistic to follow anymore – it’s more of a Collector’s Guide now. The more recent Buying Guide isn’t actually all that old… but it does predate the Chapter 2 announcement, most importantly the announcement of the Core and is thus also outdated in several important parts.
It’s a bit early into Chapter 2 to write up yet another buying guide, so this article here is supposed to serve as a stopgap for the situation.
This got fairly long, so I used some color highlights to pick out the actual advice. Everything else is justification for that advice.
Who this advice applies to
If you are the sort of person that can just buy anything, that has an easy $1000 set aside to splurge on whatever, you don’t need a buying guide. Just live your life. However, when asked the question of how to get into Arkham, then “Just buy everything you can get your hands on because you might not be able to get everything otherwise” is just not good advice. It’s not useful, it’s not taking into account that not everyone can just drop that sort of money and even when you can, it’s probably not healthy.
I also assume you get into the game to actually play it. Not to just have it so you can post pictures of shrinkwrapped packages on reddit so you feel something that almost resembles peace for ten seconds, then moan for months about those two campaigns you weren’t able to acquire while having eight other ones unfinished.
With that out of the way, i don’t want to beat around the bush any longer, so let me just get straight to answering both of those questions in a short, concise manner before going into a bit more detail.
Is It Worth Starting With Arkham Horror LCG right now?
Yes, very much so. The game is excellent and the Chapter 2 is not changing any of the fundamentals that make it excellent. Actually, I expect it to improve subtly.
Where Should You Start?
Get the New Core, released in 2026. Ignore Chapter 1 for now, at least where player cards are concerned. After that, continue with the Investigator Decks (Tommy, Carolyn, André, Marie, Miguel) to build out the foundation that chapter 2 player cards will rest on. For scenario content, there are options from chapter 1 which we’ll get into.
Alright, let me justify these takes
The player card pool is going to get built up from the ground with Chapter 2 and is going to cover a lot of the same ground that Chapter 1 did, by necessity. Some things will be different, some lines will be redrawn, but by and large we can still expect to get the same game with the same style of cards, theme for classes, etc. As a result, there’s going to be redundancies and straight up reprints, which isn’t really what gives you the best bang for your buck when starting out.
The new design team is also using this soft reboot of the game to fix some sins of the past, problem cards and longstanding balance issues alike. If you reintroduce the old cards into that new environment, that’s fine in principle – but comes at the cost of that rebalancing. I’m not saying that getting a stray investigator box from chapter 1 would necessarily be a bad idea or a detriment to your collection, but it’s not where you should start.
My strong suggestion here is to trust that the new design team is able to build a coherent new environment, learning from the mistakes of the past while bringing their own fresh takes on ideas that were executed before. By starting with the New Core now you get the experience “as intended” and can be sure that everything you buy is going to align with that. The first wave of cards to be released for Chapter 2 of Arkham is the Core Set and the five new Investigator Starter Decks (Tommy, Carolyn, Marie, Miguel, Andre), which is going to total up to somewhere in the $120-$150 range… which is a good chunk of money for a boardgame that you are just now getting into. And that is going to be enough cards that you will be able to build a solid variety of decks with two investigators per class and a couple options for each of them.
If you really feel like this is not enough, the one thing from the Chapter 1 line i would suggest looking into are the “old” Investigator Starter Decks (Nathaniel, Harvey, Winifred, Jacqueline, Stella). They are self-contained in a way that the regular Investigator Expansions aren’t which could make them good things to add onto the Chapter 2 card pool. That being said, i fully expect Chapter 2 to revisit the specific themes from those decks (like oversuccess, big hand or fail forward) rather sooner than later, which could make them redundant again.
As for the Old Core… Even if you decide to get one because you want to play chapter 1 campaigns (we’ll get to that in a bit), my initial advice would be to put the player cards from that old Core away for now and not use them… at least not at first. The design baselines have shifted considerably from the Old Core to the New Core and many of the cards in the Old Core don’t really fit with what the New Core is doing. It’s something to look into at a later point once we know more about how Chapter 2 shakes out, definitely not something i would want a new player to worry about.
I think that about covers my take on the player card situation. In short, i think it’s best to trust that the designers know what they are doing for now. Stick to Chapter 2 for now. You truly don’t *need* anything from Chapter 1.
Personally, as someone who does own a near-complete Chapter 1 collection, i plan on keeping those cards tucked away for now myself and mostly just play Chapter 2 only as well. Which brings me to another part you may or may not care about: Content Creators, Online Decklists, Online resources for the game in general. If you don’t plan on engaging with the community and just play in your home, this doesn’t apply to you of course. But if you do, it’ll be difficult to compare your experience with other people if you play some hybrid “Chapter 2, but i also have Dream-Eaters and Hemlock Vale” sort of thing. Decklists that are posted and discussed online will (i imagine) mostly assume that you are either playing Chapter 1 only, Chapter 2 only or literally all of it.
Campaign and Scenario Content
Alright, moving on from player cards to campaigns and other scenario content. This is where the lines are more blurred because there’s not really much of a distinction in designer intention between the two chapters here. As far as we know, at least. So there’s nothing standing in the way to play the Forgotten Age, Scarlet Keys or Circle Undone campaigns with the new player card pool. Well, almost nothing. Because the old campaigns require the encounter sets that came with the Old Core.
And this is where the Old Core in my opinion has its only value for new players right now, in those encounter sets. Because those unlock the ability to seamlessly without any adjustments play the old campaigns. Considering that the Old Core still clocks in at $60, that’s however a rather steep price for 50 cards to care about. Thankfully, FFG released the old encounter sets as print&play options on their website.
We were promised that we’d get an official way to play the old campaigns with the new encounter sets from the New Core as well. We got that in form of a substitution table that swaps out old sets with corresponding new ones… however I found this table lacking severely and i can’t really recommend it to new players. I did a series of better replacements on a per scenario basis and that showed that except for two campaigns (Circle Undone, Dream-Eaters) you can port them to chapter 2 with relative ease. If this is of interest to you, please find more details in that article series.
It’s unfortunate that in the product lineup that was shown for this year’s releases, no full campaign was on the docket. There’s a three-part campaign which alongside the three-parter in the New Core itself is our only campaign content that Chapter 2 starts out with. You’ll certainly be able to play those mini-campaigns a couple of times. But i’d expect those three-parters to wear thin fairly quick compared to an eight-parter. So at that point, it’d be beneficial to have the option of a more complete experience through a Chapter 1 campaign.
If you find one of the old standalone scenarios in your local gamestore or (without overpaying) online, you can always pick those up as well, i suppose. They are completely self-contained, don’t use any Core encounters. That being said, they don’t solve anything either, they are just that… a single scenario you can play. Nothing i’d focus on as a new player.
And that’s my take on scenario stuff. In short, due to there not being an eight-part campaign announced for 2026, getting one or two of the old campaigns could be very attractive. It does require swapping out the old encounter sets for different ones, but that is doable reasonably well for most campaigns. Check my guide on that for details. Alternatively, the old encounter sets are also available as print&play on the FFG website.
And just to throw that option out as well, custom content exists. You could print off one of the many existing fan-made campaigns. You are fortunate enough here to walk into a new game, getting to experience it from the start while simultaneously also being able to profit from an already established ecosystem of creators and fans that got you covered if you are interested in that sort of thing.
Is this still your opinion, in particular the last red paragraph, now, that we know, 8 part campaigns are dead? I think, you can still get (old, 2016) core sets for about $15, if you look a bit for it. (Which is all you need, if you are just wanting the core set encounter sets.) I was looking very much forward to the Chapter 2 reboot, until they announced, 5 scenarios is the new “big”. I know from “Dream Eaters” (4 scenarios per campaign), that this feels not enough invest into an investigator deck for me, and “Hemlock Vale” (great campaign, but only 6 scenarios playable) were about the minimum, I want to play a deck. And the biggest bummer: while they will provide campaigns with 3 and 5 scenarios, they won’t go for a tested and balanced official way, to chain them together alternatively to playing them on their own.
Yes, the new announcement doesn’t change my take here.
Whatever your thoughts on the new structure, panic buying old stuff is not the answer for a new player.
I’ll likely give a more detailed take later this week, i want to wait for the written article first.
Sure, new player should first buy the new core and try out the core set campaign before anything else. But after that? I think buying a few of the new starter decks and trying to get one of the older campaigns would be a better representation of the game than getting any of the new campaigns. Regardless if 3 or 5 scenarios, this is more like a Dream Eaters half than a regular campaign, and I found the deck progression very unsatisfying in that particular campaign. On the player card side, I would agree, that new players should only strive for Chapter 2 content.
Personally, I will not buy into Chapter 2 at all, at least for now. It might be, that somebody else in my group buys it, and I play it, and reconsider it after a while. In particular, if they come up with solutions to link campaigns together in a balanced way, which they for now said have no plans for. But it might also be, that we rather fall back to old campaigns for as long, as we don’t get tiered of them (which still might take a few years), and then move on to other games, like Gloomhaven for instance. AH:LCG is still my favourite game, but it won’t stay there without the full campaign format. I feel like this is a big part in what makes this game so great. So even though, I was initially looking forward to the player card reboot and fresh core encounter sets of Chapter 2, these alone won’t draw me into.
Hey, I got the current Core version as a gift last year and ended up really liking it.
I was looking into what to buy next, but now with Chapter 2 coming up I’m kind of overwhelmed because I just got the “outdated” version. Should I just stick with Chapter 1 for now and try to grab some Chapter 1 campaigns, then maybe wait for Chapter 2 investigator stuff?
What do you think could be a smooth transition while avoiding the waste of money?
My advice to skip chapter 1 as a new player is mostly based on the price tag of having to buy two Core Sets (one old, one new) which is a bit much just to get into a game. However, since you do already own an old Core, you are in the lucky position that you can do pretty much no wrong and have the whole product line open to you.
I’d definitely grab a Chapter 1 campaign or two or three, considering that campaign content is going to be a bit thin for Chapter 2 immediately.
For player cards, i’d personally wait for the new Chapter 2 stuff to avoid redundancies between chapter 1 and chapter 2, but i don’t think you’d actually regret getting an old investigator expansion either. I especially want to highlight the Investigator Starter decks here as great purchases though, maybe see if you can get your hands on Nathaniel, Harvey, Jacqueline, Winifred and Stella. If money is a concern, i’d however prioritize putting aside the cash for the New Core and the New Investigator Decks over any chapter 1 player card stuff.
Thanks for creating such a great site! For someone who has an original core set plus Stella and Winifred, who recently managed to snag the last Mythos packs from Dunwich and Carcosa, would you recommend grabbing the new core set and a few investigators? I’d like to play the campaigns with my wife, and I’m wondering if maybe the new sets might offer an easier approach for us as new players or if they might cause some imbalances in the chapter 1 campaign game?
Yeah, i think so. I wouldn’t necessarily say that it offers an easier approach, but it’s a different one. I’d say the cards from the new chapter stuff have a different enough slant to offer something new for you. And as a bonus you’ll then be ready to jump on anything new that gets released in the future instead of having to scour ebay for old stuff.
Hi, I would be grateful for an advice.
I joined the game around a month ago with Chapter 2, in the first step getting all of Chapter 2 products. However, being a great fan of H.P. Lovecraft for more than 20 years now, I knew I will want to try the Ch1 campaigns, especially those that are more closely based on his fiction . So I also managed to get Dunwich, Carcosa, Innsmouth, Circle Undone and Drowned City. I am currently eyeing throwing another away 250 euro to get Forgotten Age (I love the vibe) and in the last blink of sanity I asked myself to pause for a moment. Is there a point in continuing buying Chapter 1 campaigns? I haven’t even played any of the ones I bought yet and I know new ones are coming over the next 12 months. I realize I am driven by anxiety at this point. I am afraid I will never get a chance to play Forgotten Age, Edge of the Earth, etc… I am also anxious that the new campaigns will use a more generic horror content and will be only loosely connected to the Cthulhu’s original mythos… But I do have experience of over investing in card games before where I have put money and effort into a game not proportional to the pleasure/fun return I got back. I simply had too many cards, to be able to play them all in reasonable spans of time and I don’t want that thing to happen to me with AH as well. So help! I am confused new player, eager to continue but much looking for advice.
Well, your money is ultimately your own to do with as you please. But no, 250 bucks for a single campaign is not sensible at all. That’s Spirit Island plus expansions. That’s Frosthaven money. That’s Too Many Bones with a gaggle of expansions. Hell, if you go with a second hand copy of Frosthaven, 250 might just buy you Frosthaven, Too Many Bones AND Spirit Island.
Or, to give you another idea, 250 bucks is a full set of shiny new chaos tokens, playmats and lasercut paraphernalia on etsy to uplift the Arkham stuff you already have.
And if you aren’t even playing the campaigns, you are basically just pissing away money.
As for how … lovecraftian … the stories are: I am admittedly not an expert, but Forgotten Age and Edge of the Earth probably don’t even rank particularly high on that scale. They are more of an exploration type campaign, the horror elements aren’t super present. EotE connects to Mountains of Madness, i guess. You have the big three that i would name in this context (Dunwich, Carcosa, Innsmouth). Instead of TFA and EotE, I would actually point you towards Hemlock Vale for something that takes a Lovecraft story and explores it.
Excellent resource for us newbies! Just getting into the game and wanted to clarify and get an expert opinion.
Ill grab the new core set but wanted to get the old experience and play through some campaigns. I figured I’d start with dunwich since that was first.
Should I just pick up the dunwhich campaign expansion box and forget about the investigator expansion then? Should I not bother with any investigator expansions as I go through all the old campaigns eventually and just use the new stuff?
Have any recommendations for accessories to make the experience better?
Figured Id pick up all the new products like the deck boxes, chaos tokens+bag, game night chest, card sleeves (how many investigator or encounter art sleeves would you recommend?)
Thanks again!!
> Should I not bother with any investigator expansions as I go through all the old campaigns eventually and just use the new stuff?
That is my recommendation if you decide to stick with the game and follow its upcoming releases. Otherwise you will probably find that much of the old stuff is redundant with the new, which could feel bad. My suggestion is to just start playing and see how it feels. If at some point you are three campaigns in and think that the chapter 2 player card pool feels too shallow for you, you can always get some investigator expansion to add some spice. Doesn’t really matter which one for that purpose, but EotE and the old investigator starters were the sets I used to recommend as the best “bang for your buck” in chapter 1. I’d avoid the Carcosa and Dunwich investigator boxes at this point, since they are the most “basic” and thus most likely to be redundant with chapter 2 stuff coming out.
> Have any recommendations for accessories to make the experience better?
For accessories, let me point you to a by now six year old post i made: https://derbk.com/ancientevils/weekly-evils-17/
In it, i show off some of the stuff i had and still have. Those ElsieGee chaos tokens are what i would call my most essential board game upgrade. I find playing with those paper chits unbearable, although coin capsules are a good solution as well that doesn’t break the bank.
I am reaaaaally not a fan of those new Gamegenic products, especially the acrylic tokens. You can get way better stuff on etsy in my opinion. And i trust an established etsy seller way more to keep continuing their lines of products than i trust Gamegenic and FFG. Similar thing goes for sleeves. I don’t trust that the official ones are still available if i find out in two years time that i need another 200 of them. Dragonshields all the way for me, for availability reasons.
Thanks for the recs and advice! I will continue to read through your articles and look forward to playing the game!