Homemade cards?

By Solomon_Grundy, in Call of Cthulhu LCG

Hey all, been lurking for a while and just signed up today. I collect both the Cthulhu CCG and LCG, though there isn't any organized play around where I live. I just play with a few close friends using different decks I build out of my collection.

Which means I am less concerned with building competitive decks and more interested in the thematic elements of the game. I enjoy building things like an all Government deck, or a "Hyperboria" deck based around Tsathoggua and the characters, tomes and places featured in CAS' stories.

Anyway, given all that I was wondering if anyone here liked to think up their own "dream cards"? I used to photoshop together some home made cards for other CCGs I have played in the past, and was considering giving it a try with Cthulhu as well. As great a job as Fantasy Flight has done, they've still left quite a lot of recognizable characters and story elements out so far.

What sort of card stats and game mechanics would you expect to see on characters like:

-Titus Crow

-Keziah Mason

-Brown Jenkins

-Herbert West

-The Phantom of Truth/Queen Cassilda/Thale/Uoht/the other characters in The Play .

-Abdul Alhazred

One thing I would really like to see is Ancient One s for the human factions. I would see Nodens being Agency, Hypnos being Miskatonic and Bast being Syndicate. More low-level AO's in general would be cool... would like to see Ghatanothoa's siblings show up, Shudde-M'ell, Ubbo-Sathla, Eihort, and especially Glaaki! Oh how I would love to build a Glaaki/Herbert West/Zombie-apocalypse themed deck!

This looks like a fun thread. Ill throw one in.

I'd like to see a card from one of my favorite Lovecraft Stories "Thing on the Doorstep". How bout a card entitled:

Ephraim-Asenath-Edward (character card. Cthulhu)

cultist.

Response: When Ephraim-Asenath-Edward enters Discard Pile, take one non Ancient One character card from opponent's discard pile and put into play under Ephraim-Asenath-Edward owner's control.

How can I be sure that I am safe? Those powers survive the life of the physical form

That's a really cool idea, I like the card effect a lot. I would expect the title of the card would be a bit more like

*Asenath Waite
Her Father's Daughter

Card Type: Shub-Niggurath aligned character.

Cost: 4 (Steadfast Miskatonic? She was a student there) Skill: 3

TAAI

Cultist. ( Dreamer as well? Some of the story leads me to believe Ephriam/Asenath had access to the Dreamlands)

Response: After Asenath Waite enters the Discard Pile, take one non-Ancient One character from opponent's discard pile and put it into play under Asenath Waite's controller's control.

*Glaaki
The Thing In The Lake

Card Type: Cthulhu-aligned character

Cost: 5 Skill: 5

TTAC

Ancient One.

Toughness +2

Exhaust Glaaki to take a character with no printed T icons from opponent's discard pile and put it into play under your control. Characters you put into play with this ability gain the Undead subtype and have Skill of 1. If there is no character named Glaaki in play, all characters put into play with this ability are returned to their owners' discard piles.

*Plague of the Dead

Card Type: Yog-Sothoth Support

Cost: 3

Undead characters gain Toughness +1. Exhaust Plague of the Dead and X Undead characters to destroy a support card with cost X or less.

The Green Decay

Card Type: Neutral Event

Cost: 1

All Undead characters receive one wound. Draw one card.

Byakhee Nest

Shub-Niggurath aligned character

Cost: 4 Skill: 2

TC

Dark Young.

Toughness +1

When committed to a story, characters you control with "Byakhee" in their title do not exhaust to commit to the same story.

*Shub-Niggurath
Wife of the Not-To-Be-Named One

Hastur aligned character

Cost: 6 (Steadfast Shub-Niggurath X3) Skill: 5

TTCAA

Ancient One

Tougness +3. Villainous.

Exhaust Shub-Niggurath to choose an insane character and remove it from the game, then draw two cards and discard one of them.

Like exsquisite candies presented by a lover, the Queen of Carcosa eagerly consumes each little gift that her King brings to her.

*Hastur
Personification of Entropy

Hastur aligned character

Cost: 8 Skill: 8

TTTAA

Ancient One

Invulnerability. Loyal. Villainous.

All other characters lose 1 Terror icon and Willpower.
Response: After you succeed at a story to which Hastur is committed, each opponent must discard the top 3 cards from their deck.
Struggle Icons: Terror, Arcane

One thing I was always surprised never happened was seeing the Elder Gods included as AO's for the three human factions, particularly since there are three predominant Elder Gods and three human factions.

*Nodens
Lord of the Wild Hunt

Agency aligned character

Cost: 7 Skill: 6
CCCAA

Ancient One.
Willpower. Invulnerability.

Exhaust to choose and destroy a Monster or Servitor with fewer Combat icons than Nodens. Dreamers you control gain Willpower when committed to the same story as Nodens.


*Bast
Collector of Secrets

Syndicate aligned character

Cost: 6 Skill: 7
AAII

Ancient One.
Willpower. Toughness +2.

When you succeed at an Investigation struggle, you may choose to draw two cards instead of resolving that struggle's normal effect. When you succeed at an Arcane struggle at a story that Bast or a character with "Cat" or "Cats" in its name is committed, you may discard two cards to add a success token to that story instead of resolving that struggle's normal effect.


*Hypnos
Master of Dreams

Miskatonic aligned character

Cost: 6 Skill: 6
AAAA

Ancient One
Willpower. Invulnerability.

The cost of Spell cards are lowered by the number of Dreamlands Locations in play.
Disrupt:
pay 1 to cancel any ability targeting a Dreamer .

Solomon_Grundy said:

One thing I would really like to see is Ancient One s for the human factions. I would see Nodens being Agency, Hypnos being Miskatonic and Bast being Syndicate.

jhaelen said:

To be honest, I think they fit better into the neutral faction. While they may help the human factions from time to time, they don't really belong to any faction. They're inscrutable and fickle beings that cannot be relied on.

If the human factions can have Avatars of Nyarlathotep allied with them, then I don't see the problem with Elder Gods.

It's not like I'm saying Nodens has an Agency badge, or Hypnos holds an honorary degree at Miskatonic. But the Elder Gods are more likely to be helpful towards humans than they are to assist Deep Ones or Shoggoths or Byakhee, at least in the stories that the card game is based on. The specific factions that I've chosen for them here don't signify that they "belong" to the faction so much as that faction is made up of the type of humans that are most likely to encounter that particular Elder God. Nodens tends to show up during violent confrontations of the kind that the Agency tends to get themselves into. Hypnos is tied into the Dreamlands, one of the great intellectual mysteries plumbed by the scholarly. Bast tends to surround herself with mystique and intrigue, of the sort that the Syndicate and their ilk are involved in.

If the Elder Gods are made as Neutral cards, I would expect to see them more often then not being allies to Shub and Yog in decks that synergize with the Ancient One keyword.

Solomon_Grundy said:

If the Elder Gods are made as Neutral cards, I would expect to see them more often then not being allies to Shub and Yog in decks that synergize with the Ancient One keyword.

In the same way, Cthulhu and Hastur tend to synergize really well, but a lot of mythos fiction depicts those two factions as being at each other's throats. This is the kind of setting where I wouldn't say it matters how well two groups get along, so much as that they have a common enemy whom they can agree to work against for the duration of the match. And besides, it's not like there'd be anything stopping an Agency/Yog-Sothoth deck from using Nodens for the reason you mentioned, unless you were to incorporate specific text barring him from entering play under the control of a Mythos faction player, which would harshly limit his appeal.

Solomon_Grundy said:

If the Elder Gods are made as Neutral cards, I would expect to see them more often then not being allies to Shub and Yog in decks that synergize with the Ancient One keyword.

Also, maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but I've always sort of felt like the idea of there being entities on par with the Ancient Ones acting on humanity's behalf, runs more or less counter to the sense of hopelessness that mythos fiction as a whole wants to achieve. Does anybody else feel this way?

On topic, though: Seeing as Lovecraft himself incorporated works by other horror writers into his writings, and actively encouraged others to use elements from his own work, I would like to see occasional references to horror beyond the Cthulhu Mythos, such as Edgar Allen Poe, or this dubious conversation piece from W.W. Jacobs:

• Monkey's Paw
The Hand of Fate

Hastur Support

Cost: 2

Artifact. Attachment.

Attach to a character.

If attached character does not already have Toughness, he gains Toughness +2 .

Action: Exhaust Monkey's Paw and wound attached character to attach a resource from hand to one of your domains, then destroy a resource attached to another of your domains.

Be careful what you wish for.