I love the call of cthulhu LCG, and have been reading lovecraft for many many years, though I am very new to the game I was wondering if anyone else has found that the game dynamics seem to reward a defensive stance? For example with mono decks that have large amounts of interactions between characters (deep ones, migo, etc), you are better off not commiting in order to accumulate characters that all reward one another (I know you cant win stories defensively, but after your pool is HUGE you can then devote to winning). This in turn leads to very complicated game dynamics where many characters attributes and abilities need to be remembered all the time as they all effect one another.

Has anyone else found this to be the case? Am i playing the game wrong????

I suspect you just haven't played the game enough. When I started I too thought that defense was the key. Now I play very aggressive decks and attack the stories. It takes a while to get used to the dynamics of the game and what can or can't be done.

Consider that extremely annoying Ravager of the Deep. How can one get past it? Well, one way is to go to 3 different stories - the Ravager can only wound at one of them, so the other two don't get ravaged.

I don't mean that is the only way to deal with the Ravager, but rather that it is possible for an aggressive stance to address a very strong defense.

Oh, and the part about complicate game dynamics - YES! That's a big attraction of this game.

I'm with the Professor on this one, offense is usually the best defense. If you're planning on a defensive strategy, I'd suggest a mill deck, instead of winning by gaining stories, you win by destroying your opponent's deck. Just put in enough creatures to defend the stories from your opponent and hope you get your strategy rolling fast before they find a way around your defenses.

You mentioned the Mi-Go in a previous post, and I do have a competent Mi-Go deck, but my one complaint with it is that it is too slow, and since the Mi-Go have little to no ability to remove my opponent's creatures the game can slow to a crawl. Defensive decks could work, but the odds of them winning are very unlikely, especially if your opponent's creatures are too powerful and they keep destroying or wounding whatever you put on the board.

A good offensive deck should have the game won in less than 10 turns, this is not a game where you want to let your opponent gain the momentum he/she needs to get their own deck rolling. I find it best to hit them fast and hard, go after the stories as quickly as reasonably possible and have ways of wiping out any powerful creatures they might be able to summon. That's how I play it, and I find it most effective.

If by "defensive" you mean "control," then certainly you could win that way. There are several defensive mechanics like exhaustion, bouncing, and ownership switching that really are all just... control. You just REALLY have to dedicate yourself to that meta.

i can see how you'd think that ian, but in my VERY limited experience, i think your opponent could easily have a story or two under their belt by the time you're up and running. not that that's necessarily a bad thing, mind you. yipe demonstrated to me last weekend just how quickly the tables can turn in this game. i went from being down 2-1 to winning 2-3 in a single turn (maybe it took two turns, i forget).

Most new players go through a phase of "I can never go to any stories because some of my characters will be lost". Telling them that's OK doesn't seem to work well even if it's true, what HAS worked better is to tell them to use more Events. (Note that this is not JUST Events, it also includes special abilities that do Event-like things such as character abilities, support card abilities, and come into play effects. "Events" is just a shorthand.)

Attacking characters vs. defending characters only happens if nobody has any tricks (Events) up their sleeve. Your opponent doesn't know what tricks you have, so he's got to over-commit to be ready for them. If he over-commits, you can take advantage of that by going to more stories and winning some of them. If he doesn't, you can take advantage of that too by using your Events to win and kill his dudes.

Try it, let us know how it works for you.

Phantom287 said:

A BAD offensive deck wins in 10 turns. A good one wins in 5. A great one wins in 3.

Wow, 3 turns??? Guess my deck building skills still need a LOT of work...... Which is good, half the reason i bought the game was to hone deck building abilities

Penfold said:

hmm...can you give me example of the great one deck?

All you need are investigators.

If you go second, and can get out 1 investigator on 1 and manage to go to stories unopposed, you get 3-0-0 (tokens on stories)

Turn two you manage to get 2 more investigators out (3 total), and go to stories unopposed, you have ( W-3-3)

Turn 3 you just need 2 tokens at each of 2 stories to win all 3.

Now the tricky part is getting there unopposed...

If you can't pull that off, you need more characters. Again with the investigators, you have a chance to win investigation and skill, but you need more characters.

It's possible to win in that time, but it requires everything going right. If you have the right cards, if your opponent doesn't, if you manage to finagle unopposed runs, etc...

But it's worth noting that your opponent probably doesn't want you to win in 3 turns and assuming that he also has a pretty good deck and is a reasonably good player I would not expect a 3-turn win to happen reliably.

This is why I said a great deck. A great deck is capable of these types of wins, taking advantage of your opponents bad luck, misplays, and poor deck building. A Good deck goes off in 5 and I'd say that is where most of the top level rush/aggro decks are likely to be hitting. A control build of course is something different. They aren't really playing the same game. Instead of trying to grab 3 stories as fast as possible, they are seeking to prevent you from being able to do that. They are trying to get their control elements onboard and strangle your ability to put success on stories. Once they can do that they just saunter across for the win either by milling your deck or grinding away at stories.