Call of Cthulhu LCG: Core Set - Tips & Strategies

SETUP

Each player must bring their deck and story deck (this is important – in two player, only one player really needs to bring their story deck, but in multi, everyone has to).
No changes to deck building rules.

One player is appointed “First Player,” and his story deck is shuffled. Lay out three stories in front of that player. Then, all other players search their story decks and lay out the same three story cards in front of them. Play proceeds clockwise beginning with the “First Player.”

Rules change: on the first turn, all players draw 2 cards. No player gets a story phase on their first turn.

GAMEPLAY

Each player takes their full turn, as in 2-player, one phase at a time.

COMMITTING TO STORIES

Rules change:
When a player takes his story phase and com- mits characters, each opponent beginning with the leftmost opponent and continuing clockwise, gets ONE chance to “intercept.” As soon as one opponent chooses to intercept, no other player may do so. To intercept, players must commit atleast 1 character to “block” the active player.

Only the intercepting player may commit char- acters to “block” the active player. All players may trigger card effects as normal, starting with the active player and proceeding clockwise.

WINNING A STORY

Rules change: When a player other than the first player wins a
story, he claims that story for himself. That play- er then set aside that story for himself.

The First Player then shuffles that story card back into his story deck, then draws and plays a new story card. Each other player follows suit (ie. Their success tokens on the won story are lost, just like in 2-player), searching their story deck for the same story that the First Player has put into play.

Note: if you have already won the story card that the First Player has put into play, then you are “short” one story card (ie. You’ll only have two of them out). However, you still can inter- cept the active player’s characters at a story card even if you don’t have it out.

If the First Player wins a story, he places that story in his won pile and pulls out another story. That won story will not show up again during the game.

WINNING THE GAME

The game ends when a player has won 3 story cards. There are no further rules changes.

Like a Moth + Tear Gas:

Like a Moth allows you to reduce a character’s skill to 0 until the end of the phase. Tear gas is attached to a character, that character gets -1 skill and is immediately destroyed if their skill is ever reduced to 0. This combination also allows you to destroy any character by attaching tear gas to them, then Playing Like a Moth on them, reducing their skill to 0 which causes tear gas to kill them.
Note: This one seems not as powerful as the previous combination because, rather than use an attachment then gain a character, you use an attachment then lose an event.

(Note: I don’t recall if these are core set or expansion cards)

As I mention in my review, I feel the game is over too quickly. 5-7 turns is what we’re used to seeing. This feels wrong, so we often time play to capturing 5 quests and/or requiring 7-10 clue tokens on the quest to achieve it. Additionally, we’ll fire up a bonus 4th resource pile that can only be used for card abilities.

Some characters (such as ‘The Thing Behind You’ (not core set)) let you make some sort of payment other than the normal resource cost. Put one of these cards in a deck of a different faction and give the enemy a nasty surprise.

Don’t get me wrong, this game is really fun with just the core set, I played a long time before I bought any expansions. Personally however, I think that the added variation that even just 1 or 2 expansions provide is a great bonus.