Like some of you might notice on the earlier forums, I love to play Hastur, as it has the exciting mechanism I've ever use, cancellation.

But, right now woth the last expansion (Mountains), I decided to rebuild another deck based on the characters I used to practice + new mecanisms.

The aim of this deck is to control your opponent commission's sequence, in a way to avoid him genrating tokens + a little bit of Rush

I try this deck for fun, but he migth reach higher levels :

3x Feathery Watcher (a really cool char for this faction)

3x Demon lover (reducing the skill of char which still be able to commit

3x Giant Albino Pingouin (Deck thema + the ability to be immune against mirror strategy)

3 x Keeper of the Yellow Sign (Token Discarding+ A)

3x Arckam Inmate (combio with CDW, plus usefull I icon)

3x Patron of the Arts (Speed Bump)

3x Performance Artists (Cancel for cheap)

3x Psychopath (Invulnerability + extra text box)

3x Pulp writer (late game+ usefull ability )

3x Repairer of reputation (transient+ AA)

3x Charles Dexter Ward (the aim of the use of this card is to use CDW as a block, which will

bring madness to the opponent's chars).

3x White Out (still block your opponent when he wants to genrate tokens during resolution)

3x Polar Mirage (to still a char that hadn't been commited in a way to block you later, which can give you a strong advantage)

3x Antartic Wind

3x Polar Fog

3x Hypothermia (this deck owns a huge proportion of polar event, especially designed for Hastur )

3x Irresistible Allure (still coomission effect)

3x Cruel Temptation (committing tool)

TOTAL : 54 cards (33 characters+ 21 events)

Nice strategy. I have a similar idea, but I want to control also the hand of my opponent...when its finished I will post it.

lordofmasks

im also working on a polar/hastur deck but havent finished it yet. i have wrack/power drain for some cancel effects. the one thing im worried about is st toads church. that card basically kills all polar events.

so does dreamlands messenger.

So splash for Shub (you'll get Yeti) and burrowing beneath. And black spawn from below.

I have a similar sort of deck, only I stuck in a bunch of Sledge Dogs. Probably less serious, but a lot of fun/themed.

IvanVladislav said:

im so slow to this, my main characters were gonna be the dogs. seems i have the same idea as everyone else. first the hastur/polar theme and the dogs. but im gonna add those elder thing creatures...

has anyone played a polar theme deck yet? does it work well?

the sledge dogs are fun, i want to know aboput the polar deck as well

the sledge dogs are fun, i want to know aboput the polar deck as well

I think I just figured out yet another reason why Polar Events on the whole are subpar:

They get 100% trumped by one of the most used Shub Events: Glimpse of The Void.

Think about it. An entire strategy and the main theme of an Asylum pack gets trumped by two cards which where in print uhmmm, a whole year before it came out? How is it as a benchmark for an all time low in card game design?

Carioz said:

glimpse of the void ruins every strategy that involves the story phase....it doesnt matter what deck you play if your opponent keeps playing that youre kinda stuck sitting back and watching. granted you get a story phase first, but still the card was designed to slow things down and that it does. also if you have a way to discard cards, like temple of nephren-ka, you could still build up on polar events.

No.

Glimpse of the void kills Hypothermia too.

not to mention Dreamlands Messenger too.

Carioz said:

yes but you can only stall so long with glimpse before they can play a polar card. so glimpse doesnt do anything to polar theme decks that it doesnt do to every other deck. but using temple of nephren-ka will make sure that hypothermia isnt slowed down for when the chance comes to play the event.

and yes there is messenger, but again he stops every thing also. ravanger is useless, tons of story effects are meaningless with messenger. but the tools to deal with glimpse and messenger are there. besides if youre playing a hastur/polar deck you should be able the cancel glimpse to begin with. and pulp writer can take the messenger to the horrifing ends of the dreamlands.

sure the polar decks have their weakness, but every deck does. but i just pointed out 2 ways to deal with shub, plus the temple to keep things building just incase.

So you plan using 2 cards to enable a strategy which requires at least another one? Quite a weak proposition. And recurring Glimpse of the Void, for decks which employ it, is an easy matter.

On the deck.

It roll-over-and-dies to Nodens. Finding a way to counter it would be needed.

I cannot really find the interaction between CDW and Arkham Inmate...

-it is just me or is the edit function absent? edit: yes I am dumb -

-Also, the new forum are kinda slow for everyone?-

Carioz said:

New forum is super slow, I really prefered the old one. The bright side is that this one seems to be a lot more popular.

Also I don't think polar decks are meant to be competitive, so it's kind of pointless to point out all the cards that ruin the polar player's day. Polar decks are more of a theme thing.

i dont know about it being weak, hastur has cancel effects so it shouldnt be unheard of to use and plan on using that angle to further another part of your deck.

you do seem really hung up on glimpse though. the card isnt a special weakness to this deck at all, its a problem for many decks. and like i said before hastur has cancel........they try to bring back glimpse, cancel it. glimpse would screw with rush decks just the same. after a few turns youd have bigger characters than their little rushers...... and yes players could bring back glimpse and keep playing it just the same. so if you had a rush deck that had a way to deal with stall tactics would this also be a weak propostion? i dont think it is. its planning on making sure your strategy works. so planning on canceling glimpse or destorying st toad 's church is just having foresight.

might be fun also, but if you had a success token discard thing going, playing realm of ice and death would really screw up the synergy of polar events.

i started a posted about problems with these boards......so you arent the only one suffering, seems we all are.

Well, rush decks in general deal with GotV by simply trying to win before the oppo starts a cycle, without wasting slots for control or controllish elements.
If you ask about more specific decks, Synd rush usually deals with GotV with In the Gutter, while GK Rush employs Burrowing Beneath to kill its recursion.
Furthermore, Rush decks usually try to win by turn 2,5 which Polar decks can't (It is not me being a grouch, it's the amount of events and the factions needed to run a Polar theme really make it difficult to achieve a t 2,5), limiting the amount of cards GotV'er can go through and stunting its chance to start a recursion. Using cancels to protect an event means trading 2 -paid- actions for one, which will put you very behind, very soon in the tempo race.

-I agree kinda slow does not describe the response I am getting from the forum. Molass like would be more accurate...-

i understand the t2 deal. i never said the deck was gonna win worlds. but ffg did make it clear that they wanna slow down coc so maybe turn 5 wins may become the low end of the average and in that case this polar theme isnt that bad. plus having cancels doesnt mean using them.

other than glimpse and messenger there isnt much that will prevent people from playing polar events. so if the opponent isnt playing shub you could probably just resource a few of the cancels and safely play polar stuff. if the opponent is using glimpse to stall you, either to get the cards they need, or to keep you from doing your thing. so canceling glimpse may not only prevent them from screwing with you, but it could very well screw them too. i do see your point, but when youre playing hastur youre almost playing a control deck anyways, and cancel is so central to control. so why not use it?

PearlJamaholic said:

Oh boy, the slow and more deliberate Cthulhu debate. I'd love to have the time to debate it now, but Cthulhu will always evolve toward a t<2,5 win game (as in by t 2,5 a player has won or has such an overwhelming supremecy he has de facto won).

I have this feeling that even after Core Set, with 3x and rotation, the basic t 2,5 benchmark deck can still be built.

Glad to see so many interessants points of view on this proposition !!

Well, I kinda agree with Carioz on this point :

The deck i proposed was a kind of Hastur Rush deck, which inherited a lot of weakness, but had a huge advantage on commission sequence (which is the path to earn points). I know I should have problems to deal with some factions (especially Cthulhu), and stalling strategy may screw up my deck. I must admit I totally declined fighting against Stall, but I couldn't take care of every other strategy ...

And you're right saying that I do not take advantage on event cancelling (performance artist just works for character and support). But I believe hastur do not offer enough good cancelling engine at low price.

What about Wrack or Power Drain ??? Despite this faction is considered more efficient on this kind of strategy, why loosing 3 slots for a card I'm not even sure to draw ?? Having just 3X event cancelling in a deck isn't enough to be sure to draw it when you need it. Having more would increase my cards number, which is not to be considered.

The french meta evolved at a really fast pace, and the players I met yet are really really competitive. I need to consider it when deckbuilding, as I can't spend cardslots that got lost because of a "toolbox" strategy. Don't misunderstand me, I found of toolboxing, but I now need to consider efficiency in my deck, as most of the people I play against are good players :

We often end up Turn 4 (when the deck turns well) or Turn 8 (50/50), and the strategies did change with this deck if the Rush strat fails off. I consider that I must change my strategy with CDW and Arckham Inmate. I play them without using their capacity.

PRODIGEE said:

By definition this deck cannot win earlier than T 3,5 so considering it a rush is far fetched. Commitment tricks (which I think are completely useless in CoCCCG) by definition need high quality to work in synergy (in this case, focusing on a rush deck, Investigation chars), which Hastur has not.

PRODIGEE said:

This deck has problems against Cthulhu, against $ynd, against GK, against combo decks, and has a huge weakness in Nodens. While I doubt GK, Nodens and combo in general will outlive LCG rotation, $ynd and Cthulhu will still be forces to reckon with.

PRODIGEE said:

So, First impression after our monthly tournament :

This deck obtain the 3rd place. The committing tricks were mostly cool (except Antartic wind, which was 'nt effecient enough!)

The Hastur's Polar , the Polar Fog and Feathery Watcher worked pretty well together, and can take off turn 2 !

Despite what might have been said, I had several victory turn 4, which is really cool for Hastur (I used to win turn 6 or 7, usually).

GK and Y'go had to deal with this, and I was able to stop them, thanks to Vic's Loft !!

THat is finally a nice deck, maybe not able to reach TOPTIER, but .. that was enough to have good games

thats cool to hear, i ended up building a shub/cthulhu deck so i still havent put together a hastur/polar deck. but its good news that it works. did you get to play hypothermia, and what was about the average value of x?

It was some kind of deception ... Wasn't able to play it in an interessant perspective, I decided to replace him with something else (like I did for repairer of reputation with Vic's Loft).

I may try the new Artist from AP 6, in a way to see if he's good at something