I'm going to suggest or ask opinions as to whether cthulhu + agency is a terrible combo because both are the blunt-style factions that benefit from some tactics of the others, plus:

they are mutually exclusive in terms of villainous / heroic units!!! you lose 50% of the best units when combining these.

I've put together some fun decks with Cthulhu/Agency. Yes, it is mostly about destruction/combat, but that isn't necessarily bad. And there are some decent investigators in Agency who are not Heroic.

I also now note that the top 4 decks (in the world / from the tournament) are hastur & Agency - So i guess that is not such a big deal.

Imbalance runs pretty strong in CoC LCG. I am constantly baffled when I see that only 2 factions got their transient resources and only 1 faction got the character cost reduction stuff (making it nigh impossible for other factions to bring their more expensive characters to the field in a reasonable amount of time and without crippling themselves). Also, I still can't see why Steve Clarney has made his way into Agency from Miskatonic, which seriously reduced their C icon potential (right now they have 3! characters that are not unique and have some C icons, all of those characters cost 3 and 2 of them are rather nice, the third one is pretty much useless). So, Miskatonic is stuck with A and I icons and very few ways of dealing with T and C (and losing 2 characters/turn can be quite harmful).

And while I'm at the whining, I'd like to ask why the hell did they re-print some useless cards (I'll narrow it down to Hastur and point to Bearer of the Yellow Sign and Thing from the Stars here) while leaving out staple cards that were not imbalanced and yet pretty good (Pulp Writer and Academy Patron or Patron of the Arts, forgot which one was that, for instance).

RE: the mention of card cost reduction - there is a neutral unit from the deluxe expansion... Arkham something. that reduces the cost of cost 5 units or higher by one - several of those would help. they're also Cultists - so have several uses.

Well, yes, there's a couple of other cards that will reduce the cost to play a specific card or subtype. E.g. Shub Niggurath and Cthulhu have several of them.

I actually like that every faction has different methods to achieve similar things rather than duplicating key concepts for every faction. But unfortunately, many factions still lack any way at all to replicate certain crucial effects.

I think it sucks that you cannot currently create a competitive deck without including Agency and/or Hastur.

Hi Jhaelen.

On point I wanted to chime in that I, too, enjoy the way they have separated the various factions into individual themes as to what they do best and how they do it.... but that was a good point that Manitou mentioned regarding Miskatonic (just as an example) and Combat - inefficiency.

I too wondered, after looking at many cards in the Core Set and since....why Cthulhu (for example) gets cards that lower the cost of "him" being played (Twilight Lord)....and Shub has big-time bonuses with Priestess of Bub, in combo with Ghoulish Worshipper (and things like Eat the Dead, etc that speed up your deployment ability).

When you look at other factions, like Agency or Hastur though - their "high cost stuff" - such as G-Men, T-Men, Hastur himself, etc - is hard to put in a deck "naturally" - because it's hard to think "well, I'll just play this one Turn-5 or 6....and be fine".... without cards that boost up the possibility of getting these big things out faster. Sure, you can point to the Neutral "booster" - Seeker of Mysteries...but that only works on Cost-5 or greater - and she's sort of out of place in an Agency // Hastur deck - especially since you'd be staking your "big things strategy" (if employing her and it) ....on the chances of getting 3-cards (the 3-Seekers you could have, max, in your deck).

This seems pretty uncertain.

Hopefully they will reproduce more of these nice "old CCG cards" that balanced things out a bit more, without making any mistakes (never do Ghoul Khanum again, for instance - based on everything the Vets have been saying here about its past overpoweredness....).

Rosh87 said:

I also tried to put together a deck concentrating on mastery over the arcane struggle. But I don't think you can actually make it work at the moment.

I know I'm repeating myself, but the current status quo pretty much requires that one of the factions you use in your deck is Agency or Hastur. Combining them both results in the strongest decks because they're the masters of the two most important struggles, i.e. combat and terror, respectively.

Mastering the other two struggles can be useful to support your main strategy, but it won't win the game for you.

I'd love to be proven wrong, though!

Good points..... I was talking with my buddy at work today (the guy I play the game with) ....about that very point (the fact that if Miska doesn't survive Terror + Combat - then they are usually going to be down 2-guys before they even get to Investigation).

He also thought it was odd that FFG changed Steve Clarney to Agency, from Miska...especially cause he said Clarney seemed designed to resemble Indiana Jones - as the Professor // Adventurer - type - and it would have made perfect sense in Miska. Does anyone know why, exactly they (FFG) changed that ?? Did they ever release "logic" or "reasoning" as to why the switch was effected ?

- To Jhaelen - I hope you eventually got to check out my comment / reply in that one thread (can't recall which exactly) over in the Rules sub-forum. In it, I expressed my hopes that you wouldn't be too miffed at any perceived slight in one of my older threads, as I value your input and often-sharp analysis of some of the rules issues, etc. that we discuss - and hope you continue to chime in with useful insights when you can !

Rosh87 said:

It was an error. It was not intentional. In the starter set you will notice 20 cards for most factions, but 19 for Mistkatonic and 21 for Agency. And the numbers are sequential between Miskatonic and Agency. Someone goofed, but since it was printed, FFG decided to just make it official instead of a rather clunky errata (color and icons needing correction).

Rosh87 said:

I just wanted to get my message across; i.e. trying to keep this forum a place that everyone enjoys visiting and contributing to

Regarding Steve Clarney, The Professor is right. Sad but true, it was simply an error, that FFG decided not to correct. In our casual games we still play him as a Miskatonic character, because for them he's an extremely valuable addition. For Agency he's not only just one among many similar characters, his passive ability often actually harms the Agency player more than his opponent, considering the large number of characters with toughness.

I'd really wish, they'd finally print a worthy official replacement for Miskatonic. So far, I've not seen one.