Do you really want to go to cost three in a rush deck? For MU perhaps for Anthroplogy Advisor. For Syndicate the cost threes have specific abilities that enhance certain tactics, but no real worth it option. Trent Dixon and Pickman at cost 4 may make the resourcing worth it. For Agency it's not so simple. Character options include Marshall Green, Clarney, Elton, Groundskeeper. But they should be few for later game, which isn't the point for rush. Cost 3 Short Fuse, though excellent can be substituted by a 2 cost card...except when seven wounds will do nicely, and Shotgun Blast at cost X as skill knows no limit. Perhaps a Shub and Hastur rush deck could also be built, but Hastur has other power, and shub is meant to build up to its own rush. It's almost not worth it in any of the human cases above to place a third resource on a domain, at least until you have 2-2-2. In which case, do you even need cost 3 cards?

My Agency/Syndicate deck is a ............ slow rush.

I try to make sure I have a cost curve that is supportive. I play a few cost 1 characters, 80% (I just made that number up) or so of the deck costs 2... then there is a supportive 3 which gives me a great set of characters to chose from to handle different situations, but I'm not so overloaded that I'm drawing 2 3 cost cards every turn... and the only 4 in the deck is Pikman. He's a VERY situational card and most games gets resourced, but I like having a way of dealing with invulnerability and other nasty effects if the game makes it that far along.

So, I say yes, go to 3... in moderation. Having my curve set this way, I only ever need one domain that has 3 resources and another at 2. I don't care too much about my 3rd domain. Sometimes I'll take it to 2, but not regularly.

Chevee

Thanks RP. Building resources to Pickman makes sense. 8/10 cost 2 is interesting. That's 24 cost 2, a little high maybe.Don't you think with like 10 to 12 cost 1 characters the rush can double. Or does the deck fizzle out even with a team-grobowski sized board of players? One costs can only give you so much skill and icons.

Well, I actually just looked and discovered that I only had 3 1 cost characters in the deck!

I purposely do NOT play Dogs in this deck as I find dog-rush decks only work when they work. There is little chance for them once the game gets rolling... so I have tuned my deck to be as fast as it can be while still having staying power. Also, I play Interrogation Chamber to limit the effectiveness of not only Dogs, but other neutrals... so I've left neutrals out of the deck.

Being Agency/Syndicate, there really just isn't many 1 cost characters I'm into. I played Patsy for a while, and found that I usually just used them for resources... so I'm down to just Petty Thief. This may change. I may take it to 5 cost 1 characters.

I'm currently playing 32 characters.

3 cost 1

17 cost 2

10 cost 3

2 cost 4

So, I should be drawing cost 1/2 twice as much as cost 3. Back in the late nineties, I was playing Magic... doing the tournament circuits and all. I remember when the Red Goblin deck first blew on the scene and people were amazed at it's effectiveness. Lots of articles appeared about tuning a decks mana curve... which was basically a way to make sure that you statistically drew cards which progressively became more expensive... it was basically the first time anyone really looked this way at deck building, but it became something we all took for granted. It made a whole lot of sense to play more cost 1/2 cards than cost 4+ cards if speed was a concern... so I've transposed that into Cthulhu

Now.... cost 1 is okay in this game, but unless you are going to really build a deck around slapping 3 cost 1 characters on the table per turn, cost 2 is the same as cost 1 in Magic. Turn 2 you can have two domains with 2 resources each and it shouldn't be a problem to unload from there... at some point, you must consider that the cost 1 characters are trumped by the versatility of cost 2 and having more cost 2 doesn't really slow a deck down that much.

But heck, I could be wrong. I haven't been to any tournaments yet, so I have no idea what the meta is like out there... but I feel this deck is fast enough and full of surprises....... so we'll see soon!

Chevee

Well, the question is quite wide and not easy to answer without a deck to refer to, but I'll try to say something not stupid

First of all, I want to remember a statement I've read somewhere, probably in some old article in the CCG-period: the first who stop resourcing is the first who make card advantage.

Now, when I build a deck and a strategy I always have in mind this statement.

In a rush deck, what you are trying to do is to maximize your chance of winning the game in 3 turns (at least, this is MY definition of rush). This means that you have 3 cards to resource. The possible combinations for your domains are: 1-2-3, 1-1-4 and 2-2-2. In a rush-deck scenario, the first and the last are the most important, the last one being the best, in my opinion. Why? well, because a 3-cost card in a rush deck has to be really powerful. So, in your third turn you want to have a 3-resource domain ONLY if you have that card in hand and you are going to play it immediately.

For my playstyle and the way I build a rush-deck, I usually build up a 1-2-2 domain configurations and then, in my third turn, I don't always resource! it depends mostly on too many factors:

- are all the cards in my hand useful against my opponent? if not, then I can resource safely a card. If so, maybe it is better not to resource, and wait one turn more for the third resource.

- how is the board situation? do I need to put more pressure (= more characters into play) or can I wait?

- is my opponent playing cards that could kill many characters in once? In this case, it is better to keep in hand some characters, so if the opponent reset the board you can immediately fill the board again with pressure.

- if I have a 3-cost card in hand, do I want to play it now, or can I wait?

So, as you can see, there are many factors to take into account.

To give a simple answer: if I'm playing a rush deck, I would resuource usually 3-4 cards at maximum during a game and I would try to not play too many 3-cost cards. If you put in your deck 4-cost card and you are reasonably expecting to play these cards often, than, in my opinion, is not a rush deck anymore.

Disclaimer: what I said before is just my opinion regarding the LCG period. In the CCG period there were rituals, cost reducers, etc...so the situation was different.

my 2 cents

Konx.