Silver Twilight mono deck

By Panzerbjrn2, in Call of Cthulhu Deck Construction

Hey all,


I've been wanting to make a mono Order of the Silver Twilight deck for some time, and I have finally come up with something that has been winning me a few games consistently.


This is the deck:


Character:

3x Knight of the Eclipse (***)

3x Recruiter for the Lodge (TOotST)

3x Silver Twilight Enforcer (TOotST)

3x Disgruntled Chef (TOotST)

3x Initiate of Huang Hun (CotJE)

3x The Claret Knight (SoK)

3x Protector of Secrets (IotF)

3x Guardian of Dawn (TiV)

3x Lodge Barkeep (TOotST)

3x Student of the Profane (SoM)

3x B. Ramsdale Brown (TKatG)

3x Silver Twilight Collector (TOotST)

3x Keeper of the Silver Sphere (TOotST)

3x Ol' Lazy Eyes (CoC)

3x Meticulous Scribe (TGS)

3x Crazy Eddie (CoC)

3x Zanni (TiV)


Support:

3x Tcho-Tcho Talisman (Core)

3x The Deodand (TSS)

3x T'tka Halot (WaB)

3x Magnifying Glass (SoA)

3x The Necronomicon: John Dee Translation (TUP)

3x Whateley's Diary (DD)


Event:

3x Eldritch Nexus (Core)

3x Arcane Tampering (TBJ)


Conspiracy:

3x The Locked Door (WitD)

3x From the First Degree to the Last (TbtA)


81 cards may be a bit much, and I could probably remove Silver Twilight Enforcer, Crazy Eddie and The Necronomicon: John Dee Translation.


The plan is basically to get the Initiate of Huang Hun, and bounce my opponents characters. Since I can bounce them back to my own hand, I can get rid of 1-3 (or 6 with Eldritch nexus) per turn.

If they get killed, Ramsdale let me bring them back.


Day give bonuses to my Guardian of Dawn and the conspiracy cards convey bonuses to some others.


Very limited play testing against two different opponents, but the results have been good so far.


Any thoughts/comments/constructive criticism?


(And yes, I realise there are quite a few neutral cards, but I still call it a mono deck ;-))

Well, building a good Silver Twilight mono deck is no easy feat, so, grats for arriving at something that worked well for you so far!

81 cards may be a bit much, and I could probably remove Silver Twilight Enforcer, Crazy Eddie and The Necronomicon: John Dee Translation.
The plan is basically to get the Initiate of Huang Hun, and bounce my opponents characters. Since I can bounce them back to my own hand, I can get rid of 1-3 (or 6 with Eldritch nexus) per turn.
If they get killed, Ramsdale let me bring them back.

Even if you cut those nine cards, you still have 72 cards, that's almost 50% more cards than the minimum. Unless you have an extremely good reason for such an oversized deck (like planning to mill yourself), your deck will get a lot better by simply cutting the number down to 50.

As it is your deck will suffer from too much randomness: What do you do if you don't draw the Initiate or Ramsdale Brown, or those Eldritch Nexuses? Is there a secondary plan? You also don't seem to have ways to draw additional cards.

I've also been wondering about The Locked Door: This is very risky to play since it may help your opponent more than it helps you (you do realize your opponent also gets those extra investigation icons, right?)

You also cannot play the Barkeep - I suppose you overlooked the Steadfast requirement?

Regarding the Guardian of Dawn: Do you actually have a way to make it Day?

WTH? I just now see that the barkeep has a syndicate symbol? That is crazy. Thanks for bringing that to my attention. None of my friends I played with noticed that either.

Bugger. Why would they do something so crazy?

The Eldritch Nexuses are more 'Nice To Haves', rather than relying on them.

Recruiter of the lodge has been useful for getting characters further down my deck, and if I have Ramsdale down, then I try to get him killed so I can play him again.

I have used protector of secrets to block opponents characters when he has exhausted several in his own phase.

I have used the Barkeep to keep characters exhausted, but that strategy is out the window now -_-

I noticed the Day issue last night actually. I *did* have cards to make it day, but I must have gotten rid of them when I last tweaked the deck.

Well, the deck *did* work, but I am apparently back to the drawing board. the core of the deck is pretty good though, so I'll figure something out.

Thanks for your comments.

I agree with jhaelen, you've got a lot of cutting to do to get the deck down to a more consistent size.

You might consider changing one of your conspiracies to The Guardian and using Hermetic Seal as your Day card, this allows The Guardian to activate the bonuses on Guardian of Dawn and Keeper of the Silver Sphere simultaneously which is quite good. I've used this combo in ST/Misk rush deck before to good effect.

After removing Lodge Barkeep we are at 78 cards. btw, in that cycle every faction got one character who was cross-Steadfast to a different faction - he's not unique in this respect.

First, I'm going to say that you have too many Tomes. You want one out to activate Knight (and to a lesser extend Scribe) but you don't need 9 of them in the deck to accomplish this. I'd try cutting the Diary and Necronomicon and see how that goes. Remember, in a smaller deck you don't need as many cards to have the same proportion, and both Diary and Necronomicon are very expensive.

I'd also drop 1xClaret Knight, usually I don't put 3x of any Unique cards that cost 3+ unless they're central to the deck. Additionally, cutting Neutral cards is useful when you've got Loyal guys like Knight in the deck.

I would also drop Crazy Eddie. He's only useful sometimes and you'll often get more out of another card instead rather than this conditional guy.

You also have too many Conspiracies (and cards to fetch them). I would drop at least one of each. Like the Tomes, you'll still have a good proportion of them in a smaller deck. You can probably drop one Lazy Eye too. Very few decks run more than 4 Conspiracies, and most that run Conspiracies stick to 3x of one type.

Silver Twilight Collector should go, as you do not have any cards in your deck to activate him - it will be an unreliable effect.

Since you have no "Pay 1" effects in your deck, nor a large number of cost-1 cards, I would take out Eldritch Nexus for now

Arcane Tampering isn't all that good since it requires you to save a 2-domain in hopes that your opponent will meet the requirement. It's usually better to spend the domain on something more active or less conditional. Also, not all abilities use an exhaust for the cost so there are many abilities it won't work against.

You already have a lot of Investigation in the deck, no need for Magnifying Glass - another card would nearly always improve your position more than this one.

All this takes you down to 53 cards, looking a lot better! Now, you'll still need to add a Day card though. I'd still probably advise Hermetic Seal and swapping one of your Conspiracies (probably The Locked Door) for The Guardian, this will put you at 56 cards and have a deck that's ready for a closer eye to start making the next round of cuts after a few test games.

If you can find room for it, I'd try to fit some Steal the Soul in there. You're very light on events and this is a very good one which only costs 1 so it doesn't really take away a domain that you'd be using to play a character in most cases and can help you win more Terror/Combat that ST is weak on. The deck is currently rather character-heavy so I'd look at removing some of those to make the space. Pass Grip of a Master would be another good option if you find room for it.

Anyway, here's a version with the Day swaps, Steal the Soul and a few more small trims. It's still a few cards over but maybe will serve as a starting point for you. Good luck!

Deck Created with CardGameDB.com Call of Cthulhu Deckbuilder

Total Cards: (53)
Character: (36)
Support: (10)
Event: (3)
Conspiracy: (4)

What the .... ??

Lodge Barkeep has a Syndicate symbol ? I really did not notice it, neither did any of my opponents.

Well, that changes everything and I have to rebuilt my own Lodge-deck from mono to lodge / syndicate -

but maybe that´s not a too bad thing.

First things first, here is the Lodge monodeck that I played until now ( I guess I owe some apologies to my fellow players now ...)

Character :

Dedicated Butler (3X)

Young Initiate (2X)

Errand Boy (2X)

Lodge Barkeep (3X)

Recruiter for the lodge (3X)

Zealous secretary (3X)

Disgruntled Chef (3X)

Dr. Baker * (2X)

Lord Jeffrey Farrington * (2X)
Lodge Housekeper (3X)

B. Ramsadale Brown * (2X)

Knight of the outer void (3X)

High Wizard of the order (3X)

Event :

Steal the Soul (3X)

Brazier Enchantment (3X)

Ritual of the construct (1X)

Unbound (2X)

Pose Mundane (3X)

Support :

Tcho-Tcho Talisman (1X)

Will of Azathoth (1X)

Silver Twilight Lodge (2X)

This deck worked quite well so far, but it hasn´t been optimised yet - still it won 5 out of 6 games, I think.

I have to admit though, that Lodge barkeep always was one of my game-winning cards.

The basic idea of this deck was to have lots of characters from the very beginning, including many low-lifes, which would be sacrificied to madness or combat,

while building a combo with Knight of the outer void and High wizard of the order .

Since there were some cards, that didn´t have a special purpose in this deck, I guess I will have options to include 10 Syndicate cards.

Until now, Dedicatet Butler, Ritual of the construct, Unbound, Tcho-Tcho Talisman and Errand boy were not really important in my strategy, so I will replace them with

some low-level syndicate characters, mainly to feed one domain with a syndicate symbol early and maybe there will be some level 1 characters which do a little more than " errand boy " ...

What do you guys think?

I believe every faction has one cross-steadfast character. Lodge Barkeep is one of the better of them for sure so if you do end up combining Syndicate + ST he's a nice one to put in the deck.

Syndicate has some better Support cards you might want to look at too. Silver Twilight Lodge isn't that great. How are you getting Pose Mundane to work? It kind of depends on your opponents cooperating and bringing characters with the right keyword. I'd cut it as too unreliable.

What expansions do you have to build from?

I can build from

- 1 Core Set

- The key and the gate

- The order of the silver twillight (obvioulsy)

- all six"Rituals of the order " expansions

- secrets of Arkham

I guess you´re right about "pose mundane" - in fact, I don´t think I ever killed something with it.

I put it into the deck because it reads quite powerful

gallery_72_32711.jpg

but so far I wasn´t able to trigger the Action. ( I used it about 6-7 times )

In my updated Deck, I replaced

- housekeeper of the lodge (3X)

- Ritual of the construct (1X)

- Unbound (2X)

- Tcho-Tcho Talisman (1X)

- Dr. Baker * (2X)

with

- Panic

- Alhazred Lamp

- Dutch Courage

- Like a moth

- Hard Case

- Extortionist

- Clover Club Torch Singer

- Triggerman

- Clover Club Bouncer

(each 1X)

which worked quite well. (I won 3 out of 3 games vs Yog/Hastur, Agency/ Hastur and one deck with six colours)

I always had a syndicate in my starting hand, so I could play Lodge Barkeep from the beginning. Mostly I used other syndicate cards to fuel my domains.

Two of the games were quite close though but when I could get the High wizard / Knight of outer Void combo running, I managed to achive a nice comeback twice.