FFG has made 2 decks of 27 cards each plus 7 sample story cards.  But isn't 27 cards a little... small, for such decks?

I'm confused about where you have found these "demo decks".    Please advise.

If you have the coreset, the rulebook recommends choosing and adding together TWO factions plus common cards to make a deck. 

Chick

No I don't have any sets as yet, since I want to have a feel first before buying the actual thing.  There is a downloadable, printable set with 7 story cards and 27 card decks each (Agency/Misk vs Cthulhu/Yog-Sothoth) in the Cthulhu LCG site in this site, the support section.

These decks are small, and questionably playable. But they were released long ago back  before the age of CoC CCG even came out. They're there just to give someone who's interested in the game just enoguh of a taste to want to get into it. Not really enough to use as an "at home" version of the game.

www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/coc/support/CoCdemodecks.pdf

The Game of Thrones demo decks were similar, something like 30 cards each, which I believe also included the 5 Plot Cards. They are not meant to be for a full game. These demo decks are designed to give players a feel for the game before deciding to spend money on it.

This takes me back several years.  The decks available for download as a .pdf actually pre-date the release of the very first edition of Call of Cthulhu CCG.  If you look carefully, you'll see phrases like "cannot go insane" because they hadn't yet finalised keywords such as "Willpower" which made it into the real game.  Those cards simply represent the core concepts of the game for demonstration and learning purposes only.

There also exist "Demo Decks" with legal-to-play cards which were available in Servitor kits.  They were slightly larger, had a different selection of seven stories, and were a bit better balanced.  Again, they were not tournament-legal as decks, but were very useful tools to introduce new players to the core concepts and structure of the game before bringing in some of the more complex mechanics found in most "real" decks.

Does that kind of answer your question?

I just figured, while they do have 27 cards each, one of the stories shuffles all discarded cards back into the decks.  This could make the total cards in the decks past 40.

Yes, but that's a story effect - not an inherent part of the deck.   A deck needs 50 cards to be legal (40 for certain forms of tournament), so the 27-card 'decks' are really just demonstration and learning tools.

For the demo decks, do you shuffle and deal randomly to create each player's deck?...

Each player should get two factions to play with. I suppose you could choose whichever two factions each player wanted, but it's intended to be as follows:

Player One: Agency (Blue) and Miskatonic (Yellow)

Player Two: Cthulhu (Green) and Yog-Sothoth (Purple)

and a Story deck to be used between both players

The Agency and Misk U. got their cards in one paper

Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth got their cards in one paper

So most likely those are the deck combinations

The download demo deck was great! It played well too. Played as is it may not satisfy some. It doesn't qualify for anything, but the decks play well and have internal tactics inherent to this limited set. It's the first Call of Cthulhu Collectible Card Game playable decks released, ever. That's something.  A couple cards you will only see in the demo deck . Muzar Nulus is right. Those cards are way back. They don't have subtitles. They don't have Willpower. I think the Strangle Librarian acted as Expedition Leader. Play fifty per deck if you need to strick with some normalcy.  Format the printing large and put them in stiff sleeves. Bring them to a tournament and show it to the servitor. The rest will be history. The servitor humored the kid and let him play, but he was Mutant Spawn, soft and cuddly. And he took that tournament and the participants down with him into the sea, prizes and all. ia!

Hi Folks,

I've never played a CCG/LCG before so I've just downloaded the demo decks, they make reference to some Playtest Rules that need to be downloaded too! Alas, I can't find these anywhere...

Having read this thread I assume these demo decks are as old as time itself and I presume the Playtest Rules have vanished into the ether in aeons past...

I don't suppose anyone would have a copy of them would they?!?

Cheers!

Simon

I'm not sure about the old playtest rules, but if you read the core set rules on the support page it should cover everything for you. It might be a bit more expansive than needed for the demo decks, but should work just fine.

Cool beans, thanks. We'll give that a whirl!