There is this new Hastur's card called "Lost to Madness". The text states " Action: All characters in play go insane". Does this supercede the general rule of the game and that characters in play with Terror icons will need to go insane too. Just need some clarification.

brightknight_216 said:

Willpower and Terror still block insanity. Unless you first remove them of course, like, with whatshisname, Hastur, Lord of Carcosa .

Dam said:

If that is the case, then this card does not seem to be so useful if other players are playing with the monster faction deck like Cthulhu (especially when they have Shadowed Reefs in play, Shub, Yog and Hastur. Not sure whether others will agree with me on this.

You are correct, it does have less usefulness against some types of decks. Although that's common in almost every card / faction. They're good at something but have a weakness to others.

To make it more useful you'll want to look for things which can remove willpower or toughness. Some examples are:

1) The new Hastur card that Dam mentioned.

2) The Rays of Dawn (support card, all non-unique characters lose a terror icon)

3) Keeper of Dreams (event, character loses willpower unless controller discards 1 card at random)

4) Binding (event, character loses icons)

Etc.

That's definitely part of the fun of this game is trying to find new ways of using cards despite whatever weaknesses they may have. Or pairing up factions that have opposing strengths and weaknesses in order to get the best of both worlds.

Don't forget Scotophobia as another way to remove Terror icons.

Or Enchanted Wood to make Terror not block insanity.

I see. In order to make this card useful, we need to combine it with other cards that can take away terror icons or make the character go insane.

In fact I think this is a terribly powerful card and therefore not exactly needed by the already strongest faction.

I think Miskatonic in particular cringes at the thought of Lost to Madness, even without any helper cards on board. Others have Willpower and Terror sufficiently to have some characters still usable. Mi-Go decks don't like to think about LtM either.