(might fit better into deck construction section, dunno)

I have been thinking of constructing once more mono-faction decks for each faction to create a simple tutorial enviroment for some new players to get into the game. Each of these decks should focus on one central theme of the faction and also be as flavourful as possible. I have already had some ideas, but still i would like to know what is everyones opinion about which theme is the most flavourful and central for each faction? Each of these should also differ from the rest strongly and be on somewhat equal powerlevel. I have all the LCG cards published thus far so anything can be used.

Here's what i came up with:

Agency: Cheap characters and plenty of support to build them into powerhouses. Also support card boosts.
Academy: Nothing here yet, this one is hard solo.....
Syndicate: Cheap characters and heavy skill manipulation and control.
Order: Nothing here also.
Cthulhu: Deep Ones
Hastur: Lunatics and control effects. At first glance does not seem that powerful but has plenty of flavour.
Yog: Mill
Shub: Dark Youngs/Migo? (don't know yet which)

So, what does everyone think? What kind of set of decks would create a good tutorial enviroment?
(no need for exact decklists as the thread could easily get bloated with cardlists)

For Miskatonic University (I think this is what you meant by "Academy" below), I enjoy playing an Investigator-heavy build with lots of cheap characters, Binding, and Open for Inspection. It is fun to play and quite effective. I've won many local tournaments with a build like that. You can get so many characters out so fast you don't care if they go crazy or get killed. And they all have Investigation, so you can win stories pretty quickly.

I've been introducing a lot people to this game lately, and here are the decks I've found to be the most useful:

1. 100% Mi-Go deck. The Mi-Go are all about crunching numbers and winning via the icon struggles, so the deck is very straightforward to teach and is a great way to explain the game's basic mechanics. A character-heavy Shub deck would do the same thing.

2. Miskatonic rush deck. This deck teaches both players about speed, the need for defense as well as offense, and the power of the investigation struggle. You can also do a Miskatonic/Syndicate deck to add in more Event cards to spice things up.

3. Multi-combat round Agency deck with Willpower. This deck teaches players how adding extra icon struggles can impact the game, and how keywords work (such as Willpower).

4. Cthulhu deck-o-death. This deck focuses on Toughness (with cards like Khopesh of the Abyss) and sacrifice, and illustrates the power of doing damaging directly to characters as opposed to wounding them through the combat struggle.

5. Hastur "drive insane" and character theft deck. This deck demonstrates the insanity mechanic (restore, then refresh) as well as how players can steal an opponent's character.

I would stay away from more off-beat decks like milling, skill reduction/exhausting decks, or those with 3-card combos.

A few other suggestions:

Make sure each deck has a way to win that doesn't take forever (which is one drawback of the Mi-Go deck - it's slow). When teaching someone CoC it needs to A) have clear, consistent rules, B) take less than 45 minutes to play the first time, C) have some exciting twists and turns, and D) ensure that the beginner's deck has an answer for things they'll encounter (e.g. facing an Ancient One with no recourse isn't much fun and can be a turn off).

Rather than deck balance, I would focus on two things. One, stuff plenty of Events into every deck. They're the spice of life when it comes to unpredictability and combos, and move the game beyond simple number-crunching during the story phase. Two, have a weaker, experimental deck that you use when teaching a beginner. It's always nice to chalk up a win when you're first starting out!

If introducing more than 1 player to CoC, I have them play each other with their hands face-up for the first game while I explain the rules. As we go through a few turns, I usually ask them if they want to stop, re-start and try the game with their cards hidden. Then I can assist each player back and forth as they have questions. Because I'm not participating directly, I can be an impartial referee to handle the inevitable rules questions.

I like this idea, I just found a new boardgame group and it would be nice to have a set of beginner decks I could use to teach them with.

I think it's also important to make sure the decks are decently balanced, if someone gets horribly stomped they're less likely to want to play again. Also, you should assume they'd ask to play their favorite faction for the demo game (if you have all choices) so they're going to feel like their favorite faction is underpowered too, even though that's not necessarily a valid conclusion.

I haven't built a mono-Misk deck but it's one of the ones I want to do next once I'm happy with my current Shub Monsters project. I was thinking along the same lines with an Investigator theme - lots of card drawing and discounts from Anthropology Advisor. The Miskatonic deck should be fast with cheap weenies and free draws all over the place.

I have a Syndicate Criminals deck I really enjoy playing which showcases their strategies of exhaustion and avoiding direct conflict. If you want some ideas there let me know or I think I've posted it in the Deck Building forum.

For Cthulhu I like the Deep Ones theme, but you can do equally well building a Serpents deck or just a general destruction deck of no particular theme. Personally I don't know if I'd put Khopesh in there for beginners though.

Agency should definitely have some Willpower guys and some weapon attachments which I've always considered part of their "thing". A bit of investigation icons goes well too to bring across the "detective" part of the faction.

No matter what kind of creatures you like, Shub should have a bunch of them running around with some cost reducers and ways to turn one thing into another.

Yog should have spells, as that's a central theme of theirs. You can mostly go with the straightforward stuff but they should be there.

Shangfu said:

If collection size isn't an issue I would go with...

Agency: I would look to go with the unique character setup with plenty of attachment support. Teaches unqiue, and the value of recurring attachments.

MU: Definately rush. Cheap characters and struggle maniuplation. Teaches that sometimes its best just to go for it!

Syndicte: Heavy exhaust theme. Teaches the values of timely attacks and defenses.

Order: Bounce and Hidden Agenda control deck. The value of keeping the board light while building up towards a win in a timely fashion.

Cthulhu: Balance. Having enough speed to sneak in wins, having enough removal to play control, and having the beef take on struggles. Deep Ones are fine for this. Sort of your "good at all but master of none" type of deck.

Hatsur: Lunatics for sure. Add some discard as well to teach the value of having a hand. Oh and effect negation too. How to make insanity REALLY work in your favor.

Yog: Like you I'd want mill here, but I seriously doubt it would be properly balanced. So I would go with a tricky deck. Showing that you don't always have to pay the character's cost. So... ya. Twilight Gate, Things in the Ground, Opening the Limbo Gate all come to mind.

Shub: I'd go with dark youngs + other beefy shub guys. Show that raw strength can be enough to win the day.

That would cover almost all the bases the game while grand standing each faction's most dominant path to victory.

Wow, thanks, great replys everyone! Everything reflects pretty much what i have been coming up with. The decks will all propably be centered around certain "tribes" or groups of characters that fit well together thematically, as i want to also bring out the more flavourful themes in this game and not just mechanical. Cthulhu mythos is such a fantastic background that it should not be ignored. And each deck will also feature one powerful Unique character that works kind of like a general of the deck. This should provide plenty of good and flavourful games, and hopefully some new active players in the end!

So the decks will be:
Agency: Small characters and equipment trickery to grow the small guys into massive powerhouses quickly. Also stuff to manipulate support cards (resurrect and fetch from deck etc.) Thematically the deck is all about group of cops who end up in the middle of mythos activity and try to survive with any weapons they can quickly come up with. Kind of like a zombie survival horror movie

Academy: Quick rush. Would have also liked some more powerful speed cards from the CCG era in the deck also to teach the power of surprises, but better just to stick with LCG for start i think. Theme here is investigators of the paranormal digging too deep into mysteries of the occult, and now they either manage to come up victorious or succumb to their lust for knowledge.

Syndicate: Exhaustion and small efficient characters. Also Dutch Courage and Alhazred Lamp etc to boost the gangsters up. This one could be more thematic, but yeah, gangsters and occult.

Order: This was a hard one, as majority of the deck i came up with ended up being weak or complicated. Finally settled for a controllish weenie rush with some trickery. I propably play mostly with this one in the games as this is the least solid of the decks.

Cthulhu: Slow and steady Deep One deck with various effects for support. I tried to emphasize also the transformation that the cthulhu cultists go through, first being mere Innsmouth troublemakers and from there growing into young deep ones and finally into monsters of gigantic proportions like Dagon or Hydra.

Hastur: Lunatics, Byakhee attacks, some good Byakhees to give staying power and of course some control. While creating this deck i tried to picture a riot in insane asylum, where the patients have taken control and act out their urges without remorse.

Yog: Cultists and wide array of spells for support. Also few solid heavy hitting monstrosities. Basically what the Academy deck will become if they fail

Shubby: Dark Youngs, and i tried to pick a group of characters that also have synergies among themselves. Not in a way that you have to combo those for win, but enough that players get to understand better what characters to play when and in what combination.

It's really unfortunate that the mill strategy was left out, but yeah, i would end up as too weak or too strong, no middle ground there....

I suggest that we start working on these demo decks as a community project and open one topic in the Deck Building forum for each faction. We can each post deck ideas, discuss them, test, tune, offer variants, etc...

Once we've got all the demo decks done we can collect the final card lists and post them in a single topic and see about getting it pinned.

The other question we have to deal with first is what the card pool is for this project. I'm leaning towards including all currently released LCG cards through the end of Ancient Relics but *excluding* the cards from the Dreamlands cycle until they get reprinted in the 60-card format. However, if we want to further restrict it I'm OK with that too. Too much restriction will limit the ability to theme the decks, but we could maybe exclude Forgotten Lore if anything?

We could also consider a parallel project of demo decks including a more minimal card pool, say Core + Secrets of Arkham + Yuggoth? This seems to be a common starting point for new players to begin their collections. What do you guys think about that? Is this useful or redundant?

Silver Twilight I see being a potential problem, they seem to have more of a learning curve than the other factions due to their combo-riffic nature.

Shangfu - I'm not sure why you use the term "Academy" for Miskatonic University (maybe a translation?), but I think new players may find it confusing.

How far along are you with your decks? Your post sounds like you've got some in progress already. I've got Syndicate and Deep Ones decks I'd like to offer up, and could work on a Dark Young deck as I've worked that theme before.

Well, during CCG era Miskatonic was called Academy and i think Academy is the factions "real" name. At least it's shorter to write than Miskatonic University and pretty easy to figure out anyway.

And yeah, i have some simple drafts of the decks gathered, so could post something pretty soon. I like the idea of having a sticky with simple basic decks that new players could build. Also, the discussions about how to build the decks could work as a great deckbuilding strategy tutorial! But yeah, if we are gonna do this, i'm definitely in. And to make things easier, could we have each deckbuilding discussion named in a similar way (for example: BASIC DECKBUILDING: Cthulhu etc.)?

And about the cardpool, maybe we could start simple, like Base/SoA/HOST and then expand in time? Or just all in and provide alternatives for cards in other cycles for cards in the deck?

Dboeren: If you have decks for this ready, by all means post them and let's get started! It will propably take until weekend before i have enough time to start seriously posting and tuning decks though....

Here's the Syndicate deck, which I'm pretty happy with:

Characters: 30
3xAnarchist
3xDanny O'Bannion’s Crony
3xExpendable Muscle
3xExtortionist
3xHard Case
3xJohnny V’s Dame
2xLady Lu Chu
3xTattoo Artist
2xTriggerman
3xFixer
2xMr. David Pan

Events: 11
3xIntimidate
3xForcing the Truth
3xKidnapping 101
2xPanic

Support: 9
3xBound and Gagged
2xDutch Courage
2xGun Runner’s Club
2xMeat Wagon

And here's the Deep Ones deck:

Characters: 30
2xInnsmouth Troublemaker
3xBrood of Yig
2xKeeper of the Golden Path
3xLurking Deep One
2xYoung Deep One
3xBackwater Deep One
3xDeep One Stowaway
2xJoe Sargent
2xLord of Y'ha-nthlei
2xDeep One Rising
2xMature Deep One
2xRavager from the Deep
2xHydra

Events: 11
2xPulled Under
2xTouched by the Sleeper
1xGet it Off!
2xFeeding Frenzy
2xIn the Wake of the Sleeper
2xDeep One Assault

Support: 9
2xSword of Y'ha-tallo
2xGiving Thanks
2xShadowed Reef
2xDevil’s Reef
1xY'ha-nthlei Statue

Here I'm thinking of replace Giving Thanks with something else but demo decks don't have to be too tuned I think and it's part of the Deep Ones theme.

Found the list of my old Yog deck on computer, so here goes: (might need some work though....)

3x CS F103 Son of Yeb
3x CS F111 Disciple of the Gate
3x CS F102 Servant from Out of Time
3x CS F108 Arcane Initiate
2x YWB F80 Cultist of the Key
2x ASL F13 Bloodthirsty Zealot
3x YSC F59 Flying Polyps
3x YTC F120 Bird Demon
3x RIF F59 Constricting Elder Thing
3x RGS F99 Many-angled Thing
2x OST F7 Faceless Abductor

3x YME F31 Tattoo Parlor
2x ASK F72 •The Silver Key, Unlocking the way…
3x YME F40 Cursed Skull

3x CS F115 Journey to the Other Side
3x CS F117 A Single Glimpse
3x CS F119 Unspeakable Resurrection
3x SOA F32 Calling Down the Ancients

Total 50

Can't remember why the key is in there, maybe i just wanted to try it out or something. Otherwise pretty straightforward.....

dboeren said:

I think you're spot on, dboeren. Here are my thoughts to add:

If this project is for a basic tutorial - and also an online guide for new players who are building decks to teach their friends how to play - I would suggest restricting the card list to the following:

x1 Core Set

x1 Secrets of Arkham

The Yuggoth Contract Cycle

Most people start out by purchasing the base game. If you're coming from a boardgame background and are new to card games, it might not seem reasonable to buy duplicates of the Core Set simply to get 3 copies of each card. That's a big investment in a game that you may not be sure you like. Even if you do understand how that can be advantageous to deck-building, I think a lot of people increase their collection by picking up some APs or a larger expansion before going back and grabbing a second or third Core. Therefore, I feel these tutorial decks might serve the most good by only having 1 copy of cards that come in the Core Set. I realize that's limiting, but it's not impossible.

Judging from my friends who have bought into this game, 1 copy of Secrets of Arkham is typically the next purchase. I like including the Yuggoth Contract cards because it's a rock-solid cycle, it demonstrates how the APs can round out your decks, and gives new players a clear road map for their subsequent purchases.

I would keep the Order of the Silver Twilight out of it for now. Seven faction is plenty to choose from, and as there aren't any Order cards in the Core, Secrets of Arkham, or even the first few cycles, it's probably best to save them for later.

One more question... What about Neutrals?

1. Do we allow them?

2. If we do, is there a rule that each Neutral card can be in only one deck. ie - it's possible to construct all 7 decks simultaneously from one set of cards?

I'm thinking Yes, and Yes. Allow them but do not let them overlap. It's OK if you have 3 copies of a card to put 1 apiece into three different decks of course.

It's a limiting format and the decks won't be as thematic, but it's also an exciting design challenge to see what you can do with the limited card pool

Sounds good to me!

I myself was once thinking of doing a longer project, where i start with the base set and pick two factions at random, then construct a deck from the base set only. Then each day go through all the AP:s one by one and change the deck, and then post everything as kind of a deckbuilding diary. That would have propably been too ambitious project for me, so this works nicely as a kind of a substitute ^^

Doing single-faction decks from just one Core, Secrets of Arkham, and the Yuggoth pack has proven to be challenging. I mean, you can DO it, there are enough cards so mathematically it *works*, but there isn't a lot of theme feel to them - more like you just filter out some non-preferred cards and that's about it. Is anyone else faring better with them?

What I've been doing the past few days is working on a set of articles on Boardgamegeek.com to bring a little more attention to the game. So far I have written a review of the game, an article on basic deck building for beginners, and two dual-faction deck building examples.

You can see them here: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/40270/call-of-cthulhu-the-card-game

For the examples, what I've done is to pick two factions at random and build a themed deck using the same pool discussed earlier (Core, Secrets, Yuggoth) with the additional goal that I would try to only use a maximum of four Yuggoth packs for each deck - but that each deck CAN use a different four. I'm allowed to use Neutral cards, but I'm trying to make sure they do not overlap. The finished decks are also hosted on cardgamedb.com and the owner of the page is very welcoming to any more articles we'd like to cross-host there.

I've got one more deck building example article to go and that will cover 6 out of 7 factions. Then I was thinking the next step would be to do a vote and let people pick one of the three example decks to be tested and tuned in a followup article - the concept being that I would be allowed to add a small number of additional asylum packs for this purpose.

When I first started playing the game the very first thing I got was three core sets. Then I built 7 single faction decks and learned the game from playing them against one another. As I got more and more of the cards the decks evolved until I tired of making mono-faction-decks and started to make competitive dual-faction decks. Then, when I discovered the Centacle-rules that actually made multiplayer fun I had so many cards that I could make Highlander decks for each faction that were actually quite good (and very fun, since it was always a surprise when you drew your starting hand).

When I got tired of mono-faction highlander decks and trying to make competitive decks that I had no-one to play against (many of my friends like the game, but only play sporadically so giving them an overanalyzed deck just wasn't much fun when a single misplay always cost you the game in 1v1) I built a cube. It takes quite a while to cubedraft though so I wanted four decks to have in the cube-box to just rip out and throw in the lap of any beginner either to play a 1v1 or a centacle multiplayer. I took a cue from the core set here and made two-faction highlander decks, just with no neutrals (because it dilutes the flavor of the faction and are harder to balance between decks) and with the buddy-factions pared of: Miskatonic-Agency, Syndicate-Silver Twilight, Yog-Shubbie (the mythos factions can be discussed if they are flavorably buddy-factions, but with the amount of good hastur-steadfast cthulhu cards it was a no-brainer to build that deck).

These decks can easily be built without all the cards in the game available, and after having played with a number of beginners I actually think having two factions makes it a better tool to learn the game. All factions have a weakness or two and it is better to start playing with a deck that compensates for this right away instead of getting a scewed vision of the game (my friends who started cthulhu by just playing centacle multiplayer with highlander decks actually whined quite a lot about how overpowered Miskatonic where for a while, since the lack of removal and importance of skill + investigate in multiplayer makes one of the weakest factions into one of the stronger ones in these kind of games).

What you get is decks that do more than a single trick (beginning players will get kind of sad if they want to play Miskatonic in a 1v1 vs Cthulhu and constantly get hit with sacrificial offerings into dreamlands messenger or kopesh with no ability whatsoever to return the favor) and actually plays the game instead of abusing a single part of it as most mono-decks do. Sure it is very effective to make a cthulhu deck that shows how good removal is, but it won't get many players hyped up to play more after seeing their Miskatonic deck getting trashed.

Miskatonic-Agency: Investigation and story manipulation from Miskatonic while Agency bring combat strength and wounding. Miskatonics arcane makes Agency easier to play with for beginners while Agencies ability to remove threats makes Miskatonic harder to deal with for opposing decks.

Syndicate-SIlver Twilight: Both factions do dirty tricks, but while Syndicate do it straight up and cheap (exhausting, skill manipulation) silver twilight does it with more bang (posing mundande. bouncing, etc.), but for bigger bucks, which makes them a nice pair. Silver Twilights focus on arcane with syndicates combat makes for a similar situatioon to Miskatonic-Agency above.

Cthulhu-Hastur: It won worlds, nuff said. Seriously though, cthulhu has power, but lacks in terror. Hastur fixes this and also brings more cheap bodies and struggle surprises (that doesn't straight up wound/destroy). Makes for hell of a tag-team in short. The only thing this deck doesn't do is investigate, which is also why it is playable vs the others.

Yog-Shubbie: Might seem like an odd horse at first, but with shubbie being able to ramp up an early defense and yog providing both solid reach with sacrifice events and other similar spells and late game staying power through recursing and some tough critters that fill up some of shubs weaknesses (toughness through polyps, more reach with glaaki and more sacrifice as well just for good measure with many-angled thing) it actually becomes quite a monstrous (pun intended) deck for opponents to deal with if not kept in check. And most importantly, yog has some investigate, after investigator decks takes a quick story, a mythos player will quickly get the importance of this.

dboeren: I just read your articles on bbg, very informative and nice. Always fun to get the chance to poke around in someone elses mind when they are doing deckbuilding decisions.

As for my decks, if it is of interest to people here I could write them down, but since it is quite dreary to write down 200 unique card names I didn't feel the need to do so if it isn't something people really want to see.

Elochim said:

Alternatively, it's also quite convenient to create them over at CardGameDB.

I'd be less interested in the Highlander deck, though. It's your draft cube I'd be interested in

I sometimes use cardgamedb but don't save the decks I create there, since I want to be able to lay the deck out in front of me and play mock matches when I build it so I just use it to try out ideas and see what you can fit in a certain deck.

The cube will come, I just have to get the last pack in the cycle in there, make some minor changes (Descendant goes in) and take the time to type it up.

Is this project still going on? I'd love to delve into your deck ideas as I get my feet wet in this game. dboeren, I built the 3 decks you posted on BGG. Those articles were very helpful.

Glad you found them useful. Personally, I haven't had time lately to work on any more decks but I don't know if Shangfu is still working on anything.

Single faction decks from a highly limited card pool is honestly a tricky business. The game works best dual faction at that level, and single faction gets more viable once you have a larger collection to draw from.