This has been my favorite deck to play, as-of-late.

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Its basic theme is ensuring that your opponent never has characters available. To do that, I've taken a lot of the best Syndicate cards for exhaustion and removal (Kidnapping 101, Hard Case) and a lot of the Silver Twilight cards for bouncing (Huang, Jeffrey). Its one weakness is probably a deck heavy on terror... assuming I can't bounce the characters There's plenty to deal with locations as well (Forced Foreclosure, Lodge Housekeeper), and surprises (Master of the Myths, Dirk Sharpe). All critiques and comments are welcome

AUCodeMonkey said:

My biggest comment is to put something in to deal with the Fanatics/Rich Widows of the world.

I would also bring Smugglers up. Hes a strong card that plays well with arcane icons for draw power to keep the pressure up. (Also lets u find your Initiates faster) A trade up from Bootleggers would seem fair.

Like a Moth for Inimidate may or may not be a good thing. Skill shrinking is fun, but you don't have to much to capitalize on it and not letting a character exhaust on its own terms may serve you better in the long run.

Like a Moth I use quite a bit to use Bound and Gagged on big nasties (Y'Golonac, Cthulhu, etc.) and for stalling rush decks. I will concede that Smugglers > CC Bootleggers.

I would probably ditch CC Torch Singer and opt for something else. Is there something that SY/ST offers to help deal with Fanatics and Widows? Or would it be worth throwing Widows in myself?

AUCodeMonkey said:

Like a Moth + Bound and Gagged, while a good move on the fly, is probably not a good idea for "why its in the deck." If you get my meaning. You're using 2 cards to stall out 1 character(not too great for your card economy). I say stall because it unless you keep your Initiates in the grip you'll likely let loose the baddie you have tied up.

As for the "free" characters.... Are there things? yes. any good ones? not really. Your best option was Diseased Sewer Rats, now, not so much.

Unbound - Discarding 3 cards to destory a skill of 2 is... harsh. Combos well with Torch Singer actually(as you'd only be discarding Unbound itself if you can lower the skill enough).

Vengeful Mob - Requires some work, but possible.

Secret Stiletto - Again requires work, but triggers off of you winning by overcommiting instead of losing by undercommiting. But they'll see it coming.

The Mage Known as Magnus - Less work, but wound need to warp you deck to field stuff above cost 3 which is not recommended.

Ice Shaft - Its not cheap but it gets the job done.

If you keep the skill reduction around, Unbound doesn't look to bad. Otherwise Ice Shaft is likely the best option.

As for using a Rich Widow yourself. Depends on how rushy you feel. If you feel rushy they by all means add it. If you feel very rushy I'd add your own dreamlands fanatic. If you feel very very rushy look at Servant from out of time and/or Furitive Zoog (sometimes I think I'm the only one in the whole world that likes/uses these cards).

However, I'd add a Fanatic before I would a Widow. Turns out free 2-fast-TA icon characters with 2 skill that get around Negotium are good.

I've played a deck similar to this for a few months now with solid success - my main opponent loves to hate it. At first, I had Bound and Gagged as well but I took it out early on as it conflicts with Initiate of Huang Hun.

Some decent replacement options might be Low Blow or Intimidate. Though Kidnapping 101 has a bigger surprise element, Low Blow can be used against pesky Ancient Ones, and Intimidate is cheaper. I also like Steal the Soul and Fine Dining if you're looking to balance your Order and Syndicate events.

Character-wise, you may experiment with Young Initiate (who plays well with the Initiate and Knight of the Outer Void) or Errand Boy in place of Clover Club Torch Singer. They make nice fodder to sacrifice effects (either your own, or an opponent's), and their abilities can be handy.

A pair of questions:

1) Do you find Forced Foreclosure useful?

I can see controlling some location cards to be quite handy, but other locations can still benefit your opponent regardless of who controls it. It is worth the space in your deck?

2) How valuable would you rate Hard Case in this deck? Have you been able to successfully combo him with Initiate of Huang Hun? I'm thinking of putting him in my deck.

I definitely find Forced Foreclosure to be useful. It's not really that useful against my wife's Deep Ones deck... but it's immensely valuable against Hastur. Swiping a Cavern of Flames is a whole lot of fun. Lodge Housekeeper isn't my favorite for Location control, so I wanted to add something else.

Hard Case is just a well-rounded SY character, IMO. He fits well with exhaustion mechanics, and with a deck that focuses on exhaustion and skill reduction he's much better (Torch Singer, Hard Case, Eldritch Nexus, etc.). He's as valuable as any of the other exhaustion options I have in the deck since I try to win early.

I had Young Initiates in the deck originally, but I found that I favored flat out bouncing or exhausting characters with Terror than adding Willpower to a single character. I've been considering Low Blow and Intimidate and Feint as well... We'll see what I finally settle on.

As for Magnus' response... I will have to check out Unbound. I will probably try to add in a Fanatic for sure just because I like to feel a little more rushy (first deck was a Cops & Nerds Investigator deck). I've seen a lot of talk about Ice Shaft recently, and I'll have to admit... I need to go back and examine it. I looked at it originally and thought it was blasé, but I've been wrong before!

Also, Negotium is ridiculous. I'm definitely going to try and build another deck around that!

A quick question about Unbound. It reads: Discard X cards from your hand to destroy a character with printed skill X or less.

Doesn't this mean that skill reducing effects such as the Torch Singer can't lower the number of cards needed to be discarded? I'm still learning the game so I could very well be wrong. Either way, Unbound might be nice to combo with Ritual of the Construct. It's almost like getting double duty on the character-destruction.

As for Young Initiate, I understand your concern. I actually took her out in favor of Failed Initiate, though my Order/Syndicate deck focuses more on Investigation than yours. For cheap Order characters, Errand Boy also has his uses. Throw in Dedicated Butler and you can start sacrificing all of them to either Ritual of Summoning or Ritual of the Lance.

Yipe said:

Yep. the only card that reduces printed skill is 'Like A Moth', and it's been argued that even that wouldn't reduce the cost (although I disagree with that notion).

I agree with you jhaelen, but I still think there should be an errata addition for Like a Moth. I'm not going to stop playing it as it's written though.

And Yipe, I have some other ideas involving the Order's sacrifice mechanics, but I don't know how well I can incorporate them into a competitive deck yet. I really like the idea of sacrificing your own to force bad things to happen to your opponents, however. That will come in another deck, at a different time. I'm really digging Dedicated Butler for that reason.

I've restructured the deck as of this morning, much to my wife's ire.

- 3 Clover Club Torch Singer
+3 Intimidate
-3 Clover Club Bootleggers
+3 Smugglers
-3 Bound and Gagged
+3 Ice Shaft
-3 Like a Moth
+3 Dreamlands Fanatic

In the end, I agreed with Magnus that I don't really need the skill redux, and I agreed with Magnus and my wife that Bound and Gagged - while it has awesome artwork - has no place in a deck with Huang. Magnus made a great point about finding a way to counteract the couple of cards that would be my Achilles' heel (Dreamlands Fanatic, Rich Widow) so the Ice Shaft had to go in there. I would love to have a little more destruction in there... but Diseased Sewer Rats are not an option with the Initiate, and A Mage Known as Magnus would require too much restructuring. Magnus still has a place in a Things in the Ground deck (another one my wife won't play because I have Glaaki in there as well). Thanks also to Yipe, for pointing out that Intimidate is another great, cheap exhaustion card that I foolishly overlooked. And also thanks to Magnus for making me remember about great rushy cards, specifically the Fanatic, and thanks to my wife for saying "Ugh, that would make your deck more annoying." Now all 9 Fanatics we have are in decks

I've got Written and Bound in a shipment to the game store up the street, so I will see if that has any influence on this deck after I pick it up after work.