Hi everyone!

Here I am with my report of the Stahleck Asylum that was not held in Stahleck

This year, 26 players have been fighting with the madness in Liege, Belgium.

I went to the tournament as last year champion but, most important, with no Cthulhu playing since the last
regional in Amsterdam (May 2011). Quite a long time without touching the cards.

For this reason, I decide to bring the same old deck (Yog-Cthulhu destroy/sacrifice) with, of course, the
modifications due to the new cards and the FAQ.

I give immediately the list and I discuss it a bit: I didn't take any note about the tournament,
because I was quite sure that the final result would have been horrible, so I won't go into the details
of every match.

Neutral: 5

3x RTC F111 •The Mage Known as Magnus, Master of the Arcane Arts
2x Descendant of Eibon

Cthulhu: 22

3x YWD F4 Brood of Yig
3x SOA F29 Deep One Rising
2x CS F46 Ravager from the Deep
3x CS F56 Deep One Assault
3x CS F59 Sacrificial Offerings
3x ADN F47 Dreamlands Fanatic
3x RAA F66 Y'ha-nthlei Statue
2x SOA F28 •Carl Stanford, Deathless Fanatic

Yog: 23

3x CS F117 A Single Glimpse
3x SOA F32 Calling Down the Ancients
3x RAA F79 Servants of Glaaki
3x RAA F80 Initiation of Glaaki
1x RAA F78 •Glaaki, The Inhabitant of the Lake
3x RGS F99 Many-angled Thing
3x OST F7 Faceless Abductor
2x RIF F59 Constricting Elder Thing
2x Gathering at the stones

- Card choice or "what would I change if I had to play again tomorrow".

I have 21 destroy/sacrifice effect in total, ranging from cost-1 to cost-4. The curve is heavy with
respect to previous incarnations of the deck. It was a calculated risk I was willing to take, because the Statue
alone should keep in check rush decks so that they should not be present in the meta (I was right). I was clearly expecting
a lot of destruction/wounding/bouncing, since this is quite obviously the best strategy right now.

The 3 cards of Glaaki (Servants, Initiation, Glaaki itself) are there because they are a good combination here:
the servants are cheap defensive characters and initiations is a good sacrifice effect. Actually, the main card here is
the initiation, but I thought that someone might play Broken Space Broken Time to chea into play some AO: so, to make it a bit less
asymmetrical, I decided to put my own AO in the deck: I've chosen Glaaki because I can make it fit in the curve easily using Servants
and Eibon.

The rest is self-explanatory.

As you might have noticed, there is no Kopesh in the list. Mistake. Huge mistake.
Unfortunately, not playing and testing the cards has this side effects: you can see a good card,
but you don't realize how good it is until the moment you try it.

If I had to play again I would change something, because this version is not optimal as it could be:
I would remove the 2 Ravager, 2 Constricting and 2 Faceless abductor to put in 3 Hideous Guardian and 3 Kopesh. The last
Faceless Abductor would become the third Gathering.

This because right now the deck is completely NOT fast and a bouncing effect is basically useless: you want to get rid for good
of the problems, not just for one round.

I would keep the Glaaki-trios, even though again the Servants are not really good. The two most useless characters are
usually the Servants and the Brood of Yig: they were there mainly as first target for the opponents.

About the choice of the restricted card: I was not sure if playing with Eibon or Doppelganger. At the end, thanks to Ivan, I decided to play the Descendant, and I can say it was a good choice. No matter how many errata/wording/modifications, it is still one of the best cards out there.

- How to play the deck:

In fact, I can say that I won at least a couple of match because of them (the servants and the brood). I'll try to explain. This deck MUST
be played WAITING for the opponent to make the first move. If the opponent put down characters, start removing them immediately,
usually with one Dreamland fanatic coming into play. Notice: it is not ALWAYS the right move to put into play the Fanatic asap.
Especially if you have a sacrificial offering sitting in your hand.

In facing the mirrors, I was playing again waiting for the opponent. If the opponent is playing in the same way, then it becomes
fundamental to understand WHEN is the correct moment to put into play the first character (usually, a Brood of Yig or a Servant
that are there just to be destroyed).

In fact, when facing Ivan (that was playing more or less the same deck) I managed to win because of this: we both passed the first 3 turns
without doing nothing but resourcing. Then, evaluating MY HAND and the timing of the removals, I started playing a first character: from that point,
the match went as exected: he removed the guy, put into play 2 Dreamlands Fanatic; I could then using my other removals (no characters yet,
even a fanatic was in my hand). Then, he played other characters, I removed them and only at this point the Fanatic came in: he was running
out of gas. Whatever thing he was going to play I could have an answer.

- The tournament:

The deck performed well in the meta even if it was expected by the players. During the swiss I've lost only 1 game to a really cool
deck that was using miska/shub/agency and a lot of attachments with James Logan (cheated into play with shocking transformation).

In the top-8 I lost in the semi-final to the Thnigs in the ground deck of Vincent (you can find the report in the tournament dedicated
thread). I have to say that the deck was dangerous and well built but I kept a honestly horrible hand without DoA and, most important,
without enough removals: I should have mulligan that hand. Anyway, at some point the board was really too much and I concede to the opponent.

I then won the small-final for the 3-4 place.

The day after we played the story-deck draft; quick explanation: each player was given 6 stories. You had to pick one and pass the
rest to your left. At the end, among the 6 stories, you had to choose 3. They were your story deck. When playing, you and the opponent
had to shuffle the stories together (having, finally, a 6-stories story deck) and play a normal match. The loser of the game had
then the possibility to change one of his stories with one of the winner.

The stories were custom-made stories and they were really fun to play with!

I end up second in this tournament, losing to a very cool deck from Max (based on Glimpse of the Void) that was improved the day before
with some suggestions from me

- The future metagame:

Talking with Graham and Max, in particular, we discussed a bit about the metagame and the futue of the game. In a short summary: we all think
that the return of combo is close. The latest cycles of AP are increasing the quality of the cards and the future sets promise to be even better.
Notice: it's not (only) the power level of the cards that is increasing, but the mechanics built in the cards.

For the future, the typical division of a card game in rush-control-combo will start to become more and more clear (at least, this is my opinion).

- Conclusion:

finally, I want to thank all the people I met during this awesome weekend in Liege! I don't mention anyone in particular because otherwise
I know I would forget someone but the French/Belgian/German/Dutch/Italian/American guys have been the best company for this weekend

A special thanks to Damien that organized the event, took care of everything in the best possible way and always answered to my bothering e-mail

I hope to see you soon guys!

Francesco / Konx

Konx said:

aaahh, you forgot the austrian guy!! (and there were 2 from luxembourg as well)

still thanks for a good story!

thorondor said:

****, I knew it Thanks for the correction

Francesco/Konx

About the metagame and upcoming combo's:
There was also some talk about a first turn victory. I was curious and took a look at the deckbuilder. One thing i'm not sure about is the definition of first turn victory. Must it be the very first turn where you go first, draw one card and cannot commit to stories and thus have to get your tokens in other ways (like dabbler of the unknown) or creating a discard loop? If so, I quess you will need a lot of card drawing mechanics to make it work, else it seems quite impossible.

I think I have found a combo for first round victory when you go second and can commit to stories but that was not really hard to find so I think you were talking about a first turn victory.

The "first turn combo" has caused a lot of discussions

There are actually many questions about that:

- Is it a win using success token or discarding the deck?

- Is it (as you said) a first turn (so 8 cards + 1) or is it actually 8+2 cards?

- What does it mean "win"? if you can lock your opponent domains on turn 1 (using the Messenger, for example) you have won, even though it requires maybe more turns to win the 3 stories

I can share with you the infos I have:

- there are many factions involved (5 or 6). I would consider neutral cards too, in the count.

- It is possible to win on turn 1 (low probability) most likely turn 2, sure (> 80%) on turn 3.

- It requires a card that was not legal for the tournament yet (and this is actually the most tricky suggestion, I suggest that you don't take this literally. It might be that the deckbuilder is saying that the card is not legal but it was actually legal for the tournament).

These are all "public informations" so I think that Graham will not be disappointed if I share them with you, since he told this to a quite big audience

I'm not a combo player, so for me finding the combo is almost impossible, but it is still a good exercise to start thinking in a more "combo-approach". If you have suggestions/ideas and you want to share them, feel free

Francesco/Konx

Well, the most commonly known 'instant win' combo is using Hidden Agenda and a discard mechanic like Prism of Many Views. If you are able to use this in the refresh phase, and somehow get Hidden Agenda back into your hand, it's an infinite combo. You're able to discard one card from the top of their deck per refresh phase, and can repeat it until their deck is gone.

There are a few different ways to do this, but I haven't looked into it very much. There might be cards to get the combo off quick if you're lucky.

badash56 said:

Well, The Large Man seems the perfect card to take back Hidden Agenda from the discard pile. The problem is that Hidden Agenda (that is quite clearly a card for combo decks) cost 4 (and Loyal), and again The Large Man cost 4 (but there are ways to cheat characters into play, so this is a minor problem).

Anyway, I'm glad that there is a bit of discussion about this

Francesco/Konx

Konx said:

Actually i think it's cool speaking but just in theory , i played hundreds of matches but i can remember only one vict(ory in 1st turn and we were in the CCG era. I think the 3x format advantages hard destruction decks (once were hastur/agency now seems to be Yog/Cthulhu turn) more than combo ones . I would have definetely preferred a 4x format and a 60 ( for example) mimimum card deck . By the way the more are the cards available the more Yog will take advance ( like it was in the ccg era).

Thanks for the report Konx. Congrats to all. Major congrats to Graham! 3 times man. Awesome. I heard the rumor that you guys will finally get a card design. I hope thats true.