Howdy, thanks for peeking in.

A friend of mine who has owned this game for a long time but hasn't played it brought it over last week and we both love it. so I went out and bought a core and am waiting on the funds to purchase some of the expansions. I have done some research but seek some answers (or even just confimation) on a few topics. If you have the time I'd appreciate your input.

When we first played I just went with 'yellow' because what the hell, yellow looked cool. Turns out I like Hastur's theme and for making (more like attempting) a competitive deck, yellow is what i'm going to be working with (and spending more trade effort on). Other factions I will save for casual or themeatic play.

I haven't played to win in a long time and that was a mini's game, which is more my forte' but I don't have any friends that share the same interest. Maybe some of my quesitons will be simple or encompass generic CCG theory, forgive me if they are.

---------

1. My first analysis of Hastur seems to show that discarding and insanity (duh) as their primary strengths (perhaps the removal of characters as well). This is correct?

2. My best guess for a discarding focused deck is Hastur + Yog, correct?

3. My best guess for an insanity focused deck is Hastur + Misk or Hastur + Cthu, correct?

4. When deck-building, is there an approximate amount of cards you want dedicated toward your primary function? Let's say i'm working on my discard deck. Would I dedicate %60 of my cards toward that function? I realize this isn't a 'science' but perhaps some advice on this.

5. is there still a healthy tournament scene? The game seems to have been around for a while and my first thought is that those who play competitively have probably moved on to the new 'drug', whatever that is. Just curious.

6. Is there a healthy trade environment? I appreciate the game being a LCG but with its age and lack of random distribution I'm concerned there isn't much trade activity which means I spend more money or deal with being that much more gimped.

7. I'm having a hell of a time just finding a plain ole' list of restricted cards. Nothing in the downloaded FAQ, no sticky in a forum, etc.. Where is a list of those cards?

---------

thanks in advance for any answers,

Eric

djtool said:

1. Yes, that is correct.

2. Yes, again.

3. Not Miskatonic - they don't make anyone insane, and they can't defend against it very well themselves. Hastur, Cthulhu, Shub, and Yog are good at driving people insane.

4. I don't have an answer to this question. I don't think this way about deck building - I just try to make my deck work and have a built-in backup plan in case my primary objective is thwarted.

5. yes. The tournament scene is growing, in fact. Probably not as big as 5 years ago, but headed there.

6. No. There is no need to trade, so no trades to speak of. Of course this game is MUCH cheaper than any CCG. At $15/month you can own every card released.

7. Restricted cards are listed in the FAQ. Not sure why you had trouble finding it - did you download FAQ 2.01? And restricted is a little different than in some other games - you can bring up to 3 copies of ONE of the cards on the restricted list. So no card is prevented from play - restricted is just that, restricted, but not banned.

thanks for the reply.

I realize misk doesn't make anyone insane but they seem to have good compatibilty with all of the humans hastur has that turn themselves insane. I was specifically thinking the following cards have synergy:

Cafeteria Lady - for removing opponents terror cards and mainting my terror dominance

Doctor marama Riwhi - making someone useful go insane although i'm only seeing 'mad genius' for now. maybe the misk gal who lets you draw a card upon restore

Dr. Carson - to restore hastur's self-insaning humans

Obscure Linguist - maintaining terror dominance

Binding - obvious

Dr. Carson's Treatment - synergy with hasturs humans

....it was just a thought. y'all have more experience then I do for sure.

I appreciate your finanicial assesment but when someone like me just comes into the game after its been out so long that's a LOT of catching up to do with expansion packs. Ergo a bunch of $$$

awesome news about the tourney scene, just don't tell my wife (see above)

I see what you are thinking now - yes, Hastur and Miskatonic can make a very nice pair along the lines you describe.

1. I would say Hastur is the best faction at terror, with an additional emphasis in taking control of other people's characters. They're also pretty decent at stripping way enemy icons. Personally I find that terror alone isn't enough, because there are always some characters with Willpower or Terror of their own. So, blending them with another faction can provide a backup plan. Barring that, you'll have to fall back on removing those icons or Willpower, or taking control of the characters that you cannot drive insane.

2. Mostly Yog, but yeah - Hastur can provide some additional discard.

3. Or mono-Hastur. Hastur/Shub would work well too.

4. I'm not sure this concept makes sense in the game. More usually I'm thinking about percentages of characters vs. events vs. supports and cost curves - percent of cheap cards to medium cards to expensive cards. Your strategy has to fit first within these sort of bounds.

5. Depends where you are really. It's nothing like Magic though.

6. What? In an LCG environment there's really no reason to trade anything - you already have anything you want. How can you possibly be gimped? I wonder if I'm misunderstanding the question in some way...

7. It's in the FAQ, look again. Page 2, right column. It's a fairly short list. There are two banned cards, and eight restricted cards - meaning you can only pick ONE restricted card type for your deck. You can still have 3 copies though.

dboeren i swear i recognize your name from dnd mini's, not the official site although I can't remember the one I frequented.

thanks for the replies. Again I was hoping for some sort of trading because while the game being a LCG for those who started earlier is a great thing,its financially oppressive to someone like myself.

I've been working on a hastur/chtulhu insane deck just to go through the exercise. perhaps when i've got it all sorted out I'll put it up and let y'all tear it apart

djtool said:

You may have seen me on the Privateer Press forums, Spartan Games, or Boardgamegeek, maybe a few other smaller minis game but I've never played dnd minis. Anyway, I keep the same name/avatar on all the forums so people can recognize me if they know me from someone else.

The thing is, once you have a pack there's no incentive to trade it because you can never get those cards back without buying the whole pack again. I guess you might trade the whole pack, but it's not common. The best thing to do as a new player is just to prioritize and use a deck builder to see what's in each pack before you decide which to do next.

A common suggestion is to go Core -> Secrets of Arkham -> Yuggoth Contract/Summons of the Deep/Ancient Relics and pick up a second Core somewhere in there.

It just takes some time but with a few packs here and there you'll build up a collection soon enough.

dboeren said:

there it is.

Yeah, I've been a bit lax on visiting PP lately, mostly been hanging out in just the Skorne and Minions forums (go Farrow!)