I’ve been playing this game for a while now and owning 3 copies of the core set, the whole dreamset and most of the Julia brown set, I’m turning towards mechanics of deckbuilding. Other cardgames I have played in the past have a sort of scissors/paper/stone mechanic in deckbuilding (mtg: aggro>control>combo>aggro, v:tes: bleed. combat, politics) Is the same to be said of CoC? I noticed the prevalence of hastur/agency/dog-decks. If this is the dominant deck what would be viable as an anti-deck? In terms of scissors/paper/stone this deck feels like an aggro/control deck (spot removal/ combat/return effects/minor investigation) as there seems no way to rush past this deck (with a horde of lab assistant of something like that.) Would it be fair to characterize the archetypes as such?

Control: character manipulation (shotgun, living mummy, ravager of the deep, light side of the moon) card draw (aspiring artist), resoucring as little as possible (card advantage) prevention (
Rush: weenies (multiple stories at once) and investigation
Combo: I haven’t seen true combo decks yet.

Also, I have seen multiple attempt to use the concept of manacurving to this game. Somehow this feels awry. Any ideas on that?

I come from a pretty extensive gaming background so maybe I can help you out with this to the best of my knowledge.

First off, Aspiring Artist is banned. That's the only card banned and it's in the FAQ if you want to see where it's cited. They also put an errata on Descendant so it's not nearly as powerful as it was before. I think those 2 changes really dropped the power level of last years Worlds winning deck, which was in fact the Descendant / Dogs deck. Is that deck bad? No, not at all. Anyone not prepared to face such a deck will surely just get steam rolled.

This game is a lot different from previous games I've played. What i mean by that is that the LCG version is really dominated by characters and that decks that are heavily drenched in events tend to do worse than decks that concentrate on characters. I think the mechanics of the game have a lot to do with that. As a result, the "control" decks you see will be different from other games you may have played, especially Magic. Here's a breakdown from the way I see it:

Combo: There aren't any "true" combo decks in this game yet. There are some obvious card combinations that "combo" well together, but you can't simply kill your opponent with a combo. The CCG had a few but when the LCG came around they got rid of pretty much all the degenerate cards and you can't really abuse any card combinations anymore.

Rush (Aggro): There are many forms of rush in this game but they all are very, very similar. Most involve Agency for the cheap character removal as well as Behind Bars. Others include Agency for exhausting effects. Either way, they all serve the purpose of winning 3 stories as fast as possible. Hastur is emerging in my playtest group as a good support for this strategy as Maga Birds is completely absurd in this type of deck and as usual Power Drain is also very solid.

Control: Cthulhu and Yog corner the market on control despite Agency's best attempts. Sacrifical Offerings, Deep One Assault, and now with the reprinting of Deep One Rising and Calling Down the Ancients all actually make control pretty solid. Personally I think for control to be REALLY good a few more cards need to be reprinted or some new cards need to come out to help the strategy. I've made a few decent control decks recently but all of them are a few cards short of closing the deal.

Mid-range (aggro-control): Miskatonic does the best job with this as their investigators serve to rush the opponent as well as play control with a ton of arcane. When paired with the Agency Investigators you have a pretty solid deck.

In my opinion, aggro-control decks tend to do the best but feel free to test whatever you'd like.

- SF

I'll continue this and address the "manacurve."

I think in this game, more than most others, balancing the deck is vastly MORE important than any other game. In M:tG for instance, you have 20-30 cards in your deck that do NOTHING but provide resources... when you draw them, you play them and repeat until the game ends... in the old days, when games lasted beyond turn 4, you'd inevitably get to a point where you no longer need land, but keep on playing it anyways...

in this game, if you are playing cards in your deck that are intended to do nothing other than resource, you should question your ability to play constructively. In short, every card in your 50 cards should be important to you, thus resourcing should be a HUGE priority... AND being the first to quit resourcing means you develop card advantage. Does that mean that rush decks that never resource a domain over 2 are vastly superior!? NO. BUT, if you are playing a deck in which you need to get every domain in play to 3 or 4 in order to play your hand out each turn, I can almost universally guarantee you that you will get trounced LONG before you get your deck set up.

You MUST take into consideration with this game the "soft cap" of 3 ACTIONS per turn. You draw 2 per turn, which means to be effective, you need to be able to use all 3 domains each turn... otherwise, you're holding a bunch of stuff and resourcing each turn with no advancement..... now, this can be supplanted by card EFFECTS which require resource payment....

Chevee

First of all, thanks for your elaborate and insightful replies, Random_Person and Shubfan27! Also Shubfan, thanks for the clarification on Aspiring Artist! I read it was banned somewhere on the list, but its nice to see the official rulings about it. Your breakdown of the decktypes was very helpful. Still, I’m questioning some things:

@ Shubfan22: You mention that a control deck in CoC is very different from, say, a MTG controldeck, because of the importance of characters. This explains the prevalence of aggro/control decks in the current ‘meta’. Your remark on arcane as a control icon was new to me. To beat such a deck, a control deck has to have 1.) a way of stalling a rush deck post its fundamental turn and 2.) killcards/silver bullets to swing table dominance. Fundamental turn is a concept by Zvi Moshowitz (Whenever I make a deck, I assign it a Fundamental Turn (FT). For beatdown or combination decks, the FT is the turn you kill your opponent. It's an easy concept and you have one number. For a control deck, each aspect can be said to have an FT. But the most important one is the turn in which the deck's strategy begins to work and you make up for any early disadvantage. http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/3688.html ) In other words the control player has to say alive to the point where the aggro player has invested a lot of cards in his initial rush. Just before the third story, the control player plays a boardsweeper.

For example, my gf plays a very fast yog/hastur deck, centered around cultists, son of yeb, ‘evasion’ (stealthy byakhee, the sleepwalker) magah bird. On say, turn her 3 she has 9 characters on the board and is about to take her 2nd storycard. I have a ghoulish worshipper, an insect swarm and y’golonac. On her 2nd storycard I play ‘light side of the moon’, reducing her to a labouring gug, a stealthy byakhee and a performance artist.

@ Random_Person/Chevee: Balancing the deck is of utmost importance, indeed. A ‘sleek’ deck really plays different that a non-tweaked one, even in my casual environment (my g/f and a couple of friends, me owning all the cards) This is a very strong point for CoC, compared to other cardgames. But HOW to balance is still a somewhat of a mystery to me. Because this game has a radically different ‘manacurve’ due to the ‘3 action softcap’ as you called it, and the fact that a domain accumulates resources. Even with reasonably balanced decks I tend to overpay quite a lot after say, turn 3.
You say you need to use all domains each turn. This limits the options for control decks, because they are dependant of what the other player does during their turn.

As a point besides the ones being made. Characters can win you the game even without commiting. If there would be a location that said: ‘Indestructable. No characters can commit to stories under any circumstance’. Hastur and mad genius could win the game for you in 30 turns.

I'm glad to help and I'll try to answer your other concerns.

You seem to be pretty versed in MtG so I'll continue to just use examples from that game. In Magic, all I did was play control. It's what I was good at, what I enjoyed the most, and what I fully understood. In Magic you had cards like Wrath of God to reset the board and many different ways to draw cards and refill your hand. This game is a bit different in that respect as there is really no "true" way to destroy every character in play. SoA is reprinting a "Nevinryyl's Disk" effect that costs 4 and has an activation cost of 3. While this card is incredibly slow, it's very relevant to a control stratregy as it's the only way to absolutely destroy every character in play.

You have to good way to draw extra cards in this game if you aren't in the Miskatonic faction. That said, they aren't really the best option for control because they lack anything other than drawing cards and a few good characters. You still need a way to destroy support cards and characters. My point is that because there aren't many ways to draw more than 2 cards a turn, building a "true" control deck is difficult.

I agree with Chevee when he says that using all 3 domains a turn is pretty important, as a control deck if you don't "need" to use them then you aren't really losing. Still, you need to play removal cards that cost 1, 2, and 3 in order to facilitate the need to play 3 removal spells in a turn. Cthulhu has the best card in the game for that and it's called "Sacrifical Offerings." Agency has another called "Small Price To Pay."

There are many reasons why control doesn't work well in the games current state but it does look like FFG is trying to make it a little more viable. Look at some of the cards in SoA and many of them aren't very aggro friendly.

Again, if you can pretty much brick wall aggro decks around the time they're ready to win their 2nd story then you can turn the game around and win. You will still need to be able to win 3 stories yourself at some point while continually stopping their rush (drawing 2 cards a turn keeps the dudes coming). If you can successfully do that, then you have a successful control deck.

- SF

jormungandr said:

A rephrase then: You need to use all 3 domains each ROUND.

Truthfully, if you are tuning your decks and you are still overpaying, I'd look at your resourcing strategy and start honing it. If you are playing Aggro, obviously you don't really resource past turn 2 or 3... if you are playing Aggro/Control, then you'll need a domain (or two) at 4+... which means you are resourcing well into the 5th, 6th or 7th turn. BUT, if you are spending the first three turns getting one domain to 4 while the others sit at 1, is this the best form of play? Even with a 3+ (cost) heavy deck, I'd rather get 2 or even 3 domains to 2 resources each before I worry too much about getting my 4+ domain set up. It will give you more options in the long run... and, knowing that, tuning your deck to facilitate such a resourcing strategy goes hand in hand.

If you just NEED to get that first domain to 3+ before branching out and resourcing more, I'd suggest putting in more 1 and 2 cost cards. It doesn't have to be a lot, just make sure you can at least play 2 cards a turn while you're trying to set up. With such a character heavy environment, getting your hand on the board first is pretty important... or as Shub says, find a way to nuke 'em all!

Chevee

Again, thanks for the insightful posts! I will be using both of your messages at once so I won’t be discriminating between which comment belongs to whom. Okay, so a ‘purely control’ deck M:TG style is not viable, due to the lack off board sweepers and card draw. I’d even say that the only viable decks are aggro/control. Only some have early fundamental turns (say turn 3 or 4) and others have late ones (say 8) This means that aggro and control aren’t two different categories, but different forms of the same deck. Aggro and control would from a one dimensional continuum. Both extremen have their problems, so there probably would be an optimum curve (parabola, whatever its called in English.) This might explain the prevalence of certain decks, they actually are the same deck with different factions. I reckon this is perfectly normal for a game with the current cardpool.

Whether or not miskatonic is a good supportfaction in control, depends on what kind of dominance you with to establish. But I reckon, due to investigation etc, a miskatonic deck would normally gravitate more towards aggro.

It was said that there aren't many ways to draw more than 2 cards a turn, so this hampers a control deck. I reckon two cards a turn is quite a lot by itself, if and only if these cards yield a card exchange that is bigger than x (where x is the number of cards you have to destroy to be able to get your third storycard, or prevent your opponent from getting his.) A more pressing problem for control I’d say is the absence of cards you can play when you do not have to do anything on your opponents turn. Actually, I can only think of journey to the other side at the moment. I though Random_person said : using all 3 domains a turn is pretty important, as a control deck if you don't "need" to use them then you aren't really losing. But you have to be able to play handshape cards ATEOOT (at the end of opponents turn.) To get to this game node in the first place. That why ‘You need to use all 3 domains each ROUND’ is so true

As in cheap removal. In MT:G you can make the distinction between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ removal (say terror or twiddle.) The goal of the game is just to get 3 story cards, not to either destroy your opponents characters or to keep yours alive. I’d rather play ghoul taint and keep my twilight cannibal than play a Sacricial Offerings. Because the cannibal does 3 things at once (preventing me from losing, enabling me to win, being a clock for my opponent.) How do you guys feel about soft removal? (Exhausteffects, insanity.)Because of characters, a control deck can fend of a steady two characters a turn and still keep swinging.

Yup, recourcing is a fine art, I’d say. Perhaps somebody who isn’t a mathematically challenged as I am will be able to calculate the optimal recource strategy for different average cardcost (with deviation.) Being an oldtime MTG comboplayer, I’m really looking forward to the expanding cardpool

I'm just going to address soft removal here, and if I come up with something else, I'll post again later.

This game, like any other (MtG included) has ponits. In M:tG, WoW, etc your goal is do deal 20 damage. In CoC, your goal is to gain 15 icons. Really, it's the same thing, presented differently and slightly acted upon differently. For instance, if your opponent wins a story that you have 4 icons at, it's no different than being dealt 4 damage in Magic.

So, essentially, you can think of soft removal in this game very similarly to MtG... the great thing about this game though is that if you can go at a story unopposed, you effectively double the damage dealt... PLUS you may not have to suffer damages from the Icon struggles as well, or may be able to DEAL more damages due to the icon struggles. For instance, tapping opponents dude so that you can win a story unchallenged AND win the Arcane struggle means you get 2 (or 3) success tokens AND get to un-exhaust your character... meaning you have reduced a return threat from your opponent on his turn because you now have a blocker.

Also, consider how many characters in this game have toughness or even Invulnerability. I haven't seen ANY of them yet that are immune to being exhausted. How do you deal with Cthulhu or G-Men, Dagon or Y'Golnac? If they are exhausted, they can't attack and can't defend.

So, I like my soft removal. I play Low Blow in my Syndicate deck and some love Hard Case. Behind Bars is a great 0 cost card for Agency. Hasturs insanity tricks are awesome. This game is all about aggression. Defense rarely succeeds at winning you the game. You simply MUST attack (or discard their deck if you are so lucky to survive that long)... and damage doesn't always = win.

Chevee

It seems to look if there a no real control or combodecks present in the current meta. Would a sound classification of decks be rushcontrol/toolbox (slower fundamental turn than the first categorie)/discard?
I disagree with your breakdown of the game to points. I can gain anywhere from 0 up to 22 (4+4+4+5+5) icons and still lose the game. That’s like saying you have anywhere from 20 to 28 life in MTG. This game is not about points, its about getting 3 storycards or decking your opponent. The icons are the means to this end. What I do agree on is, as long as you get the 3 storycards first, the icon total of your opponent doesn’t matter.
What does make control or other slower decks viable is handsize. When you wish to use all 3 actions you have per round in a rush deck, the breakdown will be as follows:
Round 0 : starting hand (8) -3 initial resourcing (5)
Round 1 : draw 1 (6) -1 resourcing (5) -3 cards to fill your actions (2)
Round 2: draw 2 (4) -1 resourcing (3) -3 cards to fill your actions (0)
Perhaps this is an exaggeration. But most characters in rushdecks aren’t very versatile, whereas in a toolbox deck, you have a lot of cards in which you can ‘sink’ your excess domains for beneficious effects (forest sister, y’golonac, shotgun, etc.)

I have to disagree that there are not control and/or combo decks possible in the current LCG.

In fact, just today I ran into a fun situation where my opponent could, each turn, leave me with zero domains available for my use immediately after I refreshed them all on my turn. (And he could do this *every* turn). From there, it was a simple matter of picking off the characters I had in play, and he had the lock.

The nice thing about this game is that these types of combos are really hard to find and somewhat tough to pull off.

KallistiBRC said:

Well played! Ofcourse, in almost every game there is the possibility of situations like this. The point of this thread is to investigate whether this can be done reliably enough to make a certain decktype viable. Could you describe the situation for further analysis?

Greetings!

I'm a bit hesitant to spill the beans on his combo with the regionals still in process and stuff but oh well... here it is.

Itinerant Scholar - Sacrifice to move a drain token from a domain to another.

And two Yog cards I can't recall the names of:

The first: Character, after you win an Arcane struggle, return the topmost spell in your discard to your hand.

The second: Spell card, Pay X to put a character in your discard pile into play.

Sooo he would make sure to have 1 drained domain on his side (easy enough). Then, right after the refresh phase, I have no action to take, he uses the scholar, and flips the drain token to my domain. I again have no actions. So he casts the spell, and gets the scholar in play again. Sacrifice again, move the drain token from the domain he just used to cast the spell to a domain of mine. Casts the spell again, gets the scholar again, sacrifices one more time. And blammo. All three of my domains are locked.

Then, during his operations phase he commits two of the Sorcerer female character cards (wish i could remember the name) to the same story, protected by a few ancient ones. Wins the arcane struggle, and blammo.

And I know what you're thinking already. "If you let him get to the point where he has a few ancient ones in play then there's a problem with either your deck or your play". And I would normally agree.

However.... the new Secrets of Arkham expansion has made it possible to get an Ancient One in play on turn one. Soooooo yeah. In fact, on turn two he had in play: Atlach Nacha, Hastur, Yog, and Y'Golonac. That's enough insanity and arcane to make sure those arcane struggle winning cards will be safe at whatever story he commits to whenever he manages to get them in play.

I see, yes it's work but it's a combo with 3 cards so it's not so problematic. I thought you have a way to make an infinite loop with only 2 cards. There are too many factors to have an optimal combo, but it's funny.

You have always ways to deal with a such combo. For example the weakness of this combo is The Itinerant Scholar you can deal with The Itinerant Scholar between the moment he comes in play and he triggers its action (Wound him, destroy him, insanity, return it in hand, etc...). And remember in LCG format we have the shub Snow Grave (cost 0) : a single card to block all resurrection deck and block this combo !

The cards :

Itinerant Scholar (Core Set F30)
Unspeakable Resurrection (Core Set F119)
Shadow Sorceress (The Terror of the Tides F71)

Ah yes, those are the cards in question. Thanks Dadajef!

There are definitely ways of blocking this combo and it does take awhile to set up. Once all the elements are ready, it's hard to reliably counter it each turn. And to do so, you'll usually have to burn a domain anyway. And if he's in the discard pile again (like, you kill him or something), he can bring him back again anyway. Grrr it's annoying. Next turn, along comes that scholar doing his nonsense again and again with those unspeakable resurrections.

I've already put snow graves in one of my decks for just such a problem, but it feels a lot like the "fine tuning your deck to beat one specific deck" issue.

I'm much less concerned about the Itinerant Scholar combo than I am with any combos involving Things in the Ground.

I'm not saying that the Scholar combo is bad by any means, but it's incredibly slow to set up and relatively fragile by that nature. I'm sure once you get it set up it's more than reasonable, but you just can't feasibly do it fast enough to really make a difference, imo. Things in the Ground on the other hand, that's something to be scared to death of. I'm not sure how a lot of decks can beat invulnerable ancient ones coming into play a LOT faster than they should be, especially ones like Cthulhu that can do things as soon as you can make him not insane anymore. Journey to the Other Side especially makes sure that you get the characters that you want into play as soon as possible.

Just my two cents. Good job on discovering such a powerful combo though.

- SF

This deck I was up against is a Things in The Ground + Journey deck actually. So between the cards drawn each turn and the use of the Things in the Ground you have ancient ones slinging into play, as well as the scholar and the sorceress coming into play quickly as well. In fact, if you consider that by turn 5 this deck will usually have seen over 21 cards of it's 50 card deck... it's pretty easy to get that combo in play quickly.

Add to it that if that combo isn't coming into play, the ancient ones are and... ugh. Miskatonic + Yog... now a powerhouse.

My Hastur/ Yog deck uses this combo it is quite nasty The current list is:

3 Cannibal Ghast
3 Victoria Glass
2 Sleepwalker
3 Hermatic Scholar
3 Descendant of Ebion
3 Guardian Pillar
3 Gatekeeper
3 Tcho-Tchoo tribe
2 Atlach-Nacha

2 Infernal Obession
2 Book of the Black Stones
3 Cavern of Flames
3 Things in the Ground
3 Greatest Fear
3 Carcosa
3 Endless Interigation
3 Terrors in the Dark
3 Journey to the Other Side

As you can see this is a Discard and Deck burn deck that focuses on keeping your opponent with no cards in hand while destroying his deck before he can get anything serious in play. Wtih just Carcosa + Things in the Ground in play you kill 9 cards per turn (after they draw)! Given that you start the game with a 40 card deck in actuality this is pretty brutal. It gets even more nasty once you start playing with that Journey when you have things out and can often get a free Atlach or Thcoo-Tchoo into play. Terrors in the Dark is a brutal card too, especially if you can hit multiples...while Cavern and Pillar can effectively shut down your opponent (it will shut your opponent down if you also have a Tchoo-Tchoo out). Tchoo's main weakness is against direct wounding/destruction but this gets somewhat mitigated since your opponent typically won't have a hand and will need to focus more on getting characters on the board. Every turn brings him closer and closer to defeat. Victoria + Greatest Fear (or even Things in the Ground) is another great combo that gives you an early card and token edge while clearing the board to start the endless interrogation. It is a really fun deck!

... but watch out for the story that brings all characters back into play from the discard piles. If your opponent manages to win this one you will almost certainly lose.

Hum ... Why don't you play the Blackmoor Estate ?? It would be much more efficient than the book of the black stones, IMO.

I took blackmoor out because it is too expensive. 3 Resources to come out had it fighting with cards like infernal obsession, carcosa and the guardian pillar ...plus it requires resource/domain investment every single turn to work whereas the book is cheap and you only have to pay for it once. Attachment/support hate dont really worry me as my opponent doesn't usually have a hand to play those cards so on the next turn IF they draw something like burrow beneath they need to spend as much as I did to kill the book and either skip resourcing or basically waste a turn...either way I still come out ahead in the end. However, ...the book is still not a great enough card to warrant a third copy.

Thematically though...it was hard for me to actually remove blackmoor estate (byakhee attack met a similar fate)...but there just wasn't room. On a side note, it was also really hard for me to play a Hastur deck without Power Drain. Anyone else find it hard to build a deck with only 50 cards? There is never enough room for everthing I want!

I do think that a Hastur / Yog deck could be quite good but I think a lot of people are putting too much stock into Things In The Ground. While the card is pretty solid, I think the interaction with Gathering At The Stones is being overlooked. With a Gathering, every time you activate Things In The Ground you're essentially "drawing" 2 cards. Sure, putting a big dude into play is fine, but it comes into play Insane and it'll be 2 turns before you can even do anything with him.

If people are really that excited about the card, Short Fuse may go back into Agency decks to deal with the toughness +X Ancient Ones. Then people will try and play Invulnerable ancient ones to counter that idea (which is what they should be doing to begin with, imho). I dunno, maybe I'm too skeptical, but I'm not on the Things In The Ground bandwagon just yet. I'm sticking to my guns with the more consistent Misk / Agency deck until someone proves me wrong (maybe at Worlds).

- SF

Well, Things in the Ground with Dr. Carson's Treatment is pretty nice... and Dr. Carson himself, of course.

And Arkham Asylum.

Neutral support location, pay 1 to restore and ready an insane character... and you don't exhaust the asylum. Ooof.

Random Things in the Ground rules question...when a character enters play insane does this count as "goes insane"? Could a card like The Greatest Fear be played? We ruled that it could not since the "change" never happens the moment it is hitting play it is already insane (but this also allows TiG to ignore terror icons and willpower). Did we play this right?

I think you played it correctly. These characters never went insane - they came into play insane (no text box, etc.).