I'm pretty new to the game, but when I was asking about anyone playing casual games at Gencon I got roped into playing in the tournament instead. Good idea? Bad idea? I don't know, but I'm sure I'll learn a lot in the process!

Last night I started working on my deck. I've chosen to go with Shub, planning for the majority of the deck to be them with just a splash from the second faction, I'm starting out trying Syndicate for some exhaustion effects, a couple of cheap investigation characters, some re-readying, Patsy to help me out of a jam, and Dutch Courage to toughen up all my Shub characters. Got a couple of neutral cards in there as well for the moment, but every time I draw them in my starting hand it seems to create a resourcing problem so I may end up removing some/all of them. I didn't want to do the Mi-Go deck as it seemed more combo oriented (needing to get several cost 3 guys out at once to really reap the benefits) so I'm doing more Dark Young and what I see as good "non-affiliated" characters like Albino Goat-Spawn. I did throw in a couple of Ageless Mi-Go to soak hits for me since they're only cost 2. Between them, Dutch Courage, and some Bred to Survive I'm hoping that my characters will be annoyingly hard to kill allowing me to build up a character advantage over time.

Anyway, here's what I have so far:

Characters: 23 (3/11/5/1/2)
1x Degenerate Ghoul (Core)
3x Forest Sister (Core)
1x Hungry Dark Young (Core)
2x Ageless Mi-Go (SoA)
1x Slavering Gug (Core)
2x Watcher of the Woods (Core)
2x The Mother's Hand (SoA)
3x Albino Goat-spawn (SoA)
1x Small Ghouls (Core)
1x Ancient Guardian (Core)
1x Priestess of Bubastis (Core)
2x Anarchist (SoA)
1x Extortionist (Core)
1x Hard Case (Core)
1x Patsy (Core)

Support: 4
1x Altar of the Blessed (Core)
1x Dutch Courage (Core)
2x Magnifying Glass (SoA)

Events: 13
2x Shocking Transformation (Core)
2x Horrid Mutation (Core)
2x Bred to Survive (Core)
1x Regeneration (Core)
1x Burrowing Beneath (Core)
2x Intimidate (SoA)
1x Get on Yer Feet! (Core)
2x Eldritch Nexus (Core)

I'm currently at 40 cards, so obviously it's not done yet. The cards I have to work from are one copy each of the Core set and Secrets of Arkham, plus a few old CCG era cards. The only one of them not already being used is a Mi-Go Warrior. I'm willing to buy a few Asylum Packs to help round off the list, interested in suggestions of what would work well in the list. Currently though I'm thinking of some of the following cards:

The Cacophony: Shub Niggurath
In the Dread of Night: Ghoulish Predator
Order of the Silver Twilight: Collector of Sacrifices
Perilous Trials: One of the Thousand
The Antediluvian Dreams: Eat the Dead
The Horror Beneath the Surface: Under the Porch

My basic idea is to swarm with Shub characters carrying Terror and/or Combat icons and to make them hard to kill. To aid in their survival I've added Dutch Courage, Bred to Survive, Regeneration and I've put in a few exhaustion effects to help deal with problem enemy characters. I've also included a few expensive (cost 4-5) Shub characters to use with Shocking Transformation. The few Syndicate characters were chosen to help exhaust more things or to add some Investigation icons and a little more Combat but they've been kept on the cheap side. The only Neutral cards I've got right now are Eldritch Nexus to help pay for some "pay 1" effects or to just be a resource if I don't draw those sort of cards, and Magnifying Glass to help grab some extra success tokens with Investigation.

I'd like to pick up The Cacophony and put Shub Niggurath in the deck. She's only cost 6 in this version. I can't Shocking Transformation into her, but the cost isn't too horrible and I'm hoping to cheapen her with Priestess and possibly other means. I'm willing to look at adding cards to help bear the cost if they don't distract too much. That's actually why I'm looking at One of the Thousand and Eat the Dead. I realize that an Ancient One may not really be viable for high level tournament play. That's OK, neither am I at this point. I'm taking Shubby because she sounds like fun and because I'm running a Dark Young deck so dropping her on the table could bring back a whole swarm of Dark Young from my discard pile.

Collector of Sacrifices and Ghoulish Predator are cheap characters with some useful icons (and I've got a couple of ways to drop cheap Shub guys into play), plus Ghoulish Predator is Tough as well. One of the Thousand helps accelerate my expensive characters, mainly Shubby if I add her. Eat the Dead is also there to help get her into play by growing one of my domains rapidly, I can slap it on a character destined to die and pump my domain up to the point where I can drop her on the table, hopefully bringing back the Dark Young that just died to pay her ticket in the process. I'm less sure about Under the Porch. I've read that's it's supposed to be a strong card and I think I sort of see it. This would let me fish for Shubby whenever I'm close to ready to bring her out, or any other character I want. Heck, maybe just someone with Investigation if it will help me grab a story when my opponent isn't expecting it.

I'm having a hard time narrowing down the Asylum packs, probably need to start looking at whether any of them have any good Syndicate cards I could use too. Ghoulish Predator seems to be better than Collector of Sacrifices (plus he's in the more expensive Silver Twilight set) so I think I can at least rule out that one. If I can do without Under the Porch (seems likely) then that brings me down to just four.

I feel like I may have too many Events and not enough Support. What's the typical balance between these two? Is this something to worry about? Maybe Alhazred Lamp? Watcher of the Woods would probably like a couple more Support cards in there at least but I don't know if it's worth bending the deck much just for him

So that's it. That's what I've got so far. Advice is welcome but remember I have a pretty limited card pool right now. I'm willing to buy a few Asylum Packs though and would love advice on which ones would be most beneficial to this deck. If you think I can do better with some different cards from the Core + SoA sets I'd love to hear about that too.

The CCG-era Syndicate cards I have to work with are:

1xClover Club Bouncer
3xClover Club Torch Singer
3xBag Man
1xHired Mystic
1xSyndicate Liason
3xLike a Moth
1xPanic
3xAlhazred Lamp

I finally figured out that I've been blind w/ regards to Y'Golonac. For some reason I was thinking he could only suck in ENEMY characters to a story, that he basically pulled them in to die. And that's useful, but it's only half of what he does. What I was overlooking is that he can also re-ready friendly characters as long as you don't mind them going to the same story as him. Duh...

dboeren said:

Finally, if you want to draw an opponent's character to Y'Golonac's story, you have to do so before your opponent has committed his characters, otherwise it's too late.

Thanks for the tip, he really does have some flexibility with that action then.

I ordered a few Asylum packs last night: The Cacophony, Antediluvian Dreams, Perilous Trials, Whispers in the Dark

So, I'll be drawing on these to help finish the deck. There's some more Dark Young in there, some cost reducers, and other stuff I'm hoping will be useful. I may try to fit Y'Golonac in when I revise the deck too.

Y'Golonac can even be used to force ready characters to commit to a story, so I have been told. You have to look at his action as it are two seperate abilities:
1 --> Ready a character and 2 --> force that character to commit.
You dont have to fulfill ability 1 to use ability 2

However be aware with forcing characters to commit that have abilities which reguires them to exhaust.

For example:
You commit Y'Go. After commiting actions can be taken. You take first action and pay 1 to force opponent to commit character. Opponent can take an action and chooses to use his characters ability which makes the characters exhausted. After all actions have been taken opponent enters his commiting fase. His character can no longer commit and therefor Y'go has no effect. If you still have any free domains you can again use Y'go's ability but this will also give the opponent the chance to use and exhaust his character again.

This came across in a game I played with messenger from beyond in my deck and Y'Go in opponents deck. Y'Go wasnt very usefull in trying to destroy my messenger :-)

So he is escapable, using the "if able" clause then. You could potentially play an Event that exhausts the chosen character too I think.

He still seems pretty nice, but I'm a little torn on putting him into this deck.

1. He's not Dark Young so he won't come back when Shub drops. That's not necessarily a problem, I've got other characters that aren't Dark Young too, but I don't want *TOO* many of them.

2. Because he's an Ancient One, I can't Shocking Transformation into him. I've got a couple other characters in there to use for this purpose (Small Ghouls, Ancient Guardian, etc...) though so maybe it's not a big deal. It DOES mean that I can't make due with just one Y'Golonac and fish for him with Shocking Transformation though - if I plan to draw him I'd better have multiples.

Basically I'm having trouble trimming the deck. I added in the cards I was looking at from the new Asylum packs, removed some cards I was just "making do" with, and in the current version I'm at 57 cards so I still need to shed a little more bulk. Y'Golonac is part of those 57 right now, we'll see what ends up getting trimmed. I don't really mind so much being 1 or 2 cards over (especially since I'm not going to be competitive anyway) but seven is too many

OK, pop quiz for some of you deck builders out there

1. Intimidate vs. Low Blow. I originally chose Intimidate because it was cheaper, but now I think the added flexibility of Low Blow may be worth the higher price. What do you think?

2. Horrid Mutation vs. Regeneration vs. Get On Yer Feet! If you had to cut one, which card would be it and why?

3. It's been suggested to me on the Boardgamegeek forums that I consider adding Yuggoth Contract so I can sac cheap characters for cards. Good idea or bad idea? Of course then I've got to find more stuff to cut too. It sounds reasonable enough to me in that I can get more events in hand (for more surprises) and have an easier time finding Shub and/or the cost reducers I need to play her. I still don't have a good judgement though on whether losing a character is worth it.

Thanks for your input!

I think Y'Golnac is the best Shub character out there (power per cost). Of course since I will likely see you at GenCon, I suggest you cut him by all means!

Well, you can hardly get a better recommendation than that. I don't think you'll have too much to be worried about with my level of experience though. In fact, if anyone wants to tech their deck against mine feel free - you'll probably just be hurting yourself against the real competition. Now *NEXT* year may be another story... We'll see about that one.

I'll be looking forward to meeting you at the con, I'm signed up for the tournament but not Thursday as it conflicted with some other events I'm doing.

Here's the version I'm working on trimming:

<oh wait, there's the edit button. See next post for the list>

Well shoot, this forum doesn't seem to understand BB code and I don't see an edit button. Let's try this again in plain text.

Character
Degenerate Ghoul (Core) x2
Hungry Dark Young (Core) x2
Watcher of the Woods (Core) x3
The Mother's Hand (SoA) x2
Albino Goat-spawn (SoA) x3
Small Ghouls (Core) x2
Ancient Guardian (Core) x2
Priestess of Bubastis (Core) x2
Anarchist (SoA) x2
Extortionist (Core) x2
Hard Case (Core) x2
Patsy (Core) x2
Ferocious Dark Young (WitD) x3
One of the Thousand (PT) x3
Shub-Niggurath (TC) x3
Y'Golonac (Core) x2

Support
Dutch Courage (Core) x2
Eat the Dead (TAD) x3

Event
Shocking Transformation (Core) x3
Horrid Mutation (Core) x2
Bred to Survive (Core) x2
Regeneration (Core) x2
Burrowing Beneath (Core) x2
Intimidate (SoA) x2
Get on Yer Feet! (Core) x2

I'm just trying to get rid of that weird persistent bug that develops because your 2nd to last post appears to have been posted AFTER your last post, so it is constantly new.