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