Hi,
here is my report of the great tournament we had last week in Spilamberto (MODENA). The tournament was part of a 2 days gaming convention called "DADI & SUDORE" which included all the other LCG regionals and also many miniature tournaments. I myself had a go at AGOT LCG on saturday and it was great fun too. We ran the CoC tournament on Sunday morning and we decided for 6 swiss rounds without finals, in order to let everybody play more games. 13 partecipants in total. The company GIOCHI UNITI provided some great prizes for the winners.
I was running a Yog-Shub "character-heavy" deck. I must give some credit for this deck to the ruling world champion Capor for the inspiration. The deck changed quite a bit from what he was playing, but still I owe him some.
While I have already planned a few changes, here is the decklist:

Deck

3x CS F104 Living Mummy
3x CS F122 •Y'Golonac, The Obscenity
3x CS F131 Hungry Dark Young
3x YWB F79 Doppelgänger
3x RPT F32 One of the Thousand
3x RIF F51 Grasping Chthonian
3x RAA F78 •Glaaki, The Inhabitant of the Lake
3x RAA F79 Servants of Glaaki
3x ATT F75 Descendant of Eibon, Master of the Black Arts
3x CS F140 Shocking Transformation
3x ATH F12 Twilight Gate
1x CS F46 Ravager from the Deep
2x YSC F59 Flying Polyps
3x AMM F16 Alaskan Sledge Dog
1x AAD F52 •The Sleepwalker, Trapped by Nightmare
3x OST F7 Faceless Abductor
2x AAD F54 Gibbering Soul
3x CS F56 Deep One Assault
2x RAA F80 Initiation of Glaaki

Total 50

Strategy

The plan was simple. Hold on to the initial shootings ( I was expecting a lot of agency, and I did find more) thanks to characters recursion and the sheer number of them. Slowly take control of the table by playing my invulnerables and then wipe the table off via mummy and/or ravager. After the number of opponents characters had been drastically reduced, Y'go and Glaaki, the nasty brothers, were in charge to "terminate" the survivors. The deck is rich in characters and especially rich in characters with entering or interactive actions . This in order to take full advantage of that great card that is doppelganger. He was the true hero of my deck. He copied virtually everything on the table.

Here is the breakout of my tournament:

1st match VS Demis (mono agency)
I go one story down as expected while he plays well with Henry Price and all his attachments. But when the mummy hits the discard pile, only my characters are left.
WIN 3-1

2nd match VS Gianluca (Cthulhu-Agency). Again I go one story down but again a shocking transformation into a ravager flips the game to my side.
WIN 3-1

3rd match VS Ruling Champion ice1 (Agency-Hastur). This was a really tight match. He takes the one story advantage but then my table reset brings me back to a 1-1 draw. The game then comes to a stall mainly due to his Thomas Malone which held back my Y'golonac for quite a while. At the end I don't have the gut to risk the attacks while being slightly in advantage and the game ends in a draw 1 -1. What a game !! what a fight. !!!

4th match VS my friend Simone (Cthulhu Syndicate). I know his deck well as we play together a lot. The start is quite even but then he has the bad idea of playing a ravager and my Y'go just loved it. WIN 3- 0

5th game VS Carioz (Agency- Hastur) . He is the other unbeaten player of the tournament. Here is where my plan fails miserably. My start wasn't bad at all: I think I had 3 characters on the table first round, but he was just too fast for me with a first round Eibon over another Eibon, priest, dog, rats, new recruit and plenty of shootings. When I saw him resourcing 2 “a small price to pay” as initial resources I said to myself: "this doesn't look good". And it was. He ran over me in 2 rounds. Fairplay to him. Clean win. So LOSS 0-3.

6th game vs GIACOMO (Sydicate Agency with a splash of Cthulhu). Again, as usual, I go 2 story down but when it seems that all is going his way with his 7 characters on the table plus the safety net of dutch courage, I play a sequence of mummy and Grasping cthonian leveling the table. While the game appears won to me he doesn't thinks so, and he keeps relentlessly fighting and fighting with what he has left on the table which is essentially a very nasty Clover Club Torch Singer and a few others. I manage to win the 3rd story only few minutes before the time call. WIN 3-1

So here is the final results:
1st Carioz (Agency Hastur) 6 wins. Our regional 2011 Champion !!!

2nd me (Yog- Shub with a splash of Cthulhu) 4-1-1.

3rd LocustaMadre (with an Eibon free mono Hastur), Giacomo (Agency Syndicate), and Segno degli Antichi (with an Eibon free mono deep ones) all with 4-2.

It has been a great day of gaming and also a day where we finally put a face to the many guys that keep the Cthulhu Forum alive (www.cthulhuitaly.forumfree.it). Fairplay to all the players that came from all over Italy including some really great guys that took a long trip from the south just to be there. Thanks to GIOCHI UNITI for providing the nice prizesand support and finally thanks to the organizers of such a great convention: DADI & SUDORE. At the end of the day we all sat down at the tables for some great food and laughter and this is what a CON is all about.
Already looking forward to next year.

Will Agency Hastur dynasty continue ?

PS this forum software sucks. Almost lost all the post.

Thanks for the report and congrats for the tournament!

About your deck: do you think the Dogs were useful during the day? They seem to be a bit out of place here...maybe you were trying to have some characters to stop rush decks? (why not Rats, for example?)

Besides the dogs, would you do some changes or do you think that for now your list is optimal like this? For example, why don't you play a single T-Man as Shocking Transformation target?

And, btw, is there any chance to have the complete decklists of other decks?

thanks and again congrats!

Francesco / Konx

How did you end up with 3-0 games? DO you guys do something different than best 2 out of 3 games? Of are you referring to the number of stories won in single game matches?

It refers to the win/lose stories.

We choose to play a single match and not the 2 out 3 games to have more time for additional swiss turns (6 as you can see in the report of msommi)

Sadric said:

Don't let Fantasy Flight know! The official tournament rules require best 2 out of 3.

TheProfessor said:

As other people said, 2 out of 3 games favours rush decks and therefore I think it's a bad rule unless you allow enough time for other types of deck to come back. Since milling opponents deck , for example, is a winning condition, rules should be allowing for it to happen. Also, with 2 out of 3 games, you end up playing against less people. I like more the idea of testing every deck against a range of opponents rather then against the few that could be a great or a bad match-up for you.

Probably if we were 3 people like in Minnesota we would have chosen the best of 3 formula : P.

Aldough we enjoy being an official tournament (and we paid good money for it), our main goal is to have an enjoyable experience. After 7 or 8 games we find that concentration starts to wear off. A 2 days tournament would be ideal but this is a dream, right now.

There are also many other dark areas of official ruling as, for example, there is no official ruling for a 3 way tie. We again chose to use strenght of opponents as main parameter rather than stories won or direct match result as not all player had played against each other.

@Konx. Rats were the main dilemma in my deck and looking back they are my main regret (we say in Italy something like "with the wisdom of the aftermath"). They are indeed very good at slowing rushes. My consideration was that 9 neutral cards were a bit too much with a 3 factions deck and could give me some resourcing troubles. Dogs are a decent solution against rushes. And I didn't have many one cost characters. Eibon is... Eibon. Rats are anyway in my latest version along with many angled things which was illegal for our tournament. Anyway, not having rats didn't stop me from playing rats at the tournament ; ).

But in my opininon, the question right now is how to beat agency if you don't want to play agency. It's not as dramatic as in other metas (for example the top 8 of WHI italian regional were 8 empire decks), but again other metas are more balanced (ie AGOT). But maybe I have the solution.... Need more testing.....

msommi said:

I understand why you did it - I meant my comment in a joking manner, although I am personally rather pedantic about following such rules. It is my way to waiving any obligation and avoiding arguments. I can say, "the official rules are such and such: you have no reason to argue with me."

Also, in a previous life, I was a Regional coordinator for some sanctioned events from a game company, and my job was to go visit places holding official tournaments and ensuring they were following the rules to the letter... I guess I have a hard time dropping that mantle.

I see... You are one of those nitpickers that are fundamental in order to have a tournament without troubles and arguments.... ok you are employed for next year !!!

Sounds good! I need a good reason to go to the country of my ancestors!

Thanks for the great report!

I also have to say, I really like your deck! This is very close to what I would put together if I was better at deck-building

And my Congratulations to making second place

No lodge ? No bounce ?

It al looks good except for one thing...

How effective was Deep One Assault with so little green in the deck?

Hi,

Deep One Assault was there for 2 main reasons. To kill mad characters at cost 0 ( including a Cthulhu or Y'golonac after the famous "Glaaki treatment") and to make ravager playable from your hand. In fact it wasn't the most useful card as I only met agency decks and had little interest in terminating small weenies. This was meant to be used against other ancient ones decks. Probably unspeakable resurrection is more useful right now.

Supa said:

Hi,

as regard the lodge I haven't played it much. Our lodge expert is Sadric, and he can tell you more about it, but I think that they need a few more cards to be effective.

Here is the bunch of us after a long day of killings. I don't see any sign of regret or remorse.

http://cthulhuitaly.forumfree.it/?t=54961937&st=60