it is not necessary to chase down the older cards. The only reasons to do so are for fun or to complete a collection, though if intended for play, sleeves are required to disguise the different backs. CCG sets Arkham Edition (1st base set) Unspeakable Tales (1st expansion) Forbidden Relics (2nd expansion) Eldritch Edition (2nd base set) Masks of Nyarlathotep (3rd expansion) Forgotten Cities (4th expansion) Arkham Edition and Eldritch Edition also included "Premium Starter Sets" that contain two playable decks, primarily consisting of reprints from the normal sets, and a series of promo cards given as attendance awards for participating in official tournaments. Each booster pack contains 11 cards (including 3 'uncommon' and 1 'rare'). In addition, the Arkham and Eldritch base sets offered starter sets with fixed contents, designed to introduce players to the game. In May 2006, Fantasy Flight Games announced their decision to cease releasing cards in a CCG format, and to instead begin releasing smaller sets of cards as single decks with fixed contents in the LCG format. These "Asylum Packs" would be released once-a-month, and were initially designed to be compatible with the CCG cards. Released approximately once a month, these expansions were designed to increase the players' card pool in a balanced and affordable way. Three copies of twenty new cards are introduced in each pack, for a total of 60 cards. The initial printings of the sets included varying quantities of each card to echo the rare, uncommon, and common rarities of the original game, and this distribution may still be found in some out-of-print packs. Casual gamers can play using a single core set and have the option of using supplemental packs if they want to. Original Asylum Packs Spawn of Madness (first pack) Kingsport Dreams (second pack) Conspiracies of Chaos (third pack) Dunwich Denizens (fourth pack) Asylum Packs The Asylum Packs proved to be very popular, encouraging Fantasy Flight to convert the entire game into the LCG format. On February 5, 2008, Fantasy Flight announced that they would be publishing a new "Core Set" of cards in October 2008, incompatible with the original CCG cards, and that two additional Asylum Packs, The Mountains of Madness and Ancient Horrors, would be published to follow the existing Asylum Packs and complete the first cycle, "Forgotten Lore"; all six packs were reprinted in 2011 as pieces of a unified set, with a single