Mono-faction decks are really difficult to play in tournaments. E.g., Miskatonic U. cannot cope with nasty supports...

This very combo does not change much about the viability of mono-faction decks in competitive play: unless you have a lot of luck, you are doomed.

mzi said:

I don't agree with that statement. 'Difficult to play', and 'instant loss before you get a turn' are two very different things. Having combos in the meta is fine, it's the losing before you get a turn that isn't. It isn't just mono decks that this beats on the first turn. There are very few cards that can stop this with just your initial resourced domains and nothing else in play.

I have to side w/ badash56 here. Combos are OK, provided they're sufficiently integrated into the game as a whole.

Losing without ever having gotten a turn is not OK. If your opponent starts with the three cards in hand, even if you are "competitively aware" most of the solutions cost more than 1 resource so you won't be able to play them and most support or character based solutions won't be on the board yet or have a way of getting there.

But enough stuff, in enough factions that totally blow the combo apart, plus leave you with massive amounts of card advantage that in an informed environment this is NOT a great combo to run as the main thrust of your deck. You have to rely too much on luck of going first, luck of match-ups, and put yourself in a position where your chance of beating a deck with the combo breaker is going to too often equal a very nearly automatic loss for you.

Serious competitive players don't rely on luck for wins. They rely on good deck and play skills. Including the combo in the right deck is no different than being aware of a fools mate. Every one in a while you will catch someone with it, but even attempting it against a player of a certain skill puts you in a bad position.

badash56 said:

I understand your point. Maybe one future miskatonic card will allow you to put a single character into play until the end of the phase (there once was one in the CCG era) and you will be able to put a Hapless Graduate Student on the board? or maybe one card will make the current phase end immediately? or maybe one card will let you put back any number of cards on top of your deck? There are many ways to develop the game to block that combo without banning or restricting cards.

Well, I guess we can go back and forth on if it should be allowed or not forever.

So instead, how about ways to defend against it? Off the top of my head I can think of the following:

First Turn (before you get a turn, only 3 resourced cards)

• Sacrificial Offerings - Cthulhu; cost 1. Outright kills the large man and is useful in other instances.
• Intimidate - Syndicate; cost 1. Another good defense, and useful in other cases as well.

From what I can tell (I might not have a full deck list) these are the only two cards that can prevent a loss against the combo if you haven't taken a turn yet. Am I missing any? Everything else I see only works to 'the end of the phase" (which won't help), or costs 2.

After you are able to draw and resource on your first turn, the options get a lot bigger to combat the combo. At this point I'm not really worried about it too much to tell you the truth. A good deck usually will have something in it that can break it at this point.

Still, the first turn is pretty nasty.

Alos don't forget that a deck playing this combo might as well be supported with secondary milling strategies. So you drew 10+ or even 20+ cards to stop it? Fine, you stopped it. Stopping it doesn't mean you have won already. You still lost maybe half your deck in one turn to a mill deck.

Also the topic of this thread is "Instant Win - is it hurting the game?" and not "is the Large Man - Offer combo hurting the game?". So we should speak in general terms, too.

Here are my other concerns: The most important thing to keep a game alive is constantly getting new players to play it. Nobody will be a pro tournament player the day he starts. As from what I experienced in other card games is that allowing T1 - T2 wins is scarring new players off like hell.

Also if you open this door once you easily will loose control. I've seen too many games turn into a direction where you basically were limited to 2-4 playable decks because of the newer and always a little stronger combos. Once you start playing ~33% mirror matches, ~33% anti decks, and ~34% some creative theoretical deck that you and the anti deck will beat anyway (in practice), the game will becomming very boring very fast.

badash56 said:

Dampen Light

Primal Fear

Those two options have already been discussed.

There is also a more tricksy way if you feel so inclined with Full Ride Scholarship, a Student, and Small Price to Pay. That seems ridiculous, but remember, you are drawing until you feel like stopping, so you can get full set of cards for the stop.

My biggest issue with this combo is that it is so invasive, playing against it just sucks. Yes, I'm drawing however many cards I feel like drawing before stopping, but without Nexus, I can still only play 3 cards a ROUND due to restrictions. So, if I have a 1 cost breaker in my deck, I can only play 1 other card on my turn or else my opponent combos out on me on my turn, making me drain my last domain, then repeats on his turn while I'm all used up. So, great, I find a way to deal with Large Man, or play a snow graves on my turn. Whatever. How do I prevent my opponent from playing another Large Man? What if this combo is paired with Hastur for cancel effects?

It's no fun to only play with 1 domain a turn. Maybe you get two if you can remove Large Man on your turn, but then you spent a domain for that purpose alone, so you are back to having the use of a single domain for improving your board.

Unless every faction has a counter available there should not be a turn 1 combo that wins the game.

The narrower the window to prevent a first turn unstoppable win condition the further away we move from CoC being a game.

Random_Person said:

Hmmm, unless I am missing something both of these effects only last until the end of the phase right? Couldn't you just wait until the next phase and continue using An Offer?

Anyway, the more I think about it the more we would probably need to see it in action for a real opinion.

mephistopheles said:

Well, the problem is that this combo is the only one that can grant a T1 win. The discussion would become very abstract if we go too general.

Here is a diagram that provides a visual cue that may be helpful in a general discussion about the detrimental effect of a T1 win condition.

www.jesperjuul.net/text/gameplayerworld/6gamefeatures.gif

Negotiable consequences are one of the six essential aspect for an activity being defined as a game.

Penfold said:

As mzi mentioned: If your deck includes a card to counter/break or stop the combo you _will_ draw it! A prepared player will _never_ be defeated in turn 1.

Badash56's argument doesn't hold any water imho: The existence of this combo is irrelevant for the decision whether to bring a mono Miskatonic deck to a tournament or not: Even without the combo there's lots of decks you don't have a realistic chance against, i.e. you need to be lucky to win.

If your goal is to win a tournament you just _don't_ bring a mono-Miskatonic deck - at least at the moment.

There are other cards that I feel are more problematic right now. If a deck centered on this combo wins the next two large tournaments, then by all means put the cards on the restricted list, but no earlier!

I disagree that tournament environment should be the primary litmus. This is a casual game with virtually no meta and no significant major tournament scene. Therefore, the environment should be maintained with a perspective focused on casual social playing over pushing a more highly competative aspect. A mono MU deck should always have a chance becasue it fits within this scenario.

Tokhuah said:

I do not agree. Your card pool and deck construction strategies have to be adapted to your primary goal/community.

If a combo is overpowered in casual play, just agree not to play it after a while. Similarly, I think a card like X is impossible to counter in casual play, just playing with the core set, therefore I remove it from my ultracasual games.

Seriously, if a player at your local club always uses the same unbeatable strategy and does not want to change his deck, it is this very player who is sabotaging the game, not the game itself!

This is very different in a tournament environment: in the case competition is involved, it matters a lot that a strategy can be defeated and is not 100% certain of winning every game. Since this combo is not unbeatable in the absolute, there is no problem.

Tokhuah said:

I completely agree with MZI.

Let's just analyze more the different environments:

- casual/for-fun games: you are most likely playing with your friends. You are not playing to win, but just to have fun trying different decks/strategies. This combo is a risk because it can ruins the fun. Solution: agree with your friends that this combo is not allowed.

- tournament/competitive: you are playing with people you might or might not know. You are playing to win or, at least, you have to expect that there are players that are there to win. From another point of view: there are players that like to build what they consider the "best" deck, a deck that can virtually win in every situation. This combo is just another factor that you have to take into account. It is another factor just like it is Kopesh, like it could be Aziz, like it could be Shocking Transformation, like it could be any other _strong_ card that is present in the card pool.

If you want, you can play a mono-MU deck in both situations. But while in the first one it might be fun and you could even win some games, I can assure you (as for now) that a mono-MU deck in a tournament environment is almost impossible to play to win.

This is the case for _every_ card game out there. Simply, there are some strategies/decks that are better than others.

And now, a question for the people complaining: how many of you actually tried the deck? how many of you actually tried to build a deck able to defeat the combo? How many of you actually play in tournaments?

Because it seems to me that there is a lot of complaints based on pure speculative ideas.

I will agree that the combo is dangerous when I see proofs of that (proofs = playtest). Goldfishing-wise yes, it seems broken, but first I would like to see some numbers.

My suggestion is: instead of being worried, try to defeat it. And then, you can be worried.

my 2 cents

Konx

Well, I understand that mono-Misk is not a high level deck in the current meta, it was just being used as an example. There are a lot of deck combinations that could fail before the first turn though.

I did say above that I'd have to see it in play to get a valid opinion.

The lengthy arguments above will not change my opinion so we will have to agree to disagree.

However, I find it interesting that the diagram I provided has been ignored as relevant input to define what elements are necessary to define an activity as a game.

I think i have to agree with Mzi, Konx and Jhaelen, the combo is powerful but at the same time vulnerable. It can be stopped, but how effectively remains to be seen. And definitely, if the combo is left to the enviroment, it will definitely warp the meta considerably. If something had to be done about the combo, maybe just introduce a neutral card to the enviroment that works as a countermeasure against the combo and that way each faction can stay viable and combo can still affect the game more as a minor element, rather than a common strategy. I don't have any experience of competitive playing with this game so hard to say.....

But, i have experience with MtG, and in that game there are plenty of combo decks that can win the game on turn 1 (Tendrils, Belcher, HulkFlash, Angry Hermit, etc....) but none of them are played in tournaments regularly, apart from maybe Tendrils which is one of the hardest decks to play correctly. Usually combos just aren't reliable enough to be used in tournaments, because if you can't draw a key card fast enough, you're doomed. Then again, this combo is just two cards (or three for first turn) and can be built within a deck that uses other strategies easily, so the situation is a bit more complicated here. The other thing in MtG that keeps the combos in check are two cards that can both help and hinder the viability of combos: Duress and Force Of Will. Both are cards that player can play very cheap (or free!), Duress discards cards and FoW is a "free" cancel effect. Maybe something like this for Neutral (so that all factions benefit) could be added in a future expansion to combat the combos that are bound to pop up in future sets due to expanded cardpool.

Would love to see some group test that deck out during a long gaming session and share the results. That way we would have data to really determine if the combo is a problem or not. Would do this myself if i had a group of players dedicated enough....

EDIT: On the other hand, the more i think about the card Large Man, the more he is beginning to look like an Ithaqua for Events. And we all know Ithaqua means serious problems.....

As far as I'm aware, nobody's questioning whether something is a game or not. The diagram is interesting, but I'm not sure how it's supposed to be related to the discussion.

Back to the combo of Large Man + Offer... My observation is that a lot of people are discussing this as if Call of Cthulhu were a CCG. In that environment, combos are the norm, and certain cards or combos being overpowered or disruptive to normal play is the norm. Balance is not desirable in a CCG, because imbalance is used to drive sales.

I don't think that's the case in an LCG though. There are no Rares to make players chase, so disruptive or overpowered combos do not serve their normal purpose and in my opinion do not belong here. What we should be striving for is a well balanced game, where cards are costed appropriately for their value and where there are many viable strategies to win.

What do you guys think if there were to be a limit placed on how many times a cards ability can be used in a single turn? This would leave most things unaffected, but should stop any infinite combos. They'd still exist in a non-infinite form, just they'd be slowed down to a measured rate. Maybe this would be a reasonable compromise so that the designers don't have to limit their design space for new cards but we're less likely to run into broken combos down the line.

Tokhuah said:

Tokhuah said:

I don't understand. I mean, it's not that I write a long post just because I have time to waste.

First you point out that the tournament shouldn't be the main focus. Ok, fine.

Then, I reply: if the tournament is not your focus, why bother? just soft-ban the combo in your local group and the problem is solved. You can keep playing your pet-deck and I (we) can play in a meta with combo in it. It's a win-win situation.

Instead, if they ban the combo, I cannot play in a meta with combo in it just like you.

After that, if one day you will decide to participate in a tournament, you will find out that your pet-deck that is not tuned/built considering what are the competitive options, is just not good enough in a competitive environment in the same way as if the combo was there.

I read again your posts and I don't understand on what your opinion is based except for that diagram, that might be interesting for itself, but doesn't really add something at the discussion.

The point is: what kind of proofs do you have that a _possible_ turn 1 combo (because it's not like you have the combo 100% of the times in your hand AND you will start first AND your opponent has no answer) will kill the game and turn CoC-LCG into a gambling game?

Again, I repeat: the combo MIGHT be dangerous in the meta, but FIRST I want to see some actual test results to agree with the idea. For now, is pure speculation and talking _now_ about banning is early.

Konx

Ok...

Having combo in the meta is good. Combo decks are fun and can be entertaining to play.

However, there should never be an instance where a player should be able to win the game on turn 1...ever. Especially where the opponent never even gets a turn. Its TOO damaging. Its a major turn off to too many players to have in the enviroment.

If that vast majority of decks and strategies could handle the turn 1 win strategy (this technically doesn't have to be an instant win combo deck either), then MAYBE it could be allowed to exsist. But in this case the only deck I've made and played that could relaibly beat my various decks using the combo had sacrficial offering. I was able to get past all the end of phase stuff and even the exhausting (granted I wasn't winning turn 1, but winning none the less).

Remember though, I've only managed to do so much on my own so I haven't covered every possible scenario. However, I can at least give the combo a status of tier 2.5 with the potential for tier 1. The only thing holding it up is Sacrifical Offering. It would have to exsist in almost all decks now.

I should mention too, I tweaked my perviously built deck for competitive play so it doesn't quite look the same. The deck I posted earlier was merely to see how often and how quickly I could get the combo off.

Any case. If the combo was slower, the ny-neccessity of Sac Offering wouldn't exsist and more decks could at least 'handle' the combo. However, thats not what we have here.

The combo needs to be addressed. It doesn't really matter how, but we need to get out of turn one win territory. Just because people can know about it ahead of time is no excuse to keep turn 1 victories around. We have plenty of other cards (and more are being released every month) that people have to think and plan around so I don't think we NEED this combo to exsist. Maybe one day we can 'unadress' the combo (like we should do for Gaurdian Pillar), but for now I needs to be addressed.

Happy Thanksgiving to all the celebrate it!

I like combo decks, I always try to build combo decks when thinking up new deck ideas. I dislike the usual power cards and try not to use them in most of my decks (descendant, khopesh). I actually never played descendant (truly hate that card). So combo's for the win.

But I cant believe that a combo that could finish the game with only 2 cards is ment to exist in a designers opinion. This must be overseen by the designer and is easily corrected as proposed earlier. Just add the word MAY on the syndicate card. End of story.

You will prevent nasty things like:

- first turn kills;
- players being obliged to play certain factions and/or certain cards;
- players being obliged to spare a domain every turn to break the combo in opponents turn.

My 2 cents

I am sorry that I did not point out the point in sharing the diagram as I assumed gamer types would enjoy sifting through the data like figuring out a broken T1 combo... LOL! The diagram indicates to me that there are at least 3 elements of a game which are negated when a turn 1 combo win essentially has a counter that includes 1 or 2 cards out of over 1,000 possibilities for a deck.

At this point there is nothing to be accomplish by continuing the debate so I hope everyone has a great holiday. I will re-enter the discussion after the problem is fixed by the powers that be.

...I do agree with the last 2 posts...

Tokhuah said:

I liked the diagram. Its useful. Problem is... most (including me) don't think of games in diagram form. But, I certainly found it to be intruiging. Does it apply to this conversation? Kinda. Its an interesting way to make the point that turn 1 combos change the category the game would be in and... that would suck.