Well said. The other value it brought was it drove more traffic to the site for the extremely passionate. It gave me a reason to check the news page, check the upcoming page, check to see what people were saying on the forum. It was a feedback loop that kept me engaged with the brand. I'm sure I am a subset of their entire audience, but PHGs once described the idea of a "sneezer". Someone who is passionate about your brand and will do marketing work for you potentially through word of mouth. Fostering a sense of community with your audience is catering to that subset of the market. Finding ways to empower that population is a way to grow and maintain the health of a game community. Was this forum a lynch pin in that sort of community growing? Maybe not, but it's one less element and its a definite change in the way they are engaging with their community. So it's notable. Also it's hard to ignore that it's one in a chain of very interesting changes that in aggregate is altering FFG's identity as a company, and each time makes me pause to evaluate my opinion of the company. That sounds very negative. While I may be questioning my passion for FFG the brand for a variety of reason, AH:TCG couldn't be doing better. I enjoy the direction, like the people working on the game and don't plan on stopping my support for this game. I'm still having alot of fun playing it. I wanna thank Matt, Jeremy and the other LCG designers for the work they did to maintain the quality of the game through so many products.

Well it feels that way because it is in fact an ancient website design from the early 00's. They had minor updates to the site over the years, but it is shocking just how little it changed from those early iteration. All that said it is a major pillar of board game fandom on the internet even now. Also the quantity of information on the site is staggering for a hobby website. For the most part I've been happy with hanging out in BGG for forum discussions. Though it just feels like there is a larger population of people "hate" following games there for some reason, which gets a bit tiring. I guess that is inevitable when you switch between a focused population to a more general population. In my opinion it is definitely a step up from going to Reddit or Facebook for game discussion since the user base is more specialized. Discord is the best option probably for connecting to people passionate about a specific card game, but Discord is again a more fleeting discussion due to it's chat room-like nature. The trick with BGG and looking up topics is their search function on the site is awful and maybe a bit broken. Also forum thread lists tend to explode in page count if it is a popular game like AH:TCG. You are better off googling your question and putting BGG in the search parameters. They usually rise to the top of the search. BGG has an issue where topics get brought up over and over again in new threads because of that issue with their search function.

This is a real bummer. This was actually one of the more healthy and friendly places for community discussion. I'm certainly not making a switch over to social media... Discord usually is a good environment for conversation but also tends to be a more fast moving conversation. It services a different type of communication.

for the most part I feel the game works as intended where the aspects can be effectively plugged into each hero. It's just a question of what you want them to do. That said there are definitely better fits for heroes that are less well rounded or have very specific triggers. For example Thor has alot of Aggression cards that almost feel essential to getting his engine up and running. Someone like Hulk (who is very bad at thwarting in their hero specific package of cards) would have a real tough time trying to play solo Protection since the thwart out of that aspect is really weak. The more mature the card pool the more they can plug these holes potentially. That said the hero cards tend to be the stars with the aspect cards being more of a supporting act.

So old Agnes was never a bad design, but I will say I am really excited to try new Agnes. I like that her new ability feeds more into the Heirloom, and the flip on her health and sanity is real interesting. It is cool that they are making these parallel investigators play very differently from the originals. Also pretty cool that she has a spin on Skid's deck building options centered on spells. Some real interesting Spell event options that you might want to dupe in your deck. Is having 6 copies of the different versions of Ward of Protection a ridiculous idea? I like that upgraded Heirloom can make it's money back and turn a profit if you completely exhaust its health total and that's without considering the card draw. That's quite an upgrade. Sitting on 4 resources for her weakness on the other hand is pretty hefty (and it was already considered a pretty hard weaknesses in it's original form), but if you are mostly using her investigator ability to play spell events maybe it's not that bad in practice. Also this version opens up some interesting options. Hallowed Mirror and Occult Lexicon to name two that popped out to me. Both add more spell events into the deck once setup. Of course Hallowed Mirror conflicts with the upgraded Heirloom so... maybe a suboptimal choice though since she is taking alot of damage it might be worth it to throw a copy of Relic Hunter in there. Though I like Occult Lexicon to speed the deck up even more and give her another small damage option if we are going hard on spell events.

For Drax it really depends on what incarnation of Drax they are pulling from as inspiration. It can vary wildly.

Good design on Rocket. All his attack power and big moments should come from the tech that he builds or procures rather than big numbers on his hero card. Having 2 thwart being his bigger stat makes sense since he's very smart and not really a bruiser on his own. Can't wait to see the rest of his deck. His hero ability giving him card draw for excessive damage also feels great. He's inspired by the massive damage he inflicts. They didn't show us his alter ego side it looks like. That's too bad. I am really curious what they did for his alter ego ability. The easy thing would be card filtering for tech, but I wonder if it's something else.

I'll handle the easy questions. If we are gonna talk about the nuances of "as if" I'll see myself out depending on the card interaction in question "as if" can get pretty hard to get straight. Here in Wendy's Amulet it's pretty straight forward. In the case of Luke Robinson's investigator ability it is the subject of several different FAQ rulings.

Wendy's Amulet has a constant rule while in play that the topmost event in your discard can be played as if it were in your hand. So it's effectively the same as playing a Lucky! from hand, which is a Fast Action. So the entire card interaction counts as a Fast Action. You don't need to use an Action to trigger an asset unless you are triggering a rule on an asset preceded by the Action icon. Like for example the Fight Action on the .45 Automatic. Also the Asset doesn't Exhaust as a cost unless specified in it's rules text.

Thematically this was the pack I was waiting for in this cycle. I really liked it.

Well the one thing this definitely confirmed for me and I don't recall if it had been confirmed previously in a fiction is that the Lions are genuinely short on rations. I guess I still held the belief that Ujiaki was just manipulating the conflict in the first Tsanuri fiction rather than being truthful with her. Once you see someone as a manipulator it's hard not to distrust every communication from that person I guess.

They both seem super strong, and both have needed an upgraded form for a long time. It's interesting that they are being more liberal with double static boost cards now, and having both in a deck now is very interesting for a solo Guardian build. Having such a strong Neutral Evasion tool is also interesting for low Agility solo investigators as well. granted it's 3 xp, but if it's the major weakness in the deck then it's definitely worth considering.

Now you are making me hungry for calamari. I gotta pick some up next time I'm at the fish market.

Agnes and Jenny would do fine. Jenny is usually a pretty strong all rounder pick. If you are opposed to losing an investigator mid campaign (or just retrying a scenario if that happens) then I'd caution that going insane in this cycle as a resolution is pretty likely unless you've got a really good sanity score. Jenny has a 7 which is not the highest but is respectable. If you are worried about Agnes since her deck builds like to spend her sanity like a resource then she always has the option to take the Pete S. ally, who is stupid good in this cycle. As far as who is thematically appropriate for Carcosa then Mark, Minh, Yorick, Carolyn and and Lola all have thematic ties to stuff that happens in the cycle. Carolyn because of her job. Lola and Yorick since they are both trained actors. Lola in particular is set to star in The King In Yellow so she has the strongest thematic tie probably. Her or Minh who has an actual copy of the script for The King In Yellow. For who I played in the cycle, I've run Ashcan, Wendy and Carolyn decks. Investigators that were paired with me included Zoey, Mark, Akachi and Agnes.

The game has been around for a year. It's about time for people to start posting doom threads about Champion's future. That's traditional for an LCG I'd say.

So the theme they were actually going for is dishes representative of stuff you could find in Velma's Diner. As far as a New England diner menu goes I think they did a good job. Meatloaf, stew, reubens and fruit pies are a really good sampling of what I think of for diner food like you'd find in the area. Well those and all day coffee, fried eggs and pancakes, but we don't really need a recipe for a fried egg. The only real unusual dish for a working class New England diner is the Egyptian Barley Stew. That said Arkham is a university town so restaurants may be pandering to all the Egyptologists that hang around the school. That said the flavors in the stew aren't all that unusual for an American palate. So a dish for someone who wants something that sounds worldly, but is really familiar It's interesting that the Egyptian stew only cooks for a short period of time. I cook my stews for hours in a low heat oven similar to the hearty stew recipe. I'd think the chuck roast pieces would still be a bit tough after 30 minutes. Also as a Connecticut resident I zeroed in on the apples used. Both would be excellent pie apples. Though I think the Braeburn apples wouldn't be historically accurate for the time period. That said Braeburns are very popular currently in markets in the area, and a great pie apple. I buy them all the time. Granny Smiths were around during the period and probably would be in a diner pie. I do wish there was a bit more of a write up to be honest. I know writing isn't free, but I think it would have been a bit more fun if they matched favorite dishes to different characters or something based on their personalities. I like the idea above about church community submitted recipes. I guess otherwise we don't have a ton of references to food in the game to draw from here. There is a player card theme for Matt to follow up on in future cycles. A bunch of food cards. I wanna put some counters on a pie card Matt!

Locally or at conventions when the game first started there were alot of people looking to offset the price of a second core set for player cards. To find that online I think is a bit rare unless you work out a trade somewhere like here. That said I have found listings for super cheap core sets ( around $20-25) over the years on various places like Craigslist, ebay or even Amazon. That's been rarer lately I think because the demand for the game has only increased. Though early alot of people tried that game and didn't dig it due to the complexity and/or random elements. So you saw more people willing to part with product. Even before the Return to boxes I was making prebuilt core set scenario decks (all ready to go out of the box) for convenience and then holding onto another set for including in campaigns. To do that I think I needed around 3 or 4 core sets worth of cards minimum. Then when the Return To boxes came out I gave up on the prebuilt idea and just started sticking encounter sets in those boxes.

The upcoming page is a marketing tool for them more than anything else. It gets people excited for stuff coming down the chain. I do wish they were more diligent in updating it since it's nice as a community resource to set expectation. Though it seems like they've slowly been sliding toward less support for it rather than more. I wouldn't take it as an indication of an issue with the product releases since I just got my notification from TC that the next pack is going to ship out. So clearly the upcoming page isn't plugged into Asmodee's logistics.

Well you probably don't want to follow my lead because I'm a loony, but I buy up cheap core set encounter cards from people. I right now have a set of core set cards for each return to box. There's a nice convenience to that since I pretty much only need to pull out one small box when playing, but there is an expense to that even if you are hunting for cheap deals. Locally for me there were plenty of people early on in the game's life that are more than willing to get rid of their redundant core set cards. Alternately what I would do if I didn't have that benefit is I would just leave the core set cards in the RtNotZ and just pull out the two boxes whenever playing. That just means RtNotZ is gonna get more wear on it since it's getting opened all the time.

Well I don't do it so clearly I didn't find the value in doing it as well... though the organizing by cost was more about thinking about cost curves and comparing co-located cards. It's not about the ease of looking up a 2 resource asset because I have all the resource costs memorized, which is less about card look up so less valuable at this stage. In any event I wouldn't consider doing that until the game stopped updating. That would be a nightmare to maintain since you'd need to reorder cards alot as new ones come in when using binders. Buhallin sorting alphabetically would also have that sort of overhead if they used binders instead of card boxes. Even in card boxes you gotta resort them. I just throw them in my bucket of class by types by xp.

A fair question. One where I'm sure you'll get very different answers. Considering the card pool updates so often I have a looser sorting scheme than most I think. I sort them by class and then by type (asset, event, skill). Lastly by XP cost. That's pretty much it and I think that's the most useful sort at the coarsest level. Then at least I know if I'm looking for a level 0 Guardian event I can find it within a page or two of the binder. In my experience that's more useful that storing by cycle or by card number since I won't think of either as readily as class/type/xp cost. If I feel ambitious at some point in the future and/or the game stops updating I might go through and sort within those sections by cost. For assets it would be nice to group them by slot. I don't do either of those things right now, and I doubt I will. Especially sort by cost since that could potentially cause me to do a tremendous amount shuffling around each release. That's more an end of product line type sort.

Okay. I read it as a new Eldritch Horror expansion announcement as well and that really surprised me considering I thought they were considering that game complete. Though this is still the most mysterious part of the update. Also who doesn't enjoy a good riddle. Voiceless it cries, wingless flutters, toothless bites, mouthless mutters...

Is it absurd that the thing about this that I am most looking forward to is the AH themed recipes.

Yeah I can get two campaigns in each box and I have all the standalones in the RttNotZ box. As of the Return to TFA's release I can get all the encounter cards in these boxes quite comfortably as well as a couple prebuilt decks and the deck of weaknesses.

I've moved to the Return To boxes for all my encounter cards using their dividers. For player cards I actually just redid my binders to put all the classes into their own colored binders because the one binder I was using for player cards was falling apart. I like player cards in binders. Feels more organized to me. I use deck building apps to deck craft so I don't need to rifle through cards all that much. I just need to easily look them up and the binders work well for that. For the campaign inserts I put them in full page sleeves in a binder as well so they don't get lost or torn. It's kinda nice storing them that way since it's kinda like flipping through a book when they are all together like that. I know there are plenty of people who pursue a single storage solution for all the cards, but man that box will be so big and heavy at this point. Prior to the Return To boxes I was just using cheapo BCW card boxes to store the encounter cards.