Announcing the Eighth Deluxe Expansion for Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game

“It was here that an alliance of Federal inspectors and police, Malone with them, entered the case.”
    –H.P. Lovecraft, The Horror at Red Hook

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce the upcoming release of For the Greater Good, the eighth deluxe expansion for Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game!

The world of Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game is full of strange and horrifying creatures, many of which are both evil and powerful in measures beyond human comprehension. Some of these lurk in other dimensions, just beyond the boundaries between our realm and theirs, waiting for any opportunity to enter our world and wreak havoc. Others walk among us, disguised and evil, carefully targeting prey and sacrifices to forward their dark masters’ hideous intents.

Still, the vast bulk of human knows nothing of these entities, nor of the sinister cults that spring up around them. Instead, they live in blissful ignorance, shielded by the efforts of a handful of government agents and holy orders who have dedicated themselves to rooting out these evils and purging them. For their constant vigilance, these heroic individuals seek no recognition. They won’t even risk drawing attention to their struggles because to do so would be to expose human civilization to the maddening realization that we are threatened on all sides in a universe that doesn’t care. Thus, they commit themselves to their thankless task, placing themselves forever in harm’s way, all For the Greater Good.

With 165 new cards (three copies each of fifty-five different cards), For the Greater Good lends new strength to the Agency, its Investigators, Government officials, and secret Hunters. You’ll find a host of new characters, new synergies between Agency subtypes, new gear, and powerful effects designed to renew the authority of law and order in a world tormented by burgeoning chaos. Moreover, as your Agency characters pursue their leads to all ends of the earth, you’ll uncover several new conspiracies, each of which, if investigated, may help you safeguard humanity’s future.

For the Good of Humanity

There are dozens of Government characters in Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game. In fact, it’s among the game’s most populous subtypes; however, there has historically been very little synergy between these Government characters. They suffered from poor communication between their different departments.

In For the Greater Good, this changes.

Of the expansion’s twenty new Agency characters, nearly half bear the Government subtype. More important, though, is the number of cards that key off of it. By granting an Arcane icon to every Government character, the Military Attaché (For the Greater Good, 15) takes a significant step to compensate for one of the Agency’s notable weaknesses. Then, logistical genius Lt. Wilson Stewart (For the Greater Good, 16) helps you get your Government characters into play more quickly, and By the Book (For the Greater Good, 22) supports your Government efforts by attaching to a story and greatly limiting the impact of any non-Government character committed to it.

Meanwhile, another Government character, The Foundation (For the Greater Good, 20), arrives to oversee your efforts. It also introduces a new ability, shared by several of the expansion’s cards, that allows you to drain multiple domains to pay its cost. Once in play, The Foundation offers your agents an almost unprecedented measure of protection, allowing you to pay one to cancel any effect that would target one or more of your Agency characters.

All told, the Government cards from For the Greater Good provide a new unity of purpose and direction that promise to make the Government subtype one of the game’s most potent.

Those Whom the Monsters Fear

Even as it expands and empowers the Government subtype, For the Greater Good introduces another subtype, Hunter.

If the Government characters’ efforts represent the most efficient tactics that all the various police, military officers, and federal agents can employ, then it’s best to say that methods the Agency’s Hunters employ are far less traditional. Guided by both science and faith, Hunters bring with them an array of miraculous abilities that alter the game’s basic tenets.

For example, the Loyal and Heroic Hunter Grete Wagner-Blackwood (For the Greater Good, 12) gains strength from the purity of her faith. Those lacking a similar measure of Loyal devotion to their causes simply cannot face her gaze and stand against her; they lose the strength of all their struggle icons, and their skills fail them, as well. Because her ability is an ongoing passive effect, it cannot be cancelled, and that means even if your opponent adds struggles or changes the nature of their resolution, Grete Wagner-Blackwood will not be dissuaded from her task.

Similarly, other Hunters thwart other of your opponent’s expectations. Some can decide whether or not they’ll uncommit from stories, some can disrupt effects that target your characters, and others simply render your Hunters immune to your opponent’s triggered effects. With such effects, these Hunters quickly emerge from For the Greater Good as a potent and thematic set of characters around which you’ll be able to build a wide variety of new deck types.

The Global Network

Even though the Agency, its new characters, and its new equipment are the undisputed stars of For the Greater Good, the expansion also contains a treasure trove of new characters and support cards that the game’s other factions may use.

For those forces that might not be inclined to pursue the causes of law and order, these new characters and supports represent the seeds of potential new strategies and deck ideas, especially geared toward players who like warping the standard resolution of icon struggles at stories.

In Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game, you and your opponent compete to win stories. These stories can represent the unearthing of ancient knowledge, the conquest of an important location, or the acquisition of a powerful relic. To win a story, you need to earn five success tokens, but your efforts to win these success tokens comes with a risk: Your opponent can send characters to challenge those you commit to a story, possibly driving them mad or wounding them.

In For the Greater Good, each of the game’s eight factions gain inexpensive support cards that you can attach to a story to tilt the odds of its resolution not-so-subtly in your favor. Combined with a variety of powerful new characters, including a new three-cost Ancient One, these attachments allow you to play to your strengths even as they make the game more dynamic and horrifying.

Face to Face with the Darkness

“Morgan uncased the big-game rifle on which he relied despite his colleague’s warnings that no material weapon would be of help.”
    –H.P. Lovecraft, The Dunwich Horror

The elder horrors of Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game may be beings beyond the scope of bullets, knives, and dynamite, but don’t tell that to the Hunters and Government agents of For the Greater Good. Someone has to protect humanity from the forces that assail it, and they are willing to do whatever it takes. Moreover, with the strength of their convictions and their new leadership, they just might succeed!

Polish your badges, grab your shotguns, and deputize the bravest and best of all the people close to you. Humanity needs all the help it can get…

For the Greater Good is scheduled to arrive at retailers in the first quarter of 2015!

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