Fantasy Flight Games

Available Now: March 20

Published 20 March 2026 | Arkham Horror: The Card Game

Available Now: March 20

Arkham Horror: The Card Game Core Set is Now Available

Check out the latest product from Fantasy Flight Games, now available in the United States at your local retailer or online through our web store!

Arkham Horror: The Card Game Core Set

The world has changed. The page has turned. And now, a new chapter awaits.

Introducing the newest core set for Arkham Horror: The Card Game! Serving simultaneously as both a continuation and a fresh starting point, this new core set heralds the beginning of Chapter Two for the game. Taking place several months after the city of Arkham suffered a devastating calamity, this box provides a new introductory campaign, five mechanically-new investigators, and a fresh card pool to expand your collection—or start a new one!

Whether you’re an Arkham Horror veteran or a newcomer looking to get into the game, you won’t want to miss out on this new core set. This core set will replace the Revised Core Set from 2021 and become the new evergreen core experience for the game going forward. That said, all player content in this box is fully compatible with all previously-released Arkham Horror: The Card Game products—it is still the same game, after all!

You can pick up your own copy of Arkham Horror: The Card Game (AHC100) at your local retailer today!*

*Available now in select markets. To find updates on this product's release in your territory, please follow this link.

Discuss this article
in our forums!

Hidden Truths

Published 18 March 2026 | Arkham Horror: The Card Game

Hidden Truths

Announcing the Release of the Arkham Grimoire

Greetings, investigators!

After digging through the long-forgotten archives of Orne Library, the Arkham Horror: The Card Game design team is pleased to present the Arkham Grimoire. This is a collection of guidelines, player aids, and comprehensive rulings that aims to cover all known situations in the game. The Grimoire contains detailed information pertaining to advanced topics, such as the interpretation of card text, the resolution of timing conflicts, frequently asked questions, and all keywords and other rules in the game. It will be maintained online and updated regularly as new cards are introduced and new interactions are discovered. The previous Chapter One Rules Reference and FAQ will remain online for legacy content, but the Arkham Grimoire is intended to be the definitive resource for all current and future rules clarifications, FAQs, and other reference materials.

The first part of the Grimoire contains an extensive glossary with various terms, rules, and keywords. It is followed by detailed timing charts for setup and gameplay, along with diagrams for card anatomy and each card type. Expanded rules for campaign play and deck customization can also be found here, along with rules for standalone play.

The back half of the Grimoire contains several familiar sections from the Chapter One FAQ. Here, players can find a list of errata and card clarifications, frequently asked questions, and references for set (and now scenario) icons. A number of previous clarifications and/or rulings from the old Chapter One FAQ have also been incorporated as official rules in Chapter Two.

This section also contains the new list of “modified reprints.” Longtime players may recognize a handful of player cards that have returned to the card pool from Chapter One products, some of which are now sporting modified and/or tweaked abilities. Some of these changes were made in the interest of rebalancing certain card types, such as with Melee weapons like Machete. Others, such as core skill cards like Perception or Manual Dexterity, have received new art and mechanical text that slightly changes the card's function while retaining its classic identity. If players wish to play in the Legacy environment with both Chapter One and Chapter Two products, they cannot mix and match a reprint with its previous iteration; only one version of each of these cards may be used in a player's deck.

The Arkham Grimoire also presents official guidelines on how to play within the game’s Current, Limited, and Legacy environments. These environments determine the card pool from which players will assemble their decks and offer a variety of different play experiences for both new and returning players to explore. A list of products that compose the Current environment can be found here, and this list will be updated regularly as new products are released.

Finally, optional rules variants such as the Taboo List, Ultimatums, and Boons have been incorporated into the Grimoire as well. While the design team has not included any taboos in this initial release, this optional list will eventually include adjustments to card abilities and power levels as the game evolves and new, strange, and daemoniac harmonies emerge between cards in the current environment.

Read Or Die

With the Arkham Grimoire at your side, you will be equipped to take on any number of terrors, timing questions, card interactions, and unknown keywords. Happy investigating, and good luck!

Written by the Arkham Horror: The Card Game Design Team

Discuss this article
in our forums!

FFG Live in March

Published 3 March 2026 | Star Wars: Unlimited

FFG Live in March

Announcing the FFG Livestreams for March 2026

It's FFG Live! Join us this month for more awesome livestreams for our current and upcoming games and expansions. Read on for more information on what livestreams you can look forward to this month!

March 4 at 1 PM CST

Star Wars™: Unlimited – Meta Check-In

DISCUSSION

With the launch of A Lawless Time at the end of this week, it’s time to take a look where the game currently sits before its first instance of rotation. Join Jack Broomell and the Star Wars: Unlimited design team as they do a check-in on the current metagame before the set launches, and also discuss what the first set of the Eternal format will look like!

Check out the stream here!

March 6 at 9 AM CST

Star Wars: Unlimited – A Lawless Time Launch Day

GAMEPLAY & DISCUSSION

It’s launch day for A Lawless Time! Join various members of the FFG team as they celebrate the release of Star Wars: Unlimited’s latest set. Tune in for some gameplay (including a first look at the Eternal format in action), live chats, and more!

Check out the stream here!

March 11 at 1 PM CST

Star Wars: Unlimited – A Lawless Time Premier Gameplay

GAMEPLAY

Players around the world are excited for A Lawless Time, and we at FFG are no exception! Join members of the team as they sit down and play some games with their favorite post-rotation Premier decks.

Check out the stream here!

March 18 at 1 PM CST

Star Wars: Unlimited – A Lawless Time Eternal Gameplay

GAMEPLAY

A Lawless Time marks the first instance of rotation for Star Wars: Unlimited, and with it comes the launch of the Eternal format! Join members of the FFG team for our first dedicated Eternal livestream. Come cheer for your favorite team member to win as they show off the decks they can build with seven sets’ worth of cards.

Check out the stream here!

March 20 at 1 PM CST

Arkham Horror: The Card Game – Chapter Two Launch Day

GAMEPLAY & DISCUSSION

The release of Arkham Horror: The Card Game’s new core set is finally here! Join us in celebrating the launch of the new core set and the official start of Chapter Two with an afternoon of discussion and gameplay.

Check out the stream here!

March 25 at 1 PM CST

Star Wars: Unlimited – A Lawless Time Sectors and Regionals

PREVIEW & DISCUSSION

With the release of A Lawless Time comes a new season of Sector Qualifiers and Regional Championships. Join members of the Star Wars: Unlimited team for a first look at the amazing prizes you can compete for at these upcoming, high-level events!

Check out the stream here!

Discuss this article
in our forums!

Available Now: February 20

Published 20 February 2026 | Marvel Champions: The Card Game

Available Now: February 20

The Wonder Man Hero Pack and Hercules Hero Pack are Now Available

Check out the latest product from Fantasy Flight Games, now available in the United States at your local retailer or online through our web store!

Wonder Man

Simon Williams, the former industrial rival of Tony Stark turned superpowered movie star, first got his powers by agreeing to undergo an experiment crafted by the Masters of Evil. After meeting and subsequently being defeated by the Avengers, he changed his ways and became a consistent, part-time member of the team. Now, the flashy hero Wonder Man blasts into your games of Marvel Champions: The Card Game! With his ionic physiology allowing him to manipulate energy in incredible ways, Wonder Man is a unique hero and a fantastic addition to any team. In this hero pack, you will find Wonder Man, his sixteen signature cards, and an assortment of Justice cards—with a mix of other aspects—inviting you to thwart the enemy’s schemes.

Anyone looking to fight for their ideals will want to add the Wonder Man Hero Pack to their collection! This expansion comes with a 40-card pre-built deck, giving you the chance to start playing from the moment you open the box.

Not a standalone expansion. A copy of the Marvel Champions: The Card Game core set is required to play.

You can pick up your own copy of Wonder Man (MC58) at your local retailer today!*

Hercules

He is a man known by many names. Born Alcaeus, renamed Herakles, then—to distance himself from Hera—he was renamed again to Hercules. Now, his friends just call him Herc. This son of Zeus has had a tumultuous relationship with Olympus throughout his long life; sometimes he is their glory, other times their disgrace. But no matter what, there are few problems that he doesn’t first try to solve with his immense, godlike strength. Now, the mighty hero Hercules muscles into your games of Marvel Champions: The Card Game! With his immense strength and his ability to take on herculean tasks in exchange for mighty rewards, Hercules is a unique and powerful hero worthy of the fame his name brings. In this hero pack, you’ll find Hercules, his fifteen signature cards, his special side decks of gifts and labors, and a full assortment of Leadership cards inviting you to lead his fellow Avengers into battle.

Anyone looking to fight for their ideals will want to add the Hercules Hero Pack to their collection! This expansion comes with a 40-card pre-built deck, giving you the chance to start playing from the moment you open the box.

Not a standalone expansion. A copy of the Marvel Champions: The Card Game core set is required to play.

You can pick up your own copy of Hercules (MC59) at your local retailer today!*

Discuss this article
in our forums!

Turning the Page

Published 19 February 2026 | Arkham Horror: The Card Game

Turning the Page

A New FAQ for Arkham Horror: The Card Game is Now Available

Welcome back, intrepid investigators!

Everything seems charged with anticipation as Chapter Two approaches. There’s a warmth in the air, a change in the wind, and Arkham faces a bright new dawn. Because it’s full of hope, naturally. Not because it’s all ablaze.

Not yet, at least.

But as we turn the page and begin a new chapter, it only seems fitting to look back to whence we came and celebrate our history with FAQ 2.5: The Legacy Edition! This updated FAQ includes new errata, rulings, taboos, and even some exciting new ultimatums to spice up your play as you prepare for what’s coming next.

Come with us, and let’s see what secrets Chapter One still has tucked away for new and old players alike!

Errata

The design team works tirelessly to seal the breaches in reality—or at least in Arkham Horror: The Card Game—before they ever reach the eyes of the general public. But on those occasions where the Ancient Ones’ machinations still manage to slip past us, we turn to the errata list to set the record straight and ensure all your adventures continue to unfold as intended.

First, we're digging back in time to the original core Rules Reference itself! The alpha and omega of Arkham Horror: The Card Game’s first decade needed a couple new details to account for our modern range of card abilities—and the mad scientists in our community! We’ve established a more thorough game identity for that ever-ambiguous phrase, “the collection,” and added protections against all the dark sorcery some folks have been trying to do with permanent cards.

Meanwhile, Agatha Crane has clearly been toying with forces beyond our ken; as printed, her signature Ocula Obscura (The Drowned City IE, 9) could seize total control of the chaos bag by repeatedly resolving and re-sealing the same numerical token. A new limitation on the device’s powers should keep it in line going forward.

(Note that the following paragraph contains light spoilers for The Dream-Eaters and The Drowned City Campaign Expansions.)

Finally, both Nyarlathotep and Cthulhu have been undermining players’ success in their respective campaigns, and it was time we put a stop to it. Dark Side of the Moon’s Moon-Beast Galley (The Dream-Eaters CE, 214) is now actually possible to escape unnoticed, and in Sepulchre of the Sleeper, your team’s artifacts will remain charged up when Cthulhu finally awakens Beneath the City (The Drowned City CE, 174).

As always, we are deeply grateful to the community for all your feedback and engagement with the game, helping us catch those wily bugs wherever they’re hiding! There truly is no substitute for the eyes and minds of thousands of devoted investigators.

Hm. That sounded less sinister in my head.

Rulings and Clarifications

We may be a bit late for the holidays, but nevertheless, this FAQ brings with it a veritable cornucopia of new and revamped rulings, ready to save you from the Grim Rule in a variety of situations!

There are far too many to list here, but highlights include ruling (1.32) on Costs and Restrictions during the Initiation Sequence, which finally clarifies just why Spectral Razor (The Dream-Eaters IE, 201) works the way we all think it does. The new version of (2.16) “Farthest from all investigators” should be faster and easier to apply during gameplay. And the new ruling (2.29) really gets into the weeds on Massive Enemy Attacks, making it clear just how good Daniela Reyes (Edge of the Earth IE, 1) is at shutting them down.

Memories of Another Life (The Drowned City IE, 125) also gets the entire ruling (2.28) to itself, because it seemed easier than continuing to answer a different rules question about the card every week. Even if you were a dog handler in a previous life, you can't materialize additional physical copies of Sled Dog (Edge of the Earth IE, 127) out of thin air. It was a noble effort, however, and great fun to watch some ambitious players try!

The Taboo List

Our goal with this update to the Taboo List was to leave the Chapter One cardpool, at least for the moment, in as polished a state as possible. While we did strike down some familiar overperformers, this also took the form of passing a loving hand over a few old friends and hopefully giving them a new lease on life as they transition into the Legacy and Limited environments.

Wither (The Circle Undone IE, 157 & 321) has long struggled to compete with its more successful sibling Sixth Sense (The Circle Undone IE, 158 & 322), not to mention the variety of other offensive spells in the cardpool. This fresh mutation offers new interactions with Bless and Curse, and higher-level withering even persists for the entire investigator phase. Give the new version a try; we're optimistic that Wither can carve out a new niche as a support spell!

In the world of chaining, Monster Slayer (The Dunwich Legacy IE, 300) has been by our side loyally ever since our first outing in Dunwich…but its high level tended to keep it from having a chance to shine. Unchaining it to 3xp will hopefully make it an easier commitment as a tech card for those enemies that just won’t stay down. On the other hand, the more recent show-offs Strong-Armed (The Feast of Hemlock Vale IE, 31) and Bum’s Rush (The Drowned City IE, 55) have received a +1xp slap on the wrist for proving a bit over the curve.

As for repeat offenders, the Rod of Carnamagos (The Feast of Hemlock Vale IE, 85 & 98) has been chained to bring it more in line with Mystic’s other token reveal options. Ravenous Myconid (Sentient Strain) (The Feast of Hemlock Vale IE, 59) has undergone a subtle mutation that weakens its protective capabilities and prevents it from using a 0-shroud location to counter the Mythos Phase entirely. Finally, players who used Spectral Shield (The Drowned City IE, 71) as a direct route to immortality for the low cost of 0xp will find that the spell now only triggers a more reasonable once per round.

This Message Will Self-Destruct

Perhaps the most dramatic addition to this Taboo List is the third and final entry on the Forbidden list for Chapter One: Burn After Reading (Edge of the Earth IE, 76)! And so soon after the last Forbidden card—clearly, we’ve gone mad with power!

In reality, Burn After Reading is an extremely fun card, but one which warps the intended function of many other aspects of the game around itself…sometimes in alarming ways. It has proven capable of opening strange rules loopholes, generating a slew of unintended card interactions, and even threatening the fundamental design space of the Taboo List itself! Burn After Reading is truly a cosmic threat, and one we felt could only be answered by allowing it to burn itself out.

Ultimatums, Boons, and Refractions

This FAQ’s update to the Ultimatums list codifies several popular and long-standing community house rules, as well as incorporating a few challenging Refractions from this year’s set of Designer Dares.

If you’re one of the many players who softens their random basic weakness via the classic “draw 3, cut 1, randomize” technique, the Boon of the Morrígan shows that the Phantom Queen has witnessed your meddling with fate…and approves!

On the other hand, those who see a dire challenge from the Ancient Ones even in the kindest corners of reality may already play with the Ultimatum of Malevolence. This variant is known by the community as “Stanhard,” a custom game difficulty that mixes the strategic flexibility of the Standard chaos bag with the brutality of Hard/Expert symbol token effects.

Our newest Refractions introduce whole new dimensions of difficulty for The Path to Carcosa, The Forgotten Age, and The Drowned City campaigns. Accept the Ultimatum of Spoilage to see your supplies dwindle perilously throughout your next excursion to R’lyeh. Take on the Ultimatum of Ambuscade, and any unwelcome intrusion into parts unknown will be met with deadly Serpent warriors behind every tree and stalagmite. And for those who venture back down the Path to Carcosa, the Ultimatum of the Brass Crown stretches out the long arm of the King even into our reality, threatening your investigators by threatening you, the player!

Go, then, and face these fresh horrors—if you dare!

Current, Legacy, and Limited Environments

Last, but most certainly not least, we’d like to thank everyone who engaged with the “beta” versions of our upcoming deckbuilding environments over the last year. We got some great insight into the Current, Legacy, and Limited environments, and we are looking forward to releasing the official versions soon alongside the Chapter Two core set! We also thought this would be a great place to clear up a couple of questions we’ve seen about the environments going forward.

First and foremost, the original Arkham Horror: The Card Game core set and investigator starter decks from Chapter One will not be included as the foundation of the Current and Limited cardpools in the final release. The official versions of these environments will list the Chapter Two core set and investigator decks as evergreen products instead, with the Chapter One core set and each investigator starter deck remaining viable options for your Limited pools, and a permanent part of Legacy.

As for the beta versions of the environments, those will be preserved for posterity via this FAQ release! If you’ve enjoyed deckbuilding and playing using these cardpools and would like to revisit a “Chapter One” variant of the various environments every once in a while, the rules for doing so will remain available in this document.

Sparks of a Fresh Flame

With all that and more awaiting you inside, we come to the end of the final FAQ for the first chapter of Arkham Horror: The Card Game. Chapter One has been an absolute joy to share with you all, both as designers and as fellow players, and we are beyond excited for you to experience everything we’re cooking up for the future!

We’ll see you all in Arkham very soon! In the meantime, it’s cold out there. You may want to light a fire for warmth…

Written by Josiah “Duke” Harrist, Nicholas Kory, A. Reid Bradshaw, and Alex Werner

Discuss this article
in our forums!

The Miskatonic Masquerade

Published 16 February 2026 | Arkham Horror: The Card Game

The Miskatonic Masquerade

Join Us for a Special Arkham Horror Celebration

In honor of our upcoming release of the new Arkham Horror: The Card Game core set, we're hosting an in-person launch party in Saint Paul, Minnesota at the wonderfully spooky (and surprisingly period appropriate) Wabasha Street Caves on the evening of April 4th. This event is intended to be a celebration of the things that make Arkham Horror the great game and setting that we believe them to be.

You will enjoy music inspired by the 1920s, food and drink, fortune telling, and haunted tours all set in an authentic speakeasy at the Wabasha Street Caves. Meet the designers of the game, collect the latest Arkham Horror promo cards, learn how to dance during the Age of Jazz, and indulge in the occult. The abyss beckons; will you answer?

This is a 21+ event.

Get your tickets before February 21^st to lock in early bird prices - Miskatonic Masquerade Tickets

Early bird tickets are $120 ($150 after).

Ticket purchase includes:

Game Demos
Designer signing
Dance lessons inspired by the 1920s
Haunted cave tour
Food and drink
Promotional items
Additional activities
- Costume Contest
- Tarot Reading
- Photo opportunities
- And much more!

Discuss this article
in our forums!

Ever Investigating

Published 12 February 2026 | Arkham Horror: The Card Game

Ever Investigating

Introducing the New Investigator Decks for Arkham Horror: The Card Game

As the threats of the Mythos only continue to grow, the city of Arkham needs as much help as it can get. With Chapter Two launching with the new core set in just a couple months, the five core investigators—Daniela Reyes, Joe Diamond, Trish Scarborough, Dexter Drake, and Isabelle Barnes—are certainly going to have their hands full.

Thankfully, they’re not alone in the struggle against the Mythos.

During our In-Flight Report back in November, we revealed five new evergreen Investigator Decks for Arkham Horror: The Card Game. These decks will release shortly after the new core set and will help form the new foundation of the game going forward. Each one comes with a fully pre-built, ready-to-play deck featuring its title investigator, as well as a plethora of upgraded cards to help expand your deckbuilding options.

Today, we’re finally able to provide a closer look at what these new investigator decks have to offer, so without further ado, let’s kick things off with Tommy Muldoon!

The Officer

While he was working with the Boston Police Department, Tommy thought there was no such thing as real monsters. When he got loaned out to the sleepy river town of Arkham, he learned he couldn’t have been more wrong. That was almost a year ago at this point, and despite still being “the new guy,” he’s pretty sure he’s seen far more out on the beat than anyone else on the force. Now he’s working hard to prove he’s not a laughingstock to the rest of the police department, all while facing off against half the monsters of Arkham. And he’s learned that not all monsters have fangs and tentacles.

No longer a rookie, Tommy Muldoon (Tommy Muldoon, 1) returns to Arkham Horror as a Guardian investigator with new confidence and a new playstyle. While the previous version of Tommy focused more on taking hits with his assets, this new, seasoned version is all about packing serious heat with firearms. His innate abilities let him load extra ammo onto his Firearm assets, which works great with both big guns like his signature weapon Becky (Tommy Muldoon, 2) and little ones like the handy Service Revolver (Tommy Muldoon, 8).

As you might expect from his focus on firearms, Tommy will want to load his deck with lots of support cards in addition to the guns themselves. Thankfully, his pre-built deck comes with exactly that, such as the Protective Vest (Tommy Muldoon, 9), which offers a bit of armor in addition to helping Tommy arm himself quickly. You can use the vest to pull a Firearm asset out of your deck, or—if Tommy’s already got one equipped—you can grab an Upgrade card instead, such as the new Iron Sights (Tommy Muldoon, 13), which lets you take aim with your gun for a significant boost in accuracy. All that said, with such a hard emphasis on his guns and his propensity to face situations head-on, Tommy will need to be careful not to become a Loose Cannon (Tommy Muldoon, 3) and get his assets confiscated by the higher-ups!

The Psychologist

Carolyn Fern has listened to her patients share their dreams for years, many so vivid they seem like actual memories. But she never expected to experience such things herself. Visions of dark caves deep beneath the surface of the world, of alien creatures creeping in the shadows, and of thousands of strands of glistening spiderwebs. Is her mind trying to remind her of something she witnessed in her past? A place she went? Or is it trying to warn her of something dangerous, something otherworldly, or even something catastrophic still to come?

With her superb intellect and deep understanding of the human mind, Carolyn Fern (Carolyn Fern, 1) returns to the scene as a Seeker investigator. Originally a Guardian, this new version of Carolyn retains her focus on healing horror but otherwise takes a whole different approach to the game. Once per round, after you heal horror from an investigator or Ally asset through any means, Carolyn can automatically discover a clue at your location. This is a potent bit of action efficiency that allows you to split your attention without sacrificing your ability to get clues for the team, and when you equip Carolyn with her Experimental Psychology (Carolyn Fern, 2), she can even use that healing to boost an investigator’s next skill test by a solid amount.

Naturally, Carolyn can benefit from her own horror-healing, which pairs especially well with cards in her pre-built deck like the Dreamer’s Chronicle (Carolyn Fern, 5). By taking 1 horror, Carolyn can use the Chronicle to discover 2 clues at once, and then she can heal that horror with Experimental Psychology or a different card—such as a Psychology Student (Carolyn Fern, 8)—to immediately discover a third clue thanks to her innate ability. Pair that with Private Practice (Carolyn Fern, 7), and Carolyn will net herself some extra resources to help keep the engine going on later rounds. She just needs to make sure she doesn’t dream too deeply, or else the Unbroken Web (Carolyn Fern, 3) of the Dreamlands might halt her momentum at an inopportune moment!

The Film Star

When André turned 13, his parents scrounged up just enough money to buy him a ticket to the Central Paris Theatre. Enamored by the art form, André quickly became obsessed with the silver screen, working tirelessly to act his way to Hollywood. There, while filming A Cosmic Journey, he experienced inexplicable and world-altering happenings. As the lines between reality and fantasy began to blur in his mind, his peer and friend, Betsy Baxter, suggested a change of scenery. At her recommendation, André packed up and moved to the small town of Arkham, Massachusetts for a much-needed break.

Introducing André Patel (André Patel, 1), the latest (some may say greatest) Rogue investigator to join the Arkham Horror roster! First introduced as a supporting character in the Film Fatale Scenario Pack, André steals the show with a smile and a wink, showboating with the versatility befitting a man born for the silver screen. So long as he succeeds a skill test by 2 or more, his innate ability grants him an extra action once per round, and that can be any action he wants! This extremely flexible ability can be leveraged in all sorts of ways, and André’s got three (that’s right, three) signature skill cards to help ensure he wows the audience enough to trigger it each round: Know the Exit (André Patel, 2), Know the Line (André Patel, 3), and Know the Scene (André Patel, 4). Each of these skill cards can boost his skill test by up to 3 when committed correctly, ensuring that André doesn’t just succeed, he exceeds!

Having an extra action each round opens up a lot of doors, especially for a Rogue investigator, and André’s pre-built deck has plenty of tools to take advantage of it. Standing Center Stage (André Patel, 7) works particularly well with André’s playstyle, giving him a boost that scales to the number of actions he’s performed that round. This can help him over-succeed to trigger his innate ability, or it can be used during his bonus action for a whopping +4 to the test. Speaking of over-succeeding, the Polished Cane (André Patel, 13) lets André use his considerable agility while fighting a foe, potentially allowing him to automatically evade them as well. So long as André keeps succeeding, the wealthy benefactor Marcus Sengstacke (André Patel, 12) will keep funding his efforts, and he won’t succumb to the Weight of the World (André Patel, 5) on his shoulders. After all, a star like André Patel simply can’t afford to fail.

The Entertainer

When Marie discovered her Grand-Mère’s dark and sordid legacy of blood magic, she did her best to ignore it. It was much easier to just sing in the smoky lounges and packed nightclubs of Arkham, and far less dangerous. But then times got tough. As crowds thinned and patrons grew surly, Marie found herself embracing her Grand-Mère’s powers to sway her audience, quieting the rowdy ones and enticing the wealthier amongst them to open their wallets. Relying on her dangerous powers increasingly often, Marie felt they were becoming a necessary tool to get through the day. Surely there would be no cost for this newfound power…right?

Hard times call for harder resolve, and Marie Lambeau (Marie Lambeau, 1) returns to the scene ready to rise to the challenge. As a Mystic investigator, Marie’s playstyle revolves around risk and reward, but unlike her previous version—which focused on placing doom on her own cards in exchange for benefits—this new version of Marie is all about turning her pain into power. Whenever damage is placed on Marie’s investigator card—from any source—she immediately draws 2 cards and chooses one to keep. This helps her keep her options open, and since the ability can be triggered once per phase, she can even benefit from it while fending off the hazards of the Mythos.

Marie’s ability can lead to some pretty impressive sequences during a round. With her Grand-Mère’s Charm (Marie Lambeau, 2), Marie can deal herself 1 direct damage (triggering her ability and netting her an extra card) while also replenishing a charge on one of her assets. This charge can get her an extra use out of one of her spells, such as Shadowmeld (Marie Lambeau, 11), which can let her both evade an enemy and move to a new location in the same action. If you play Spiritual Charm (Marie Lambeau, 16) before using Shadowmeld, Marie can net herself an impressive amount of resources before she vanishes, which in turn can help her pay for a pricier bit of magic, such as Infuse Life (Marie Lambeau, 14). This sequence allows Marie to keep her momentum going no matter how much damage she takes, just so long as she isn’t being Called to Guinée (Marie Lambeau, 3)—always remember that power comes at a price!

The Rancher

Miguel never thought he’d find himself managing a stockyard. Having left his native Argentina, he has worked tirelessly to save up enough money to bring his husband Guillermo and their daughter Adonia to Arkham. But now his business is at risk; something has been killing the livestock at night, leaving mutilated corpses in its wake. Stranger still, it’s not even killing them for food. But Miguel is more than capable of fighting back: he has tracked this mysterious predator into the local woods, intent on catching it once and for all.

Last but certainly not least, we have newcomer Miguel de la Cruz (Miguel de la Cruz, 1) joining the Arkham Horror playable roster as a Survivor investigator. Even horrific monstrosities can fall prey to a hunter’s traps, and Miguel’s traps are second to none, a fact embodied by his abilities. His innate ability grants him an extra action that he can use to play an event each round—any event, including ones that synergize well with his Trap and Trick events. And you’ll want to play plenty of those, because Miguel’s Elder Sign ability lets him return expended Trap and Trick cards to his hand, ensuring that he always has something he can use to harry the monsters of the Mythos.

Each Trap and Trick event in Miguel’s deck attaches to your location, most often triggering their effects when an enemy enters that location. Take Lie in Wait (Miguel de la Cruz, 16), for example, which lets you spring a surprise attack on any enemy that enters its space—even if you’re currently somewhere else on the map! This works especially well with Miguel’s Knapsack (Miguel de la Cruz, 2), which lets him set up his traps on connecting locations before any enemy is bearing down on him. He can also use his knapsack to set up a Hidden Shelter (Miguel de la Cruz, 15) to give his fellow investigators a much-needed safe space away from danger, or even utilize some Guerilla Tactics (Miguel de la Cruz, 14) to fight or evade an enemy from up to 2 locations away. All these hunting tools are a necessity if Miguel ever wants to bring down the Feline Hybrid (Miguel de la Cruz, 3) plaguing his ranch, since normal methods won’t work on such a malicious fiend. Still, if anyone’s got the grit, determination, and patience to trap the biggest beasts in Arkham, it’s Miguel de la Cruz.

Evergreen Investigating

With these five investigators joining those from the new core set, new players and veterans alike will have a strong backbone for their collection as we kick off Chapter Two for the game. Look forward to adding the Tommy Muldoon, Carolyn Fern, André Patel, Marie Lambeau, and Miguel de la Cruz Investigator Decks to your Arkham Horror collection when they arrive this April!

Written by Peter Schumacher

Discuss this article
in our forums!

Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent

Published 10 February 2026 | Descent: Legends of the Dark

Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent

Announcing a Brand-New Dungeon Crawler Coming to PC, Mac, and Consoles This Spring

Dark forces are drawn to the lands of Terrinoth. Somewhere hidden lies a forgotten relic that could turn the tides. Such power cannot fall into the wrong hands, lest the fate of the world plunge into unending darkness.

Fantasy Flight Games, New Tales, and Artefacts Studio are proud to announce the legendary board game series comes for the first time to PC, Mac, and Consoles in the video game Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent! The first video game adaptation of the Descent universe, Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent invites players into a brand-new chapter of the saga.

Delve into its deep and dark dungeons right away with a demo available starting today on Steam, ahead of the full game release later this spring! Launching on PC, Mac, PlayStation® 5 and Xbox Series X|S, the game blends real-time exploration with deep, turn-based tactical battles, playable solo or in online co-op.

Form your company of ragtag adventurers, journey into the perilous dungeons of Terrinoth, face the mysterious upheaval of an occult master and unfold a fully original storyline set as a standalone prequel to Descent: Legends of the Dark.

Your Legend Continues

The Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent demo opens the doors to the tutorial and first dungeon of the game: The Crypts of Aerendor. Meet some of the heroes you’ll take on your journey and answer the call of Baroness Harriet the Willful to investigate the crypts below Aerendor Keep, hoping to find the source of an undead incursion.

Play the Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent demo on Steam, available now: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4162860/Terrinoth_Heroes_of_Descent_Demo/

Master your Heroes

Choose from 8 signature adventurers, each with their own background and combat style. Hone your skills and perks through leveling; upgrade your equipment at the Forge; and become an undefeated company of heroes.

Authentic dungeon crawler

Explore 20 massive dungeons with unique environments and full-voiced storylines. Meet characters with dynamic dialogues that adapt to your party and complete side quests with narrative highlights.

Accessible Turn-Based Combat

Tactical combat without steep learning curves or complex rulebooks! Use positioning, elevation, line of sight and timing to your advantage against cunning foes and ruthless bosses. Unleash multi-character combos and finish them with devastating Synergy attacks. Easy to pick up, but with deep tactical depth, there’s always another strategy, synergy, or build to discover.

Full Campaign, One-Night Missions

Unfold an epic story-driven campaign spanning four themed Chapters split into multiple self-contained Missions. Each can be completed in a one-night session and offers a unique, replayable experience. Perfect for game night!

Play Solo or Co-Op up to 4 players Online

Face the forces of darkness alone, or team up with your friends online, with full controller support included. They can even join mid-dungeon!

Once again, Terrinoth calls for its unfaltering heroes. Get ready to experience the definitive dungeon-crawling video game with the release of Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent, planned for Spring 2026.Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent has been created for both long-time tabletop fans and players discovering Terrinoth for the first time, with no prior knowledge required to follow the story.

You can play the demo of Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent on PC (Steam), and wishlist the full game on Steam, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S starting today: https://linktr.ee/HeroesofDescent

Written by Artefacts Studio

Discuss this article
in our forums!

Intro to Arkham

Published 5 February 2026 | Arkham Horror: The Card Game

Intro to Arkham

A Guide for New Players Looking to Get into Arkham Horror: The Card Game

Dark entities work maliciously in the city of Arkham, doing everything within their power to realize unspeakable goals. Many of the city’s residents stand idly by or live in blissful ignorance of this growing darkness. Others, however, stand up and fight against these threats and do what they can to keep the city of Arkham and its citizens safe.

As an Arkham Horror: The Card Game hopeful, maybe you are interested in joining this defense against the Mythos, but you aren’t sure where to start. Or, perhaps, you have all the tools you need but aren’t sure how to put them to good use. Luckily, with proper guidance and understanding the basics of Arkham Horror, you’ll be confident to join the fight against the Mythos in no time.

All you need to start playing Arkham Horror: The Card Game is a copy of the core set. Within this core set, you’ll find five different investigators, a collection of player cards to build decks with, and a three-scenario campaign to play. Though the box contains pre-built decks for each investigator that you can play with immediately, you can also build your own decks with the cards included in the core set. While playing with the pre-built decks is a perfect way to jump in and start playing, understanding deckbuilding opens up more options to you as a player to express yourself through the game.

It is this player expression that makes Arkham Horror’s deckbuilding so exciting to delve into. Each investigator has a card pool with restrictions, but players are free to explore as they wish within those restrictions. One player can build Daniela Reyes (Core Set, 1) as a defensive support for the team, using cards like Bodyguard (Core Set, 16) to soak damage for others. But another player can build Daniela as a reckless damage dealer, using a Meat Cleaver (Core Set, 77) paired with Resilience (Core Set, 21) to maximize her damage output.

It’s this openness in deckbuilding that enables such deep exploration, letting players play the three-scenario campaign included in the core set multiple times, trying different decks and investigators. Different builds and team compositions can handle the campaign’s challenges in distinct ways, and discovering the strengths and weaknesses of each class and investigator is a key aspect of learning Arkham Horror.

The challenges will change from scenario to scenario, but for a better understanding of Arkham Horror: The Card Game, it’s important to know the foundational form that these challenges take. Deckbuilding can be daunting, and having the knowledge of how the game confronts you and your deck will provide a solid base for the decisions you make while building it. Let’s take a look!

The Three Pillars of Arkham Horror

When playing a scenario of Arkham Horror: The Card Game, the players will find themselves challenged by constant threats. There are enemies and pitfalls lurking around every corner, and players will need to find clues to unravel the mystery around them. These three aspects (enemies, survival, and finding clues) make up the three pillars of an Arkham Horror scenario. Managing all three is key, and knowing how they challenge you is an important baseline to learn.

Enemies can show up at any time, and they are threats that must be dealt with. If even the weakest enemy is left alone, it will cause chaos, hurting the investigators every turn. Hellhound (Core Set, 122), a monstrosity rampaging through the Miskatonic campus, is a terrifying creature that shows the risk an enemy can pose. With every attack, it will deal 1 damage and 1 horror to an investigator and also burn away the cards they control, costing valuable resources and setup time. This is why enemy management is crucial. An unchecked enemy will cause great stress for the investigators, but players have a variety of methods at their disposal to help manage them.

Enemies can be fought against their fight value, designated by the red number next to the fist symbol on the enemy’s card. Successful attacks—such as the Fight action on Machete (Core Set, 20)—can deal damage, and when enough damage is dealt to match the enemy’s health value (the black number in the center), that enemy is defeated. Instead of fighting the enemy directly, investigators can also evade enemies, testing against an enemy’s evade value (the green number next to the shoe symbol). This will exhaust the enemy for the turn, meaning that they won’t attack this round, but it also means they will eventually ready and become a threat again for the next one. Some enemies, like the aforementioned Hellhound, have keywords that pose additional challenges. In Hellhound’s case, it has the “hunter” keyword, which means it will continue to chase you down, even if you manage to temporarily escape from it.

The next pillar of an Arkham Horror scenario is survivability. This challenge asks how much physical and mental strain an investigator can take before they are defeated. While enemies can deal damage and horror when they attack, survivability is tested more commonly through treacheries drawn during the Mythos phase. Each player must draw a card during this phase, meaning that each player’s survivability will be tested in some way. Most treacheries, like Noxious Smoke (Core Set, 130), demand that the players take a one-time test and will punish them if they fail. Other treacheries, like Unspeakable Truths (Core Set, 125), will remain in play and pose a threat over multiple turns.

Each investigator needs to build a plan for how they will survive these treacheries, and it is important to keep their risk in mind both while deckbuilding and playing a scenario. Isabelle Barnes (Core Set, 13) can lean on Aleksey Saburov (Core Set, 72) to take damage and horror for her, while Dexter Drake (Core Set, 10) can use a Ward of Protection (Core Set, 65) to cancel the treachery at the cost of 1 horror. There are very rarely “wrong” ways to protect yourself in Arkham Horror, but it’s important that you have a plan and don’t go unprotected against the Mythos.

The final pillar of an Arkham Horror scenario is the act of investigating and discovering clues. Unlike enemies and survivability, investigating doesn’t have to do with how you lose, but rather it’s how you win. During a scenario, the agenda deck is how the game advances and attempts to defeat the investigators. The act deck, on the other hand, is the investigators’ method of advancing through and succeeding a scenario. Acts are often advanced through the collection of clues, so a team of investigators must strive to discover clues, and the pace at which they do so determines how many threats they may have to face.

Your Friend’s Room (Core Set, 113B) is a location you’ll come across in Spreading Flames, the first scenario in the new core set. This location has a shroud value of 2, which is the difficulty an investigator tests against while investigating that location for clues. Your Friend’s Room also has 2 clues per investigator, which are the clues you discover upon a successful investigation. Like enemies, locations can throw additional challenges or penalties at players, such as the Science Hall (Core Set, 118) causing investigators to discard cards from their hand upon discovering clues.

If an investigator can survive enemies and treacheries, but can’t get clues, they’ll live until the end of the scenario with nothing to show for it. Likewise, if an investigator can get clues but has no protection, they’ll be overwhelmed before they know it. This is why the key to finding success in a scenario is to balance the solutions for all three pillars.

The Five Classes

To manage these challenges, each investigator “class” approaches their solutions differently. There are five classes in the game—Guardians, Seekers, Rogues, Mystics, and Survivors—and each class brings their own strengths and weaknesses.

The Guardian class is the protector class. They do what they can to keep themselves and their teammates safe. They show off their combat prowess through allies like Logan Hastings (Core Set, 18) and powerful skill cards like Vicious Blow (Core Set, 25). When surrounded by enemies, they can turn the tide with a Lesson Learned (Core Set, 22) or Scene of the Crime (Core Set, 24). However, Guardians need time to set up for their battles and will often find themselves short on resources compared to other classes.

The Seeker class is the master of investigating. They have a variety of tools at their disposal to increase their ability to discover clues. They can utilize a Fingerprint Kit (Core Set, 31) to grab multiple clues at once, boosting their consistency with a Magnifying Glass (Core Set, 34) or Sharp Rhetoric (Core Set, 35). Additionally, Seekers can maximize their card draw potential, refilling their hand with a Laboratory Assistant (Core Set, 32) or Gather Intel (Core Set, 36). While Seekers are masters of investigating, they lack permanent solutions to enemies, offering temporary fixes instead.

The Rogue class find its strengths in movement and resource economy. Rogues can move across the map in the blink of an eye with skills like Out of Sight (Core Set, 53) and allies like Olivier Bishop (Core Set, 46), evading enemies and leaving them in the dust. That said, Rogues also bring their own style of enemy management to the table. They can utilize the M1903 Hammerless (Core Set, 45) to take enemies out or Paint the Town Red (Core Set, 51) to bring one into play in exchange for a few extra resources in their pocket. Survivability is the biggest weakness in a Rogue’s kit. Their recklessness puts them at a disadvantage against the Mythos deck, putting them at risk of getting overwhelmed by the horrors around them.

The Mystic class is the class of spellcasters in the world of Arkham Horror. A Mystic’s biggest strength is that they can do pretty much anything, but they have to risk something for that power. They can take advantage of Cosmic Flame (Core Set, 59) and Second Sight (Core Set, 62) for fighting and investigating respectively, but both of these spells run the risk of hurting them. A wise Mystic knows how to navigate the advantages and disadvantages of cards like Will of the Cosmos (Core Set, 66), which provide a great reward with a great risk. This is where Mystic’s weaknesses lie: they are powerful, but this power always comes at a cost.

Lastly, the Survivor class is the ultimate class of survivability and card recursion. They often brute force their way through challenges, taking them on without knowing whether they will come out on top. A rough scrape with an enemy can be mitigated through a clever use of Bandages (Core Set, 73) while a bad token pull can be softened with “Look what I found!” (Core Set, 78). Though Survivors are durable, they need to expend more of their cards to survive, which is why cards with recursion effects like Hunter’s Instinct (Core Set, 74) can be so lifesaving, allowing the investigator to find the right card at the right time. This class has to put in a bit more effort than the others, meaning that they pose the highest risk of getting outpaced by the scenario.

Deckbuilding

Even with the knowledge of the classes, it can be a daunting challenge to know how to best construct a deck, much less upgrade it with the experience you’ve gained during the course of a campaign. There are three fundamentals to help lay the beginnings of a good deck: the investigator’s role, the deck’s foundation, and the deck’s economy. Understanding these will give strong guidance for building any deck for any campaign.

An investigator’s role is likely the first decision you’ll make when deckbuilding after choosing an investigator. There are four main roles in Arkham Horror:

The Fighter: An investigator who focuses on defeating enemies.
The Cluever: An investigator who focuses on discovering clues.
The Flex: An investigator who does a little bit of both fighting and investigating.
The Support: Like a flex, but focuses more on helping their teammates excel or survive.

In the core set, Daniela Reyes and Isabelle Barnes would make good fighters, Joe Diamond (Core Set, 4) and Trish Scarborough (Core Set, 7) would make good cluevers, and Dexter Drake would make a strong flex. However, these investigators are not locked into these specific roles, and it’s always a good idea to include options for cards outside of your role. For example, between breaks of whacking enemies with her Meat Cleaver, Isabelle Barnes can pick up some clues with a “Look what I found!” or even Second Sight (since her deckbuilding options let her use some Mystic cards).

After deciding on your role, you’ll want to build a strong foundation to ensure that you can accomplish that role. To do this, you’ll want to include assets and events that help you with your role’s goal, and you’ll want enough of them so you can do your job reliably. Since she can include both Rogue and Seeker cards in her deck, Trish Scarborough will want to include multiple good investigation assets like Thieves’ Kit (Core Set, 49), Fingerprint Kit, and Local Map (Core Set, 33) to ensure that she draws one in her opening hand. After that, she’ll likely look at investigation events like Breaking and Entering (Core Set, 50) and Working a Hunch (Core Set, 38) to round out that consistency.

Lastly—and arguably most importantly—is your deck’s economy. This fundamental aspect of deckbuilding ensures that your deck has the ability to draw cards and also pay for them. While not the most exciting part of deckbuilding, it is crucial to make your economy a focus. A staple piece of Arkham Horror’s economy is Emergency Cache (Core Set, 89). Because it’s Neutral, every investigator can take it, and it provides a good starting point to ensure you have the resources for the cards you want to play. After that, you’ll want to look through your investigator’s card pool for what can draw cards (like Gather Intel in Joe Diamond) and what can gain resources (like Sticky Fingers (Core Set, 48) in Trish Scarborough).

After establishing a strong foundation for your deck, you can build around those cards. You will want to check if your deck has the survivability to manage the Mythos phase, and then you can add in what you feel would be powerful or fun. Maybe you want to use Prestidigitation (Core Set, 52) to swap assets in and out of play as Dexter Drake? Or maybe you want to use Jim Culver (Core Set, 60) to draw extra cards on top of your recursion effects with Isabelle Barnes? Explore the card pool and find what is fun for you, because Arkham Horror’s amazing deckbuilding is the perfect way to express yourself.

As you near the completion of your deck, another consideration is your deck’s “curve.” This checks the cost of all the cards in your deck and tracks how many of each resource cost you have. If you have a lot of cards that cost 3 or more, your deck’s curve is higher, meaning that you potentially would want to run more economy than if your deck’s curve was lower with mostly 1- or 2-cost cards. When you’re first building a deck, this can be hard to grasp, but it’s something that you can pay attention to while you play if you often feel that you have too many or too few resources.

Additionally, don’t feel like you shouldn’t include Neutral cards just because they aren’t in your investigator’s classes. The Neutral skill suite of Guts (Core Set, 90), Perception (Core Set, 93), Overpower (Core Set, 92), and Manual Dexterity (Core Set, 91) can all help you pass a test and grab an extra card, which can potentially find an answer to a future threat. Unexpected Courage (Core Set, 94) can help you pass any test, and that versatility shouldn’t be overlooked. Fedora (Core Set, 87) can soak a little damage or horror if you feel you’re missing some survivability, while Broken Bottle (Core Set, 86) or Hand-Crank Flashlight (Core Set, 88) can be another asset to help build the foundation of your role.

With all this said, don’t feel as though using the prebuilt decks is a bad place to start. If you want to immediately jump in and play, you can use the decks included in the core set. With these, you can get a good idea of the investigators and how they fit into their class, as well as see the three pillars of Arkham Horror in action. After getting a game or two in, you may feel more knowledgeable and confident to try building your own decks with the core set’s card pool.

Outro

There is a lot to discover in Arkham Horror: The Card Game. Jumping in and playing the core set is a great place to start. You may struggle as you begin to face the threats before you, and they may seem impossible to beat, but if you persevere and continue the fight against the Mythos, you’ll be surprised by what you’re capable of. Explore the card pool, get to know the investigators, and build decks that speak to you as you discover all the amazing stories that exist in Arkham Horror!

Written by Justin Cauti

Discuss this article
in our forums!

FFG Live in February

Published 3 February 2026 | Star Wars: Unlimited

FFG Live in February

Announcing the FFG Livestreams for February 2026

It's FFG Live! Join us this month for more awesome livestreams for our current and upcoming games and expansions. Read on for more information on what livestreams you can look forward to this month!

February 4 at 1 PM CST

Star Wars™: Unlimited – A Lawless Time Twin Suns

GAMEPLAY

It’s time for some more multiplayer mayhem! Join members of the Star Wars™: Unlimited design team as they tackle a Twin Suns game using leaders and cards from the upcoming set, A Lawless Time. Be sure to tune in and root for your favorite leaders (or player) and see who can pull off a win!

Check out the stream here!

February 11 at 1 PM CST

Star Wars: Unlimited – A Lawless Time Trilogy Gameplay

GAMEPLAY

A new set means a new card pool, which means even more options for building Trilogy decks! Let’s jump back into the Trilogy format for a full-length, dedicated stream. Join members of the Star Wars: Unlimited design team as they explore what decks they enjoy most for the format and what new archetypes they can show off.

Check out the stream here!

February 17 at 1 PM CST

Marvel Champions: The Card Game – Wonder Man and Hercules

GAMEPLAY

With the upcoming release of the Wonder Man and Hercules Hero Packs, it’s time to take them for a spin and see what they can do! Join us as we take an in-depth look at these new heroes and test our luck with them in a short gameplay segment.

Check out the stream here!

February 18 at 1 PM CST

Star Wars: Unlimited – A Lawless Time Draft Play

GAMEPLAY

As we wrap up the spoiler season for A Lawless Time, join us for our traditional draft session as the Star Wars: Unlimited designers draft the set for the very first time on stream. Be sure to tune in and root for your favorite to win!

Check out the stream here!

February 24 at 1 PM CST

Arkham Horror: The Card Game – Evergreen Investigators

PREVIEW & DISCUSSION

The release of Arkham Horror: The Card Game’s new core set is just around the corner, and following soon after it are five new evergreen Investigator Decks! Join us as we take a look at some of the cards from these new products and discuss what role the evergreen Investigator Decks will have in the game for new and established players alike.

Check out the stream here!

February 25 at 1 PM CST

Star Wars: Unlimited – A Lawless Time Organized Play Update

PREVIEW & DISCUSSION

The release of A Lawless Time will also mark the beginning of a new set or Organized Play, which means new prizes to collect for both casual and competitive players! Join team members Jack Broomell and Bri Harstad as they go through all the prizing for A Lawless Time’s Weekly Play events, Store Showdowns, and Planetary Qualifiers, as well as reveal the dates and locations for the set’s Sector Qualifiers and Regional Championship.

Check out the stream here!

Discuss this article
in our forums!

The Magician

Published 29 January 2026 | Arkham Horror: The Card Game

The Magician

Introducing Dexter Drake from Arkham Horror: The Card Game’s New Core Set

“I’ll show you real magic.”

After finding scraps of the dangerous and mysterious Necronomicon while fighting in the Great War, Dexter Drake wasted no small effort in hunting down and translating more pages. At first, his goal was to keep its evil contained. However, Dexter’s curiosity drove him to delve deeper into the profane text, tempted by the promise of “true” magic. Dexter is sure he has what it takes to decode the text: he proved his courage in the war and his resourcefulness on stage as a magician. But true magic comes at a cost. Will Dexter prove his mastery over the arcane, or will the arcane overpower him?

Back in October, we revealed the new core set for Arkham Horror: The Card Game, which heralds the beginning of an era we’re referring to as “Chapter Two.” With that new core set comes a new set of five core investigators, and the last (but not least) of those five is Dexter Drake (Core Set, 10)!

Returning to the stage as the new core’s Mystic investigator, Dexter’s new approach to investigation has echoes of his original asset-discarding playstyle but takes a fresh and versatile spin. His innate ability triggers after you play an asset of any type, allowing you to either “bounce” another asset back into your hand, or play a second asset as part of the same action. Right off the bat, this grants Dexter some handy flexibility, allowing him to get two cards out at once or “refresh” a depleted asset (by returning it to his hand and then playing it again). Any asset with limited uses—such as Cosmic Flame (Core Set, 59) with its 3 charges or the Cloak of Resonance (Core Set, 58) with its 3 sanity—can suddenly have a lot more staying power when Dexter can refresh it on a whim, and it can allow you to pull off some pretty impressive sequences, especially when you take the discount from Dexter’s signature event, “For my next trick…” (Core Set, 11) into account.

For example, say you have Jim Culver (Core Set, 60) and a Lucky Charm (Core Set, 61) in play to help you soak some hits. With the ability on Lucky Charm, you can spend some charges to move a damage and a horror off of Dexter and onto Jim. Then, you can use “For my next trick…” to search for and play Second Sight (Core Set, 62) for just 2 resources, allowing you to “bounce” Jim Culver back into your hand, which removes the damage and horror from him. Then, on your next action (if you have the resources), you can play Jim Culver again, fully healed and ready to soak more hits for you. Or, alternatively, you could have chosen to bounce the Lucky Charm instead, which would let you replay it to refresh its charges, or you could bounce an asset with doom on it—such as the asset you targeted for Will of the Cosmos (Core Set, 66)—to clear that doom without losing the card.

By now, it should be clear just how versatile Dexter’s innate ability is, but the fact remains that he can only trigger it once per round. Not only that, but constantly bouncing your assets back to your hand can get expensive fast. Fortunately, Dexter has some other cards in his pre-built deck to help him navigate the dangers of the Mythos. The event Premonition (Core Set, 64), for example, tells you the exact next token that will be revealed from the chaos bag, which can help Dexter decide what abilities are worth using (and what resources are worth expending) for a test he’s about to make. Even if you know the outcome of a specific test, sometimes a treachery is just too nasty to deal with, in which case the classic Ward of Protection (Core Set, 65) is an invaluable tool in an investigator’s belt, trading a bit of horror for a moment of safety. In similar fashion, the skill card Soul Link (Core Set, 67) can grant a powerful boost to any skill test at the cost of a horror (which, remember, you can later heal up with Dexter’s asset-bouncing shenanigans). Finally, if Soul Link is unavailable (or somehow not enough) and you have a few extra resources to spend, Spiritual Intuition (Core Set, 63) can power up Dexter’s Willpower or his Combat skill as much as you need—which combos supremely well with Premonition!

As you can see, the sky’s the limit for this magician’s tricks, and his performance will only be grander over time. And speaking of tricks, veterans of Arkham Horror: The Card Game may recall that the original version of Dexter Drake could include Rogue cards in his deck, and this new version is no different. If you’re curious about what sort of Rogue cards you can find in Dexter’s pre-built deck, be sure to check out our preview of Trish Scarborough and the Rogue class from a few weeks back!

Dexter Drake is a versatile investigator who can pull off some pretty impressive—dare we say magical—feats, but there’s one not-so-little snag that he will eventually have to deal with: The Necronomicon (Core Set, 12). The source of Dexter’s power is also the biggest thorn in his side, as the book pops up now and again to remind him that every gift comes at a price. By forcing itself into play and preventing you from playing or using any other assets until you deal with it (and you can’t bounce it with Dexter’s ability), this cursed tome demands your undying attention whenever it appears in your hands. The book’s price is something Dexter can’t ignore if he wants to continue his work, and it will just keep coming back until he succeeds its test. Thankfully, with enough tools in his deck—and enough friends at his side—Dexter can pull off the greatest trick of all: victory from the jaws of certain defeat!

Mystical Magic

With his versatile tricks and his dazzling magic, Dexter Drake is the shining example of what the Mystic class has to offer in Chapter Two of Arkham Horror: The Card Game.

With that, we’ve previewed all five classes and all five investigators from the new core set. Look forward to seeing more of what Chapter Two has to offer as we count down to the new core set’s release!

Written by Peter Schumacher

Discuss this article
in our forums!

A Look at Things to Come

Published 22 January 2026 | Arkham Horror: The Card Game

A Look at Things to Come

Presenting the Upcoming Product Lineup for Arkham Horror: The Card Game

Hello, Arkham Horror: The Card Game fans!

Back in November, during our In-Flight Report at PAX Unplugged, we gave a brief glimpse of what the product roadmap will be for this game in 2026. In case you missed the presentation or need a refresher, you can see that roadmap right here:

Today, we’d like to provide a full breakdown of what the different types of expansions for Arkham Horror: The Card Game will look like in the future. By the end of this article, you should have a good grasp of what sort of things to expect going forward, and spoiler alert: there’s quite a bit to be excited for!

Before we dive into the full breakdown, let’s establish some terminology. Going forward, there will be two main “categories” of products for the game: evergreen products and rotating expansions.

Evergreen products, as the term suggests, are products that will stick around for the foreseeable future. These form the core backbone of the game; they will remain in print and exist within the current environment.

Rotating expansions, therefore, are everything else. Each rotating expansion will be printed enough times to support it as part of the current environment, after which it will rotate out of the current environment and will only exist in the legacy environment.

As a reminder, you choose what products you want to use for your game; if you want to keep playing with your favorite expansion even after it rotates out of the current environment, that’s perfectly fine. After all, everything in the current environment is also in the legacy environment!

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s take a deeper dive at what’s coming up for the game in the future!

Evergreen Products

Since evergreen products form the core of the game, it’s only natural that the most important of those products is the core set itself! We first revealed the new core set for the game’s “Chapter Two” era back in late October, and we’re just a couple short months away from its release. This is the only product in the game line that new players need to pick up if they want to play the game. Existing players will also need to grab one if they want to play through any campaigns that come after it (which is fine, since the new core has a bunch of new stuff in it for veterans as well).

The new Arkham Horror: The Card Game core set is slated to release this March.

Following close behind the new core set is a batch of five evergreen investigator decks! Each of these decks provides one playable investigator, a pre-built deck for that investigator, and a bunch of player cards for that investigator’s class to expand deckbuilding options. These decks feature Tommy Muldoon as a Guardian investigator, Carolyn Fern as a Seeker, newcomer André Patel as a Rogue, Marie Lambeau as a Mystic, and newcomer Miguel de la Cruz as a Survivor. Between these five investigators and the five in the new core, you’ll have ten total that will remain within the current environment going forward.

All five evergreen Investigator Decks will release at the same time this April.

Rotating Expansions

Now that we’ve covered the evergreen content for the game, let’s take a look at the five types of rotating expansions you can look forward to in the future.

First up, we have a new product type, the small campaign expansions! These are just what they sound like: short, typically 3-scenario campaigns that provide a self-contained Arkham Horror experience, similar to the core set itself. These will alternate with full-scale campaign expansions (more on those in a moment) in the expansion release cadence, ensuring that you always have something new to look forward to!

The first small campaign expansion for the game is Children of Blood, slated to release late this summer.

On the topic of self-contained experiences, the much-loved scenario packs have always been a staple during Arkham’s first chapter, and that’s not changing anytime soon! These packs continue to provide thrilling standalone scenarios that you can slot into a larger campaign or just play on their own. Just like with Chapter One, you can look forward to getting a new scenario pack around once a year.

This year’s scenario pack is Traces to Nowhere, and it’ll hit store shelves this fall.

As we hinted at in the small campaign expansion section above, there will also be larger campaign expansions in Chapter Two! These campaigns feature five scenarios, with deeper narratives and impactful experiences that emphasize maximum replayability. While this product type shares its name with the campaign expansions from Chapter One, it is important to note that these campaigns will no longer be thematically tied to investigator expansions going forward.

And speaking of investigator expansions…

The investigator expansions also return in Chapter Two! Just like before, these expansions provide a suite of new investigators alongside a trove of new player cards to expand deckbuilding options. As we touched on above, these expansions will no longer be thematically tied to any campaign expansions going forward, which means you could get a campaign covering one piece of the Arkham Horror story or setting and then later get an investigator expansion that covers something completely different!

Finally, if the investigator expansions aren’t enough player content for you, then look no further than the deckbuilding expansions! This new expansion type can be thought of as the player card counterpart to the small campaign expansions for scenario content. Deckbuilding expansions will not contain any new investigators (usually); instead, they are packed full of new player cards across all five classes with the sole purpose of expanding deckbuilding options. Just like the small campaign expansions alternate with the larger ones, deckbuilding expansions will alternate with investigator expansions in the release cadence, giving you a steady stream of new customization options to look forward to.

Going Strong

With new evergreen products hitting stores soon and a plethora of rotating expansions on the horizon, it’s clear that Arkham Horror: The Card Game is here to stay. This game has a long and exciting future ahead of it, and we can’t wait to share it with all of you!

See you soon.

Written by Peter Schumacher
(Edited on February 9, 2026)

Discuss this article
in our forums!

The Former Spy

Published 15 January 2026 | Arkham Horror: The Card Game

The Former Spy

Introducing Trish Scarborough from Arkham Horror: The Card Game’s New Core Set

“You’re quite good, but nobody can catch me.”

Trish Scarborough enjoyed an exciting and dangerous career as a spy for the Black Chamber. She’s no stranger to subterfuge, but she also never expected to be at the center of her own conspiracy when a new director arrived to run the organization. After a series of increasingly menial missions, she was strongly encouraged to “take time for herself.” Suspicious of her director’s motives, she dug into the Chamber’s records and discovered evidence of corruption going all the way to the top: rumors of an organization known as the Red Coterie working behind the scenes. Framed for leaking sensitive information, Trish is now on the run and driven to restore her good name.

Back in October, we revealed the new core set for Arkham Horror: The Card Game, which heralds the beginning of an era we’re referring to as “Chapter Two.” With that new core set comes a new set of five core investigators, and one of those five is Trish Scarborough (Core Set, 7)!

Returning to the scene as the new core’s Rogue investigator, Trish retains her emphasis on sneaking past enemies but does so in a different way than before. No longer (officially) a spy, Trish must now use her skills to solve mysteries while being constantly on the run, and this is reflected in her new playstyle. Her innate ability grants her a bonus evade action once per turn, while her Elder Sign ability can let her slip away from every enemy engaged with her, regardless if she succeeds the associated test or not. Her Elder Sign ability comes with the added feature of letting her move to a connecting location, a feature shared with her signature asset, Covert Ops (Core Set, 8), which pairs well with her free evade action each turn. If you manage to pull the Elder Sign while performing an evasion test, then you could even combine Covert Ops with Trish’s special ability and move two locations at once!

Speaking of movement, many of the other cards in Trish’s pre-built deck can also boost her mobility, her evasion, or both. Take Olivier Bishop (Core Set, 46), for example, who grants Trish a bonus to her agility (and therefore her ability to evade enemies) as well as the ability to move locations as a free action once per round. The boost to agility from Olivier works great with Breaking and Entering (Core Set, 50), which lets Trish combine her intellect with her agility for an investigation. Boosting agility also makes it easier to evade enemies, which you can combo with Sticky Fingers (Core Set, 48) for an extra resource, which you can then spend on Silver Tongue (Core Set, 47) for a bigger boost to your next test. Succeeding a test by 2 or more also gets you an extra card draw with the Lucky Cigarette Case (Core Set, 44), and if you happened to commit Out of Sight (Core Set, 53) to that test, then you can get even more free movement out of it!

Longtime fans of Arkham Horror: The Card Game will know that extra actions and movement are classic features of the Rogue class, and another thing they have in spades is extra resources! We already mentioned Sticky Fingers, but Trish has other sources of extra resources in her deck as well. For example, the Thieves’ Kit (Core Set, 49) can let you use Trish’s agility for an investigation instead of her intellect, netting you a resource if you succeed. While the event Paint the Town Red (Core Set, 51) pulls an enemy out of the encounter deck that you must contend with, it can also grant you multiple extra resources—plus, Trish can always just evade that enemy with her abilities. Finally, though it doesn’t technically grant additional resources, Prestidigitation (Core Set, 52) does let you fast-play an Item asset for a discount, on the condition that you return something to your hand at the end of your turn. This can let you whip out an M1903 Hammerless (Core Set, 45) on an enemy you just evaded, attacking with Trish’s agility instead of her much-lower combat skill.

With how her actions flow together, Trish can adapt on the fly to any situation, which is only compounded by her additional deckbuilding options. Veterans of Arkham Horror: The Card Game will recall that the original version of Trish Scarborough could include Seeker cards in her deck, and this new version is no different. If you’re curious about what sort of Seeker cards you can find in Trish’s pre-built deck, be sure to check out our preview of Joe Diamond and the Seeker class from back in November!

Speaking of seeking, as a former spy on the run, it’s only natural that Trish would be hunted by her “associates” at the Black Chamber. Her signature weakness, the Black Chamber Operative (Core Set, 9), does exactly that, chasing Trish down no matter where she tries to hide. Since the Chamber is fully familiar with Trish’s methods, she’ll have to work a bit harder to give them the slip, leaving clues behind as false leads in order to get them off her tail. It’s going to take all of Trish’s resourcefulness and skill in order to fend off the operatives she once thought were her colleagues, but with quick thinking and a friend or two, she can pull it off while accomplishing the main mission to boot.

A Dashing Rogue

With her evasive maneuvers and ability to adapt on the fly, Trish Scarborough is the perfect example of what the Rogue class has to offer in Chapter Two of Arkam Horror: The Card Game.

Look forward to our previews of the Mystic class in the coming weeks!

Written by Peter Schumacher

Discuss this article
in our forums!

FFG Live in January

Published 6 January 2026 | Star Wars: Unlimited

FFG Live in January

Announcing the FFG Livestreams for January 2026

It's FFG Live! Join us this month for more awesome livestreams for our current and upcoming games and expansions. Read on for more information on what livestreams you can look forward to this month!

January 7 at 1 PM CST

Star Wars™: Unlimited – A Lawless Time Art Preview

PREVIEW

You saw a glimpse in the first look, and now it’s time to take a deeper dive into the art direction for A Lawless Time, the thrilling next set for Star Wars: Unlimited! Join members of the team as they talk about some of their favorite art pieces from the upcoming set.

Check out the stream here!

January 14 at 1 PM CST

Star Wars: Unlimited – Rules Update

DISCUSSION

A trading card game like Star Wars: Unlimited is always evolving, and sometimes that means adjustments to the rules. Join members of the team as they discuss some rules updates coming to the game alongside the release of A Lawless Time!

Check out the stream here!

January 20 at 1 PM CST

Arkham Horror: The Card Game – Product Roadmap

DISCUSSION

With the onset of Chapter Two for Arkham Horror: The Card Game fast approaching, we have a ton of new expansions in the pipeline to look forward to. Join us as we provide a roadmap of what products will be releasing this year, as well as talking about the new types of Arkham Horror expansions that you can expect to see in Chapter Two.

Check out the stream here!

January 21 at 1 PM CST

Star Wars: Unlimited – A Lawless Time Spotlight Decks

GAMEPLAY

With the release of A Lawless Time fast approaching, it’s time to take a look at the contents of the set’s two new Spotlight Decks. Join members of the Star Wars: Unlimited design team as they play a game or two with these pre-built decks and show off what they have to offer!

Check out the stream here!

January 28 at 1 PM CST

Star Wars: Unlimited – Secrets of Power Premier Play

GAMEPLAY

Players around the world are currently enjoying Secrets of Power, and we at FFG are no exception! Join members of the team as they sit down and play some games with their favorite Premier decks that have popped up in the Secrets of Power Competitive metagame!

Check out the stream here!

Discuss this article
in our forums!

The Mechanic

Published 18 December 2025 | Arkham Horror: The Card Game

The Mechanic

Introducing Daniela Reyes from Arkham Horror: The Card Game’s New Core Set

“Those creatures are definitely gonna know what hit ‘em.”

Daniela worked hard to make a name for herself as a mechanic. She’d only just paid off her new garage when Arkham was devastated by that cataclysmic flood, sending her business quite literally underwater. Rather than mope, she rolled up her sleeves—like always—and got right back to work. Now she works an extra shift tuning up engines at the new meat-packing factories. But she’s started to hear talk about strange things going on in the waterfront district: locals gone missing, corpses drained of blood, and rumors of a shadowy figure that stalks the alleys at night. Daniela knows better than to dismiss these strange happenings as mere circumstance. Whatever it is, she intends to be ready.

Back in October, we revealed the new core set for Arkham Horror: The Card Game, which heralds the beginning of an era we’re referring to as “Chapter Two.” With that new core set comes a new set of five core investigators, and one of those five is Daniela Reyes (Core Set, 1)!

Returning to the scene as the new core’s Guardian investigator, Daniela remains a tough-as-nails mechanic who can take a beating and dish it back in spades. The original version of Daniela was all about retaliating against enemies that attacked her, and this new, seasoned version expands on that playstyle even more. Now, after any investigator at Daniela’s location is attacked, she can punish that enemy with a mean swing. While Daniela can only do this once per round, she can use any Fight ability in her arsenal to do it, which works wonderfully with her new and improved Wrench (Core Set, 2). With her wrench in hand, Daniela can freely engage an enemy, take a hit from it, and then immediately retaliate with an attack of her own—and she can do all that without even using an action!

Naturally, with a playstyle built around counterattacks, Daniela is going to want plenty of cards to help her take as many hits as possible. Fortunately, her pre-built deck comes prepared for exactly that. For starters, the Bodyguard (Core Set, 16) ally continues the theme of counterattacks by being able to soak a hit for not only Daniela, but also any other investigator at her location, and he’ll dish out a point of damage if he is defeated. Pair that with Daniela’s innate ability and the Fight ability on her wrench, and the unsuspecting enemy could wind up taking 3 damage in retaliation—or even 4 damage, if you boosted that counterattack with Vicious Blow (Core Set, 25)! Even without the Bodyguard, Daniela can equip Resilience (Core Set, 21) to increase her own durability, and with the event Lesson Learned (Core Set, 22), she can turn an enemy attack into a source of clues. Speaking of clues, Scene of the Crime (Core Set, 24) is another great source, potentially grabbing you two at once if there’s an enemy nearby.

So now you have a decent grasp of Daniela’s defenses, but what about her offenses? While we already covered her wrench and Vicious Blow, that’s only scratching the surface of what she can do. Use Right Tool for the Job (Core Set, 23) to find yourself a Tool or Weapon asset, which could be Daniela’s Wrench or something more traditional, such as an M1911 (Core Set, 19) or a Machete (Core Set, 20). Keep in mind that Daniela can trigger any Fight ability for her counterattack, so it’s a good idea to equip multiple weapons and keep her options open. If you’re having trouble landing hits on a particularly tough enemy, equip Endurance (Core Set, 17) onto Daniela for some impressive boosts to her combat skill (so long as you have the resources to pay for them). Once you finally take that enemy down, Logan Hastings (Core Set, 18) can help you recoup the resource cost for doing so, giving you access to even more options for delivering a beatdown to the monsters of the Mythos.

At this point, you have a good grasp of the Guardian cards in Daniela’s pre-built deck. Longtime fans of Arkham Horror: The Card Game may recall that the original version of Daniela could also include Survivor cards in her deck—in fact, her deckbuilding options emphasized the Survivor class a bit more than Guardian. While this new version of Daniela has a more traditional focus on Guardian cards, she can still splash Survivor cards in her deck for some extra versatility, which is fitting for a tough customer like her. If you’re curious about what sort of Survivor cards you can find in Daniela’s pre-built deck, be sure to check out our preview of Isabelle Barnes and the Survivor class from a few weeks ago!

On the topic of survival, we can’t end our preview of Daniela Reyes without talking about her signature weakness. Daniela is known for being tough and determined, and her fearless, go-getter attitude can often lead her to putting herself In Harm’s Way (Core Set, 3). This treachery represents the recklessness Daniela displays when throwing herself head-first into the fray, and it can cause her to wrack up injuries fast. The only way to get rid of it is to persevere through the pain and keep fending off foes, a task made more bearable when Daniela relies on her allies and her fellow investigators to help mitigate the damage coming her way.

Standing Guard

With her ability to counter enemy attacks and her tough, can-do attitude, Daniela Reyes is an excellent example of what the Guardian class has to offer in Chapter Two of Arkham Horror: The Card Game.

Look forward to our previews of the Rogue class in the coming weeks!

Written by Peter Schumacher

Discuss this article
in our forums!

Championing New Rules

Published 17 December 2025 | Marvel Champions: The Card Game

Championing New Rules

Presenting the Marvel Champions: The Card Game Rules Reference v1.7

Greetings, heroes!

The Marvel Champions: The Card Game rules team is pleased to present to you version 1.7 of our online Rules Reference. This update is intended to document new rules that have been introduced to the game since our last update, address some areas of the rules that were not addressed previously, and add clarity in some areas that were previously unclear. All of these updates are intended to make your games of Marvel Champions play as smoothly as possible.

Today, we would like to discuss some of the more important changes of this update so that you know what those changes are and why they were made.

Defining the Environments

Earlier this year, we announced that a new concept of “game environments” was coming to our Living Card Games. In brief, before you begin a game of Marvel Champions, you can choose a game environment in which to play. Your chosen game environment determines what heroes and player cards you are allowed to use during that game.

This update provides us with an opportunity to share with you more specifics about what these game environments look like. We are establishing three game environments: the Current Environment, the Legacy Environment, and the Limited Environment. Here is a description of each, along with examples of what type of player each might appeal to:

Current Environment – “I’m new to the game” or “I want to play only with what’s new”

When playing in this environment, players can only use heroes and player cards from the core set and the most recently released Marvel Champions products. As of this update, this includes the following expansions and their associated hero packs:

Age of Apocalypse
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Civil War

With each update to the rules reference, this Current Environment will shift to include only the most recent products.

Playing within the Current Environment is the easiest way for a new player or group of players to get into the game. For long-time players, playing in the Current Environment presents an opportunity for them to test their creativity and skill by limiting the available player card pool. Veteran players will have to seek out alternatives to their most-frequently-used cards and experiment with cards they may not have tried previously.

Legacy Environment – “I want to play with my whole collection” or “I don’t want to change how I play the game”

If you just want to keep playing the game as you have always played it, the Legacy Environment is for you. In this environment, your player card pool includes every hero and player card you own. If you enjoy limitless options and want to build the strongest, most optimized deck possible, or just play the way you have always played, you can do so with the Legacy Environment.

Limited Environment – “I want to mix and match Current and Legacy” or “I want to challenge myself with a different approach”

If the idea of the Current Environment intrigues you but you want to come up with your own subset of Marvel Champions products from which to customize your decks, the Limited Environment is for you. This highly flexible environment gives you the opportunity to get really creative by choosing the products you want to limit yourself to. Just pick up to three expansion boxes and up to 10 hero packs to serve as your card pool.

For greater challenge and theme, try playing only with the contents of three waves of products. Do you love mutants? Go with the Mutant Genesis, NeXt Evolution, and Age of Apocalypse waves. Are Avengers more your speed? Pick the core set wave of hero packs, The Rise of Red Skull, and The Mad Titan’s Shadow. The possible combinations are immense!

Environments Q&A

We have received many questions from the community since we originally announced game environments, so we wanted to address the most common ones here.

Does the introduction of these new game environments mean I can’t use older content/expansions anymore?

Not at all! While we will continue to design new content for the game primarily with the Current Environment in mind, everything will always be compatible with what came before, and we encourage you to play with whatever brings you joy. Only limit yourself to what’s in the Current Environment if you want to!

Will FFG / a later expansion ever require me to play using the Current Environment?

Nope! Every expansion we release will be compatible with each of the environments detailed above. If you want to use cards from every era of the game, play Legacy. If you only want to use the newest cards, play Current. Or, if you want a mix of the two, try Limited!

Will Current Environment content always be compatible with Legacy Environment content?

Absolutely! Just like always, older content for the game will still be compatible with newer content, and vice versa. There’s nothing stopping you from mixing and matching as you see fit—in fact, we encourage it!

Does my chosen game environment limit which scenarios or modular sets I can use?

No, game environments limit only your card pool when it comes to your player deck. You are free to play any scenario using any modular sets, regardless of your chosen environment.

Uniqueness

Defining which cards represent the same character has been a challenge for this game because of all the different ways individuals in the Marvel universe are addressed. Some monikers are shared by multiple people, while some people have had different monikers at different times. And that’s without even getting into all of the multiversal hijinks!

The previous rules were able to define uniqueness in a way that worked for the game early in its lifetime, but as we’ve added more versions of the same characters to the game over time, those rules got more and more complex. With the release of Civil War, which introduced many more heroes as encounter cards, we’ve decided to give the uniqueness rules a major overhaul in an attempt to simplify them. No ruleset can perfectly ensure that the same character can’t show up in multiple places while allowing every group of characters who share a moniker to show up together. But we feel that these new rules strike a good balance between simplicity and storytelling.

To determine if two cards “match” for the purpose of uniqueness, you compare them in one of two ways:

If neither card is an identity and neither has a subtitle, you simply compare their titles to see if they match. For example, two copies of the Jarnbjorn upgrade (Thor, 99) match each other, as do the Jessica Jones ally (Core Set, 59) and the Jessica Jones minion (Civil War, 185).
If either card has a subtitle or is an identity, you compare its subtitle or alter-ego title to the other card’s title, subtitle, and alter-ego title (if any). If any of the three are the same, those two cards are considered to match. For example, the Black Panther identity card from the core set (Core Set, 40B), the T’Challa ally from the Black Panther hero pack (Black Panther, 2), and the Black Panther leadership ally (War Machine, 12) are all considered to match.

There is one “matching” situation where we chose to explicitly allow multiples of the same character to be in play, and that is when comparing identities to villains. Because villains do not have subtitles or alter-ego titles, they will not match up with an identity except in a few rare cases, namely those like Nebula and Vision where the title of a villain (or leader) matches an alter-ego. Since the rules allow you to play Captain America against Captain America or Magneto against Magneto, we decided that you may have Nebula fight Nebula and Vision fight Vision, leaving it to the players to decide whether they want to allow these matchups at their own tables.

Quick Notes

The following updates are important enough to note, but don’t require in-depth explanation:

Choose (Option): We have simplified the rules around what is a valid option for “choose” effects on cards (especially encounter cards). Rather than requiring players to choose an option they can “fully resolve” or “most fully resolve,” which can be ambiguous in certain circumstances, players can now choose any option so long as that option has at least one valid target.

Ownership and Control: The rules did not previously address certain situations where cards enter out-of-play areas under the control of someone other than their owner, such as the Cosmic Entity event cards from Mad Titan’s Shadow or encounter cards in the Mysterio scenario from Sinister Motives. We have now enumerated the conditions under which a card will revert back to its owner’s control. In all other cases, control of the card remains constant. This means that a Cosmic Entity card that is resolved as a boost card is discarded to the encounter discard pile, not its owner’s discard pile.

Referential Ability: Our previous update to this section shut off some card interactions that were an intended part of the design, such as Pyromaniac (Mutant Genesis, 134) searching for and revealing the Pyro minion (Mutant Genesis, 75) when a card with that same name is also a part of that same encounter set. To enable these interactions once more, we have removed the requirement that the named card belong to the same encounter set and instead added a separate level of referential abilities that looks only at encounter cards for encounter card abilities or player cards for player card abilities.

Note that there is still a level for identity-specific cards, so you cannot ready your Venom ally (Sinister Motives, 190) using your Run and Gun event (Venom, 5).

Reveal: We have established a stepwise process for revealing encounter cards in order to clear up any timing questions related to the reveal process.

Errata: Most of the card errata in this update are technical in nature, made to keep cards functioning as intended under the current rules. Below are a handful of notable errata:

Magneto’s main scheme cards (Mutant Genesis, 141-143): The order of resolution in the Forced Responses on these main scheme cards created rules issues when the Magnetic card being revealed placed additional magnet counters on the main scheme, triggering the ability again before the magnet counters from the first trigger could be removed. These effects now remove the magnet counters before revealing a Magnetic card.
Suit Up (Age of Apocalypse, 17): The previous wording of this card raised rules issues about how to determine whether an upgrade could attach to a particular ally. To avoid these issues, we have changed the card to fetch an upgrade that can attach to any ally.
MACH-IV (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., 156): This minion’s effect of not allowing characters without the Aerial trait to defend his attacks was intended to include allies, but allies do not technically “make basic defenses” as they do not have a DEF stat.
S.H.I.E.L.D. Deputy (Winter Soldier, 33): Some copies of this card were printed without the “Max 1 per character” limit, which the card should have.

Those are the main changes we wanted to highlight in this update, but there may be others that may impact your understanding of the game. As always, if you have a rules question you just can’t figure out, you can send it to us through our rules contact form: https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/contact/rules/.

Until next time, keep saving the world!

Written by Tony Fanchi

Discuss this article
in our forums!

The Returned

Published 4 December 2025 | Arkham Horror: The Card Game

The Returned

Introducing Isabelle Barnes from Arkham Horror: The Card Game's New Core Set

“My sister’s sacrifice won’t be in vain.”

Isabelle Barnes has been on the run for as long as she can remember. She finally escaped from the Olmsteads, a family cult who thought of her as the “final piece” for some dark and twisted ritual. She doesn’t know what made her so special to the cult, but now, thanks to her sister Jenny, Isabelle is finally free. But freedom came at a price; her sister gave everything to get Isabelle back, and for that, Isabelle intends to make the Olmsteads—and all those who prey on the weak and innocent—pay in blood. Armed with her lost sister’s twin .45s, Izzie can finally turn to face her pursuers head-on.

Back in October, we revealed the new core set for Arkham Horror: The Card Game, which heralds the beginning of an era we’re referring to as “Chapter Two.” With that new core set comes a new set of five core investigators, and one of those five is Isabelle Barnes (Core Set, 13)!

Joining the game’s roster as the new core’s Survivor investigator, Izzie steps onto the scene with a score to settle and hell to raise. Her playstyle revolves around using her high sanity to her advantage, intentionally taking horror in order to commit a skill card from her discard pile during a skill test. This lets her get multiple uses out of handy skills like Slippery (Core Set, 80) and Timely Intervention (Core Set, 81) in a single deck cycle, giving Izzie a leg up when dealing with the unexpected threats of the Mythos.

Of course, sometimes you have to deal with those threats the old-fashioned way, and that’s where Isabelle’s Twin .45s (Core Set, 14) come into play. This pair of pistols packs quite the punch, allowing Izzie to make use of both her combat and her agility skills when dealing with monsters. Even better, the .45s let you shoot twice with a single action, which means Izzie is more than capable of (and more than willing to) fire several shots in a turn against a particularly nasty foe.

As you might expect for a Survivor, the rest of Isabelle’s deck is all about pushing forward no matter what, even in the face of insurmountable odds. Since Izzie wants to deal herself horror to get multiple uses out of her skill cards, she’ll want to mitigate the horror—and damage—that she takes from enemies in any way she can. That’s where Aleksey Saburov (Core Set, 72) comes in. With his ability to heal himself over time, Aleksey can take quite a few hits for you over the course of the game, letting you get plenty of mileage out of Izzie’s otherwise low health and freeing up her sanity to use as a resource. After dealing with an especially grisly monster, use some Bandages (Core Set, 73) to patch yourself or Aleksey up, and if things start getting really hairy, you can equip Izzie with a Jumpsuit (Core Set, 75) for some added protection.

That Jumpsuit can do more than just soak a hit. If you discard it during your turn, you can retrieve any Tool or Weapon asset from your discard pile, potentially letting you get even more uses out of Isabelle’s Twin .45s. Even if the .45s aren’t in your discard pile, you could grab another handy weapon like the Meat Cleaver (Core Set, 77) instead. This beefy blade works especially well with Izzie’s playstyle, since it both hits harder when her sanity is low and lets her heal some horror when she manages to take out an enemy with it. With Izzie’s Elder Sign ability being the other primary way she can heal horror from herself (in her pre-built deck, at least), you’ll certainly appreciate the mental catharsis this giant cleaver can bring!

As demonstrated by Isabelle’s innate ability and the Jumpsuit in her deck, a staple of the Survivor playstyle involves retrieving or reusing cards in your discard pile. Naturally, there are other cards in her deck that also follow this trend, such as Hunter’s Instinct (Core Set, 74), which can pull an event back into your hand. That event could be “Shove off!” (Core Set, 79), a handy tactic that lets you both evade and damage an enemy simultaneously…if you succeed. If you fail, then the event returns itself back into your hand, which means you could try again or use it to fuel a skill test later. In similar fashion, if you fail an investigation test by 2 or less, you can follow it up with “Look what I found!” (Core Set, 78) to immediately discover 2 clues at your location, letting you “fail forward” in true Survivor style. Finally, when you really, really need to succeed a willpower or agility test, you can spend some resources to boost yourself with Levelheaded (Core Set, 76), and there’s no limit to how many times you use it!

Speaking of limits, there comes a point in every quest for vengeance where the pressure, anger, and stress gets to be a bit too much to handle. With her constantly using her own sanity as a resource, it’s only natural that Isabelle will eventually hit her Breaking Point (Core Set, 15). Depending on her current remaining sanity, this dangerous signature weakness could deal Izzie up to 3 direct damage, which is a frightening thing when she only has 5 health to begin with. Thankfully, by relying on friends like Aleksey Saburov and her fellow investigators, Izzie can put herself back together and pull through those toughest moments.

By now, we’ve given you a good look at the Survivor cards in Isabelle’s pre-built deck. Of course, most investigators in Arkham Horror: The Card Game can mix in some cards of other classes, and Izzie is no exception. While Survivor cards are her main focus, Isabelle Barnes can also include some Mystic cards in her deck. As for what specific Mystic cards are part of her pre-built deck, you’ll just have to wait and see!

Bullets in the Dark

If that’s not enough of Isabelle Barnes for you, then we’re also excited to announce Bullets in the Dark, an upcoming new Arkham Horror novel from our friends at Aconyte Books! Written by Cath Lauria, this book accompanies the release of the new core set and puts Isabelle at center stage. Looking for justice in a transformed Arkham, Izzie teams up with Tommy Muldoon, and their combined detective work reveals the city’s dark underworld teeming with murder and eldritch mayhem.

Get ready for a thrilling crime noir adventure when Bullets in the Dark arrives in spring of 2026. Be sure to sign up to the Arkham Horror newsletter and follow Aconyte Books on social media if you want to find out more!

Surviving the Horrors

With her ability to utilize her own sanity and her perseverant drive for vengeance, Isabelle Barnes is a fantastic example of what the Survivor class has to offer in Chapter Two of Arkham Horror: The Card Game.

Look forward to our previews of the Guardian class in the coming weeks!

Written by Peter Schumacher

Discuss this article
in our forums!

FFG Live in December

Published 2 December 2025 | Star Wars: Unlimited

FFG Live in December

Announcing the FFG Livestreams for December 2025

It's FFG Live! Join us this month for more awesome livestreams for our current and upcoming games and expansions. Read on for more information on what livestreams you can look forward to this month!

December 3 at 1 PM CST

Star Wars™: Unlimited – A Lawless Time First Look

PREVIEW

A Lawless Time—the thrilling next set of Star Wars: Unlimited—is fast approaching! Join us for an early look at the upcoming set and what it has to offer, including a brand-new token type and the game’s first-ever multi-aspect cards!

Check out the stream here!

December 4 at 1 PM CST

Marvel Champions: The Card Game – Synthezoid Smackdown

GAMEPLAY

It’s hero versus hero (again)! Join members of the Marvel Champions design team as they face off each other’s heroes in this demonstration of the optional PvP mode in the upcoming Synthezoid Smackdown scenario pack. Who will win in this clash of ideals?

Check out the stream here!

December 10 at 1 PM CST

Star Wars™: Unlimited – Booster Pack Changes

DISCUSSION

As we approach the third year of Star Wars: Unlimited, we’re gearing up to make some adjustments to the game’s booster packs going forward. Join Senior Design lead Danny Schaefer as he breaks down all the changes to booster packs coming in A Lawless Time!

Check out the stream here!

December 11 at 10 AM CST

Twilight Imperium – Twilight’s Fall

GAMEPLAY

The release of Thunder’s Edge introduces a whole new way to play Twilight Imperium! In this dark alternate future, each player takes the role of one of the mad Mahact kings as they battle for ultimate galactic supremacy. Join designer Dane Beltrami, Hunter and Matt from Space Cats and Peace Turtles, and Community Manager Liv Sheppard in this all-day playthrough of Twilight’s Fall. Which Mahact king will reign supreme?

Check out the stream here!

December 17 at 1 PM CST

Star Wars: Unlimited – Secrets of Power Premier Gameplay

GAMEPLAY

Secrets of Power is out in the world, and with it a new metagame is gradually developing. With Planetary Qualifiers starting up soon, join the Star Wars: Unlimited team as they show off some of their favorite Premier decks with the new set!

Check out the stream here!

December 18 at 1 PM CST

Arkham Horror Files – Happy Horror Days

DISCUSSION

What’s this? What’s this? Eldritch horrors everywhere. What’s this? Smoke is streaming through the air. What’s this? Don’t believe your eyes; monsters’ scheming will take you to their lair. What’s this?

Usher in the holidays with a Happy Horror Days livestream! Join members of the FFG staff as we celebrate the Arkham Horror Files community, show off some of the fun things that were shared this season, talk about some of our favorite spooky traditions, and share a bit more about the upcoming Chapter Two releases for Arkham Horror: The Card Game.

Check out the stream here!

Discuss this article
in our forums!

Available Now: November 28

Published 28 November 2025 | Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game

Available Now: November 28

The Mandalorian Faction Pack is Now Available

Check out the latest product from Fantasy Flight Games, now available in the United States at your local retailer or online through our web store!

Mandalorian Faction Pack

Expand your Star Wars™: The Deckbuilding Game collection with the Mandalorian Faction Pack! This pack comes with everything you need to add the Mandalorian faction to your copy of the game, including new base cards, starter cards, and cards for the galaxy deck. Also included are special rules and neutral cards that allow you to play an all-new, 3-player, free-for-all variant game mode!

Not a standalone product. A copy of the Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game (original or Clone Wars edition) is required to play.

You can pick up your own copy of Mandalorian Faction Pack (SWG03) at your local retailer today!*

*Available now in select markets. To find updates on this product's release in your territory, please follow this link.

Discuss this article
in our forums!

Available Now: November 21

Published 21 November 2025 | Marvel Champions: The Card Game

Available Now: November 21

Synthezoid Smackdown is Now Available

Check out the latest product from Fantasy Flight Games, now available in the United States at your local retailer or online through our web store!

Synthezoid Smackdown

The battle between heroes rages on! In the wake of the Superhero Registration Act, the mighty She-Hulk stood with her fellow Avengers Iron Man and Captain Marvel in support of registration. Meanwhile, the empathetic android Vision joined Captain America and Spider-Woman on the side of resistance. Both of these former allies are ready to deliver a smackdown for the sake of their ideals, and in this time of strife, everyone must choose a side.

Introducing Synthezoid Smackdown, the latest scenario pack for Marvel Champions: The Card Game! This pack includes two brand-new, customizable scenarios featuring She-Hulk and Vision, two heroic leaders clashing over their conflicting ideals. This extra-large, 90-card scenario pack comes with eight modular encounter sets (four for registration, four for resistance) that can be mixed and matched with those from the Civil War expansion for further customizing options. Also included are rules and cards for an optional competitive mode in which players team up with their own leader and race to be the first to defeat the opposing team’s leader.

Will you fight alongside She-Hulk in favor of superhero registration? Or will you align with Vision on the side of resistance?

Not a standalone expansion. A copy of the Marvel Champions: The Card Game core set is required to play.

You can pick up your own copy of Synthezoid Smackdown (MC57) at your local retailer today!*

*Available now in select markets. Available in the US on December 5, 2025. To find updates on this product's release in your territory, please follow this link.

Discuss this article
in our forums!