Living Card Games

The Upcoming Changes for Arkham Horror LCG

Hey everybody,
I haven’t been keeping the closest of eyes on the upcoming Chapter 2 for Arkham Horror LCG. Having decided not to continue to buy the game with the second edition core set that is due out this spring, I’ve pretty much dropped off in terms of my level of interest in the whole thing, and instead will treat my collection of what is now first edition as a complete experience, to come back to as and when. However, there have been a couple of things that have been discussed online recently that have made me at least a little bit interested in what’s going on…

Let’s start with a bit of a recap. At the In-Flight Report back in November, they announced the 2026 roadmap of products for this game, which involved the new core set and a series of five investigator decks for the spring. All of these are apparently coming under the “evergreen” umbrella of content that will always be available, with the investigator decks giving clear indications for how each of the five classes work. That seems good, because it will supplement the five core set investigators and give a lot of material for deckbuilding right out of the gate. In the summer, there’s a small campaign expansion that I think I heard was meant to round out the core set’s three-scenario campaign, to give players something more. Then in the autumn there will be a standalone scenario pack coming as well.

All of that sounded fairly exciting, really. I know a lot of people weren’t too happy with the fact that there are 10 investigators and three scenarios from the start, but I think this release model is firmly aimed at new players, so you have a variety of investigators to learn how the basic game works. As opposed to experienced players, who know how the game works, and just want more content to play.

The fact that a small campaign box was met with much gnashing of teeth was further evidence of this, to me. Three more scenarios to build on the core set experience is perfect for new players who are just getting to grips with what the game is about, and have maybe tried out three or four different investigators. It’s also really helpful when you want to play the game, but you’re unsure if you can commit to a full-on campaign. This is a very real concern for a lot of folks, and I have certainly found myself in that camp lately. Sure, I’ve played a full campaign in 2 days before now, but that is very much an outlier – I would say my average is more 2-3 months. And I play by myself, so don’t have to wrangle a group together. A lot of folks online were very vocal about how the new release model seemed to be the death of the longer campaigns, and I got into a mini-argument on reddit about how it seemed disingenuous to think they would never create campaigns longer than three scenarios, but was shouted down for that opinion…

Well, from what I’ve read since, I may have been only slightly incorrect in my reading here. It seems that they have now said the new campaign structure will be 5 or maybe 6 scenarios long, as opposed to the traditional eight that we used to get in first edition. Of course, the old campaigns were only eight scenarios long because they were still holding to the deluxe + six packs model, so even the final four campaigns of first edition kept that structure even though they were single boxes and could have had any number of scenarios. I don’t think it’s too controversial to say that some campaigns have suffered from this, with a need for “filler” scenarios when the campaign itself could have been much more condensed.

The interesting thing here, of course, is that this model of 5 scenarios is exactly what we have in Marvel Champions. This similarity is then further made clear when the designers have talked about adjustable difficulty through encounter sets, which is of course how Marvel Champions has always worked. Now, this was also a feature for Arkham Horror when they did the Return To boxes, and had alternative versions of some of those encounter sets to make things more difficult for players. I don’t think it’s entirely as dramatic as people seem to be making out, but I can see if a newer player wasn’t entirely familiar with that adjustment mechanism, they may be concerned. As it stands, Arkham scales its difficulty only through the chaos bag, but adding a -8 or -10 token to the bag to increase the difficulty is a fairly boring way of doing things. Having more interesting and unique cards to change things up is a far better way to keep things fresh, in my view!

Of course, making Arkham more like Marvel could also cut the other way, which is why I’ve recently become so much more interested in these developments.

In addition to the investigator decks, Arkham Horror is set to return to the usual structure for release, with an investigator expansion and a campaign expansion, seemingly every other year. Alternating with this will be a smaller (3-scenario) campaign, with a “deckbuilding expansion” that sounds like something Magic the Gathering used to put out. The designers have given a somewhat woolly answer as to whether there will be actual investigators in this box, I think the response was mainly aimed at leaving the door open in case they wanted to do that in the future.

It’s got me thinking, though. The LCGs have always been somewhat cannibalistic in how they work off each other, and if Arkham is potentially adopting the Marvel Champions approach to modular encounter sets, then how long will it be before Marvel looks at what Arkham is doing, and maybe adopting a similar release model? With Daredevil on the cards for 2026, I think a lot of the online chatter is now speculating that 2027 will be the year we see a Chapter Two sort of re-set, but I’m no longer quite so sure of this. We’ve already got a couple of scenario packs (Mojo Mania, Trickster Takeover) where they pretty much function as a smaller campaign anyway, so I wonder if the box we see after Daredevil could be a small thing that is accompanied by some kind of Deckbuilding Toolkit that sees a few of the older heroes come back as well?

Details on the older, out of print heroes have always been a bit sketchy of course, but there have been enough hints that we’re currently assuming that we’re either going to see completely redesigned heroes, or heroes with small tweaks. I don’t think we’re just going to get a straight reprint of, say, Captain America, because otherwise why let it go out of stock? But while some heroes might get a new deck released with new aspect cards, I think we might see others released as part of a toolkit like this, with just the 15 hero cards they need, the nemesis set, and you’re free to put them in any aspect that you like.

I think Marvel Champions has always had a far stronger identity than Arkham Horror, and I don’t really see why they would feel the need to mess with the idea of campaign expansions and scenario packs that we’ve had since its release. But I think we could very likely see some smaller waves of content released to bolster the cardpool since as it stands, a lot of the deck archetypes for Marvel Champions don’t exist in the Current Environment.

When it comes down to it, and all of the preconceived notions of what the release schedule is “supposed to be” are thrown out the window, I think there’s so many interesting products they can release for this game. If not a full-on deckbuilder’s toolkit, how about a regular-sized pack of just aspect cards, to help build out certain strategies? Given that Marvel Champions is released in hero packs, maybe the evergreen products for this game could be four aspect packs that are valid for the three-year Current cycle, or something? Depending on what’s in them, I could see myself buying this sort of product for certain reprints, to help with the deckbuilding…

How about a pack of alternate nemesis sets for heroes? A sixty card pack could give us ten different nemesis/obligation sets, that you could either use for specific heroes, or that could function for multiple / any hero. If not nemesis sets specifically, how about a 60-card pack of modular encounter sets, bringing back some old favourites from the earlier expansions to help out new players? I’d also love some kind of “recommended encounter sets” pack that works for specific heroes, like a step down from the nemesis set, but a few cards that you would bring to a game if you were playing as Spidey, or Iron Man. A bit like the Deadpool/Dreadpool set. (I doubt they’d actually do this, because of the expansion-of-an-expansion rule, but who knows?)

It will definitely be interesting to see how things work out once we’re into this brave new world of releases. I keep coming back to the comment about 2026 being exciting, and 2027 being even bigger. What’s bigger than Daredevil for this game? It’s got to be the Fantastic Four, but what will that mean for the game as a whole? Will we see a heroes-only box? Will we have core set 2.0? Time will tell!

Card game catch up

Hey everybody,
I wanted to catch up a bit with some of the games that I’ve been playing of late, because I’ve been having an absolute ball with them recently! 2026 has certainly gotten off to a great start in this respect, as I’ve been playing a ton of Lord of the Rings LCG, but also have been getting to see some of the new stuff being released for Marvel Champions, which has been fantastic!

Yesterday, I wrote a post all about Tigra and her deck from the Civil War box. I was really impressed with how it looked like it was set to work together, so was looking forward to trying it out. Well, I literally couldn’t wait so last night I had a game with Tigra and Wonder Man taking on Klaw! Of course, Klaw is a classic villain from the core set, but being minion-heavy I was looking forward to seeing how Tigra would work going against him. The answer, unsurprisingly, was she’s amazing! Other minion-hunters like Thor and Rocket Raccoon are decent enough, but I think you can really see how the designers have been able to take the years of development for the game and build Tigra to work so well.

As expected, she was able to keep a couple of minions engaged but stunned in order to benefit from their presence, drawing cards and reducing the cost of her Tooth and Claw attack. I didn’t quite manage to get through the deck with her, but she came close enough! In fact, Tigra was able to make the killing blow, dealing all 21 points of damage required to kill off Klaw when the main scheme was just 1 threat away from completion – talk about your cinematic endings!

Tigra is a bit of a powerhouse, then, but Wonder Man was a little more difficult to work out. I want to try and write up a post about his deck as well, in the hope that it can afford me a greater level of understanding in terms of what he can do, but suffice it to say, on his second outing with me, I think he was struggling a bit. Or rather, I was struggling to see what he was trying to do. Towards the end of the game, I think I started to see the matrix a little, but still. I’ve made a couple of small changes to his deck now, and I hope that it will play better next time – basically, my plan is to lean more into his thwarting and Justice aspect, rather than the more generic “Energy resources matter” build he comes with, which seems to dilute his effectiveness, I feel.

I also had a game against Ultron, which is only the second time I have been up against that guy, and seeing how relentless he is, I remember why! Even on standard difficulty, he is a beast – his big thing is to place the top card of your deck into play, face down as a Drone minion. The Ultron Drones environment card then tells us these Drones have 1 attack, 1 scheme, and 1 hit point, but there are plenty of cards in his deck to mess with this. Stage two of the villain builds on this as Ultron gets +1 attack for each Drone engaged with you. Urgh! He also has the Under Attack encounter set recommended for use, which just adds to the feeling of being a really relentless enemy. Unsurprisingly, I lost the game as both my heroes died, but it was nice to see a scenario that I don’t have a lot of experience with!

While I have been enjoying getting to see more of Marvel Champions of late, Lord of the Rings LCG is currently my most-played game of 2026. Indeed, in terms of number of games played since it came out in 2011, I have played more games in only two other years: 2011 and 2012. So I think it’s safe to say that it really is a renaissance for this game! I think one of the secrets to this is that I have really embraced the deckbuilding for the game, so whereas in years gone by I would build a deck or pair of decks, and expect to do well with a multitude of scenarios, then grow tired if it didn’t work out, now I am enjoying the fact that I get to build loads of different decks and see different cards, many of which I have never played with before.

A case in point is my current Lore/Spirit deck, which is headed up with Elrond and Galadriel. I’ve played Elrond back when he was new, but Galadriel is completely new to me. She has 4 willpower, 0 attack and 0 defence, and cannot quest, defend or attack. So what’s the point? Well she can exhaust to allow a player to draw a card and lower their threat, but she was very much a resource match for spirit cards until I finally started to draw her specific ring of power, Nenya. Nenya allows you to exhaust both it and Galadriel, and you can add her willpower to another hero’s willpower – so she cannot quest alone, but she can give another hero a big boost. Thematic enough, plus Nenya gives her the lore icon in the same way Vilya gives Elrond a spirit icon, so they become a nicely matched pair in the deck.

While the deck is fun to play, I did have an interesting game today with The Dunland Trap, the first scenario in the Ringmaker cycle. It uses the Time mechanic, where you place a number of Time counters on the quest card, and it’s essentially counting down round after round to something usually dreadful. In this scenario, there are loads of Dunland enemies, and the final stage has five times the number of players’ worth of Time counters on it; if you survive until the final counter is removed, and there are no enemies in play, you win, but if you lose any hero, you lose. Which is fine, as far as it goes, but after a while it just gets so boring as you’re playing to just remove tokens…

This isn’t the end for my adventures in Middle Earth, of course, but I definitely thought it was an interesting development. I definitely want to build some new decks now, as I think I might try again with some Hobbits and maybe Rohan, but I’m not exactly thrilled to be playing this cycle…

Reflections on Lord of the Rings LCG

Hey everybody,
The other day, I made a post about the games that I’d like to play in 2026, and Lord of the Rings LCG was on there once again. Not in the sense of previous years, where I want to jam in ten games, or I want to make sure I play through one of the cycles that I have still never actually played, but rather that I’d just like to get back to playing this one regularly.

I recently realised that I have played Lord of the Rings LCG just over 200 times in the slightly-over 14 years that I’ve been playing it for. Now, that’s not an overly-impressive number, for sure – around 14 games a year is probably peanuts compared with the die-hard fanatics who grind out multiple sessions and the like! Of course, an average like that will always be skewed, and that’s painfully true here. I played the game 32 times in the first three months of having it, for instance, and while I played 40 times in 2012, I didn’t touch the game at all in 2019.

All that to say, the game was massive for me when I first bought it, but the way it ramped up in difficulty saw me drop off in terms of my interest (although I have continued to buy it, so it is currently a complete collection for me). But before I get much further into this, let’s have a short recap of what the game actually is.

Lord of the Rings LCG is an expandable card game from Fantasy Flight Games, where you build a deck and can play co-operatively (or solo) against an encounter deck. It was the first co-op LCG, and in some respects you can see how the designers were figuring out how that would work. Player cards come in four spheres (colours) – leadership (purple), lore (green), spirit (blue) and tactics (red). Each sphere is good at one aspect of the game, such as questing (spirit) or fighting (tactics). When you build a deck, you select a maximum of three heroes to headline it, and the spheres to which those heroes belong denote which colours you’ll include within your deck. I think the most common way to build a deck is dual-sphere, though tri-sphere is popular for players who play “true solo” (ie, one deck), and mono-sphere is a subtype that was supported at one point. You build your deck, then you go up against the encounter deck, where you will generally be trying to generate enough willpower to add progress tokens to the quest you’re playing; once you have advanced through all of the quest cards, and completed any stipulations on those cards such as killing a specific enemy, you win. Along the way, though, the encounter deck is going to be churning out enemy cards, who will fight your heroes and slow them down, location cards which need to be explored or else you’ll be unable to quest effectively, and also treachery cards, which are generally bad news.

That was perhaps a larger nutshell than I’d expected…

This used to be what I would call my all-time favourite game, perhaps shown by the fact that I played it so often in those first few months. I was kinda obsessed, to the point where I can remember getting up late at night to play the new adventure pack again, because it was just so much fun! It’s never been what I would have called an easy game, though as I said earlier, the level of difficulty got to the point where I just didn’t want to have to go through that for a game, which is supposed to be fun.

Something that has perhaps kept me from enjoying it too much in recent years has probably been the deckbuilding commitment that is required. For other games, and I’m thinking specifically of Marvel Champions, you can build a deck and rock up to the game, and it’s just great, no matter which villain you’re facing. Of course, some heroes and deck-builds will struggle against certain villains, but you never feel like it’s an impossible task. With Lord of the Rings, you can lose as early as round one, and I have lost a game recently in round two, when a series of treachery cards killed off three or four of my characters, meaning I couldn’t possibly continue to play the game. That’s bad luck of course, but unless you have built a deck specifically for a scenario, and have a healthy dose of luck along into the bargain, I think you’re really going to struggle.

The struggle can sometimes be fun – it can be extremely satisfying to overcome a particularly difficult scenario if you weren’t tuned for it. But my deckbuilding laziness has led to some really un-fun situations, and with limited time for hobbies due to real life, I don’t want to be spending that time feeling awful because I’m not drawing cards in the order I’d like to!

I think this is really what has put me off playing the game as often as I used to. I think I was perhaps just approaching this game from the wrong angle, and expecting to build my deck (or decks, since I started playing two-handed a few years back) and play through without making any adjustments. I guess this is part of the game’s original design philosophy though – as the very first co-operative LCG, I guess the designers felt like they needed to create a series of challenging scenarios that demanded different things from players, in the same way that you would have a real-life opponent changing up their deck if you were beating them consistently. I think Arkham Horror LCG has let them see things differently, where the RPG-feel of that game makes you want to keep the same deck from game to game.

I’m a lazy deckbuilder, but I’m also a thematic deckbuilder, and if I’m building a Rohan deck, then I am going to include as many of the Rohan cards as I can, and as many horses as I think is right, and I will stay away from cards like The Galadhrim’s Greeting, or Celebrían’s Stone because they aren’t thematic to the deck that I’m building. I’ll also only include one copy of Gandalf, because I want it to feel really impactful when he shows up, rather than have him popping in every couple of rounds. These are all self-imposed of course, but I do believe that it’s possible to win games with thematic decks – I’ve done it myself – so I will need to commit to building the right decks for the right challenge, I think.

The game is also hard. I’ve heard many folks talk about it like it’s basically a puzzle, or a numbers game, which is somewhat sad but true, unfortunately. It’s very much risk management, as you’re trying to determine whether you should commit characters to the quest before you reveal cards from the encounter deck, so you might commit someone who would have been much better off defending against the attack that you now know is coming. Or you committed someone only to have a treachery card un-commit them, or deal damage to them and kill them. You might reveal an enemy that is too strong this time, but you have a card in your hand that will help to defeat them next time; do you optionally engage that enemy now, or do you leave it in the staging area and risk being ineffective next turn, when you might reveal cards whose combined threat cancel out your willpower?

That side of things can be fun, because while it is a numbers game, you can also think of it as strategizing among your heroes, because they can see the lumbering Orc up ahead so are trying to decide how best to deal with it, and so on. However, the game is relentless in that you will always be revealing encounter cards, and unless you do something about it, the staging area will get to the point where you just can’t effectively quest any longer, and you need to just abandon the game. This is the thing that I think is perhaps the biggest negative about the game, for me. I’d have to go through every single card to check, of course, but I don’t believe there is any encounter deck mitigation in the game; there are limited ways to remove cards from the deck (such as by giving them Victory 0 to remove them to the victory display, meaning they don’t go into the discard pile and so can’t be returned to play later on) and there are some cards that let you see what’s coming next, but there is no real way to draw fewer (or no) cards on your turn.

Within such an environment, then, some cards become auto-includes. Cards that let you place progress on location cards, allowing you to get rid of them without having to travel to them first, are always a big deal. Characters who can attack or straight up deal damage to enemies in the staging area, getting around the fact that enemies always engage you first, are also extremely useful. However, I find this style of play boring: every scenario will include locations and enemies, so there is a case to be made that every deck you build should have the trap cards that deal damage to enemies when they are revealed, or cards that put progress onto locations when they do something else.

It makes me a bit sad because I realise that I have a choice between losing games, or playing the same thing every time. “Established play patterns” is a term that is often used in miniature wargaming, and is the idea that a certain model or unit is used in a specific way, every single time it hits the table. I hear that phrase and inside I’m screaming! For a game like Lord of the Rings LCG, it almost defeats the object of being an expandable card game – why collect more cards, when you already have those that you need to win?

But for all of this, there’s something about this game that keeps pulling me back in. Despite having played it so often, and despite the fact that I am familiar enough with it that I can pretty much run a game without thinking about it, the deckbuilding pretty much consistently lets me down.

I think it’s fairly safe to say, though, that you will lose to this game, a lot. While it’s not always about the winning, it would be nice to play a game where you feel like you have a chance at winning! I think I need to get more comfortable with the fact that I am going to lose a lot, and I can’t let that discourage me. It’s too good a game to abandon simply because I brought the wrong sort of deck to a particular scenario.

Here’s hoping for more Lord of the Rings LCG in 2026, then!

Top 10 games played in 2025

Hey everybody,
As we hurtle towards 2026, I’ve been thinking about the games that I’ve played over the last year, and truthfully, there has been some corkers. I wanted to do a top ten list, because that’s what all the cool kids do, right? But also, I wanted to try to record how I’ve felt about gaming in 2025, so I could come back to this next year, and see if my top ten has shifted about at all. It’s not a top ten in terms of how many were played (though those stats are included, naturally!) and it isn’t really a top ten in terms of my personal rankings. It’s very much looking at the games played this year, and how much I like them based on that. Does that make sense? Who knows… let’s just take a look at the list, though, shall we?

10. Star Wars the deckbuilding game (17)

This game crept onto my radar at the tail end of 2024, and over the course of the year I’ve played it using the Leaders variant that allows you to effectively simulate an opponent and what they would be doing in the main game. It’s a really good game, and I love it for the slightly puzzle-y nature it has. The artwork is, of course, top notch. It has seen some love in 2025 with a Mandalorian expansion, and next year we’re set to receive another expansion of some sort – so I can definitely see this remaining as a firm favourite as time goes on!

9. Arkham Horror LCG (2 campaigns, 16 games)

I’m really not entirely sure how I feel about this game anymore. I have such fondness for the early campaigns, and it’s really tied up with a lot of good memories for me. This year, I have played through two full campaigns, starting with The Circle Undone in January, which felt like a bit of a chore at the time, despite the fact that it’s one of my favourites. I played through The Dunwich Legacy almost in a day, and really enjoyed that one. But despite picking up the two latest campaigns earlier in the year, I’ve found it very difficult to want to play this much in 2025. The new edition is coming next year, of course, and I’ve decided not to continue to collect it; as such, I’m currently feeling pretty bittersweet about this game. Maybe I’ll play it some more and rekindle the love in 2026, though…

8. A Game of Thrones LCG (second edition) (1)

This game sprung out of left field and has really grabbed me. I think the fact that it was familiar enough, but the second edition redesign is so sleek that I just love the look, so can’t help myself. I’ve got a lot of proxy cards that I’ve printed off, as the game had been dead for more than five years when I got into it in the autumn, and I’ve been so keen to try different decks and so on, that this has really taken me by surprise by being on this list at all!

7. Lord of the Rings LCG (7)

Oh, my! This used to be my favourite game of all time! Earlier in the spring, I played The Hunt for Gollum and had such a good time with it – this is kind of what prompted me to start thinking about this post. I’m not thinking about my all-time favourites, it’s just out of the games played this year. I’ve also played some of the Dwarrowdelf scenarios, and it almost felt like stepping back in time… This game has also been dead for about five years at this point, but there’s no denying the hold it retains on me. I’m genuinely thinking about playing some more games as I type this, actually…

6. Dune Imperium (9)

Back in January, I bought the Rise of Ix expansion for this game, and entered into what have been some of the most exciting games of the year. I already knew this game was a corker, but with that expansion it became really something special. I’ve since stripped the Ix stuff away and played core only games, and while they’re still great, I feel like Ix just adds so much spice to the game. Haha! I’m looking forward to trying the Immortality expansion soon, which has been waiting patiently in the wings. It also looks like a really great addition to a truly awesome game…

With the first five containing so many great games, you know the top five are going to be spectacular – though long time readers will no doubt already know what’s likely to come!

5. Outer Rim (9)

This was my Christmas present last year, and while I was in love with the production value of the game from the start, I think it was either my 2nd or 3rd game with Outer Rim that really cemented my love for it. It’s a really fantastic game where you’re not trying to fight against your opponent, but rather it’s a race to see who can become the most famous outlaw. I’ve not yet played with the expansion, but I have it ready to go. It’s such a fantastic, fun experience, and of course it’s Star Wars! I think the only thing that puts me off is the set-up time…

4. Ashes Reborn (6)

This has been quite the discovery! I seem to make a habit of getting into games at the wrong time, and I started to pick up this one just as the kickstarter for the new edition was drawing to a close. I’ve managed to pick up a lot of exciting stuff for it since August, though, and with the addition of the Red Rains series of expansions, I’ve been really enjoying the solo experience. It’s rare that a head to head game can feel so great with a solo mode, but this is exactly what we have here. The player decks function exactly as they’re meant to, but the AI deck works seamlessly as if it’s a real opponent. It’s fantastic to play, and now that I have had a decent injection of new stuff with the addition of the other dice, etc, I can’t wait to dive deeper into my collection!

3. Star Wars Shatterpoint (11)

This game… it’s just so good! I think I’ve really dived off the deep end with Shatterpoint in 2025, picking up so many new boxes of squads to play. While I haven’t actually been able to play as much as I’d have liked, I find that this game really takes over my life at times, and I’m obsessed with building lists and thinking of strategy! Of course, I’m not exactly a good player, so it doesn’t normally work out, but what I lack in skill, I make up for in passion and determination!! I’m going to make a real push to get more of my backlog painted in 2026, because I think this game deserves it.

2 Marvel Crisis Protocol (13)

Oh man, if I thought I was obsessed with Shatterpoint… MCP has definitely pipped it to the higher spot on this list, thanks to a spate of thoroughly enjoyable games that we’ve played. I think I’ve settled for the time being on X-Men, albeit with something of a rotating roster of characters. I’m really enjoying my games, regardless of win or lose (though the wins are pretty good!) I’ve been trying to think more about my tactics with this one as well, which somehow feels easier to do than in Shatterpoint…

1 Marvel Champions (43)

This should be a surprise to nobody who has read this blog. Marvel Champions has been my most played game for a few years now, and I think it will continue to be so, especially with the Daredevil content coming in 2026! It’s so good, the gameplay is excellent and, as a long-running LCG there is a huge variety to be had. Even if you’re only able to get in today with the current environment stuff, you still have a ton of replayability. I absolutely love it. A particular highlight from this year has been discovering the Jubilee hero pack, though I had some amazing games at the top of the year with Bishop and Magik. I picked up the Civil War box for Christmas, and have been really excited about the new heroes there, so I’m looking forward to diving into that in January!

So there we are! My top ten games based on what I played in 2025. I’m hoping that next year I can shake this up a little, as I’m very much intending to try out some different things. Star Wars Legion is hopefully going to be a major feature of 2026, but I’m also hopeful that I can dive into my game collection some more. I think I’ve added more games to my life in this year than I have for many years, now, so while 2025 has been something of a year of discovery, let’s hope that 2026 can be one of truly getting to know these things more.

Though I still think, if I do this again at this time next year, Marvel Champions will still be at the top…

Marvel Champions: top ten heroes (2025 edition)

Hey everybody,
Last year, I wrote a bit of a rambling post about my top ten heroes for Marvel Champions, but since that post, Fantasy Flight have released a few more – and I’ve gotten to play with more still, so thought it might be time to review my list from last year, and see how the newcomers have shaken things up!

10. Gamora
A hero that didn’t even feature on the list last year, I’ve played a couple of times with Gamora this year, and it’s been a very fun time. Her kit is really enjoyable, working around attack and thwart events, and the fact that she can break the deckbuilding rules by mixing aspects is really powerful. I still play her in her precon form, though, and I think it’s always an amazing time, no matter who she’s paired with. I suspect that’s because of the fact that she doesn’t just feel like a thwarter, or just an attacker, for instance. She’s a very powerful hero, but of course, there are 9 more to come!!

9. Silk
Cindy Moon was almost a complete unknown to me prior to the release of her hero pack in this year’s SHIELD wave, but she very quickly became something of a favourite. She’s in protection, which is not exactly my favourite aspect to play, but she’s another hero I pretty much still play in the precon. While I did enjoy her from the get-go, I think it was after really digging into her hero cards, and seeing how she “should” be played, that my enjoyment of her as a hero really took off. The tuck mechanic is fun, of course, but it’s not just all about that! Definitely a fun hero to play, after unlocking those secrets!

8. Iron Man
Iron Man is a core set hero, but while I did play him a bit at the start, I feel like I’ve really come back to him this year, and it has been a lot of fun. Now, I know that there are some criticisms of Tony as being a fairly one-note hero – you build the suit – but I’ve swapped around a couple of cards in my aggression build, and I’ve always found him to be enjoyable but not too overwhelming. He’s not like Wolverine, for example.

7. Cyclops
Cyclops is the first entry here on this list where the character has climbed a bit – he was in the number 8 spot last year! I recently played him against Master Mold, though, so he is a bit recent in my memory, and the fact he was able to deal out 25 damage in a single turn was very impressive, so I couldn’t help myself. I really like how Cyclops’ deck functions, and I absolutely love the theme behind it. Scott is definitely the field leader of the X-Men, and I don’t think there’s any way you could not see that. Definitely worth his spot on the list; I’m excited to see whether he can continue his climb next year..!

6. Black Widow
Oh, Natasha! She placed 4th last year, what happened?! Well, FFG released new heroes that came along and tickled my fancy! Black Widow is still a fantastic hero to play, and I love seeing her preparations coming to fruition over the course of a game. Nothing more to really add since last year’s remarks, anyway!

5. Domino
The former number 2, Domino has had quite the tumble in this year’s chart! I haven’t actually played much with Domino this year, which could be the reason for this fall from grace. I mean, she’s still a really fun deck to play, and I love seeing how it all works on the table, but I think I’ve just been a bit spoiled with the new releases this year, so she’s slid down the rankings a little bit.

4. Jubilee
I mean, I’ve written two blogs about her in recent weeks, and she’s consistently been hitting the table since I discovered her back in November. Jubilee is just so fun to play, I love her ‘resources matter’ mechanic work itself out on the table. I’ve also had some incredibly thematic wins where she has dealt the final blow to the villain with the Grand Finale card. She’s not high on many people’s lists, from what I can see, but I absolutely love her. Can’t wait to play her again!

3. Winter Soldier
Another of the new heroes for 2025, Bucky has an incredibly strong aggression deck that I was very impressed with right from the start. He can almost run the game by himself, but I’ve had some tremendous fun playing him in some thematic pairs, going up against the Red Skull box. It’s definitely a strong deck, but it still manages to work on theme, and I have enjoyed each game I’ve played with him, even the losses.

2. Magik
Ah, Magik. I gave myself the Age of Apocalypse box for Christmas last year, and Bishop and Magik were the first heroes I played in 2025. I absolutely adored the pairing, and it could have very easily been Bishop who was in this slot, except for the fact that Magik comes with an aggression deck that feels full to the gills with my kind of cards. Things like Test the Defense and Clobber are great, but Full-Body Charge is one of my all-time favourite cards. Her kit is built around the fact she plays with the top card of her deck revealed, which is such a straightforward mechanic it’s easy to overlook it, but I have had some wildly enjoyable games with her, and she’s in danger of becoming my go-to hero…

1. Spider-Man
However, when it comes to Marvel Champions and that feeling of “coming home” to a hero, nobody can really beat Spider-Man for me. It’s not all about the Swinging Web Kick, of course, but the whole deck is just fun. What more needs to be said?

So there we are! It’s fun to see how this list has moved about, especially how those theee heroes have basically squeezed in between Spidey and Domino. Last year’s number 3 spot was Nova, though, and he’s nowhere to be seen! Maybe in 2026 he’ll be back, who knows. And maybe Daredevil will supplant Spider-Man in the top slot… I can’t wait to find out!!

LCG environments?

Hey everybody,
Way back at the start of the year, FFG shook the LCG communities for Arkham Horror and Marvel Champions, when they announced a shift in how the games would be releasing, going forward. One of the fundamental building blocks for the living card game experience was how everything would always be playable, though in the fullness of time this became obviously unsustainable as games like A Game of Thrones LCG grew to the point where the card pool was too big for players to dive into. I’ve seen it said time and again how new players were met with the realisation that “oh, you like this game? It’ll cost you £1000 to buy in”. Even when you looked to buy a single core set and a cycle of six packs, which is the ideal, that’s an investment of around £130. Suddenly, CCGs, which were the opposing force in card gaming at the time, became a bit less intimidating.

I think this is one of the reasons why the competitive LCGs have all gone away, and we’ve been left with the co-operative games that feel much more like a board game situation. But even then, Arkham Horror has a collection of ten complete campaigns, plus a dozen or so separate packs of standalone scenarios etc. Marvel Champions has recently wrapped up its ninth wave of releases, and currently has over 60 playable heroes with over 50 scenarios.

These games are massive. So earlier this year, FFG announced the idea of “environments” for each game – current, and legacy. The current environment is a currently ill-defined set of products that is presumed to be the most recent three campaigns, broadly speaking, while legacy is just everything that has ever been released. This allows the designers to ensure they can keep releases fresh, and they don’t have to worry about a card’s interaction with the bajillion other cards that have been released for the game up to this point.

For Arkham Horror, this does make some sense. I haven’t played either of the two most recent releases, but sleeving up the Feast of Hemlock Vale revealed some extremely complicated-looking cards, especially when compared with the releases from earlier in the game’s life. While there is probably a lot to be said for having a deep and interesting game, it does raise questions about how much design space is left if the game needs to be making location cards that can also turn into enemy cards, and whatever else is going on there. Of course, I haven’t played it so it could actually be amazing, and there’s a part of me that is keen to find out. But at the same time, I also feel like it’s a step too far, and I’m missing the core principals that made Arkham such an enjoyable game in the first place.

Marvel Champions is a different kettle of fish, but there are some issues here as well that need addressing. A lot of the earlier stuff, particularly the Red Skull campaign box, and the Captain America and Doctor Strange hero packs, are no longer being printed. I haven’t seen the same sort of design issues with the scenarios that I mentioned for Hemlock Vale in this game, so I do question to some extent why Marvel Champions is moving to this ‘environments’ situation. Officially, of course, it’s to open up the design space and ensure the games can continue, which ultimately I am all for, but I do have some trepidation around the future for Marvel Champions.

They have mentioned that some of those early heroes are going to be redesigned, and there’s no doubt that a hero like Hulk needs it. But while Arkham has less risk of going back to Dunwich again, as there is probably still plenty of material to use for a campaign there, Marvel Champions seems to be running the risk of simply re-doing the content that has already come before. In all honesty, a Marvel game needs to have a Captain America hero after all. Do we risk having a game without Spider-Man’s rogues gallery as villains to go up against? I’ve talked before about the idea that a villain like Sabretooth could be re-done, as he doesn’t always need to be trying to capture Senator Kelly, a villain like Sandman is very much doing what Sandman does (and the scenario replicates that perfectly, in my view).

All that said, Fantasy Flight have stated they will be doing their big announcement, the fabled In-Flight Report, at PAX this year, so 21 November or thereabouts. This could be when we get a lot more news on the future of these two games, and I’m quite excited to see what that’s going to actually look like when it gets here. If this does happen, I think we can expect to see either a new core set announced, or else the next campaign box – which I think everyone is firmly hoping will be Fantastic Four or Defenders. I’d be happy with either – I think I’m most excited for Defenders for the heroes, and Fan4 for the villains, so either way it goes, I’d be happy. However, this does still mean that the game would be without a Captain America hero pack and Spider-Man campaign box that new players could buy, and I think that is doing nothing to help the game at this point.

For Arkham Horror, I have literally no idea what they’re going to do there. We currently have a Cthulhu themed campaign as the most recently-released expansion. If it weren’t for the fact they’ve just hired a new designer, I would not have been surprised if they announced the fact that the game was done. Of course, just because I have no idea where it could be going does not mean anything – I’m not a game designer after all! We might get something like an Egyptian campaign, but I am a bit concerned here that they could end up rehashing a lot of what has gone before. I think it’s for this reason that I am largely considering my Arkham Horror collection complete right now. If anything grabs my attention later down the line, I’m sure I could see myself picking it up, but given how much content I currently have for the game, and how much of that is unplayed, I think I’m good for a while.

You could almost make the same argument for Marvel Champions, but that game is just so ridiculously fun that I could honestly see myself buying that for as long as they make content for it!

Call of Cthulhu LCG

Hey everybody,
Back in August, I talked about the Call of Cthulhu LCG as it had come back on my radar after quite a few years away. It’s a game that dates all the way back to 2008, and is usually cited with A Game of Thrones LCG as one of the first living card games from Fantasy Flight Games. Originally a collectible card game, FFG re-structured releases for this and A Game of Thrones by implementing a core set design (Thrones had to wait a bit longer for its core set, if memory serves) and then the monthly fixed-content packs. When I had my retrospective post back in August, I called it something of a mess, as the LCG model struggled to establish itself at first, and the monthly packs attempted some kind of pseudo-rarity that caused some issues at the time.

The game is kinda fascinating, although I do appreciate that it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. There are factions that are roughly divided between human and monster, but you can build a deck by mashing literally anything together. You’re playing to win control of three story cards from a central row, and to do so you commit characters and go through a series of struggles in order to place control markers there.

You start the game with three domains, and this is the primary resource mechanic. Each card also has a small faction icon in the bottom-left corner, and throughout the game you can choose cards from your hand to place as resources in your domains. You need to march at least one icon to play a card – a Cthulhu faction card will need at least one Cthulhu icon in the domain, unless a card effect tells you otherwise. Having only three domains, with varying numbers of cards in each, really controls how quickly you can build up your board state, and I really like how the big monsters like Cthulhu himself can’t be rushed out as a result of this.

Once you’ve paid for the card and played it, a character can then be exhausted to commit it to a story. The story cards each have icons on the left-hand side that show the struggles in order – terror, combat, arcane and investigation. Players resolve each of these in descending order. If you lose the terror struggle, you have to drive one of your characters insane (placing them face down); if you lose the combat struggle then one of your characters takes a damage, which is most often enough to kill them outright. If you win an arcane struggle, you can immediately ready a character; and finally, if you win an investigation struggle you can place a success token on the story.

After that, you determine success by totalling the skill values of each character at the story, and if you exceed your opponent’s total (while having a total of at least 1) you win, and place a success token at the story. A total of five success tokens is required to win the story card.

That’s the game in a nutshell. Obviously, with a game like this there are a lot of points to consider, and over time the card pool grew quite large with the number of releases for the game. I’m not entirely sure that I played it to its full potential back in the mists of 2012 when I was most active with this, and indeed I sold off my complete collection sometime around 2018 when real life had taken over quite a bit! However, I’ve determined to give it another shot, and have printed off some proxies from cardgamedb to build a couple of decks to throw at each other.

The game survived until October 2015, and so tomorrow marks the decade anniversary since the final expansion for the game released. It’s been really interesting to go back through the game like this, and see what all the cards did and so on. While I spent a lot of time and effort last year getting Netrunner back into the fold, I wouldn’t say this game is on the same level, unfortunately! Obviously it has its fans, and I think it is a really interesting game, but the mechanics are a curious match to the theme. For instance, Netrunner has a very clear theme of hackers and corporations, and while you’re playing out cards on a table, it still feels very much like you’re building those servers, or whatever. Here, while there is flavour packed to the gills, ultimately it doesn’t feel like a Lovecraft game because of the factionality, and whatnot. Lovecraft was about professors going mad when they discover the truth of the universe; the game is rather inspired by Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu RPG, which is itself based on the wider Cthulhu mythos. I do like the theme of cultists trying to bring about their deity while there are opposing factors at work to stop them, but there were no hard-and-fast rules for good vs evil in the game, so you could have Cthulhu decks vs Cthulhu decks, or ‘Cthulhu and the Cops’ decks, and so on.

The idea of competing for stories also feels a bit weird, if I’m honest. Warhammer 40k Conquest reimplemented this far better with a central row of planets, but I think Call of Cthulhu should have instead had something more generic like “objectives” or similar. While some of the story cards are named after the short stories from Lovecraft, thematically it’s just a huge miss, and something I really have to work at ignoring to get into the game.

Ultimately, though, it is much like any of these Arkham games. When you get into it, and immerse yourself in that sort of struggle for dominion and end-of-days stuff, the game is a lot of fun. I’m really pleased to have this back in my life, even if I don’t foresee it being the sort of game that gets played every week or even once a month.

Marvel Champions Creator Spotlight: SuperMario

Hey everybody,
I’ve recently been getting into a lot more of the fan content for Marvel Champions, and have been really enjoying myself in getting to see what else is out there in the community. Seems like Discord is the place where a lot of this stuff goes on, but after seeing a couple of posts on reddit and facebook that were showing off alternative heroes, over the last few weeks I’ve taken the plunge and have been investigating all sorts of stuff!

I don’t honestly know whether this is going to be a big series, but every so often I want to do a post to talk about some of the amazing stuff that I have come across, and to kick things off, I’m going with the stuff that started me down this rabbit hole at the end of August: SuperMario’s Star Wars content.

This guy has created a massive amount of stuff for the game, split mainly between custom heroes and scenarios, and then a Star Wars re-skin of pretty much the entire player card pool. There are hundreds of aspect cards for all four aspects (with ‘Pool re-skinned for Clones), and I think this is the main thing that has attracted me to his content. In the past I’ve seen a lot of fan created content like this that has been overpowered or too convoluted to play, but essentially having all of the existing Marvel Champions stuff reskinned for Star Wars, with appropriate art and keywords changed, it put me in a much better frame of mind for actually exploring this stuff.

And oh boy, I dived into this rabbit hole head-first.

There are a lot of playable heroes for the game, and a lot of scenarios as well. At first when I was looking at this, I was a little bit lost – I mean, why are there so many cards for the Luke Skywalker hero, or the Obi-Wan Kenobi hero? As I dived further, it became more convoluted as I realised there were ways to level-up your hero. Additionally, a lot of these heroes seem to have taken the idea of Dr Strange’s incantation deck, or Storm’s weather deck, and dialled it up to 11. Luke has a mini-game of becoming a Jedi through a series of side schemes he needs to thwart, and Anakin is trying to go through the trials? I have to admit, I really struggled to see the benefit of this at first. I’m here to face the villain, I don’t think I need the additional angst of trying to do this side-quest as well, thanks very much!

One of the heroes that has this kind of side deck is Mando, however his upgrades are linked to the Armourer persona support. It’s an interesting deck to play, because generally he’s playing the game, but gets rewarded for defeating minions or side schemes by placing “bounty tokens” onto his helmet upgrade, which the Armourer can trade in to upgrade his armour. I like this, because Mando himself is doing something you’d be doing anyway – defeating minions – and it’s then the Armourer who is upgrading the armour. It’s an alter-ego action, which does mean you need to plan a bit for it, however this is very similar to other persona types in the FFG game, so it doesn’t feel egregious somehow.

There are also scenarios. Oh man. Collector 1 gets almost entirely re-skinned as Grakkus the Hutt, who is himself a collector, and so it all feels rather amazing in that respect. But we also have a Vader scenario, a Battle of Hoth, Jabba the Hutt, Escape from Cloud City, the list goes on. If I’m honest, though, some of these fell a little flat for me. I think it’s because they try too hard to re-tell the story from the films, or whatever, that they are “managed” too much. What I mean by this is, you set aside some cards at the beginning, then as the game goes on you add them in (sometimes entire modular sets at a time) to better emulate the story of Star Wars. It’s something that Lord of the Rings LCG does quite a lot in scenarios from the third cycle, and became really prevalent there, but is so sparingly done in Marvel Champions that it felt odd to be doing it here. It’s particularly evident, I thought, in the Jabba scenario. I understand why, of course, but it kinda took away from what I like about how clean Marvel Champions plays, and it felt a little too clunky as a result.

I don’t hate it, of course, but there’s a part of me that feels like it could have been done better, somehow. I think Marvel Champions mostly succeeds where the story of why you’re fighting the villain is contained within the scheme, rather than tinkering too much with everything else in play. And this is something that the Grakkus and the Kreel scenarios do very well, as they feel much more like a traditional Marvel Champions scenario.

But overall, I am extremely happy to see these things exist for the game. I think on the whole, his content does feel like it’s a good fit for the Marvel Champions system. I’ve not really seen SuperMario active around the internet, but the fact that the re-skinned aspect cards contain stuff from the most recent hero pack at the time I’m writing this (Winter Soldier), I assume he’s still going strong, so look forward to seeing what else might be coming down the pipe as we get stuff like the Civil War wave released.

Remembering the Call of Cthulhu LCG

Oh yes, it’s time for another look back through the annals of history! Today, I want to go back to 2009, when Fantasy Flight released the core set for Call of Cthulhu LCG, a revamped version of the collectible card game designed by Eric Lang way back in 2004. The game was basically the same, I think there’s plenty main difference was in the actual mechanics of the cards themselves – otherwise, if you knew how to play the CCG you could very easily transition into the LCG. Indeed, I’ve read a few times online that it was an initial design goal of the LCG to have backwards-compatibility.

This is a game that I’ve been thinking about quite a lot in the last few weeks. It was never exactly my favourite, indeed I barely played it back in the day, and while I did feature it here on the blog back within a few months of starting this endeavour, it wasn’t really something I was actively playing. Which I’ve found strange considering it’s an Eric Lang creation – though if I’m honest, I hadn’t actually realised that until I’ve looked at it again for this post.

The game involves 8 factions from across the mythos, vying for supremacy in the struggle to win three story cards from a central row. It sounds a bit gamey when I say that – in terms of how ‘Lovecraft’ a game feels, the Arkham Horror LCG is far better at implementing the feel of Howard’s world. But I think this is perhaps one of the big stumbling blocks for this game – it isn’t so much a Lovecraft game, as it is a Chaosium game set within that company’s Call of Cthulhu RPG landscape. There aren’t really factions in Lovecraft’s works, just academics going insane when they realise the truth of the world. Here, however, we have Cthulhu and Shub Niggurath heading up their own teams, as well as the criminal Syndicate and the scholars of Miskatonic University.

And what on earth is this ‘fighting over stories’ lark? Well, I don’t know what to tell you, as I’m not entirely sure how the mechanics of this game fit the theme. What I can say with absolute certainty, though, is that the game is crafted quite beautifully, and the mechanics are really top notch. At its core, it is very simple: you commit characters to these stories, you compare icons in a series of mini battles, you then compare final skill in a final battle, and whoever wins places a success token on that story. There are ways to place more than one per struggle, of course, but the base mechanics are quite easy to grasp, meaning that the real heft of this game comes from just what all these cards are doing.

The game came out on 2 January 2009, like I said, and it had an initial couple of cycles of packs that were still somewhat stuck in the CCG environment. It wasn’t really until the following year when the Yuggoth Contract came out, that the LCG truly began to feel like it was its own game. FFG released more packs and rereleased cards from the CCG, updated for the LCG, in what was quite a mess initially. I think for the first couple of years, the game definitely had some kind of identity crisis, not helped by the fact that it was kinda the first LCG so Fantasy Flight were figuring things out as they went.

By the time the final cycle of packs came out, there were 7 full cycles (42 packs) but just two deluxe expansions, one of which brought a second deck of story cards (a third deck had come out in one of the packs). The other deluxe expansion had given us the eighth faction, Order of the Silver Twilight. Late in 2012, however, they shifted gears to deluxe boxes only, with the initial idea being three boxes per year, two boxes each focusing on a different faction, and the third being a narrative expansion. This only lasted one cycle, as we had the University, followed by Yog Sothoth, then a narrative box that took us to Venice. After this, FFG banged out five deluxe boxes for each of the remaining factions, with the final box devoted to Hastur coming out on 8 October 2015.

And with that, the game was over. Arkham Horror LCG came out the following year, and the rest is history on that front!

I owned everything for this game, but I only really played it in the second half of 2012, when the final cycle of packs was coming out. I think it’s extremely unfortunate that at the same time, I was playing a lot of Warhammer Invasion (my favourite duelling game at the time) and A Game of Thrones (Tony’s favourite), so it didn’t really find its place.

I think it’s important to note the fact that Arkham Horror LCG exists because this is definitely the superior Lovecraft game if you’re after that kind of feel. Call of Cthulhu absolutely has its appeal, but I think unless you’re familiar with the Chaosium development of Lovecraft’s universe, which blends his work with that of his literary circle, as well as more recent authors such as Brian Lumley, and adds historical ideas such as bootleggers and the like, you’re going to be a little bit lost. I think it can’t be stressed enough how this is more a card game based on the RPG than specifically a cosmic horror story from 1928.

I keep emphasising this because the difference between this game and the Arkham LCG are vast, but this is certainly not to the detriment of Call of Cthulhu LCG. I don’t think I really appreciated it at the time, but as I’ve been looking anew at it, I think the gameplay and mechanics are fantastic. The resourcing mechanic of domains, which ensures you can’t play more than three cards at a time, is really interesting, and the fact that the framework is so simple that it allows for the cards themselves to become something far more interesting than just the basic pieces is just fascinating.

Unfortunately, I sold off my entire collection in something like 2018, but I’ve been looking again at the cards online, and reading what info I can find about it. It’s a shame that there isn’t really that much out there for it – perhaps symptomatic of how it was always kinda overshadowed at the time? There is definitely that element of, is this really a Lovecraft game? It feels awkward to sell it like that, but I think there has always been a solid crowd of people who love it, regardless. Like I’ve said, the gameplay itself feels fantastic – this isn’t Netrunner, where you can very easily understand what the game is trying to get you to do. It could be reskinned in any number of ways – I think it could actually work really well as a Star Wars game, reskinned for the Galaxy far, far away. But it’s definitely a bit of a gem, and it’s one that I desperately wish I had played more often when I actually had the physical cards.

Le sigh…

More rambling about living card games

Hey everybody,
With the news last week that Fantasy Flight Games are making some changes to the way their Living Card Games work, the internet seems to have been in a bit of a froth over the weekend, with a lot of “should I buy this?” posts on social media and the like. It feels like the announcement they made, which could have been a very exciting next step kind of thing, has led to far too much instability in the communities for Arkham Horror LCG and Marvel Champions LCG. I’ve not seen many, but there have even been people dumping their collections wholesale, which strikes me as just a step too far.

Ultimately, it does seem to go against the original ethos for the LCG model – that you don’t have to chase the rares because all packs are the same, but also that you can always play with your toys because the game will never retire older stuff. Even back in 2012, that felt like a slightly unattainable goal – either you expect your game to last 4-5 years, tops, or you are fully intending to create a behemoth that requires its own warehouse to eventually store all of its product. It feels like I’m just a stuck record at this point, but the Team Covenant idea of a robust rotation that sees seasons of a game, where cycles will cycle in and out at regular intervals, should have been the norm from the start. When cycle two comes back in, there’s a new print run, and players know that it has never gone away forever, so a new player should never be in the situation where they can’t get a product because it isn’t being made anymore.

This is the environment we’re currently in after a weekend of panic among a lot of new players, all asking whether The Dunwich Legacy is a must-have, or wondering why The Rise of Red Skull is suddenly unavailable. There is, sadly, panic and confusion because, in classic FFG fashion, we’ve not yet been given the full story. The Fireside Chat talked about some products being evergreen for each game, and the fact that this is products, plural, seems to suggest they mean more than just the core set. But what will be evergreen? If they had come out with a proper presentation, and told us Dunwich and Carcosa campaigns will be kept in circulation, but the investigator boxes will be retired, then that is something concrete. If Rise of Red Skull was being reboxed to include its subsequent wave of heroes as well, then that is great, and there’d be no need for rending of garments and gnashing of teeth.

The cynical part of me is left wondering if this isn’t some kind of marketing ploy to clear out the old stock, by giving just enough information to cause a panic but not enough to allow for informed choices to be made.

I’ve already rambled at length about a lot of this stuff, though, so today I was thinking it might be better to try to imagine what the new landscape for these games might look like. A lot of this will be considering how FFG seem to want to keep the number of products down, but also keep games alive in terms of the community and chatter.

This seems particularly to be an issue with Arkham Horror currently, because of course since the move away from monthly asylum packs and instead having the campaign in a box and stuff, releases being concentrated into just once or twice a year does tend to make community engagement difficult. Indeed, this announcement has prompted the most activity in the Arkham spaces online that I’ve seen for a long time! A suggestion that I keep seeing made is the idea that Arkham would move to monthly investigator decks, similar to Marvel Champions. This idea seems to ignore the fact that Marvel can do hero packs like that because there is a pull on those heroes – people are going to be drawn to a Captain America hero pack in a way that they completely won’t be drawn to a Hank Samson investigator pack, for example.

There were five investigator decks released for the game, shortly before the pandemic seemed to skew everything, and these packs included three brand new investigators, with two Arkham Files staples. I don’t have the numbers, obviously, and I do remember a time where people were absolutely clamouring for these things online. But that was more due to the fact that there were some very useful scaled-up versions of staple cards that were seeing a lot of play (and still do). Coupled with a strong intent to provide representation within the game, I think these decks were quite popular, overall – but I do believe that this was very much an isolated thing. The decks had a novelty factor to them, as prior to this, the only distribution method for investigators was in the deluxe expansions that would drop once or twice a year.

However, I find it curious what will now happen to the investigators, if the intent is to sunset most of the line. While these names probably don’t carry a tremendous weight outside of Arkham circles, within the universe there are some extremely important names to the game lore, such as Ashcan Pete, Rex Murphy, Dexter Drake and Sister Mary, to name but a few. An Arkham game without these would be… odd, to say the least. Will they re-do these guys? With The Drowned City, we will have had all 40-ish investigators from the original board game line now in the card game, plus about a dozen original investigators created for the LCG. Surely they won’t just keep creating new names? I’m really curious to find out what is going to happen to the likes of Jenny Barnes and Diana Stanley.

Assuming that Arkham sticks to a campaign model, I think we’re much more likely to see the player cards divorced from the campaign, and I also feel like the campaign itself will be scaled back to maybe 5-6 scenarios, rather than the eight (or so) we currently have, which was itself a relic of the asylum pack model. If we have two shorter campaigns produced per year, with two boxes of player cards released separately, then FFG could hit all four quarters and even out the conversation over the year. Coupled with maybe a standalone scenario as well, that would be a decent amount of content for a year that could potentially have appeal across fans old and new alike.

For Marvel Champions, I think it’s a bit tricker to divine what route they could take. I think the hero pack model works for them because it is designed as a slightly more easy-to-play game, the idea being you can pick up the deck of your favourite hero and just play it. Would they gather these things up into a pack of two or four heroes when the likes of Cap, Thor and Iron Man would easily sell their own hero packs? I doubt it.

What I could see happening is the campaign boxes becoming smaller, perhaps along the lines of the MojoMania scenario pack, which included just three scenarios to play. Whether they would actually get rid of that model is definitely up in the air, and given how it has worked so far, I don’t really see any actual changes being made overall. Instead, I think the Marvel model would be most likely to stay unchanged, unless they slow down on hero packs to have just two in the box then two subsequent packs, to cut down on SKUs? Time will tell, I guess.

It’s definitely a shame, how things are going, but given that’s what is happening, I suppose we just need to live with it and make the best of things. There is still too much unknown at the moment to make any kind of informed decisions, though I realise I am in the enviable position of having all of the Arkham Horror LCG content, and all of the Marvel Champions LCG content, so I’m not faced with turmoil of having to pick between The Path to Carcosa or The Dream-Eaters. (If you are faced with this turmoil, though, the correct answer is Carcosa, always). I am looking forward to seeing what exactly FFG decide to do though, as I think it has the potential to be a very exciting time. LCGs have always been at their absolute best when they are in the early days of core set + one or two cycles. Cycle three is often where things start to go a bit strange – Arkham started to play around with sealing chaos tokens, for example – so the promise of a continual cycle of this sort of smaller-scale environment definitely has its appeal.

I guess we’ll see, anyway!