The Key and the GateAnnouncing an Upcoming Expansion for Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game
“It was an All-in-One and One-in-All of limitless being and self – not merely a thing of one Space-Time continuum, but allied to the ultimate animating essence of existence’s whole unbounded sweep – the last, utter sweep which has no confines and which outreaches fancy and mathematics alike.”
–H.P. Lovecraft with E. Hoffman Price, Through the Gates of the Silver Key
Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce the upcoming release of The Key and the Gate, a deluxe expansion for Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game with a strong focus on the mysteries and minions of Yog-Sothoth!
With its 165 new cards (three copies each of fifty-five individual cards), The Key and the Gate delves deep into the dark secrets of Yog-Sothoth. It also changes the fates of the game’s other factions with new Fated characters and powerful support cards.
Coterminous with all time and space, the Outer God Yog-Sothoth knows and sees all, and its power extends across all reality and through all time. In Call of Cthulhu, this Ancient One exerts an unparalleled influence over the draw deck and discard pile. Under the control of a clever fan of Yog-Sothoth, cards are never lost or out of play; they merely lie dormant, waiting to move from one state to another. The Key and the Gate reaches farther than ever with this power, introducing effects like that on Lost Oracle (The Key and the Gate, 9) that trigger only from the discard pile, as well as enhancing strategies built around discarding opponents’ decks.
Because Yog-Sothoth possesses unfathomable knowledge, there are always some reckless or daring individuals who seek the deity’s favor in order to gain knowledge and power. The Key and the Gate rewards these mad Scientists and Sorcerers with new powers, allowing players to tweak old strategies and develop new ones around their new scientific knowledge and Spells.
The Great Race
“The Great Race itself waxed well-nigh omniscient, and turned to the task of setting up exchanges with the minds of other planets, and of exploring their pasts and futures.”
–H.P. Lovecraft, The Shadow Out of Time
The Key and the Gate marks the introduction of Yithian player cards to Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game. The great and ancient race of Yith, Yithians possess the ability to transfer their minds across time and space. By swapping consciousnesses with other beings, Yithians are able to explore remote worlds and eras. Furthermore, when they learned that their race would be extinguished by flying polyps, they used their psychic powers to send their minds hurtling across the universe to reside in the tall, strange, conical forms of four-limbed beings from an ancient Earth.
The Key and the Gate brings this strange race to life and makes the Yithian subtype a viable center for strategies geared toward strange tricks and unexpected control. You’ll find the Yithians represented both in their disembodied consciousnesses and their tall, conical bodies. Also, a wealth of Yithian support cards and events lends strength to this new theme that carries well beyond the characters and their abilities.
Discover Your Fate
Some people – and other entities – have special roles in the universe. Their actions are more important to the flow of history than those of others. Could you see the threads of history woven together, you could alter it radically by influencing the destinies of these uniquely important individuals.
Perhaps it makes sense, then, that in an expansion dedicated to the inscrutable Ancient One that resides simultaneously along all time and space, we should find a new mechanic concerning fate. The Key and the Gate introduces the new Fated keyword and develops it across all of the game’s factions.
The Fated keyword opens space in the game for the development of tremendously powerful effects like that on the Norman Blackwood, Sr. (The Key and the Gate, 42), balanced by the fact they go away after a set number of uses.
Of course, the destinies of these Fated characters appear differently to Yog-Sothoth than to those beings subject to the four-dimensional flow of Space-Time. Accordingly, The Key and the Gate presents a new version of Yog-Sothoth (The Key and the Gate, 8), the All-in-One, that can use individuals’ fates against them. As has long been realized by the disciples of this Outer God, knowledge is control.
Yog-Sothoth Is the Gate
“Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again.”
–H.P. Lovecraft, The Dunwich Horror
In another reality, in another state of consciousness, The Key and the Gate is already here. We’re already changing the course of Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game with the expansion’s new Yithians and Fated cards…but in our perception of reality, with our limited experience of Space-Time, we still have to wait. Do you wish you could have your copy right now? What sort of deals would you make to perceive all Space-Time simultaneously? Would you risk the madness?
The Key and the Gate is scheduled to arrive at retailers everywhere late in the first quarter of 2013. Until then, keep checking our website for additional previews and announcements.
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The Key and the Gate
