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4
The Great Cthulhu- Play this Game!
Dec 05 2013 06:00 PM |
mnBroncos
in Call of Cthulhu
Call of Cthulhu The Great Cthulhu mnBroncos
Welcome new and veteran players to a new article series centered around the great game Call of Cthulhu. After going to Worlds and watching people playing the game and doing research into the game, I decided to jump on in and buy two core sets and play around. What I discovered is the most underrated and under-appreciated game of all time, and in just a short time playing the game I have dove in and have got many expansions and plan on getting all of the card pool soon. My name is Brandon Zimmer, mnBroncos on the forum, many of you may have seen me post on the forums before, I play Game of Thrones (main game), Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Netrunner, and now Call of Cthulhu which means I play every lcg besides the recently deceased Warhammer. This means two things: first I have an addiction to these games 
, second is that I have competed and played all the other lcg games and although I am new to Call of Cthulhu I have an understanding of card games. My goal in this series is to push this game because it is an amazing game, and I don't want to see it end like Warhammer. Now is the time that all of the Call of Cthulhu players need to get out of hiding and help promote it to other gamers. I am very new to the game though so I will be writing from a new players perspective and welcome any comments from experienced players!In this first article we will be looking at some of the things that makes The Call of Cthulhu LCG unique.
Resources
This is the first thing talked about by most players that separates this game from the other card games out there, and for good reason. This game takes an innovative approach to resources and makes every card in your deck have the potential to be a resource. In that way you don't need to include any cards whose sole purpose is for economy. Now you may include cards that increase the speed you gain resources, most decks don't require any boost. Comparing that to my favorite game Game of Thrones it is better in a way since there is no need to dilute your deck with gold locations or reducers (their are reducers in CoC but most of those are characters that can participate in stories as well). This really gets your deck to flow smoothly and prevents negative play experiences like getting drawing all or none of your resources and thus having little to play. There are still important decisions though as you still have to match factions of the cards you play with the cards you use as resources and you have only 3 domains to attach these resources to so you have to choose wisely to be able to pay for the right cards at the right time.
Combat/Stories
Now I am going to be honest the idea of stories is kinda odd to me, in that what you are competing for is stories, but that doesn't bother me when playing the game because of how exciting and how much thinking goes into every combat/story commitment phase. Star Wars took the idea of Cthulhu of having different battle icons where each one does something different and that makes knowing when and where to attack and defend that much harder (and with how many sneaking combat events there are in the game makes it even that much harder). Knowing that you may have to sacrifice a character, or have a character go insane in order to win a story makes you have to decide how important every character you have is. Also, a hard challenge for new players is getting around the fact that some characters can't go insane or even get wounded and you have to use creative ways with dealing with those characters and in that way it makes the powerful characters actually feel powerful, yet not unstoppable.
Large Card Pool/Deck creativity
Now I know this can also be a negative to many players but to me that is a huge bonus to the game. It does make the game more costly to start off but to me I would rather pay 200 bucks for a game where I can be creative and just spend hours just making decks. To me the biggest problem with games like Star Wars and Netrunner is the lack of deck diversity and that isn't because of some cards being over powered it is because these two games are so new there is a limited card pool. The decisions you have are greatly reduced from what you get with large card pool like Thrones and CoC. The other benefit of CoC is the deck building freedom. You can run any cards together in the same deck which allows you to think of crazy combos and synergy for those that love the deck building aspect of card game (and honestly if your playing a card game yet don't like this part your really missing out on a major part of the fun these games offer). Throwing monsters together with other types of monsters or humans can greatly alter what your decks strength/weaknesses are going to be. Even with just the core set there is many different variations of decks you can make.
Links from fantasyflightgames
http://www.fantasyfl...s.asp?eidn=4455
http://www.fantasyfl...s.asp?eidn=4454
these two recently released articles from FFG say more then I can say about the game and if you play any of the LCG games you should read this. You could be surprised, this may end up being your favorite game.
Closing comments
I hope this was an enjoyable first article for you new and old players. Since I am getting into this game I will be pushing to promote this game online as well since is a great way for players to gather together. If anyone wants to play little bit online and new or old I'd love to play with you and can help grow the community. What I want from you guys is to post questions you have about the game in the comments and I will either answer the questions in the comments or in my next article. I plan on doing deck building articles with cards from limited card pool, basic strategy, and anything I feel should discuss or what the readers want me too. Lastly I have read ZERO of the HP Lovecraft books before, A Game of Thrones will probably always be my favorite game because the Song of Ice and Fire series is by far my favorite books series and I love the theme, but CoC has now become my second favorite game it is that great. Until next time hope you consider looking into this game and seeing if it maybe right for you.
Sorry for the shorter article there are many other things we can discuss that makes this game amazing, but for a first article wanted to keep it simple and short for the readers. Let me know in the comments what you'd like to see me cover!
- zordren, Danigral, RalZarek and 13 others like this
31 Comments
Glad I already got a fan. Is there anything in particular want me to discuss in future?
Let me state/ask this. I'm one of those card players who really enjoys a universe I can relate to something outside of the cards (i.e. GoT, Star Wars), and I have nearly zero appreciation of the Call of Cthulhu universe. Do you think this will matter much?
As a player that completely agrees with you. I mean I think even stated it in the article that is why got into thrones (and ffg in general) is that I LOVE the Song of Ice and Fire series. I only have read the Call of Cthulhu book and that was after bought the game. But I still love this game and the theme is cool even without knowing the source material. I mean it is monsters and humans it isn't like you need to know each particular monster to get a feel of what is going on. Also, I think some of it is based on the RPG and I have no relation to that, but have played some D&D in my days and same basic stuff MONSTERS. Like how many people that play agot want to play dragons, because they are dragons. In this game you can play those cool types of things, but actually have a good deck. And even the themes for the humans are fun as well, trying to slay monsters is sometimes better then being the monster. Oh yea and nothing stops you from making a human/monster deck (:. it is just cool when you throw out some freaky looking thing, and like all ffg has great art.
Also if you want to get into the theme. If you own a kindle or anything like that you can get all of his books for basically free (since they are old and past that weird time frame of having a patent). That is what I did and since they are mostly short stories can just read them at my leisure.
I have only read your opening couple of paragraphs so far, and I am trying to keep from reading further, but its like that itch you just have to scratch.
I feel the pain (: one can only play so many games, but since getting into this can easily say it is my second favorite game. Star Wars and Netrunner to me doesn't come close sadly.
I find it very interesting - you basically have to remove cards in your hand and attach them to your 'domains' in order to pay for other cards. For example, if you have a domain with two cards attached to it, you can use it to pay for one card with a cost of 1 or 2.
It makes for some very tough choices. You need every card you put into your deck - but you're forced to make spot decisions and basically remove some from the game in order to play other cards. Games can be won or lost based on your resourcing decisions.
It's probably the best thing about the game IMO.
I 100% agree. This is usually the most frustrating thing for newer players to grasp though because they aren't sure what they should be resourcing and what they should be playing. Once one figures it out though it's easy to see how awesome the resource system is. Bar none it's my favorite resource system in any card game. It doesn't make you dilute your deck with 25% or more with cards that are specifically designed to be resources.
I'm the same way. I am a huge fan of Lovecraft and own every single Cuthulu game FFG makes. Unfortunatly, There isn't anyone in my local (Metro Detroit) area that even takes interest in the game. Makes me sad that I bought all those cards and cant use them.
Any tips on getting others interested? I have been hugly successful selling Netrunner to my friends but this seems to be a much harder sell for some reason (Maybe because no one I know is more into Lovecraft than I am)
Most people only have the resources (time and money) to devote to one or two LCGs. AGoT, Netrunner, and Star Wars seem to be gobbling the majority of LCG market share, to the detriment of this fine game. Plus, Lovecraft has more of a niche fanclub (compared to Star Wars or George R.R. Martin) - which is, likewise, a damn shame.
I agree and didn't go into that much detail because it is almost guaranteed to be talked about in more detail in other articles.
I have done this to play Star Wars, I really like it. I prefer having real cards in my hands.
figured it would work fine, but glad got confirmation (:
Well then do something about it! Not terribly hard to start a playgroup, especially if you have a decent collection - I have one (nearly) complete set, nothing more than 3x, and am able to have over 20 different decks built at any given time. Most of the friends I've taught the game to have already bought in themselves... and the game is great fun even in a limited format, when you say "only build decks from 1 core set and 1 deluxe box", for instance.
Since there are no "universal" must-includes, it's much easier to do than, say, with Netrunner.