Took a while to post this, but in the spirit of Gencon you may like to see the World Championship of last year even if it was a debacle. At least new players can see what one looks and feels like.

Thanks for posting the link.

The video is a PERFECT example of how the game, pre-re-launch, had become zero fun. Player on the left gets his combo working and keeps his opponent's domains all drained. Opponent is prevented from playing the game. BORING !

Chick

I was glad that when that deck face mine in to took it an hour to beat mine.

Yeah, I have to agree. That looked incredibly boring. I'm very happy there was a re-boot!

actually, a mono-cthulhu or cthulhu/X deck would have an auto-win vs this deck - barring some very bad drawa

(sac. offerings / DOA targets ithaqua, later forgotten isle ...)

Speaking of broken deck - some one remembers rainbow, both versions of it? that was pretty sick, but was fixed with erratas... And guess what - the problem was gone.

Urban said:

As Smashspitter could tell you cthulhu is not an auto win. While you may have some defense for Ithiqua...you still have to deal with the rest of the deck is about as fast as a slick rush-control deck. Plus it seems to be even faster when you are down to 1-0 domains and quite often without your 'big' domain as the deck just pummels with Messengers and Ancient Ones. Not to mention most lists included removal and recursion to deal with opponent threats. The deck was wicked strong.

Rainbow was broken. It got me top 8 (and nearly a championship win) before the nerf bat started swinging. Was a really fun deck while it lasted though.

Errattas, while ugly can fix a lot of problems. I was suprised that nothing seems to have been done about some of the more powerful decks last year that ruled the meta. Then I realized... FFG no longer plans to support the legacy (i think thats what its called now) format in any way, shape, or form other than trying not to take down whats already there. Meh...

I final legacy faq and errata makes sense. It would close the book on our old game better. Or is the final deck in discussion here to always be considered legal legacy. It should be dealt with in some way, if it can't be dealt with with any deck. How many changes are we talking about? I saw the combo once. I see Teller of Tales and Ithaqua in the video.

Otherwise , why change legacy format in any way, especially down to three cards per deck. Might well have left the old game with some classy closure. Sponsor a legacy league FFG, one that emphasizes broader inclusive play versus the rise to number one.

Polish format includes all cards so far printed. 3x of each card, plus banned list .. as banned list, so no more 1 turn Dagon+ Yig, go

And it's a nice format.

BTW - I don't even remember FFG saying that there is a legacy format, I'd rather think it is a name we made ourself

I saw the video. The only remaining errata that the ccg (And for the record I do support a Legacy format) really needs is to errata the messengers . Just add that the drain token must be moved to an undrained domain controlled by the owner of the sacced messenger , not just any undrained domain. That's crazy broken and the playtesters should have caught it. In fact, I thought that's how the messengers were supposed to be played when I first saw them, I thought they were pointless. There was a lot that FFGs so-called "playtesters" let through. Oh, well... this isn't "The Only Game that Matters" after all, so why bother?

Archwraith, do you think there's a compromise between crazy broken and pointless?

Archwraith666 said:

I can't comment first hand about the Messenger cards, but I do know most of the notes and comments that were submitted by me and our group of play testers was completely ignored on the last set of APs. This included basic wording and game term issues. You can tell them there's a train coming, but you can't make them get off the tracks.

Well, on the surface, it is a trade up. Sacrifice the messenger to drain an opponent's domain and undrain your own. That's a big two for one. How was it abused so that it must go?

johnny shoes said:

How soon they forget. Exhaust Ithaqua to bring the messenger back. Use the newly undrained domain to use Ancient Guardian/Yglonic to refresh Ithaqua. Sac the messenger to drain another domain. Repeat until all domains are drained in their operations phase. Stack your deck for maximum efficiency.

Donald

Well, I didn't forget actually. Admittedly, I looked at the youtube final round again after posting my question. Equally embarrassing, I'm slow. Only now do I fully appreciate the combo. I do recall (inaccurately?) it was contrived or discovered or originally used to effect in the PA group. It appeared on the national scene via the GenCon 2008 championship, a Chicago player. Over a year removed, it's still tough to write about.

The cards in question hail from FR, MN, and FC. Was this combo available much prior to the triple whammy - end of CCG, broken lock down, and bad blood.

Seems the legacy question of errata focuses on this one situation. Messengers and Ithaqua are getting all that attention. Ancient Guardian and Y'Golonac are not also tagets of the community legacy dialogue?

No, there is no compromise between crazy broken and pointless, but in this or any ccg ( lcg...whatever), I will always opt for pointless. Because crazy broken cards and combos make people games. No one wants to play a game that's not fun. At least pointless cards can still be used in casual games for a bit of a laugh.

@Donald10- It makes me sad that FFG would choose not to listen to it's playtesters. It explains alot, but not everything. Like, I still want to know why CoC Lcg is not getting all the care it deserves.

-This post isn't entirely my own production, most of the thought put on it was just following the footsteps of one great guy, namely Graham-

Having recently put some thought on messengers in 3x, I feel the reduction in combo keystones and direct searches made the deck a LOT less strong. While the 4x version could easilly average a turn 2 lock, if we limit the maximum number of instances of the same card to 3, the average locking turn, for the "vanilla" build raises to 3.something. Which is enough to make the deck unviable for competitive play.

Now, the lowered chances of locking might still not be enough to make this deck step down from overpowered to just really really good, and, frankly, there still could be better builds -it would be foolish for me to say that a vanilla build cannot be improved-, at 3x, that lower the average locking turn back into overpowered territory, and it would be wise to think about a long term solution that takes into account the fact that, as long as cards keep getting published, there are chances for the combo and direct searches density to raise.

If I were in charge of putting the deck back into the really good territory from overpowered, I would only make one change to messengers (all factions): I would make their ability triggerable during operations phase only.

The reason is: if the cards were faq'ed like this, while the opponent can still lose two domains under the mess-ithaqua combo, he would still be able to play one operation phase only card per turn, and so to speak, to have the possibility to fight out of the lock, albeit from a very inferior position.

I think making the messengers work only on the controller domains would be an overnerf, and would clump the messenger along a ton of other cards already useless from a competitive point of view.

Thanks Carioz! It's very complicated, the moment in the operations phase when the opponent breaks the lock. What type of options does he have? Are they so specific as to command a deck basically built to defend Messenger-Ithaqua?

johnny shoes said:

Well, if we are talking about an hypotetical op phase only messenger, on the top of my head I could say:

1) Any wound or destroy card.

2) O'Bannion Warehouse

3) Snow Graves

4) Forgotten Isle