Concept: Yog / Hastur deck destruction deck

Optimal win: turns 7-9

Most challenging opponent: Fast investigator decks

The concept behind the Blackmoor Grinder is to grind your opponent's draw deck and prevent him from drawing anything from his discard pile. This is a character light deck that does not intend to win by winning stories, but instead force the opponent to lose by not having any more cards to draw.

Character Cards (15 total)

x3 Cannibal Ghast (Yog) *1* - cheap early turn blockers to slow down Fast Investigator decks.

x3 Giant Albino Penguin (Hastur) *2* - cheap terror and combat creature.

x3 Fishers from Outside (Yog) *3* - terror and combat creature to fight off Fast Investigator decks, able to bounce an opponent's character into his hand

x3 Hermetic Scholar (Yog) *3* - discard four of opponent's cards each time he enters play (even from discard deck or as a resource brought into play)

x3 Forgotten Shaggoth (Yog) *4* - used to defeat an opponent who is running a deck destruction deck to out last him

Events focus on either card advantage, pulling cards back from the discard pile into play or deck destruction

x3 Journey to the Other side (Yog) *1* - allows you to rearrange your draw pile and put one into your hand by overpaying.

x3 Byakhee Attack (Hastur) *2* - Opponent discards 2 cards from his hand... excellent early game gotcha

x3 Gathering at the Stones (Yog) *2* - Put a card in your discard pile into your hand... allows you to bring a Hermetic scholar or any card back for more fun

x3 Power Drain (Yog) *2* - cancels an action or response and is a nasty surprise

x3 Twilight Gate (Yog) *2* - allows you to bring in a hermetic scholar attached to a domain, drain enemy cards and reattach to a different undrained domain

x2 Implant Fear (Hastur) *4* - Great combination with Snow Graves and good at ridding an opponent's hand of cards

Support Cards are key to victory You need the right comination of these at start or should take a mulligan

x3 Snow Graves (Shub) *0* - locks down the opponent's discard pile and works great with an Implant Fear

x3 Setting Sun (non) *1* - Slows down an investigator deck. Essential first turn draw against such decks

x3 Terrors in the Dark (non) *2* - a deck grinding support card

x3 Blackmoor Estate (yog) *3* - note this is not unique and is essential to draw either this or Carossa on turn one

x3 Carossa (Hastur) *3* - If you pull one of these on the first turn and have another Hastur card, you are on your was to grinding victory.

x3 Dimensional Rift (non) - *4* - used to either threaten to clean off the board or to do so. Sometimes it is useful merely as a threat.

I've played this about 50 times against other decks and see a win occur between turns 7-9. Fast Investigator decks are problematic and need to be dealt with using cheap blocker characters and Setting Sun.

Snow Graves in combination with Implant Fear is a great turn three combination to gut your opponent's hand.

I place a Hermetic Scholar in the resource pile so that I can bring him into the game using Twilight gate over and over again, and then place Hermetic Scholar in another resource and drain that.

The Blackmoor Estate and Carossa are the primary game winning cards. Protect them with Power Drain if your opponent has Dimensional rifts available or other location destruction cards.

Enjoy.

Alternate Deck #1:

Azathoth the Blind Idiot God - Substitute in one or two copies of Azathoth for some character destruction fun. Place Azathoth in your domain as a resource and use Twilight Gates to wipe the board of characters. This is a very effective and a nasty surprise. You might even consider a 52 card deck by just adding two copies of Azathoth.

Alternate Deck #2

If you know you won't be facing another deck destruction deck then replace Forgotten Shaggoth with x3 Magah Birds.

Domain Strategy:

You will have three total domains. You want to build up one to three cards as quickly as possible and have at least one Hastur (perhaps an extra Carossa) and one Yog (likely a Forgotten Shaggoth). This domain will be used primarily to play 3 cost cards. A second domain will include only two cards, one of which is a Hastur to be used for Power Drains (defensively) or Carossa if no Power Drain is available or used. A third domain will include all of your other resources and will be used to power up Blackmoor for massive deck grinding. The game is generally over by the time you have 4-6 cards in this domain (one way or another).

Thank you for posting your ideas about decks - this is nice to see and may stimulate discussion on the forums - something we all need!

I'm curious as to why you give names to the decks? Is that just so you can reference a different deck you posted and make comparisons?

Have we decided that a character attached to a domain loses all text allowing you to Twilight Gates Azathoth?

Did we ever get an official ruling on this? It seems ridiculous to me that a card states "non-Ancient One" and we argue the ruling that cards attached to your domains are blanks.

Chevee

FAQ 1.1 says

I would also believe that you can't Twilight Azathoth.

Seems like a fun deck, I run a similar but different one that was posted in deck mechanics thread. Curious how exactly the estate is working out for you? I felt like I never had the resources to spare for blackmoor most turns. Carcosa though is just plain nasty, however, Terror in the Dark so far has been my deck burn deck's all star card. I love that card, it forces your opponent to really have to make a tough choice whether or not to play a card. Hand destruction early on really thins out your opponents options which puts them in that I better play it while I can mindset...after following that up with losing a card if they do play it I find it really is an evil card...especially if you can get 2+ copies out! Book of Black Stones has been working well for me as well.

I agree that the intent of the Twilight card was obviously designed so that you can't target ancient ones. However the rules, as written, explicitly allow you to target Ancient Ones in such a manner since they don't have a text box when they're a resource, and therefore, aren't Ancient Ones.

That being said, my play group has a rule that says it's not allowed to use this card on AOs.

And you are right it has always been the way to play it. As with a shocking transformation you are not looking for an ancient one character in your deck (you could say "in my deck my cards have no text boxes so I can take everybody !!"). The Golden rules says also, the rules on the card take precedence. The faq says "A card attached to a domain as a resource does not have a text box..." but the Twilight Gate contradicts this rule so you must apply the rule on the card.

Dadajef,

Excellent point on cards taking precedence over the rules... I'd love to see an official ruling on it in a FAQ, but I agree Azathoth shouldn't text blanked for a twilight.

Luckily there's still plenty of fun with this deck without that... Azathoth was just something I tossed in once in awhile for fun but going forward (and without an official ruling) agree that for our local games it is an Ancient One even as a resource...

Dadajef,

Excellent point on cards taking precedence over the rules... I'd love to see an official ruling on it in a FAQ, but I agree Azathoth shouldn't text blanked for a twilight.

Luckily there's still plenty of fun with this deck without that... Azathoth was just something I tossed in once in awhile for fun but going forward (and without an official ruling) agree that for our local games it is an Ancient One even as a resource...

TheProfessor said:

I suppose that's the organizer in me... I like to name everything. For this deck the key card is Blackmoor and it is a deck grinder. This was an original constructed deck without any research on what other groups are playing.

rufusmcdufus said:

I looked through your deck posting just now and see your take on a yog/hastur deck. I think our decks would function in a similar fashion, but after a lot of playtesting I tuned mine not to keep characters around, and hence no need for the Book of Black Stones. That card along with several others were in my deck originally but with trial and error practice I took out some of those cards and added other key ones such as snow graves... try mine out and let me know what you think.

Blackmoor becomes the key grinding card that enables a win on turn 6-7 if you get it out early.

Sadly I can not try yours out as I do not have Mountains at Madness. I will try to put together something similar without snow and penguins this week and give it a run through though.

Hopefully Mountains of Madness will be available again soon.

Well, first, a big thanks for posting the decks.

It's always helpful to share feelings and experiences with the community and I love to discuss such stuffs.

I tryed to build quite a similar things mixing LCG and CCG months ago, but I'm not a great player, so I did pretty huge mistakes and leave the deck to despair !! I joined Performance Artist+Writhing Wall to my deck for denial and did'nt pull not Book of the black stone and Carcosa ...

My biggest problems was to handle Cthulhu's destruction DOA + Quagmire, as my opponent had no problem keeping characters coming into play.

Your main problem must be the lots of cards that destroy or take control avec support (agency/political demo, Shubb's support destruction). I tryed to answer via denial, but the problem was I was always in the need to domains to play denial and it slow me down a lot. Your deck needs a high ressource curve on one domain (for blackmoor estate).

I also tryed dreams within dreams to enact twice the story that makes you discard ... and it did'nt worked, as I always lost the first story and need time to settlemy strategy !!! The Path to Y'anthlei was a lot more effective ... I had'nt got time to try Twila with it !!

Strictly speaking of the discard strategy, I was a little bit puzzled on how the Gatekeeper was able to trigger three times if you manage to commit her unchallenged and have three domains left with 2 on them. I mean it can mill up to 9 cards, which can be strong.

I did some maths and finally discover that I needed to mill 8 cards (ratio) per turn in a way to have a chance to win turn 4

(DRAW = 9-10 drawn to start + 2 each turn in a well cut deck of 50 cards, so you need to discard something like 5 cards on every turns if you want to win turn 5 or 6)

Turn 3 : Drawn 16 => need to have 12 cards discarded at least during the firsts turns or you're dead !! Scholar is fine but needs a lot of investment to be played fully!

May I suggest Cavern of the flame in your early draw (mulligan if not present) in a way to uncommit the opponent characters during th first turn and lower your lack of characters.

I second the Cavern of Flames, it is probably my favorite Hastur card hands down...when you combine it with Guardian Pillar you have an amazing defensive wall. Both of these cards also help support each other's requirement of having the most Dreamlands. They are also so effective at stopping your opponent they will usually be the prime targets for things like Burrow Beneath. I had one game where turn by turn 3 I had Guardian Pillar, Cavern of Flames and a readied Tchoo-Tchoo tribe in play (thanks to Things in the Ground). Seeing as how my opponent also had no cards in his hand, it really stopped him dead in his tracks. Turn 6 he finally drew another deep one rising (endless interrigation pitched his first) but at that point he only had 3 cards in his deck...so it was too late.

My friend was pretty frustrated the whole game as he couldn't do anything...cavern + tchoo tchoo+pillar was really, really nasty...

The Cavern and Guardian pillar are greats cards but very vulnerable against the Agency faction, you have to deal with Torch a joint, the Groundkeeper, the repo man and the interrogation center for the guardian. Your friend will be less frustrated

Well my version of the deck ran up against a MU/Agency investigator and a Shub/Cthu big deck last night. It did alright but it needs some work. I need to the greatest fear in which case victoria will probably leave the deck for my other hastur deck. Also the Tchoos and 6 are gone as I don't really take my resources that high and TiG is too situational to rely on getting them every time. I haven't decided what to replace these cards with but I think 2 copies of blackmoor will find their way back in the deck along with a 2 drop. I haven't decided which char yet, though demon lover is a strong possibility as token denial is crucial. In terms of supporting cards...power drain, gathering at the stones and byakhee attack are the primary choices off the top of my head. I need to see what is in Whispers first though

thanks for the input. I have made some significant modifications and may end up heading to Gen Con with a couple different deck concepts that have been improved with input from everyone.

Anyone else heading to Gen Con want to get together Thur to play?

I plan on joining the league at GenCon. Registration is Thurs...

Chevee