Making A Case For Highlander / Thematic / Casual / Budget Play

Living card games are an excellent alternative to the dying collectible card game marketing scheme, where blind buy and rare chasing is the rule of the day. It is comparatively cheaper in the long and short run and removes the uncertainty of what your collection would contain due to transparency of what comes in each LCG product.

But the qualifying statement in the last sentence is "comparatively", as having a full collection of one or many LCG's can be anything but cheap.

This is why comparing LCG's to CCG's is a false dichotomy and should not be compared to CCG's at all but in actuality should be judged on their own merits.

The above is true about any LCG that FFG makes, but this is intended to be geared towards Call of Cthulhu the [Living] Card Game.

CoC LCG has a unique quality that other LCG's cannot utilize nearly as well as it's LCG brethren. This quality being constructing compelling decks with only one of each name of card. Also it is the only LCG whose core contains no more than a single copy of any one card.

Gamers who play Magic: the Gathering long ago coined the term "highlander" format decks. This is a geeky reference to a geeky 80's movie called "Highlander" where every sword wielding immortal proclaims "There can be only one!" at the top of their lungs before beheading their fellow immortals and stealing the power contained within their neckhole. Thus a deck containing only one copy of any one card is called a highlander deck.

This format was created by and for budget minded players in a game where the prices paid for cards in the secondary market can be quite high.

While LCG's do not suffer from high secondary market prices generally, the format is especially relevant and easily transferable to CoC due to the unique way resourcing takes place in CoC. Making it an especially exciting format to explore in this game not only for that mechanical reason but also for thematic reasons.

Why Highlander is especially relevant for thematic reasons in Call of Cthulhu:
Fans of the shared world of H.P. Lovecraft already know the tension involved in each story written by Lovecraft and his circle. How the odds are continually against the human protagonists at every turn threatening to severe their tenuous link to their idea of consensual reality and shatter their sanity in the process. Forces beyond human understanding beating down the fragile veil that separates "them" from us.

The choice to play Call of Cthulhu is likely based on your personal enjoyment of that background to begin with.

These fundamental ideas of that mythology are reinforced in CoC LCG when the highlander format is used. Each unique character truly is unique in the deck just like every other card. When, for example, Randolph Carter commits and challenges a story, finds and equips a Shotgun in the Atwood Science Hall, you get more of the thematic urgency involved in the game and the suspension of disbelief becomes easier. Thus allowing deeper thematic immersion of each player depending on how far he is willing to take it. Because with few exceptions, when a specific card hits the discard pile, it is gone for good.

Why Highlander format is especially relevant for mechanical reasons in Call of Cthulhu:
Speaking of cards being gone for good, this brings us to another unique quality of CoC LCG and that is how resources are dealt with in this game. Unlike Magic: the Gathering, CoC does not use cards specifically for resourcing (mana) but each card you build your deck with has a resource icon of that faction at the bottom of the card.

So the choices can become excruciating in how you choose to resource your cards because again, with few exceptions, once a card is resourced it will likely not see play during that game.

For those of you who already play CoC and are reading this, the game now plays so much different in highlander that it almost becomes a new game. So if you feel the game become tiring then you have a new way to explore a game you already have invested so much in. Speaking of monetary expenditures, this brings us to...

How Highlander format can be especially useful in introducing the game to new players and help the community grow:
With every new asylum expansion pack, with every new deluxe expansion the card pool grows deeper. This is a good thing as each player now has more options to explore when constructing their deck, but the expenditure is likewise deeper with every new product offered.

It can be quite daunting and overwhelming (not to mention discouraging) for a new player dabbling in the game to face players who not only have more experience and highly tuned decks, but also have a very deep and very expensive pool of cards to choose from.

The initial price shock can easily be allayed through creative consumer purchasing in a small group.
The ideal method is for three new players to each buy their own core set.
Then each player shares the cost of each asylum pack. $5 gets each player one of each card in every asylum pack (currently, with the exception of the dreamlands cycle).
Likewise for each deluxe expansion (though the group may have to find someone else to sell that last set of cards from Secrets of Arkham, I doubt they will have to much trouble finding someone to pick that up from them). Deluxe expansions are ideal for new consumers as they offer the best bang for the buck.
So the small group can grow their collections rather cheaply at whatever rate suits that group. Each cycle costing each player $30 for one of each card in a particular cycle.

This not only helps solve the initial cost of players getting into the game but it also solves another bugbear that typically plagues Call of Cthulhu players and that is one of finding opponents. If a group of three people can stick together sharing the cost of purchases, then you have the ideal pod of gamers to grow your own community with and can never lack opponents of your own as each shares in the cost and each invests in the other players mutually.

If the group seems to like the game enough and really want to delve deeper into the mechanical side of the game in what is commonly seen as a more competitive fashion, then they can share the cost of 2 more asylum packs of any specific name to acquire the maximum allowed cards in each deck to 3.