A question here from a casual, not to say occasional, player:

There seems to be a certain measure of consensus, partly gathered from the tournament reports I think, that Hastur is pretty strong as a faction at the moment. Could anyone give an outline of why this is, as well as some examples of the sort of strategies or card combinations that causes it? When I've played Hastur in the past I've had a lot of difficulty with fairly standard Agency and Agency/Miskatonic decks.

I'm not sure that it's mono-Hastur dominance so much as certain specific cards from Hastur, combined with certain specific cards from Agency (and a few Neutrals) that are very difficult to counter.

If you check out Magnus Arcanus' tournament report for the Worlds (which he won) the top four players all had Hastur/Agency decks. Although they weren't identical, there were certain cards which featured in every deck without fail.

Magah Birds and 70 steps is the combo most people have issues with. Combined with the mulligan, triples in a fifty card deck give a very high percentage chance of getting one of each in your hand first turn. You then play the Magah Birds, something else at Cost 1 or 2 (Byakhee Attack or Victoria Glasser both being popular choices if drawn) then 70 steps. You've now got three ready characters in play, your opponent has none, and any that come in are exhausted. You probably / potentially get two turns of three characters unchallenged against all three stories. Four tokens on each before your opponent even gets to do anything. That's incredibly difficult to counter, and some of the tourney regulars have been saying that with this deck, getting first turn simply means an auto-win. I'm not a tourney regular, so I don't know if that's true! But I've used it in friendly games and it's VERY effective.

This is particularly nasty when also combo-ed with the hand control and board control cards. Endless Interrogation (a Hastur card in all but name) empties your opponent's hand, assisted by Byakhee attack. Blind Submission and Infernal Obsession mean that any characters your opponent gets into play, having sat there exhausted for a turn, are then taken away from him. Meanwhile the Agency cards are killing stuff (shotgun, shotgun blast etc) that you can't control or disable. Other cards that often turn up are the neutrals like Alaskan Sledge Dogs or Guardian Pillar (though they are relatively easily countered by Interrogation Centre) as good Aggro / Rush cards.

In short, Birds / Steps make for a very effective Rush deck, which is then flavoured Control / Rush or Aggro / Rush depending on your preference for more Hastur or more Agency respectively. I should say again that I don't play competitively so I'm only reporting what others have said plus a little friendly-game experience of my own. I'd recommend reading MA's report here . Well-written, fascinating stuff, and includes links to all four top decks.