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Cheapest way to get into Arkham Horror LCG? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by wet_squid@lemmy.world to c/boardgames@feddit.de

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I really love the Core Set of the AH LCG! Now I want to dig deeper without ending up poor. What are my options?

Good thing: I‘m just a casual gamer. I could get it to the table probably once a week max for an hour or two. That‘s why i can squeeze months of fun out of a set.

But how do I proceed in 2023? There are mythos packs, scenarios, campaigns, cycles, deluxe editions, return to editions…?!

It get‘s more complicated: I‘m from Germany and want to play the sets, that are released here in german.

What I already own:

1st edition core set <— only box I played yet
1st edition Dunwich set
1st edition Carcosa set (someone sold these 3 for 25€)

My questions:

I don‘t own any mythos packs or anything else. So Dunwich and Carcosa are incomplete, right? Should I sell them? Because:
Tracking down „old“ (German!) mythos packs to complete the sets I own could end up very expensive and difficult, right?
The return to-editions are cheap here, but it doesn‘t make sense to play them, if I don‘t own the standard cycles, right?
The „new“ campaign/investigator expansions are probably the easiest way to get another set, but they are kind of expensive (~50€ each). Still cheaper then buying every single mythos pack (15-25€ each), right?

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[–] WilloftheWest 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The best way is buying campaign/investigator expansions. Note that both are necessary for a complete cycle. Fantasy Flight have also starting reprinting older (and harder to find) sets in the campaign/investigator expansions; purchasing both these sets is equivalent to buying all mythos packs for a cycle. If you search „Ermittler-Erweiterung" or „Kampagnen-Erweiterung" for your preferred cycle, you shouldn't have an issue finding a set.

The „Return to-" sets are further expansions to a cycle and intended to give a campaign greater replayability. I would not recommend them instead of the original campaigns.

A note on card sets. While your current 1st Edition Core is still useable, it is a 2-player box. There is a revised version which accommodates 4 players (and includes some cards from expansions as part of the core) though if you are solo or want to play with just one friend, then the original core set will work.

Edit: While I don't endorse this method, I have played with a friend who grabbed high-quality card images from an Arkham Horror module for Tabletop Simulator and then printed out playable sets on cardstock.

[–] wet_squid@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yes, most of the time I play alone, 2p max. Is this game fun with more players? At the moment I don’t have a player group that would like such a long game, unfortunately.

Sigh, 50€ for an expansion is a lot of money, even if it’s cheaper than buying the mythos packs. But maybe I just budget and buy them a few month apart to save money.

Thank you for your ideas, I already live this community.

(Btw, I can’t see my own posts, and even this instance doesn’t show up in my descriptions, shit, even when I search for this community and find it, it doesn’t show my own posts. This fediverse stuff still feels a bit confusing to me…)

[–] WilloftheWest 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Oh, I just remembered as I played one of these last week. There are a lot of standalone scenarios which are cheaper. Searching „Arkham Horror Einzelszenario" should reveal these. They cost about 20-30€ each which is expensive for a single scenario but I find that some have a lot of replayability. The three I have played are Karneval des Schreckens, Mord im Excelsior-hotel, and Der Blob, der alles fraß. All are fantastic.

Googling the standalone scenarios, I found a free fan-made cruise ship scenario which is print and play. Unfortunately, it is only available in English. Perhaps if printing is an option for you, you could find some scenarios this way.

Edit: I did the googling and found pages dedicated to fan made scenarios here and here.

[–] wet_squid@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Wow, thank you so much, I didn’t even think of standalone scenarios!

[–] WilloftheWest 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I find the game fun with any number of players. In having more players, you trade one kind of difficulty for another. In a single player game, your main difficulty comes from the fact that you can't do absolutely everything; you must either diversify your skillset and be not-so-great at everything, or specialise and lose out on some interactions. In say a 4 player game each investigator can afford to be very specialised, but the trade-off is that you must find 4 times as many clues, mythos cards are drawn 4 times as often, and some monsters are 4 times more difficult to kill. I've found 2 or 3 to be the sweet spot for players, and playing solo with 2 characters can be quite fun.

On the topic of missing posts, I think it may be teething issues of the tech. Currently I can't see anything on the Lovecraft community, including my own posts, but I get notifications if I receive replies. For now I just browse the community locally.

[–] ClonedPuffin@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The new campaign/investigator sets would be the cheapest. Some scenarios are really hard to find even in English. On a budget i would recommend the investigator set for dunwich as it really fleshes out a lot of the classes. Together with the card from the old carcosa deluxe it should allow for some decent deckbuilding. I would also suggest using the playercards from the Dunwich deluxe box as proxies for cards you really want to use in your deck from later sets. That way you have playercards for a long time while you get the new complete campaign in release order.

If you want some more playercards after that the starting investigators are quite good value.

[–] wet_squid@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks for your insight! Where can I read more about your proxy cards-idea?

[–] ClonedPuffin@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Basically you just use the cardbacks to make them indistinguishable from a normal card then put a note in if using sleeves (that way they are reusable as other cards) or write on them if not (but then they are obviously not reusable as other cards). You can find descriptions for all the cards released on arkhamdb.com and you can set the language to German. I have done so myself to be able to include a few cards from circle undone which came at a time when I did not have time to play the game and I have been waiting for the re-release of.

Obviously not as nice as having the real cards and unless you are using sleeves you can't do it for every card, but a cheap way to use that one card you really want to have in your deck without buying a whole expansion for it.