What Does Rotation Mean for Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game?

In 2014, Fantasy Flight Games’ Living Card Game® (LCG) category is the strongest it has ever been, and the continued success of Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game, our second longest-running LCG, is a big part of the reason.

Since we first introduced the LCG model in 2008, we have learned much about how these games function differently than collectible card games, and we have taken many steps to apply the lessons we’ve learned. We have established the standard that our monthly expansion packs offer a complete playset of each new card within them. We have grown our Organized Play programs, introducing Restricted lists when necessary to balance the evolving metagames. And we have learned that each of our LCGs works best with its own publication model; specifically, since we have limited our expansions for Call of Cthulhu to fewer, larger deluxe expansions, the game and its audience have enjoyed continual growth.

In fact, fans of Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game have much to which they can look forward. In addition to future expansions, Necronomicon Draft Starters and Draft Packs will soon make Call of Cthulhu Draft Play a reality, and the continued growth of FFG’s in-house manufacturing means that we will soon be able to reprint our old cycles of Asylum Packs, starting with the Summons of the Deep cycle.

Rotation and Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game

Recently, early attendees of our 2014 FFG World Championship Weekend had the opportunity to join the leaders of our LCG department for an LCG State of the Union address. In it, we acknowledged the category’s growth and its increased importance to Fantasy Flight Games as a key business category. However, in order to ensure that our LCGs continue to grow and remain healthy, we also looked toward the future. We realized that our LCGs would suffer if we were to let them continue to grow unchecked, so we decided to introduce rotation to our competitive card games.

For more about rotation and why we’re introducing it to our LCGs, see the article, “A New Stage of Growth.”

Our new rotation policy dictates that each game’s standard play environment consists of the game’s Core Set, its deluxe expansions, and its five to seven latest cycles of monthly expansion packs. Because LCG rotation only retires the oldest cycle of monthly expansions after the first pack of the eighth cycle is introduced to the game, there will be no rotation for Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game.

There are seven cycles of Asylum Packs for Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game, and we have no plans to add more. The game has moved to a model where it now grows only with deluxe expansions, and this model has proved successful for the game. Accordingly, there will be no eighth cycle of Asylum Packs to retire the Summons of the Deep cycle, and all cards in the current Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game card pool will continue to remain available for standard play.

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