No.

THIS.

IS.

CTHULHU!!!!

/kick into the pit of death

Ok... that was aweful. Just like this deck! 4 factions...

Warning: Those with small amount of patience when resourcing should not play this deck as your sanity may be at risk.

Silver Twilight: 12
3x Hidden Agenda
3x The Groundskeeper
3x You Know to Much
3x Rumor Mill

Yog-Sothoth: 12
3x Forgotten Shoggoth
3x Things in the Ground
3x Speak with the Dead
3x All In One

Syndicate: 12
3x Smugglers
3x Degenerate Gambler
3x Gun Runner's Club
3x Patsy

Hatsur: 12
3x Altar of Madness
3x Aspiring Artist
3x The Seventy Steps
3x Dangerous Inmate

Neutral: 2
2x Eldrich Nexus

Behold thy infinitium! Yes its true folks. Our first, true blooded, infinate combo!!!!! Dun dun dun.

Requires 2 cards, Forgotten Shoggoth and Smugglers/Degenerate Gambler to continually re-use a card. The card we're re-using is Hidden Agenda which allows up to repeat our Refresh phase. However, Hidden Agenda is a loyal cost of 4. Of course we COULD build up a domain to reach 4 silver twilight, but that would take FOREVER! So... enter the reason why we're playing a fourth faction, the Altar of Madness. Of course the Altar only works is you opponent has at least 3 insane characters under his control. Sure we have dangerous inmate, but hes not nearly enough. However this does provide us with our first of 3 reason why Things in the Ground is our chose restricted card.

1. It puts insane characters into play on your opponents side to let Altar of Madness reduce the cost of Hidden Agenda.
2. It helps accelerate several key characters into play. I.E. Forgotten Shoggoth, Smugglers, Degenerate Gambler, etc...
3. It also happens to be our win condition! Since it also refreshes when we repeat our refresh phase, it will eventually run your opponent out of cards in his deck while your non-characters continually go to the bottom of your deck.

So ya, basically a 5 card infinate combo with 4 of them being from different factions. So what do the other 11 do you ask?

The Groundskeeper is simply there to help out with resources. Say if I need to play a support card, but only have resource matches on single rescourced domain(s).

You Know to Much (thanks Chevee) is there incase I have an active Things in the Ground and I draw Forgotten Shoggoth or any other needed character.

Rumor Mill... needs to be replaced. By what yet I'm not sure, but its there purely for stall purposes. Its rarely, if ever, used.

Speak with the Dead does a few things for us. It digs for and recovers needed combo pieces. All In One draw and helps rig the top card of our deck to help combo with Things in the Ground. Originally I had Journey to the Other Side in place of either one of these, but for resourcing reasons I would rarely have a Yog card as my single domain and I was liking the greater digging power of the other two cards more than just the rigging the top of my deck. Still, I haven't settled on which 2 of the 3 will end up making the final cut.

Gun Runner's Club is merely there for the draw. Digging to cards I need is necessary. Shame it didn't draw from the bottom of the deck. Yes, I know bootlegging operation does, and I may even put it back in for something to put on the seventy steps. For now though, its just too slow and I don't have many non-exhausting locations that are easy to play.

Patsy is interesting. He stalls, and can be combined with Forgotten Shoggoth and Smugger/Degenerate Gambler to keep your opponent from winning until you find any missing combo pieces.

Aspiring Artist finally found a home after being nerfed into crapsville. Normally I like to have my single resource domains be syndicate (for gambler and patsy), and hatsur for this guy and the steps. Usually the hatsur domain gets build up second with silver twilight. However, this guys merely makes my deck 47 cards which isn't bad since its a combo deck.

The Seventy Steps, the king, is used here for its fantastic ability to set your opponent back a turn (or more) from where they normally would be. The more turns you have the better.

Dangerous Inmate is also here for his stall tactics. Driving insane a skill 2 or lower character a turn is a great way to keep success tokens at bay.

Eldrich Nexus helps with resource matching or to spread things out so I can keep doing things like recurring patsys... patsyies... ahh you know what I mean.

That pretty much covers this aweful deck. A few weaknessess other than resource problems and speed is it really can't deal with much on your opponent side of the board. Will be looking to fix that soon as well. Until then there ya go!

Crazy no?

Hidden Agenda, ey? I knew this card meant trouble!

It's actually somewhat similar to what I've been recently investigating. I was also looking into the Smuggler/Forgotten Shoggoth combo. However, my idea was to keep the opponent from being able to do anything by draining his domains and (preferably) destroying his resources. The latter currently requires Agency (and won't work against Agency), however.

Domain draining is slightly easier and can be done using Syndicate, the Lodge, or Miskatonic.

The main problem is in setting up the combo (requiring expensive cards) and doing it repeatedly. It's also difficult to pull off with cards from 'only' three factions.

So, this is very interesting to me indeed - thanks for posting!

This was actually a really fun deck to watch work. I think I beat it the first game.... can't remember honestly, then switched to Agency/Syndicate removal to see how that would work out.

Tom somehow "sneaked" a Shoggoth in on me with Things in the Ground (i.e. I wasn't paying attention) while I was holding 2 Shotgun Blasts in my hand... and, well, I watched it win. It was fun to watch him struggle each turn to resource. The deck is a little much for me to try out. If we could make it more reliable in the future, I might give it a shot... I loved playing combo decks in Magic after all.

Haha, very interesting deck! Is Hidden Agenda out already? That card doesn't ring a bell. I'm still new to the game, how does FFG handle infinity combos like this? Do you expect it to be changed to not reflect the Refresh phase?

badash56 said:

Its been spoiled.

As for its nerfing/banning/errattaing/restricting ya.. until something... faster and far more reliable emerges... I seriously doubt its competitive enough to warrant any changes.

Magnus Arcanis said:

Well, I could definitely imagine them putting two of the cards required for the infinite combo on the restricted list if only to prevent their use in future, more reliable combos.

Isn't Itinerant Scholar restricted for a similar reason?

Anyway, it's a beautiful combo if you can set it up. I hadn't thought about using Hidden Agenda in a milling deck but it makes sense considering it's the only way to win a game outside of the story phase!

jhaelen said:

Maybe they could. I'm also still not sure why the Scholar is on the list either to be honest. The combo it was used with still exsists so... meh. I do forsee Things in the Ground being banned at some point. When I don't know, but eventually. Though, that doesn't stop this deck from working. It would just need another win condition and there are several to choose from.

Also, good news. There is another way to win outside of the story phase. You can still win stories without actually commiting. A good example is Pagan Hall. All you need is a way to generate success tokens and continually ready the hall. Oh wait, I know of one, same combo as above but use Dabbler in the Unknown and the Hall! Muwhaha.. (yes, that means a 5 faction deck... which... is probably a bad or genius idea as Museum Curator would go a long way with all these support cards).

However, did some 'goldfishing' (where you play only your side of table and have no interference from an opponent to see how a deck would run) and I'd put the average win at about the refresh phase of turn 5 or 6. Now thats just me going for the combo and not taking into account what an opponent may or may not do to disrupt me. Which is painfully slow and given that to do things that quickly you need to expose several parts of the combo and have them survive until your next refresh phase after you find them all... is pretty far from 'game breaking.'

As for the Forgotten Shoggoth & Buddies combo... its neat, but slow and its but 2 pieces of a possible combo. So they may see some attention if something comes along, but... I doubt it. At least... thats until someone figures "it" out.

Magnus Arcanis said:

on a player's side, yes?

It's funny you mention Pagan Hall since that's one of the kinds that came to my mind after looking at the new story cards in the following thread: www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp

The wording of 'A New Challenge' seems to leave room for some interpretation:

After you replace this story, take all success tokens for
each player and redistribute them between the revealed
stories. No more than 4 success tokens can be
assigned to any story on either player's side.

I've also been looking over the different phases in the rulebook again and noticed that 'End of Turn' is also a phase!

What would happen if I used 'Hidden Agenda' to repeat 'End of Turn'?

It says: The player on your left becomes the active player

Wouldn't this mean for a two-player game that I get to keep being the active player, i.e. my opponent's entire turn is skipped?

I mean, the player to the left of the player to my left is myself, right?

jhaelen said:

There is no Action box in the End of Turn phase, so no opportunity to play Hidden Agenda.

TheProfessor said:

The End of the Turn is a separate phase
that occurs after the Story Phase. The
End of the Turn should have its own
grey (non-interrupt) box in the timing
flowchart.

What's that supposed to mean? End of turn already has its own green (non-interrupt) box in the timing flowchart!

jhaelen said:

I THINK... my memory on this is really really REALLY vague on this. But I sorta half remember there being a rule book at some point that had a messed up turn chart. Possibly first print run... or demo print run or the original download was wonky or something... not sure... but that might be why its there.

As far as grey vs green... meh. We know what they meant. My guess is whoever entered this ruling was looking at a black and white copy of the rule book and didn't realize in the color version it was green instead of grey, but thats just a pure guess.

Either way.

You can't play actions during the End of Turn phase to repeat it so not extra turns for you, but I applaud the thought as it would be miles better than the refresh phase.

Magnus Arcanis said:

What a pity it doesn't work - although it probably would have been too powerful an effect!

jhaelen said:

I think your logic is not right. The End of Turn phase repetition only does to pass the turn two times to the player on your left, not jump their turn. Its like a traffic signal, if for something you see two signals that obligates you to turn to the left, that doesnt mean you have to return for the way you're coming.

I hope i make understandable my point.