So my son was telling me that in a video game (Street Fighter, I believe), the Japanese players have taken an interesting approach called a "soft ban." Apparently there are some characters in the game considered better than others (broken?). Instead of making a ban on these characters for tournaments, the "good" players just don't use them. They consider it dishonorable.

Considering the power of Hastur with Magah Birds and 70 steps (see French Nationals or NE Regionals for example), etc. I wonder if a soft ban on the Hastur control would be considered gallant for Worlds?

It would be interesting to see a soft ban implemented in Western society. The trouble is, how do you get the word out?

Excellent question. I'm guessing this forum is a starting point?

I don't think those cards are that bad. You can just throw some dimensional rifts in your deck to get rid of everything.

Ephraim said:

Dimensional Rift is good in theory- but at cost 4, you get to play it on turn 3- which means, you lose before you get to use it.

Chevee

It's true. A won a couple of games at NE Regionals on turn 4 using a Hastur rush/control deck.

I think even if Magah birds was limited to "When you play Magah Birds from hand...." it would help a bit.

When I can 3 birds and someone else on turn 1 just before 70 steps, this means 3 x 2 tokens on turn 2. On turn 2 if I Caverns of Flame and a Moonbeast captain I can usually hold off the opponent so that on turn three I win one story and have 4 tokens on the other two. Victoria doesn't hurt either.

This makes turn 4 win not too unlikely.

The Dimension Rift won't kick in until the second player's turn 4, which is too late - game is already over.

Fear the Magah Birds at Worlds!!!!!!

haha can't wait

Well, in tournaments, I do that a lot. No birds, no dogs, no 70 steps. It's funnier that way. Furthermore, birds and 70 steps is hard to survive first turn, but it is clearly possible to go through it. But not with every faction unfortunately.

Yes birds are strong but when you are used to play them or against them, you can deal with them. Just few examples :
- You are playing also Hastur. You have a performance artist in play, think to cancel the response of the first bird from your opponent to stop the arrival of the others.
- You are playing Syndicat, add Richard Finchington III (Ancient Horrors F7), you play it in the first turn and it will block the birds or all creature rush. Panic card is very useful also.
- You are playing Cthulhu, the DOA is terrific against all hastur's one cost card.

To be sure to win with an hastur birds + 70 steps + Cavern of flames deck, you need to start the game (you are not starting always). What is strong is not so much to have birds, it's to have a strong combo in your start hand (birds + steps or birds + endless interrogation for example). The mulligan rule is also helpful to have birds in your start hand. The mulligan rule is too strong because a player have no penalties for a mulligan.

And yes, The Dimension Rift is useless against a rush deck. Playing a rush deck means winning the games in 4 or 5 turns.

What I could say is when you are deckbuilding, think you're opponent will play with birds (or/and dogs in their decks) and test your deck again and again against rush decks.

For my experience, with the actual pools of cards, Agency, Syndicat and Cthulhu are good factions to block hasturs / birds deck. Hastur also in mirror games but be careful with the time limit !

Is there any card that has an effect of destroying or returning to hand all characters with a chosen title?

The Story card They Come at Night (Secrets of Arkham F52). Add some Stealthy Zoog in your deck (Journey to Unknown Kadath F115) to be sure to trigger its effect. Sometimes it can be useful.

Yes, but usually too late to help against a Hastur rush!

Considering the Soft Ban, as it is supposed to be the main topic :

We actually practice it in the french community, while playing casually. I've stopped playing Hastur because of this.

Like you know, Hastur has been the main faction of the Top4 decks from the Nationals and it seems like there a lot less fun to play it. It walks by itself ! Automatic play is no use !

But, in tournament, you can't ask anybody not to pick the better faction... So the ban is considered soft, but don't really interfer with the tournament environment

Actually, what I find the scariest part is not Birds + Steps but Endless Interrogation. Whoever thought that it should be a 0 cost card that can be returned to your hand (giving you a possibility to discard 4-6 cards from your opponent's hand as soon as you succed at story once is pretty **** strong).

Also, I think that the best way to counter Birds/Steps combo is to play Syndicate/Yog with Panic, Silver Key and Dampen Light, that's 9 cards of which any could reduce the effectivenes of such deck greatly.

could you explain your thoughts with an example of how those 3-cards could (in theory) be used to slow down or stop the Birds / Steps Combo ?

- also - how do you possibly get 6-cards out of one single Endless Interrogation ? How would that be accomplished (I've not gotten that card yet, so I have not been able to experience it's silliness).

Panic seems easy enough (unless I'm misremembering the wording). Opponent plays 1 Magah and gets his other two in. When they would get around to committing to a story, just play Panic in the Action window before the commit step to exhaust them (only need to pay 1, since Magah's have skill 1). Dampen the Light, they play Magah, you play DtL, all costs go up by 1, he can't play 70 Steps (which now costs 3).

Rosh87 said:

6 cards is assuming you have 3 EI in hand.

Now, for the cards:

Panic - exhaust his chars so they can't commit to story (although, you need a domain with 2 syn resources attached - note that Panic exhausts charasters with skill lower than X)

Dampen Light - Birds/Steps combo is based around cheap stuff that you put in early and en masse. By increasing the costs you effectively slow it down by a great deal.

Silver Key - especially useful when enemy goes first and manages to play his Steps, your chars enter exhausted, you attach SK to a story, Now you can commit your chars there while the enemy can't. Also, your chars are going to get refreshed so you'll have them ready to defend other stories on your opponent's turn.

None of this cards form a "hard counter" to the Birds/Steps decks. But they're really good at slowing down any form of rush and the longer the game goes on, the weaker rush decks get as they lose their early advantage and can't really face better characters in the stories.

Good points...overall.....one question on Silver Key though -doesn't that eventually hurt you (after one go at the story) - since you end up having to Refresh your guys at the start of the next turn (after they enter exhausted from the 70-Steps) ....and when you do that...they aren't allowed to commit to any stories any longer ?

The Key attaches to a single story. So it only affects that story.

But if you have a Syndicate deck, you have plenty of ways to exhaust yourself!

It doesn't really matter. Let's use the example to illustrate how this works:

Enemy has 3 birds and steps (his was the first turn).

You have 2 patsies (or whatever really), who are exhausted from steps.

You play SK on one story and commit your patsies there who get refreshed and grab you 2 tokens at that story (birds couldn't commit to this story).

On opponents turn he can either split his birds over 2 stories (of which you should be able to defend at least one) and/or put some exhausted guys into play to go for the story with SK which you can't defend right now.

It really depends on who got commited to the stories (and which stories) on your opponent's turn. The fact is though that you were first to start hitting tokens at the SK story which means you should be able to take it (thus making steps hurt enemy more than you).

It's all highly hypothetical, but in theory it should work.

Well, IMO, the problem still is difficult to handle ...

If you don't play Cthulhu or Syndicate, the game is almost over! Being myself a Yog/Shubb player, you can't consider the Silver Key an appropriate answer to the problem of Birds+Steps :

If the Hastur deck start, you can't have a ready character, which meant you need to pay for the key and play only 2 characters (if you're lucky enough), and you'll only be able to defend on one story.

Your opponent (hastur deck) will just avoid committing to the story attached with the Silver Key and wait, as he will be able to defend on it then.

In the situation you posted, you're getting 2 success tokens on the story with SK attached for free (as he can't defend it) and then you have 2 readied characters to defend with on your opponent's turn.

This could potentially screw up Birds+Steps decks big time as they lose all of their early advantage this way.

Well, I might not explain my points very well. Let's say A plays Hastur, B plays Yog.

A starts, he drops birds+steps (this being usually out 60% of the time, with the Mulligan rules).

B starts, his characters being exhausted while they come in play + he needs to pay for the key. He can commit on 1 story and ready his characters... and ready one of them, just 1. He managed to have 2 tokens on 1 story, and might defend then, but the birds players will just have to avoid the SK story.

Considering the low amount of 1in Yog, Let's say he will try to use his 2 cost character. At that time, Hastur will have the possibility then to pay for Victoria or Rats (anything that could come in handy in Hastur 2nd turn), or anything to react, keeping 2 domains open and having a character able to commit to the SIlver Key story.

In case B starts, it obviously not interesting for him to play the SK first, as he'll need to have domains to handle the Hasturian devlopment. Once the 2nd turn is on, the SK becomes allmost unusefull.

As the player will need to develop + slowing down the Yellow Machine, SK becomes less interesting, as the A player might have characters exhausted!

Why would SK ready just one character? It triggers for each commited character...

Oups... forgot about that one ... yeah that slightly increase the interest of the card.