I've just put up pics of all the Shifting Sands cards on photobucket, you can see them here:

http://s15.photobucket.com/albums/a392/dboeren/Snapbucket/CallofCthulhu/

Enjoy, and feel free to post your comments. Personally, I think some of my favorites are the Khopesh and Canopic Jar cards, Master of Amulets seems interesting too, and Sam Campbell seems very useful for Miskatonic.

Yeah... consider dropping a 4 cost Dhole Ant-Lion or a Hideous Guardian (Toughess +5) (note these could be brought cheaper than 4 with a Ghoulish Worshipper or two). Then put Khopesh on this tough character. You spend 3 or 4 for the Ant-Lion, 2 for Khopesh, and can wound 6 opponent characters in one phase.

Kind of harsh.

TheProfessor said:

yep....

Though I do really like Canopic Jar. It makes Yog less sad in the face of mad khopesh swinging.

The Large Man is just straight up brilliant. That card is going to be sooooo much fun.... for me.

Khopesh is great but expected.

Deodand is awesome and above expectations.

Nassor needed Willpower or 1 cost lower to see play.

Desertification printed as a Shub card is jank... no, total jank.

The Seventh Gate: How about a prediction? The first story card that will require an errata due to game balance issues. At minimum it should be removed from play after it resolves.

Think you might be too harsh on Desertification.

Its a little metagame specific, but aboslutely scary in the right circumstances.

Granted you can say that about a lot of cards... but this one just might find a home if the meta is gonna warp like I think it will.

You mean if Locations start getting "shuffle into deck when discarded from play" text as a norm? IDK, around these parts we never see Forced Foreclosure and Syndicate has much, much, much less support hosing than Shub. If the text targeted the OWNER of the location it would be set up to be a great combo card because a player could steal an opponent's location and then use it to destroy their resources (sort of like cutting someone's arm off and beating them to death with it). But alas, desertification looks more like one of many cards that never leave the box.

I can't wait to get my hands on Granny Orne...

Tokhuah said:

So far, there's exactly one: "Torch the Joint!" I've already been brainstorming about a deck utilizing "Torch the Joint!" over and over to destroy an opponent's resources. So far I haven't found an infinitely repeatable way that is also action-effective, but maybe I just didn't have the right idea yet. Between Yog, Syndicate, and the Lodge there's plenty of deck and discard manipulation available.

Now, there's a second card that allows the destruction of an opponent's resources - and it doesn't even cost you an action - your opponent will do it for you. Of course, in general, it's more likely he'll avoid using the location's triggered ability before he can get rid of Desertification, but depending on circumstances it might be a tough choice. And tough choices are always good!

It's a bit unfortunate that it's a Shub card, though. Shub is already the faction with the best support/location destruction and if you want to combine Desertification with Torch the Joint, two factions are already set for your deck.

Am I the only one absurdly excited for Nigel?

Kennon said:

Probably. lol, jk. Hes basically another Princess Zura. Amazing ability, but is usually to hard to use and not usually worth it unless its apart of some convoluted combo that accomplishes something even greater.

However, it will always be in the back of minds waiting for the aforementioned combo to reveal itself.

This is.. unless of course... you know something I don't! Does the combo exsist? Well, I mean... a good combo TELL ME!!! lol.

Since Nigel St. James needs to be exhausted in order to trigger his Disrupt ability, I don't see the hotnizz with his ability. It seems it is intentionally made difficult to pull off with all the arcane icons he has.

Unless there is some easy way to exhaust him arbitrarily and as a Disrupt. Then there could be some use with a couple key rituals.

But like Tom mentions, it would be one part of a long convoluted combo, one which may not pay off once it is set up since the game may likely be over by that time.

Poor Nigel... They should have given him the criminal subtype. Then he could easily trigger off a jankalistic Meat Wagon combo! LOL

Disclaimer: I am not saying the following is great, just easily doable...

Since Syndicate/ST does go together nice like red beans and rice you could use cards like Intimidate, Low Blow, And Panic to put Nigel into the proper state. Of course the uber 2 card combo tech would be Nigel+Barkeep, except for the ever so slight flaw that this combo would be a huge waist of Lodge Barkeep's awesome ability.

Desertification doesn't seem like a great card, but it doesn't strike me as horrible either, it's really cheap and discourages use of a Location card. Not to the point where it's unusable, but there's a significant cost to it. The only issue is that it only works on Locations, so you depend on your opponent bringing some.

I agree Nassor seems like he needs a little something to be worth 4, which is too bad because I like the concept.

Desertification... for the record... is pretty bad right now. Its our only other resource destruction card so that alone makes it a niche card.

However, what I was talking about was that the focus on which decks are built around seem to be shifting more towards support cards. More often than not those suppost cards usually are locations.

Temple of Ry'leh, Meseum of Natural History, Arkham Asylum, Price Manor, and Safe House are just a few of the location support cards we know about now that can have a deck built around it.

Sure, the card's controller can simply just not use those, but how long do you think it'll be before we get some location cards that must trigger an effect. Not to mention, if they're deck is based aroud a certain support card... odds are you'll just make em sweat every time they're tempted which could force them into a situation where they are over-resourcing or under-resourcing.

Granted, I don't think we'll see Desertification in tournaments any time soon (at least not on any great level), but I'll gladly sell it as a niche card before putting it into the junk pile.

Side note... still hoping we get a card that will let us give our opponent control of a card.

Magnus Arcanis said:

I guess, the latter is a bit problematic since it's very difficult to see all the potential side-effects of such a card.

I think that's what he meant, to give control of any Support card (or at least any Location card or other common Support subtype) to an opponent.

Magnus Arcanis said:

Hahaha, well, no I don't know it off hand. I was hoping one of you guys did! I agree, he just seems like one of those cards that's waiting for a great combo to be built around. I don't know what it is yet, but I'll start looking.

I like Nigel. I think committing him with another character and choosing it to be killed which of course would help accelerate your own resource curve. HE isn't great, but I think he is good.

The Deodand is straight dope.

I'm not sure why people think Nassor needs Willpower to see play. I mean sure that would make him better, but it seems the general formula for characters is cost is X and icons are X-1 and skill is X-1 and keywords start mucking around with that formula. I commit him to a story and choose your best (non-Ancient One) character now you either loose that character at the end of the story phase or you remove him from the challenge which gives me a better chance of wounding one of your other characters committed to a story (because three combat icons is nothing to sneeze at). I'm not saying he is the best character in the game, but he definitely seems like a solid Syndicate character to me. When combined with Written in Blood there gets to be some good story control on the table. Am I missing something?

Nassor is not inherently weak but I think he is high on the cost curve for what he supplies for a faction that is centered around getting cheap characters to win stories through control via evasion and skill debuffs. Even Panic is typically used in combo with debuffs to maximize its effect rather than building a resource tower. For me when playing Syndicate paying 4 for anything should mean I gain a virtual auto success at a story (or stories). As a way of comparison, Nassor is lesser than High Wizard of the Order (ST) who completely eliminates a character from contention for a turn, ties up resources, AND has Investigate and Willpower. Syndicate is not winning too many fights so changing out some combat for an investigate icon, Willpower, or something else that will make him more resilient to removal would be preferable. 3 cost and remove some icons works too. Looking ahead there is a 3 cost Syndicate character that I believe is in the next AP who is going to be a game changer for the faction and may push them to mono-deck viability (along with the two stellar cards from Kingsport Dreams).