The awesome quest had begun when West and I were students at the Miskatonic University Medical School in Arkham.
    –H.P. Lovecraft, Herbert West – Reanimator

Seekers of Knowledge is the third deluxe expansion for Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game . Its 165 cards (three copies each of fifty-five individual cards) lend new strength to Miskatonic University, bolstering existing strategies, creating new synergies, and introducing a host of characters that represent the University’s best incoming class since the Core Set .

Seekers of Knowledge is also the first expansion in the new distribution model for Call of Cthulhu , and you can read more about the game’s shift from smaller, monthly releases to regular, larger expansions in our announcement of the expansion .

The Price of Knowledge

Throughout the years, Miskatonic University has managed to keep the cost of enrollment to a minimum, but many of its best students (and even faculty) have paid heavy costs of other sorts, including physical injury, strained sanity, and even death. The “nerds” (as they are affectionately dubbed) have long been the faction in Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game with the least Terror and Combat icons, making it difficult for them to fight their way through to the Arcane and Investigation struggles at which they excel.

Seekers of Knowledge represents a dramatic shift in the University’s recruiting policies. While the nerds still excel at the latter struggles, many of the expansion’s new characters provide broad, theme-based support for your Miskatonic characters. For example, the Board of Trustees ( Seekers of Knowledge , 1) either grants Willpower to all your Students or Toughness +1 to all your Faculty .

The addition of several new Explorer characters, and some helpful support cards, further enhances Miskatonic University’s ability to field some rugged individuals at the stories where Willpower and Toughness are most badly needed. Brette Wulffsen ( Seekers of Knowledge , 5) may be nothing but trouble, but she’s the sort of troublemaker that may help Miskatonic University’s finest investigators fight their way past a band of cultists in order to explore the secrets the cultists hoped to hide in the shadows forever.

Seekers of Knowledge doesn’t change Miskatonic University’s core mission or identity, but its incoming class can take heart in the fact that the new Board of Trustees and Faculty have helped lower the unspoken costs of admission.

Portents of Doom

Even as the University takes measures to better protect its brightest minds, those minds wander farther afield in search of knowledge. In Seekers of Knowledge , the University uncovers several Lost Civilizations and a host of new Prophecies to decode.

Seekers of Knowledge introduces four Lost Civilization support cards to Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game . Inexpensive and exotic, these Lost Civilizations hint at historical secrets of ruin and destruction that may shed light on humanity’s current struggles. Like Atlantis ( Seekers of Knowledge , 25), they can each exhaust for responses or actions that can aid Miskatonic decks designed to stray far from home, and Explorers far from Arkham will be thankful for their experiences within these strange and desolate places.

Meanwhile, University staff and students assigned to study these forgotten civilizations may also chance upon the expansion’s new Prophecies . In Seekers of Knowledge , each faction receives one of these mysterious new portents. How fully they can benefit from the knowledge of these new events, though, depends how well they can make sense of them. Each Prophecy plays during any player’s draw phase and sits atop your deck faceup until the trigger condition is met. Then, like A Vörös Hal’l Jön ( Seekers of Knowledge , 29), it provides a boost tailored to suit your faction’s strengths or needs.

As players look to these new Prophecies for guidance, they’re certain to find wrinkles and inconsistencies in how they are translated and deciphered. After all, several of them trigger off effects under your opponent’s control, forcing your opponent to choose from options presented by faceup information like that of A Vörös Hal’l Jön: will he play for the advantage he gains in destroying your characters, or will he choose not to destroy your characters in order to prevent you from taking two cards of your choice into hand? In either situation, it’s better to be forearmed with the knowledge of your Prophecy than to wander blindly into the game’s maddening struggles!

More Efficient Techniques…Just in Time!

Seekers of Knowledge gives Miskatonic University a tremendous boost, making them far more competitive against the game’s other factions, and it does so just in time…

Also debuting in Seekers of Knowledge are five Ancient Ones , three Servitors , and powerful characters for each of the other factions. These characters can easily supplement existing strategies, or they can serve as the centerpieces of exciting new deck designs. Either way, they serve to ensure that no faction walks away from Seekers of Knowledge empty-handed. Though Miskatonic University gets the expansion’s biggest infusion of talent, these characters remind us that it’s not how much talent you have in the classroom that counts, but out in the field, involved in the struggles to decide the fate of the world.

Can Miskatonic University’s new class translate their excellent new theories to success in the field? How well are its faculty preparing its students for success? The new Board of Trustees seems dedicated toward promoting life experience as much as abstract theory, but will they be able to implement their policies before the world is devoured? These questions and others are addressed by the 165 cards (three copies each of fifty-five individual cards) in Seekers of Knowledge !