This article needs additional citations for verification .(June 2011) |
![]() Call of Cthulhu CCG's card back design | |
Designers | Eric M. Lang, Nate French, James Hata, Damon Stone |
---|---|
Publishers | Fantasy Flight Games |
Players | 2 |
Setup time | < 2 minutes |
Playing time | ~ 30 minutes1 |
Chance | Some |
Age range | 14+ |
Skills | Card playing Arithmetic |
1 Games may take much longer or shorter depending on a deck's play style and the number of players. |
Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game (formerly the Call of Cthulhu Collectible Card Game ) is an out-of-print card game produced and marketed by Fantasy Flight Games. It is based on Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu role-playing game, the writings of H. P. Lovecraft, and other Cthulhu Mythos fiction. [1] In 2008, Fantasy Flight moved the game over to its Living Card Game (LCG) format, [2] which retains the deck-building aspect of collectible card games, but without the random distribution. [3]
It shares art and characters with FFG's other Cthulhu Mythos products Arkham Horror and Elder Sign .
Chaosium had previously been involved in the collectible card game (CCG) business in the mid-1990s, printing Mythos , its Cthulhu mythos CCG. Chaosium discontinued the game in 1997 after poor sales. In 2004, Chaosium instead licensed the property to Fantasy Flight Games (FFG), allowing FFG to produce the official Call of Cthulhu Collectible Card Game. It was designed by Eric M. Lang as a more accessible introduction to gaming in the Mythos environment and to provide a fast and lively interplay with the usual elements of the mythos (e.g. arcane tomes and secrets, paranormal investigations, the elder gods and their terrible servants, dark sinister plots, inhuman conspiracies, and dangers from beyond the stars). The game is nominally set in 1928.
FFG staffer Darrell Hardy developed the background for the game. Most of the storyline text (including card names and flavor text) was written by creative developer Pat Harrigan. In the Living Card Game format, the original story line was penned by Nate French, with the help of Dan Clark. Since 2010 all story lines have been created by the game's current developer Damon Stone.
Players attach resources (taken from the cards in their hand) onto blank placeholder cards known as domains, later "draining" them by putting a drain counter on them to play various cards. Both players compete to complete stories by winning success tokens. Five success tokens wins a story; three stories wins the game. Players typically assign character cards to stories, to win struggles and gain these success tokens. Additionally, the first player to run out of cards to draw from loses the game, making deck destruction another potentially effective strategy.
Five types of card exist in Call of Cthulhu: Story Cards, Character cards, Event cards, Support cards and Conspiracy cards. All cards (except story cards) have a cost and belong to a faction (described below). Various cards have subtypes (such as investigator, tome, or location).
There are eight factions in Call of Cthulhu, as well as "neutral" cards (light grey in color) that are not part of any faction. A card may only be played if a domain with that faction attached is drained (neutral cards can be paid for using any faction).
The Call of Cthulhu card game is currently produced in the form of a core set, featuring cards from 7 factions, neutral cards, story cards, success/wound tokens, a full-colour manual, a game board, and Cthulhu-shaped domain markers. (The 8th faction, Order of the Silver Twilight, does not appear in the core set.) The game is ready to play and decks can be made quickly by combining cards from two of the factions along with several neutral cards.
Older products may still be available from retailers, though these cards have black borders and different backs. Official tournaments so far have been "white border only", so it is not necessary to chase down the older cards. The only reasons to do so are for fun or to complete a collection, though if intended for play, sleeves are required to disguise the different backs.
Arkham Edition and Eldritch Edition also included "Premium Starter Sets" that contain two playable decks, primarily consisting of reprints from the normal sets, and a series of promo cards given as attendance awards for participating in official tournaments.
Each booster pack contains 11 cards (including 3 'uncommon' and 1 'rare'). In addition, the Arkham and Eldritch base sets offered starter sets with fixed contents, designed to introduce players to the game.
In May 2006, Fantasy Flight Games announced their decision to cease releasing cards in a CCG format, and to instead begin releasing smaller sets of cards as single decks with fixed contents in the LCG format. These "Asylum Packs" would be released once-a-month, and were initially designed to be compatible with the CCG cards. Released approximately once a month, these expansions were designed to increase the players' card pool in a balanced and affordable way. Three copies of twenty new cards are introduced in each pack, for a total of 60 cards. The initial printings of the sets included varying quantities of each card to echo the rare, uncommon, and common rarities of the original game, and this distribution may still be found in some out-of-print packs. Casual gamers can play using a single core set and have the option of using supplemental packs if they want to.
The Asylum Packs proved to be very popular, encouraging Fantasy Flight to convert the entire game into the LCG format. On February 5, 2008, Fantasy Flight announced that they would be publishing a new "Core Set" of cards in October 2008, incompatible with the original CCG cards, and that two additional Asylum Packs, The Mountains of Madness and Ancient Horrors, would be published to follow the existing Asylum Packs and complete the first cycle, "Forgotten Lore"; all six packs were reprinted in 2011 as pieces of a unified set, with a single set icon and continuous numbering. Fantasy Flight continued printing monthly Asylum Packs, arranged into six-piece cycles, for several years.
In July 2012, Fantasy Flight announced that they would switch to a new distribution model: instead of the near-monthly Asylum Packs, there would be one 165-card deluxe expansion every four months, beginning with Seekers of Knowledge. [4]
In May 2006, as a special promotion, copies of the Yithian deck were handed out to tournament organisers. The Yithian deck was a purposely unbalanced deck, ignoring normal deck-building rules and featuring overpowered cards representing Yithians. Since these cards are so overpowered, they are illegal in normal tournament play. This Yithian Tournament had the following special rules:
The Yithian Deck consists of the following promo cards:
The winners of the Call of Cthulhu World Championship are invited to design a card that is released within the other products. These cards usually have a high power level, and the art features the likeness of the person that designed it. A number of these cards depict Tom Capor's character, the Archmage Magnus Arcanis.
Card | Tournament | Player | Artist | Appears in |
Assistant to Dr. West | 2005 Worlds | Gregory Gan Pittsburgh, PA | Patrick McEvoy | Forgotten Cities expansion |
Mentor to Vaughn | 2006 Worlds | Christopher Long State College, PA | Patrick McEvoy | Kingsport Dreams asylum pack |
Descendant of Eibon | 2007 Worlds | James Black Pittsburgh, PA | Henning Ludvigsen | The Terror of the Tides asylum pack |
Harry Houdini | 2008 Worlds | Scott Ferguson | Tony Foti | The Cacophony asylum pack |
The Mage Known as Magnus | 2009 Worlds | Tom Capor | Henning Ludvigsen | That Which Consumes asylum pack |
Hall of Champions | 2010 Worlds | Tom Capor | Tiziano Baracchi | Written and Bound asylum pack |
The Festival | 2011 Lieges | Graham Hill | Tiziano Baracchi | The Key and the Gate expansion |
The Mage's Machinations | 2011 Worlds | Tom Capor | Tiziano Baracchi | Terror in Venice expansion |
Thaumaturgical Insight | 2012 Nationals | Tom Capor | Damon Westenhofer | The Mark of Madness expansion |
The Archmage, Arcanis | 2012 Worlds | Tom Capor | Mark Behm | The Mark of Madness expansion |
The Archmage's Attaché | 2013 Nationals | Tom Capor | Tiziano Baracchi | The Thousand Young expansion |
Jeremiah Kirby | 2013 Worlds | Jeremy Zwirn | Romana Kendelic | The Thousand Young expansion |
Seer of the Gate | 2014 Worlds | Jeremy Zwirn | Jarreau Wimberly | The Mark of Madness expansion |
A New Day | 2015 Worlds | Tom Capor | Adam Schumpert | Given out as gifts during various events [9] |
Also depicts Tom Capor's gaming group of Jon Lekse, Selene Parkhurst, and Rhett Jenkins |
On December 18, 2012, Fantasy Flight announced retailer-incentive "Game Night Kits", meant to serve as demo kits and encourage new players to get into the series. The kits include alternate art versions of existing cards to be used as prizes, as well as a unique deck box, promotional poster, and two sets of specialized wound tokens. [10]
Fantasy Flight Games have set up the Servitor program to help tournament organizers by giving tournament support, like promo cards, Sanity Certificates and access to special promotional items like the Yithian Deck, to give away as prizes.
Older products in the line come with Sanity Points on the packaging, which range from 1 Sanity Point on boosters, to 5 on Asylum packs. Servitors are given Sanity Certificates to hand out to tournament winners. These Sanity Points could be redeemed until June 30, 2008 [11] for items like promo cards or T-shirts.
On the September 22, 2015, it was announced that Fantasy Flight Games would cease all tournament support and stop developing new expansions after the 2015 World Championship. The Mark of Madness expansion, focusing on Hastur, was the last expansion, completing a cycle of expansions for all 8 factions. In total the game had 10 deluxe box expansions and 7 cycles of 6 asylum packs through the years. Fantasy Flight Games announced that they will keep the ability to reprint already released expansions on demand.
Call of Cthulhu is a horror fiction role-playing game based on H. P. Lovecraft's story of the same name and the associated Cthulhu Mythos. The game, often abbreviated as CoC, is published by Chaosium; it was first released in 1981 and is in its seventh edition, with licensed foreign language editions available as well. Its game system is based on Chaosium's Basic Role-Playing (BRP) with additions for the horror genre. These include special rules for sanity and luck.
Netrunner is an out-of-print collectible card game (CCG) designed by Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic: The Gathering. It was published by Wizards of the Coast and introduced in April 1996. The game took place in the setting for the Cyberpunk 2020 role-playing game (RPG), but it also drew from the broader cyberpunk genre.
The Babylon 5 Collectible Card Game is an out-of-print collectible card game set in the Babylon 5 universe. The game is ideally set for 4-5 players but can be played with a minimum of two players up to as many as 20 if using multiple Non-Aligned Factions and Home Factions. This CCG is distinct from most others of the genre for being specifically designed to be played by more than two players. The gameplay tends to have strong political elements encouraging significant player interaction aka "table talk" which is appropriate for a game based on a series which featured such a strong element of political intrigue. During its six-year existence under the Precedence Entertainment banner it released two core sets, five expansions sets and one revision set. There were two World Championships during that time. The game still continues to have a cult following as further expansions were made available online.
A Game of Thrones: The Card Game is an out-of-print collectible card game produced by Fantasy Flight Games. It is based on A Song of Ice and Fire, a series of novels written by George R. R. Martin. The first set was Westeros Edition and was released in August 2002. It has since won two Origins Awards. The game's primary designer is Eric Lang, the lead developer is Nate French, with Damon Stone serving as associate designer.
Arkham Horror is a cooperative adventure board game designed by Richard Launius, originally published in 1987 by Chaosium. The game is based on Chaosium's roleplaying game Call of Cthulhu, which is set in the Cthulhu mythos of H.P. Lovecraft and other horror writers. The game's second edition was released by Fantasy Flight Games in 2005, with a third edition in 2018.
Shadowfist was created by Robin Laws and Jose Garcia. It was released in June 1995 as a collectible card game (CCG), but was shifted to a fixed distribution of cards as of 2013. It shares the same background as the Feng Shui, a role-playing game created by Laws and Garcia and released the following year. In September 2018 ownership of Shadowfist switched to Vetusta Games.
Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) is a game developer based in Roseville, Minnesota, United States, that creates and publishes role-playing, board, card, and dice games. As of 2014, it is a division of Asmodee North America.
Blue Moon is a German collectible card game (CCG) designed by Reiner Knizia and published by Kosmos and Fantasy Flight Games in 2004.
Mythos is an out-of-print collectible card game published by Chaosium. It is based on the Cthulhu Mythos stories of the horror author H. P. Lovecraft, as well as on Chaosium's own Call of Cthulhu role-playing game.
Battlestar Galactica Collectible Card Game is an out-of-print collectible card game based on the Battlestar Galactica science fiction media franchise. The game, published by WizKids, saw first release in May 2006 and was officially canceled in March 2007.
A collectible card game (CCG), also called a trading card game (TCG) among other names, is a type of card game that mixes strategic deck building elements with features of trading cards. It was introduced with Magic: The Gathering in 1993.
Warhammer: Invasion is a Living Card Game (LCG) designed by Eric M. Lang and produced by Fantasy Flight Games in 2009, set in the Warhammer Fantasy universe. Like Fantasy Flight's other LCGs, Invasion is sold as a core set, which can be played on its own, or built upon with expansion packs. Each pack has a fixed set of 3 copies each of 20 cards. There are six factions in Invasion: Dwarves, Empire, Orcs, Chaos, High Elves, and Dark Elves. The first four have decks in the core set, while the elves' decks are available in the Assault on Ulthuan expansion.
Android: Netrunner is an Expandable Card Game (ECG) produced by Null Signal Games, previously by Fantasy Flight Games. It is a two-player game set in the dystopian future of the Android universe. Each game is played as a battle between a megacorporation and a hacker ("runner") in a duel to take control of data. It is based on Richard Garfield's Netrunner collectible card game, produced by Wizards of the Coast in 1996.
Elder Sign is a cooperative card and dice game, based on the Cthulhu Mythos of horror writer H.P. Lovecraft and Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game. It is published by Fantasy Flight Games, which also produces the Cthulhu Mythos games Arkham Horror, Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game, Mansions of Madness, and Eldritch Horror.
Mansions of Madness is a tabletop strategy game designed by Corey Konieczka and published by Fantasy Flight Games in 2011. Players explore a locale filled with Lovecraftian horrors and solve a mystery.
Star Wars: The Card Game is a Living Card Game (LCG) produced by Fantasy Flight Games. It is a two-player card game set in the Star Wars universe. It puts one player in command of the light side of the Force, and one player in command of the dark side of the Force. The Balance of the Force expansion allows multi-player games. The game is set within the time-frame of the original Star Wars trilogy.
The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game is a non-collectible customizable card game produced by Fantasy Flight Games. As part of the Living Card Game (LCG) genre, it is a cooperative and strategic card game set in Middle-earth, a fantasy world featured in literary works by J. R. R. Tolkien, including The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Its digital adaptation, titled The Lord of the Rings: Adventure Card Game, is published by Asmodee Digital for cross-platform play on Microsoft Windows, macOS, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, being the "first ever digital LCG".
The My Little Pony Collectible Card Game is a two-player collectible card game based on the animated television series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. It is produced by Enterplay LLC under license from Hasbro, and follows from Enterplay's previous work to produce a trading card series based on the same show.
Arkham Horror: The Card Game is a cooperative living card game produced by Fantasy Flight Games. It is set in the universe of Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game which is itself based on the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft and other cosmic horror writers. The title refers to Lovecraft's fictional town of Arkham, Massachusetts which is mentioned in many Mythos stories.
Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game is a Living Card Game (LCG) produced by Fantasy Flight Games (FFG). It is a two-player game set in the world of Rokugan. During the game, players take on the leadership of one of the Great Clans which define Rokugani society, and they are cast into conflict against another clan. The conflicts will decide the future of Rokugan. The game is an iteration of the Legend of the Five Rings collectible card game, produced by Alderac Entertainment Group in 1995. On 17 February 2021, FFG announced the completion of the game, Under Fu Leng’s Shadow being the last pack, released in June 2021.