I think you and I have fundamentally different tastes: I prefer what I think of as “elegant” gameplay (relatively few pieces/actions but with relatively deep consequences) whereas you tend to like the more “baroque” type games (Trickerion and Anachrony are good examples), which have all the bits. (Note: I love Trickerion and just ordered it, but I do like elegant games.)
So, discussing what i consider the unnecessary Chapter 6 expansion of Thunderstone Quest with my friend, we got into the issue: which company is greedier in terms of expansion-milking, FFG or AEG? It’s a tough choice.
I’m just gonna wait for Arkham something Eighth Edition. Should only be a couple of years now.
To me, the appeal of 3rd edition Arkham is that it’s the card game minus the cards. I liked the ideas that the card game put forward (except the business model), but I hate deck building. So 3rd edition was perfect for me.
But if you are into deck building, there’s zero reason to get 3rd edition instead of the card game.
I mean, I don’t like deckbuilding, but I do like card games and the internet has plenty of deck designs to play with.
Ah, I didn’t realize that! Do you know what happened? Based on some of her designs and rulesbook rulings, I thought she was pretty horrible.
-Tom
A.k.a. “cheating”! :)
I like deckbuilding, but it gets to be a real pain in the Arkham Horror card game. It’s almost like, after every adventure, “oh god, not another four experience points of cards to buy…”
-Tom
Heh. Depends on the game. Still waiting for FFG to release an expansion to DOOM: The Board Game.
I was actually interested in some of FFG’s Living Card Games at some point, especially Star Wars: The Card Game – but then I realized that I’d need to buy two core sets and that they’d also released countless expansions and – well, thanks, but no thanks. There’s sometimes so much stuff, I don’t know where to begin and then simply don’t bother. Might just be me, though.
KeyForge is still pretty great, though.
Good thing you didn’t, it’s essentially dead.
Perhaps, but I tend to like lots of different stuff. Also, not sure you could say any FFG game has elegant gameplay.
When you buy an FFG game you’re buying an experience as much as any gameplay. They tell a story, have amazing art, and production quality that sucks you in. I’m not saying outer rim doesn’t do that as I haven’t played it, but I just look at that game board and then I look at Rebellion’s, Xia’s, or even Firefly’s and I just find them more interesting.
The “2-3 core sets if you want full options” for the Arkham Horror card game was galling, especially when all you needed in the extra core sets is the investigator cards and the 60% of components that make up the rest of the core set are worthless dead weight.
It would have been so easy to just sell extra investigator cards separately, but they force you to pay for all other stuff you don’t need in extra $40 core sets.
I know, right! ;-)
Yeah, it’s at this point where I don’t really see what the advantage is of an LCG compared to a CCG. At least with a CCG, all I have to buy is a starter deck and some boosters to be at least a bit competitive. An LCG where you have to buy two core sets at $40/$50 each to be able to have enough options – ouch. There are a lot of other games I’d rather spend that kind of money one – especially the ones that are ready to go straight out of the box…
Sure, for a CCG, the minimum investment just to have a basic starter card pool is smaller. But the ongoing investment, particularly if you want to be seriously competitive, is much, much lower for an LCG. (Which is not to say that it’s necessarily cheap, of course.) And if you want to get a decent amount of game, ready to go straight out of the box, for <$80, you shouldn’t be doing either.
Yeah, true. Just with a CCG, you can sort of test the waters before taking the plunge. With an LCG, you have to immediately dive into the deep end, so to speak.
KeyForge seems like the best kind of approach for a game like this.
Also, on further thought, I reject the premise that you can get a more viable card pool for the starting money in a CCG. The reason you buy multiple core sets for an LCG is that you don’t have the maximum number of all of the cards for deckbuilding. But you’re not going to get that from a single starter and a few random boosters in a CCG either, and you’ll have a less robust selection overall. (I think they’ve stopped doing this, but it used to be that a starter was just a bigger set of randomized cards and you had no guarantee of having a playable deck, even.)
If you already know people who have their own decks, you might be able to get into a CCG a little cheaper than an LCG by buying a single preconstructed deck and testing with that, but I think that’s as close as you get to a cheaper buy-in. And honestly, most LCG core sets are going for around $30-33 online, that’s not that much of an ask to dip your toes in.
I mean honestly, it’s all a joke - they’re just charging what they can get away with.
Realistically, both LCG and CCG pricing are complete ripoffs. I’m talking about from a material perspective. I can buy a game like Caverna or Agricola, and get a ton of cards, chunky cardboard components, glossy instructions, the whole works, for like $50.
But for some reason, selling me a hundred or two thing cardboard playing cards with nothing else in the box costs like $70-80 or so.
I mean, they can charge what they want, capitalism, more power to them. But recognize, before we start hearing arguments about “intellectual property” and the like, that there’s just as much intellectual property in a board game. Yet they manage to sell them for far less. The markup/margin game is clear.
So, as someone else said, if you’re looking to maximize affordability, the direction does not lie in either CCGs or LCGs, in my opinion. Sure, some people just play one game, and then maybe it is for you. But don’t expect to pick up a CCG or LCG as “just another game” and have it be really affordable.
This, completely.
It can be worth the price, and for perspective I spent more money on train tickets going to Netrunner tournaments than I ever did on the cards, especially since I recouped a chunk of the cash when I sold the collection.
Yeah, true. Cards are dirt cheap to manufacture. When I compare what I paid for some of my board games (quite a few with fantastic plastic miniatures, loads of cards, nice, chunky tokens/tiles, etc.) with what I’ve spent on some card games…
You don’t need two core sets for AH LCG. You really dont. People have convinced themselves that you do, but you dont.
Depends on what you’re trying to do. It’s not mandatory, but there are some deck builds you won’t be able to do without it, and you absolutely cannot field 3-4 investigators off a single core. You also shouldn’t play with 3 or more investigators, because the game is clearly not actually designed for those investigator counts. But if you want to for some reason, you’ll need two cores.