“To hint to unimaginative people of a horror beyond all human conception – a horror of houses and blocks and cities leprous and cancerous with evil dragged from elder worlds – would be merely to invite a padded cell instead of a restful rustication, and Malone was a man of sense despite his mysticism.”
    –H.P. Lovecraft, The Horror at Red Hook

For the Greater Good is the eighth deluxe expansion for Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game .

The Agency reinforces and expands its network in For the Greater Good , as roughly two-thirds of the expansion’s 165 cards (three copies each of fifty-five different cards) lend new strength to these heroic champions of law and order. Numerous police officers, military officials, investigators, and psychiatrists bolster the Government subtype, even as several new Hunter characters track the game’s monsters and otherworldly evils across the earth, seeking to purge them from our world.

Of course, the confrontations of Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game are rife with violence, so For the Greater Good grants Agency members access to plenty of new weapons and vehicles to aid them in their efforts.

Still, will even all of these new recruits and pieces of equipment provide the Agency enough strength to withstand the never-ending tide of monsters, cultists, and Ancient Ones ?

New Recruits

For the Greater Good reinforces the Agency with no fewer than twenty different characters. As these characters lend considerable strength to the Government subtype and propel the new Hunter subtype toward greatness, they simultaneously reinforce the Agency’s strengths in Combat and Investigation struggles.

While there aren’t quite as many Government characters in Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game as there are Cultists , Investigators , and Monsters , the subtype is still one of the game’s largest. Yet, despite its size, it has historically been mired in bureaucracy and has suffered from poor communication between its many departments. The result is that the number of synergies within the subtype has been greatly restricted, but this is soon to change with characters like Military Attaché ( For the Greater Good , 15) and logistical genius Lt. Wilson Stewart ( For the Greater Good , 16).

Moreover, even as the Agency has taken significant steps to reorganize and empower its Government agents, it has redoubled its efforts to recruit the best possible talent.

• For example, Karl Heinrich ( For the Greater Good , 17) is an expert military commander who knows how to strike against his opponents where it hurts – in their domains. Whenever your opponent’s character is destroyed by the results of a Combat struggle, Karl Heinrich can choose any one character card attached to your opponent’s domain as a resource, and he can discard it.
• Similarly, expert Hunter Grete Wagner-Blackwood ( For the Greater Good , 12) excels at thinking beyond the present moment. Powered by her faith and conviction, she denies all your opponent’s non- Loyal characters the use of their struggle icons and skill at any story to which she is committed.
• Finally, just as the Agency depends upon the combined efforts of its most talented individuals, it has rebuilt some of its key organizations, such as The Foundation ( For the Greater Good , 20), so that Agency players can combine the resources from all their different domains. Then, after these powerful organizations enter play, they can help keep your other characters safe from harm.

New Gear

 The Agency needs more than new recruits in order to keep pace with rivals that can flit between dimensions, travel through time and space, and rise from the grave. It needs all the best gear on which it can get its hands. That means rifles, knives, flashlights, tommy guns, dynamite, and armored cars. These things – and more – may just give humanity’s defenders the edge they need in their battles with ghoulish monsters and elder gods, as well as the cultists who revere them.

For the Greater Good keeps the Agency in good supply with twenty-one new support cards (three copies each of seven individual supports), and these both enhance the Agency and hinder their rivals. In fact, the faction’s old bureaucrats may have streamlined communication between the Agency’s different Government departments, but there’s still plenty of Red Tape ( For the Greater Good , 27) that they can throw at their rivals.

While no measure of Red Tape can stop a determined foe for long, the Agency’s most talented operatives will take advantage of any delay their rivals suffer. Even a few minutes may prove the difference between solving a grisly murder or finding yourself coming across a portal ripping open to another world… where a hideous Ancient One waits to enter our realm.

New Ways to Break the Law

Of course, not everyone adheres to the same codes of honor as the Agency’s cops and crusaders. For that reason, For the Greater Good also introduces new characters and support cards for each of the game’s other factions, as well as a handful of neutral cards that represent the seeds of potential new strategies and deck ideas, especially geared toward players who like warping the standard resolution of icon struggles at stories. Among other things, all of the game’s eight factions gain inexpensive support cards that you can attach to a story to tilt the odds of its resolution not-so-subtly in your favor. Like Non-Euclidian Geometry ( For the Greater Good , 40), these attachments further allow your deck to play to its strengths even as they make the game more dynamic and horrifying.

Serve as Humanity’s Shield

Will the hidden cults and monsters of Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game finally pave the way for their dark masters to bring our world to ruin? Not if the Agency, its cops, its officers, and its Hunters have anything to say about it.

As they prepare to confront these insidious evils, they realize they will face tremendous challenges. They will come face to face with horrifying monsters that could freeze the blood. They will find themselves in situations that no number of bullets can solve. Yet they won’t be daunted. Nothing less than the fate of humanity is at stake, and even though their struggles will sound completely unbelievable and incomprehensible, they will fight. They don’t fight for fame or riches. They fight because the world needs them. They fight For the Greater Good .