And … that's what I get for only reading the last post … ignore my redundant comment

He didn't say it wasn't a triggered effect effect, he said a player does not trigger it but resolves it… so if I had to guess it means the game triggers it, the player resolves it. Which makes sense in a lot of ways since he has no choice about it being triggered. Any chance we can get his actual words on this answer, as well as the specific question asked? Sometimes that makes a world of difference.

oh well.

guess i'll make yet another cthulhu based deck and prepare for a very boring and predictable tournament. the only question is, do i mix it with hastur or shub-niggurath.

it seems the only choices these days are join the ranks of the talentless and unimaginative or make a deck with true style and lose.

COCLCG said:

I don't think situation is so at all bad. Focused Cthulhu deck is super slow anyway. So you can just outdraw that deck. Try some slower deck with Negotium. Cthulhu is not fan of that card.

Ah, alright, I guess that's the death blow for this deck idea.

I was already a bit miffed that the Messenger couldn't prevent card effects (see the other thread about answers from Damon).

But if it doesn't even prevent Forced Responses of any kind it's useless as an idea to build a deck around.

The positive thing is I save time since I can skip testing my Messenger deck. It's going to have to be a different one for the German Regional.

dont you mean its just plain useless full stop? like every other ingenious set-up, sneaky trick and bluff is these days.

basically, as i see it, you now ABSOLUTELY NEED to have a deck that can defend itself against the stoopid khopesh and the brain dead who use it. which comes down to support removal as far as i know (now the messenger can't be employed-booooooo), or blanking the toughness on the recipient (which still allows 2 wounds). and a couple of other options but they're covered by the same decks. if you can't do any of these then throw your deck in the bin.

so you're left with a must have choice of cthulhu or shub-niggurath. boring. any combination without one of these 2 will get wounded to death very quickly and die die die. forget setting things up for a nice clever combo or tricky plan.

wound or be wounded. that's cack. should we just remove the story phase altogether??

Damon's response.

You are absolutely correct, Forced Responses are technically triggered by the
game. The controller of the card resolves them, (because FFG has not yet
incorporated AI and nano technology into our cards… YET!) but they are not
player triggered effects in the same way that Action, Disrupt, and Response
effects are.

For all you sweating Kopesh, our regional was Saturday. Out of 4 decks playing Kopesh, only 1 finished in the top 4. Yog, Hastur and Syndicate were the top 3. It seems the true answer to Kopesh is doing your homework and building a solid deck.

yeah, i know…..

i'm just an angry little man venting his frustrations at having wasted a good few days on a deck design that corresponded to the rules outlined in the book, just to have those rules changed right before the tournament. (see page 12 of the rulebook which clearly states that forced responses must be triggered by a PLAYER). it's still a response, no matter how you look at it, and responses are triggered by players. the only difference is that these MUST be triggered. the game DOES NOT trigger them in the slightest, only provide the conditions that force the PLAYER to trigger them. if this were the case it would simply be a passive effect, and the player triggering is actually the only difference between the two, but i get the feeling that this fact is not getting through to people, and that somehow FFG has installed some kind of artificial intelligence into the game that it can now perform actions itself, so i'll leave it at this, shake my head in bemusement, and move on.

thanks for the encouraging news though about the khopesh.

Hm… the designer disagrees… and to be fair there are lots of "casual" wording in the rulebook which is further defined, clarified, and extrapolated on in the FAQ. The FAQ says "a Forced Response must trigger if able." Not that a player must trigger if able. Which seems to be a bit of a distinction, and certainly seems to support what Damon ruled. Then there is this, "The only responses players can choose to trigger are Disrupts, however Forced Responses that apply to the situation must trigger automatically." Which darn near spells out exactly what he was saying in his ruling, which also speaks to this, "The main difference between a passive ability and a forced response is that a passive effect cannot be canceled."

Also to clarify, a Forced Response is not a Response . They are two completely separate types of triggered effects.

I think there is more support in the FAQ pointing to the answer he gave than there is in the rulebook against it. That said Dreamlands Messenger still prevents the Khopesh from being triggered when it is committed to a story. You just need to have a turn with it being untargeted by the khopesh. You can use cards that prevent it from being uncommitted from a story until it is won and then there is no khopesh, or really much of any non-Combat struggle wounding/destroying that can hit it.

tomato tomato

potato potato

Shub-Gyrl said:

I would be very interested to see the deck lists and what restricted cards they use. I am not trying to prove that Khopesh is too good or anything, I am just interested. There seem to be very few CoC decks posted anywhere anyway and I would like to see more decks posted.

But I have to say that every time I build a deck it seems to be Khopesh or Negotium from restricted list for me. Negotium if I plan to stall a game to bring ancient ones or mill. Khopesh for other occasions. I feel just adding 2-3x Dreamlands Fanatic, 3x Khopesh and 3x The Terror of the Tides makes many of my decks better. The Terror of the Tides and using Cthulhu for about 10 card off faction will be even better when this card gets released:

i think i'll be selling / burning my copy of this game after this tournament if thats a herald of whats to come.

obviously whoever is making this game is turning it back into the LCG version of super powerful cards and ridiculous combos that require half a deck just to guard against the other half the deck, all in a bid to make us spend more money on a game thats only getting stoopider.

make sure you burn it. that makes more sense…

COCLCG said:

Burn? No, that's too Magic: the Gathering. If you're gonna do it, do it with style. Sacrifice all the way.

If you are going to be so fatalistic why not build your cards into a pyre soak them and yourself in gasoline and send the ultimate message! Yeah, that would show'em! ; )

The Necronomicon (Owlswick) isn't really that scary. There are already board-wiping cards out there, and no one is clamoring about them. Of course this one is slightly easier to use, but you always have to ask yourself: is the juice worth the squeeze? If I kill all characters below X skill, including my own, what does it buy me? You better have tricks up your sleeve, and hope that your opponent does not have any. Also, an Action window opens up after playing the Necronomicon. What if I choose to destroy it, say, with a Burrowing Beneath? Or maybe I sacrifice whatever that Miskatonic thing is to put a Relic or Tome back into play from my discard pile, and I choose another Necronomicon that forces you to shuffle the Owlswick one back into your deck? Or maybe it becomes A Small Price to Pay to drive Paul Lemond insane to wound the character that Owlswick Necronomicon is on, effectively destroying it?

I'm just not seeing the huge issue with it. Maybe I'm more arrogant that even I realize in thinking I'll always be able to deal with it.

perhaps i'll feel differently after regionals, but like AUMonkey, i find that i can fight cthulhu and his khopesh-wielding minions reasonably well with my humans. i think the game is pretty well-balanced. perhaps from AP to AP one or other faction will get a slight boost, but overall each faction seems to get tools balanced in proportion to their style of play and to the opponents they'll face.

maybe, coclcg, you're too focussed on breaking the game and finding killer combos. the fact is, in this game you just gotta get in there and get dirty. fight, kill, sacrifice, be willing to risk it all, bluff, etc. i think you'll find once you start to play real human opponents more that there's a LOT more subtlety and opportunity in ANY decks and faction combinations than you're imagine from goldfishing and solo play.

AUCodeMonkey said:

I agree it is not too major and not even close to overpowered but it is a solid card. I still have very hard time to think better small and efficient module to put in almost every deck I make like: 2-3x Dreamlands Fanatic, 3x Khopesh and 3x The Terror of the Tides, (1-2x Necronomicon). You can of course destroy Khopesh/Necronomicon etc with many cards. But you are allowed to play Burrowing Beneath (or Small Price to Pay etc.) and Necnomicon/Khopesh in a same deck anyway and you probably should. I just hope other factions starts to get a way better cards so deck building wouldn't feel so simple in this game. Newest cycle is starting to look great tho.

EDIT I don't understand why people speak about different "factions" decks so much. In CoC it is very easy to mix factions in a deck. You are only handicapping yourself if you are playing single faction decks. You can have huge amount of loyal cards but even then you can make smaller off faction module which requires only one specific resource easily. Like that Cthulhu module I mentioned it is enough to put single Cthulhu resource in a 2 resource domain, after that you don't need to put Cthulhu resources any more. This can be done with other factions also.

ok, i stand corrected and i take it all back. i'll rack it up to my somewhat bi-polar nature.

had our regionals and i took a deck that whipped a khopesh deck with some recursion support destructions. in fact my deck practically made ALL supports null and void, so if you want to play a deck that uses them look out!! - haha (im on a mood upswing at the moment). if you'd like to see the deck its in the ORGANISED PLAY forum under REGIONALS DECK LISTS.