Hi,

What are other peoples thoughts on this, I was playing a couple of games against a friend who has his own set of CoC and also has a varied collection of asylum packs. He was playing his investigation deck of Agency/Miskatonic with 5 Alaskan Sledge Dogs (ASD). Now when you have 5 of these blighters on the table they each have 5 Combat and 6 skill which is quite a lot. This proved unbeatable my mono-faction Hastur deck which I could not get the low cards out early enough (Typical) and hence lost very quickly has I even though I could send them insane if he coupled a dog with a character with willpower and fight icons I had no chance (which he typically did), I accept the deck I was using was hastily created and I need to rethink it.

However I feel for a 1 cost card they are far more powerful than the Aspiring Artist (which was banned from organized play) is there a good method of countering a deck that has a good number of these beasts?

Also if an ASD is sent insane does it's bonuses still count towards the totals of the other ASD? as it says on the card "in play" technically it in play but not useable for 1 turn at least.

Cheers.

peltazoid said:

Good question. When a character is insane, do they lose their name? The rules of play state that insane characters have "no text". Does that include the name of the card? Or just what is written in the text box? Provided they lose all of their text (which I assume is the case, otherwise they would have stated "blank text box"), an insane Sledge Dog is basically a blank card in play and would not add said bonus to the ASD total. I'm not 100% sure, either way. The FAQ is a little more specific but still does not mention the name.

In my current Agency/Syndicate deck I use Interrogation Center to deal with them and a whole host of other neutral characters.... I back that up with matching speed and wound cards.... Shotgun Blast, Small Price to Pay... etc.

In my Miskatonic/Yog deck I don't really have a specific way of dealing with them other than making them go crazy and trying to match the speed of someone playing a rush deck like that with a massive amount of card draw, cheap 2 cost characters and a good bit of recursion from the discard pile.

They are rough, and I fully expect to see them played in a LOT of tournament decks for some time to come.

The current 1 that's giving me a fit is Magah Bird from Unknown Kadath. 3 1 Skill, Fast creatures for 1!? Brutal opening.

EDIT: And yes, my interpretation is that an insane ASD is still considered an ASD and adds to the total number of ASD in play.

Chevee

Yes, Characters retain their name when insane (that's why you can't send a unique character insane, then play another copy.)

And yes, Sledgedogs are overpowered. Not to the level that they can't be handled, but it's very close.

Marius said:

Thanks, Marius! I re-read the insanity FAQ entry and realized it specifically includes mention of the text box but omits any mention of the name. So yeah, that changed my assumption.

Hmm. Hurry up and re-print the Mountains of Madness AP ...! Now I feel vulnerable.

Peltazoid said: "even though I could send them insane, if he coupled a dog with a character with willpower and fight icons I had no chance"

Hmmm, sounds a little bit as though you MIGHT think he can choose the character with willpower to (not) go insane, thereby protecting the dog from insanity. This is not so, a character with willpower cannot be chosen. You probably already know this, and are playing it correctly; if so, please forgive me for this un-needed post.

Chick

Random_Person had a few good ideas of dealing with the dogs, but in the Agency / Hastur deck it's probably still not good enough. Despite the banning of Aspiring Artist, the deck is still pretty unreal and I have yet to find a deck that can beat it consistently. With Magah Birds, it's even faster than it used to be. It's pretty tough to be staring down 4-5 creatures in play on turn 1 when you know they play A Small Price to Pay in their deck among other tricks to kill your guys and you ultimately get overrun very, very quickly.

I hate banning cards for the sake of banning cards, but the dogs really need to be looked at.

ShubFan27 said:

Back in the day of the SW:CCG, Decipher was so proud of the fact that they never banned a card... and players were proud of that fact as well. So what happened when they made a broke card? They came out with cards that countered the power cards in the next set. That was an okay fix for regular play, but was a disaster on the meta-game for organized play. Do you take the power deck to the tournament and assume that no one will play the break cards... play the break cards just in case... don't play the break cards assuming that no one will be foolish enough to play the power when a break card exists... bad idea.

I'll agree, though there are other reasons to include Interrogation Chamber in the deck... Descendant and now Narly being 2 more reasons, it's in the deck simply because I expect to see a lot of Dogs in tournament decks and I'd like to have a quick answer... which really feels a bit sloppy. I hope with the recent banning and errata of other cards that FFG will take a look at Dogs again... but, we'll see. Maybe it will take seeing them dominate the tournament scene for them to do something about it? It would be a shame to go to an event and only see Dog decks or Anti-Dog decks.

Chevee

Rubbed Out would be another solution. Maybe it should be a bit cheaper.

In my opinion the dogs are overpowered with respect to other cards, but not a card that you cannot face.

I mean, it is quite obvious that they are good: cheap, strong and give consistency to a deck. But even with these characteristics, you can esaily kill them (and every deck, to be competitive in the LCG environment, MUST pack removals...this game is strongly characters-focused, it is simply wrong if you don't have many ways to deal with every kind of character). They can go insane, due to terror struggle or game effects. They can be faced with the rights characters in the deck.

In stahleck I was playing Hastur-Agency without dogs (I didn't like them in my deck-strategy, and still I don't like them) and I've faced 3 decks that were packing dogs, and I've lost 1 match out of 3 (the final with Graham, bad starting hand even with 2 aspiring artist and a really good opponent were too much ).

The only problem I see with dogs is that is just more easy to build a deck, playtest it and think "hey, this deck is good". In fact, the problem is that 8 cards alone can make a deck good and this, sometimes, is a limit to the deckbuilding because people think "I want to have a good deck, so I have to play dogs".

But, at the end, I think we can live with dogs, especially with the new cards coming out.

bye

Konx.

PS: for comparison, Descendant is (was, pre-errata) much more better than dogs in my opinion. And looking back to the old CCG metagame, a card like Assistant IS overpowered. At the end, the problem with dogs is that you can play 8 of them, nothing more.

I don't play dgos either, and I did manage to have some good p^laces in tournaments facing them ...

Consider one Thing : First, The dogs have to be paid for... Most of the time, this 1means your opponent used 2 or 3 domains by his first turn. he will surely overpaid one or two ? Ok ?

So, Keep a good and solid deck which starts slowly and you'll get easily rid of the threat if you don't let your opponent play with more than 3 dogs., Wound them, steal them, drive them insane and the solution will appears.

Like Konx said, the dogs are no fun to play ... and I never ever will consider having them in a deck (except if I want to play Norm Grwbosky)... ^^

Their have consistence and have a real low price. Their text is not the best fit that exists for a card, right now.

If you stop focusing on this card, I agree that a lot of others cards will seems overpowered, but no matter, this one is a threat you can handle following Francesco's information (wounding is a key to success!)