under advice i'm starting a topic for deck lists from this years regionals and a brief description of how they play. Any comments on improvements that could be made or variants is appreciated (at least by me). i'll start with this years australian regional winner.

YOG / SHUB

Gibbering soul x 3
Harvesting mi-go x 3
Pawn broker x 3
Blood magician x 2
Faceless abductor x 2
Hungry dark young x 3
Descendent of Eibon x 2
Mage known as Magnus x 3
Stalking hound x 3
Telepathic chthonian x 3
Shudde M’ell x 2
Shub-Niggurath (new) x 2
Yog-Sothoth (new) x 3

A single glimpse x 2
Casting off the skin x 2
Speak to the dead x 3
Opening the limbo gate x 3
Thunder in the east x 3
Burrowing beneath x 3

Fairly straightforward deck but was darn effective ( on the day ). Was lucky and most times had 2 ancients in play on turns 3 - 4 and a 3rd coming in soon (even snuck Shub-niggurath out on turn 2 once!!). Pawn broker / Magnus mill ancients from hand (you actually WANT to start with them) and Limbo gate plays them out and activates all Stalking hounds from hand / discard. All spells re-castable from discard (often 2nd ancient for COST 2) with Yog the frontrunning ancient one engine and Shub relegated to support (or support destruction!) and minor character engine.

Along with faceless abductor (some attachments) and speak to the dead returning destructions (and limbo for a triple cast if desired), no supports lasted much more than a turn, if not directly after playing, sometimes causing sacrifices, even the threat of which slowed some opponent plays down. Also threw out a couple of nice early rushes (mi-go / Eibon combo can turn a 2:1:1 domain into a 2:3:3 for 1 turn). Includes reshuffles to mix double cast spells back into deck from bottom. Designed it to counter all the new relics last series and the tomes from the new packs (could change slightly as weren’t legal here yet). Also never went over a 4:3:2 domain total.

Certainly wasn't often a quick win deck but it is super speedy for what it is and with ancient ones, character engines and support denial it was simply too much on the day. I'm also glad i didn't see a particular couple of cards.

actually a fairly brutal variant i was tossing up took out Shudde M'ell and substituted Cthuhlu himself, to be milled into the discard with the others so no resource matches required. i'm a sucker for synergy though so the green just didn't fit. another was to have 2 x Yog / Shub / Cthulhu / Hastur for an all out ancient one extravaganza.

i also was kept awake ALL night previous to the regional deciding whether to have horrid mutation instead of casting off the skin to protect against that damned scotophobia.

ok. someone asked by email how on earth Shub-Niggurath was played in turn 2 and i admit it was a bit of a freak. quick synopsis:

opponents 1st turn:

degenerate serpent cultist and the twilight cultist that lowers cthulhu cost

my 1st turn:

pawn broker milling Shub-Niggurath to discard (opponent comments that it sucks getting ancients in draw hand)

opponents 2nd turn:

carl stanford sacrificing serpent cultist to ensure undefended story

my 2nd turn:

resource descendant of eibon for a 4 domain, pawn broker milling stalking hound for extra card, and playing out Shub-Niggurath, serpent cultist AND stalking hound with limbo gate

that is all. MORE DECKLISTS PLEASE!!

I humbly present you my deck, which placed second in the Munich Regionals this weekend. Without further ado, here's the decklist:

Silver Swarm

Silver Twilight:

3x Lord Jeffrey Farrington

3x Initiate of Huang Hun

3x Protector of secrets

3x Master of the Myths

3x Recruiter for the Lodge

3x Rich Widow

3x High Wizard of the Order

3x Steal the Soul

3x Initiation

3x Dark Secrets of the Order

Shub-Niggurath:

3x Priestess of Bubastis

3x Hungry Dark Young

3x Y'Golonac

3x Grasping Cthonian

3x Harvesting Mi-Go

3x Burrowing Beneath

Cthulhu:

2x Dreamlands Fanatic

Why this deck?

I knew that I wanted to play Silver Twilight from the very beginning because, well, it's pretty much my favorite faction and it's a blast to play. However, ST is severely lacking in support control, and I was sure Khopesh would be everywhere (I was right). The obvious choice to cover that weakness was Shub-Niggurath. I soon noticed the synergy between the factions and just decided to build around it. In essence, Hungry Dark Young works extremely well with cheap characters that trigger abilities when they enter play, and there's a lot of bouncing for board control. Then, in the late game, it's not unusual to have the table cleared enough for a rush to the remaining stories with your investigation-heavy guys and a little bit of help from Y'Golonac, who can distract the rest of the opposition.

What's really interesting about the bouncing mechanic is that there are few defenses about it. Attachments? Gone with the bounce, no matter the toughness or other keywords that the character can have. Ancient Ones? Meet Lord Jeffrey and the Initiate. Invulnerability? Have fun being invulnerable in the limbo of the opponent's hand! The bounce also works very well with the Rich Widows and, of course, the Dreamlands Fanatics.

Another thing this deck has going for it is its speed. The early rush is very strong, and in fact I found myself finishing most of my games in under half an hour.

The wrong choices

I found myself resourcing the Initiations every single time. I thought I would need the speed, but I was wrong. Shocking Transformation would have served the same function but better -- getting a powerful character fast and at any moment. The rest of the cards would have worked wonders with them, including the Harvesting Mi-Gos, which were there primarily to support the Initiations. Other than that, the deck worked pretty well, but I think the amount of 3x copies took away some versatility at the expense of consistency. Extreme redundancy is an old habit to shake off after playing M:tG for so long.

Looking back, I would also have removed the Grasping Cthonians. When CoC players play support cards, it's because they're very powerful and have an immediate effect. The Cthonians are just too slow to matter when a Khopesh destroys 2 (or 6! ) of your key guys while you just sit and watch. If I had used Shocking Transformation instead of Initiation, however…

Also, even though it didn't matter as much as I feared, I still think that bouncing in general doesn't really synergize very well with insanity. If the game dragged on a little big and my opponent had a couple of insane characters, I wouldn't even bother playing the Initiate… I wanted those guys to stay insane!

The right choices

Without question, the inclusion of Steal the Soul and Dark Secrets of the Order. The first is just SO versatile. It can really turn a game in too many ways. Copy the terror and combat icons from a scary character to turn the tables at a story, or the investigation icons to add insult to the injury. Or any combinations thereof!

DSotO was the "secret" tech and boy was it sweet when it did its magic. I had completely overlooked it at the beginning, but in the right deck it can be devastating. It also has a very strong combo with the Initiate. At some point, I could exhaust a domain with 4 resources to play the initiate, exhaust another one with 2 to re-play it and then use DSotO to free up my 4-resource domain -- which allowed me to play Y'Golonac on a table with no opposition (remember, two enemies two Initiates left play). I'm working on another combo involving this card, I think I haven't squeezed it thoroughly yet.

Master of the Myths was every bit as good as I expected it to be. Whenever I drew it, I knew my chances of winning increased exponentially. It's an awesome defender and a tricky attacker. My favorite use of it is negating the opponent the ability to ready a heavy attacker when he least expects it and then cruise by the stories undefended on my own turn.

The Hungry Dark Youngs were equally awesome. They helped the early rush (Protectors, Initiates, Recruiters) and they allowed me to stabilize big time bringing my guys from the dead.

That's all I have to say from the top of my head. All questions and comments are welcome!

well done!! initiate / dark secrets is one of my favourite combos. its a free initiate basically the turn you play them (sorry, its not a secret - haha)

i've come across a similar deck and knew it would be a very strong contender and it was very touch and go. the only thing saving me was i quite enjoyed having my ancient ones bounced back with magnus milling them back into the discard and destroying any other character on the board (usually the offending farrington). it lacks character destructions and concentrating on my ancient ones which were generally back next turn allowed my other characters plenty of playing space, and once the twin ancient one loop was in place it couldn't keep up with the recursion or being outclassed in the stories. silver twilight is definately my decks nemesis though and always ensures a great battle. stalking hounds goes a long way against this deck with its ubiquitous master of myths.

its funny about your initiation because my most redundant card was gibbering soul to help with speed (bringing hungry dark young / mi -go to hand to resource the soul) and i found myself resourcing this constantly as well.

and you're right about grasping cthonian. far too slow. it is a nice character and i played with the idea of it with shocking transform as well, or with shudde m'ell as a last ditch attempt to stop a khopesh. didn't make the cut though.

hungry dark ones simply rock steady.

steal the soul is another given for silver twilight and icon increases in story are super neat (ergo casting off the skin)

another surprise was again the lack of supports. i rarely use them (1 deck in 5) and i wonder if this will be one of the trends emerging.

thanks a million for your insights!!

here's my revamped tournament deck, including the new asylum packs and weeding out a couple of mistakes that actually playing against real opponents brought to light.

Priestess of bubastis x 3
Black dog x 3
Pawn broker x 3
Blood magician x 2
Faceless abductor x 2
Hungry dark young x 3
Many angled thing x 2
Mage known as Magnus x 3
Stalking hound x 3
Telepathic chthonian x 3
Shub-Niggurath (new) x 3
Yog-Sothoth (new) x 3

A single glimpse x 3
Walk the path x 3
Speak to the dead x 3
Opening the limbo gate x 3
Thunder in the east x 2
Burrowing beneath x 3

for an overview i replaced gibbering soul with priestess of bubastis. i thought the former would be better because i could call forward the harvesting mi-go and resource the soul for an effective '-1 cost on all cards' (pre feed her young days) but i couldn't have been more wrong. the opportunity never presented itself and the priestess was always the better choice and helps playing out hungry dark one and t.chthonian earlier. luckily it didn't cost me any matches. its still in it's developmential phase so feed her young may replace the priestess but i'll have to playtest / shuffle to see if there's not enough low costs with this version and if the steadfast will be a problem. if it's practical with only 10-11 2 cost characters then this also opens the door for negotium perambulans as i don't have a restricted card yet.

using limbo gate it's very important to have an opponents character in their discard so sacrificing their weakest cards really made it feel as though i wasn't bringing back anything to compare with my ancient ones, so i added a 3rd single glimpse and 2 many angled things to support magnus in this endeavour. and once Yog is on the board the double casting glimpses are quite destructive in one turn. unfortunately D.eibon had to go to make room for this change and i'm still unsure about that but playtesting will reveal when i get the chance. it does feel a lot more aggressive though now.

i took out Shudde M'ell as it was only ever really in there to test how it went with 3 ancients and the t.chthonians and the tournament was the only place i could do this. although nice when it occurred, the 3rd Shub-Niggurath is a much better investment.

from the new packs the black dog helps against rushes and overall the deck feels a lot quicker with this and the priestess / hungry dark one, and its a sneaky cheeky card which im always chuffed about (love my dirty goblin tactics!!). walk the path simply rocks and not only fixed my horrid mutation vs scotophobia dilemma but also is a very useful card against the ubiquitous destruction and bouncing decks.

i have no problem posting this as im way down here in australia and really it has no 'secret surprises', beyond revealing the fact that to best counter it one would include no supports in their own deck, but i don't see this happening much with the relics and new tomes. i also know that it will probably change a bit by next tournament (if i used it that is) with the release of more AP's. if anyone thinks it's worthy enough (even with some changes), then i'd only be more than pleased for them to see how it goes abroad so feel free to try it out (and let me know if you would be so gracious). one thing i love about this game is that you can enjoy the hobby and challenge of deck building simply for just that, even when you may only get to play a handful of games in a year (though i'm working to change that).

P.S. i have played it once against a mono cthulhu and had an interesting series of play where the black dog jumped in and out, activating a dreamlands fanatic, which activated a stalking hound. i will fondly remember this as 'the double dog dash' - haha. i would also probably use corrupted midwife in any shub deck apart from this one. it soon becomes redundant / obsolete once Shub-Niggurath comes out.

after reading through the post i think i may try to work in negotium perambulans anyway. my 1 and 2 costs are mainly for support with a nice mix of icons just a happy coincidence.

Priestess – for hungry dark young / t.chthonian
Black dog – can ignore NPIT when using ability
Pawn broker – for milling ancients
Blood magician – for removing terror icons / adding investigation icons
Faceless abductor – for removing attachments and relics from play on low skills

so NPIT would give my ancients plenty of time (although its usually turns 3 - 5 as it is) to come in and hopefully steal the show. time and playtesting will tell. could be nasty though!! so it MIGHT look something like this (off the top of my head):

Priestess of Bubastis x 3
Black dog x 3
Pawn broker x 3
Blood magician x 2
Ol’ crazy eyes x 2
Hungry dark young x 3
Many angled thing x 2
Mage known as Magnus x 3
Stalking hound x 3
Telepathic chthonian x 2
Shub-Niggurath (new) x 3
Yog-Sothoth (new) x 3

Negotium perambulans x 2
A single glimpse x 2
Walk the path x 3
Speak to the dead x 3
Opening the limbo gate x 3
Thunder in the east x 2
Burrowing beneath x 3

any thoughts / comments ALWAYS appreciated.

At some point, I built a deck using negotium perambulans. I did the calculations on being able to play the card on my first turn. I don't recall the precise figures, but they are something like:

If you play with three copies of negotium perambulans, without Ol’ crazy eyes, then you have slighty greater than a sixty percent chance of being able to play the card on turn one (about 63%, I think). If you play with three copies of negotium perambulans and three copies of Ol’ crazy eyes, you can bring this up to about 91 percent. I assumed that I would always mulligan, if I didn't get at least one of negotium perambulans or Ol’ crazy eyes on my first draw.

this is the deck i'm going to start trialling, so its either a version of this one or the original revamp.

Priestess of Bubastis x 3
Black dog x 3
Pawn broker x 3
Red gloved man x 2
Hungry dark young x 3
Many angled thing x 2
Mage known as Magnus x 3
Stalking hound x 3
Telepathic chthonian x 3
Shub-Niggurath (new) x 3
Yog-Sothoth (new) x 3

Negotium perambulans x 2
A single glimpse x 3
Walk the path x 3
Speak to the dead x 3
Opening the limbo gate x 3
Thunder in the east x 2
Burrowing beneath x 3

will let you know how it goes…….

seeing as no-one is posting regionals decks, i'm just going to hi-jack this one for the evolution of my favouritist deck, for anyone that's remotely interested.

played the above deck once so far and it worked quite well, but brought up a couple of changes if i decide to go with it over the re-vamp. mainly being:

Ghoulish Predator x 3
Black dog x 3
Pawn broker x 3
Red gloved man x 2
Hungry dark young x 3
Many angled thing x 2
Mage known as Magnus x 3
Stalking hound x 3
Telepathic chthonian x 2
Shub-Niggurath (new) x 3
Yog-Sothoth (new) x 3

Negotium perambulans x 3
A single glimpse x 3
Walk the path x 3
Speak to the dead x 3
Opening the limbo gate x 3
Thunder in the east x 2
Burrowing beneath x 3

it was a case of the priestess slowly becoming more pointless as the shub characters dwindled and the need for a rush no longer, well, needed, and when NPIT was in place i was finding that it wasn't taking as much time as i liked and sucking back some of my higher costs. enter the ghoulish predator, perfect for the task with 4 skill, + 1 toughness and good icons for miskatonic munching. i'm really wary of this card against hastur so won't play it till i'm down to 2 cards or so in hand and i also steered clear of monsters in the initial deck, but since i've included black dog / angled thing i thought 'why not?'.

also an extra NPIT to ensure an early play.

tossing up between walk the path and feed her young but my opponent said he HATED playing against this deck because of this card, because he never felt safe playing events or activating character abilities, and when a t.chthonian came into play he then wasn't even comfortable using his supports!! that's exactly what i was hoping for (haha) and is a main feature of the deck for me (as if ancients in turn 3 wasn't enough).

i am missing my faceless abductor as its very good at removing some over cost 2 characters that would compete with the other stories. same old same old too many cards, not enough space though!!

and here's the first prototype for a cthulhu / yog variant. definately needs some work / playtesting though:

Jade salesman x 3
Faceless abductor x 3
Pawn broker x 3
Red gloved man x 2
Mutant spawn x 3 / Dreamlands fanatic x 3
Many angled thing x 2
Mage known as Magnus x 3
Stalking hound x 2
Deep one rising x 3
Cthulhu (new) x 3
Yog-Sothoth (new) x 3

Negotium perambulans x 3
A single glimpse x 3
Walk the path x 2 / Sacrificial offerings x 2
Speak to the dead x 3
Opening the limbo gate x 3
Dragged into the deep x 3
Get it off x 3

any comments / ideas on this one greatly appreciated, but i won't hold my breath!!

am going to try out this version for a bit. reason being is that i really want the t.chthonians on the board as soon as possible, multiples of if it can be arranged, to really screw with all the new tomes etc. if i'm tricky enough, i can maybe phase in a black dog for cost 1, wait till the end of the story phase, and then sacrifice it with the shocking transformation / t.chthonian before it comes back into hand, where it will patiently wait in the discard for a hungry dark one. as usual, will see how it goes. removed 1 speak to the dead as the beauty of yog-sothoth is that it's the equivalent of 4 speak to the deads, 6 single glimpses and 6 opening the limbo gates in the deck. trying to re-work in blood magician too as its getting a bit high cost (though negotium 'should' cover this) and i would like to be using all the domains every turn for some purpose along with pawn broker, and also might include feed her young now that shub is in the dominance card wise.

Ghoulish predator x 3
Black dog x 3
Pawn broker x 3
Red gloved man x 2
Hungry dark young x 3
Many angled thing x 3
Mage known as Magnus x 3
Stalking hound x 3
Telepathic chthonian x 3
Shub-Niggurath (new) x 3
Yog-Sothoth (new) x 3

Negotium perambulans x 3
Shocking transformation x 2
A single glimpse x 3
Speak to the dead x 2
Opening the limbo gate x 3
Thunder in the east x 2
Burrowing beneath x 3

or perhaps this, which defends against rushes in a completely different way and lowers the cost a bit.

Cannibal ghast x 3
Black dog x 3
Ghoulish predator x 3
Pawn broker x 3
Hungry dark young x 3
Many angled thing x 2
Mage known as Magnus x 3
Stalking hound x 3
Telepathic chthonian x 3
Shub-Niggurath (new) x 3
Yog-Sothoth (new) x 3

Feed her young x 3
Shocking transformation x 2
A single glimpse x 3
Speak to the dead x 2
Opening the limbo gate x 3
Thunder in the east x 2
Burrowing beneath x 3

any advice on which might be best from all of the above?? (he speaks into the void)

dummiesday said:

Thank you for posting this, a lot of great ideas in there! I had some thoughts about a sacrifice-oriented Twilight/Shub deck, but I think the bouncing-oriented Twilight/Shub deck may work even better.

A couple of thoughts on potential changes. First, Black Dog is an obvious candidate for inclusion; it's great at holding off any super-fast rushes while you can get resourced up and start feeding your discard pile. Along the same lines, Stalking Hounds is another great blocker, and in fact I think may be superior to Dreamlands Fanatic, although that point is debatable. (As an aside, I was wondering if FFG may be tempted to do something about the increased popularity of bouncers that don't need color alignment, but the fact that they just published Dr. Mya Badry would seem to indicate that they're OK with the concept even as more players are using them.)

As for working the discard pile, Corrupted Midwife is an obvious choice. Combine with Hungry Dark Young, and you have a very resilient deck that can easily take losses and bounce back quickly (this combo may also work particularly well with a sacrifice deck.) Book of Iod may be another effective addition to accelerate your deck even faster.

COCLCG said:

OK, I am guessing that one of the cards you were glad you didn't see was The Stone on the Peak! It's pretty much the hard counter to the discard pile-fishing strategies, at the same time that it's a nice defense against milling. I think the Stone makes a good card for Shub players to include one or two of in their decks if they're worried about any kind of manipulation of discard piles. Its only real downside is that it can potentially be resource-intensive, depending on how much work the Stone is doing in recycling the discard pile.

actually wasn't too concerned about any support cards. was probably lucky in that all the ones i saw i managed to destroy either straight away or in my next operations phase, and once the t.chthonians were in play i hardly saw any at all!!

was more worried about jeffey farrington and apierophobia, which i did see in one deck but thankfully only bore it once.

as usual, i've gone a bit crazy with modifying my deck with only the extremely rare opportunity to test it, so i'm going to take a couple of steps back and focus on one of the earlier re-works before trying anything new.

got some interesting deck ideas to work upon with a few sneaky tricks up their sleeve, but tired of posting with next to no feedback (520+ views with only 3 responses to the decks, so thanks to the rare people who do) so gonna leave the forum for a while and just do my own thing, concentrate more on my writing, and see what i can come up with for next tournament.

ia! ia! Yog-Sothoth.

I may be speaking on the behalf of others when I say that there may be so many views because there are a lot of players, like me, that don't know what they're doing.

I enjoy your brainstorm sessions on the forums, but I have no idea how to contribute to them because I don't get to play that much. Any input I gave would be in theory only, with no practical experience. Of course, most lurkers are lurkers because of that inherent fear that any input would be looked on with incredulous disdain.

Perhaps there could be a thread that discusses common archetypes and what those archetypes include. You touch on this with your thread on most efficient cards, but efficient depends on what kind of deck you are running. Min/maxing a CoC deck seems less important since there are so many ways to get around costs, or get things into play.

all good. i have no idea what i'm doing either ( hence the ramblings ). and i'm getting no closer to knowing what i'm doing by talking to myself - haha. most of what i've been posting is theory only ( with a few facts - hee hee).

i guess cause i'm sitting at my computer all day procrastinating about belting out another chapter, that i'm on here a lot more than most and am suffering a bit of 'cthulhu burnout' anyway. you haven't heard the last from me!!

i think a lot of posters are really just trying to flesh out ideas and have no-one to do it with in their every day life ( boo hoo ). such is the burden of being the part of a very exclusive and elite niche!!

but with no feedback, those of us who have no environment to playtest within, and are merely generating ideas, can be left wondering if perhaps these are so pathetically crap that no-one has the heart to tell them!!

COCLCG said:

Exactly. I guess I just have to man up and post my crap ideas more.

ok. a month after buying the game, i built my regional deck and with no play experience or trialling jumped
right on in. in hindsight, i was probably lucky to win, as there were some pretty useless cards in there. but
the core was strong and it served me well on the day ( as did lady luck ). after seeing the potential out there
and gaining a deeper understanding of the game, i put the regional deck away and never played with it again,
instead exploring the card pool and building many new decks ( with varying degrees of success ). some for fun,
some for a challenge, but never anything again similar to this deck or with tournaments in mind.

with a couple more months experience, and now with a MASSIVE 20 games under my belt - haha - and a more expansive knowledge of the game, i decided yesterday to dust off my old trusty and try refining / updating it. what you see below is the initial result to go back into playtesting with:

3 x Priestess of Bubastis
2 x black dog
2 x Blood Magician
3 x Ya-te-veo
3 x Pawn Broker
3 x Hungry Dark Young
3 x Many-angled Thing
3 x The Mage Known as Magnus
2 x Constricting elder thing
3 x Stalking Hound
2 x Telepathic Chthonian
2 x Y'Golonac, The Obscenity
3 x Shub-Niggurath
3 x Yog-Sothoth

3 x A Single Glimpse
3 x Burrowing Beneath
2 x Thunder in the East
2 x Speak to the Dead
3 x Opening the Limbo Gate

the things i love about this deck ( and to explain a little ):

-first of all the originality. i've not encountered or heard of anything using the same engine in this manner
and even the combination of Yog / Shub is hard to find in the 'competative' world. being what is referred to
as a 'johnny' player, this is the most important factor of all

-the ability to throw out an ancient one in turn 3, with the possibility of 3 ancient ones in turn 4, using
no other cards that require being on the table to reduce cost and be vulnerable ( ie seeker of mysteries, beings
of ib etc )

-the use of magnus and him loving the ancients and stalking hound to WANT to use as very high cost destructions
( its quite fun using a 6 cost ancient to take out a 1 or 2 cost character first turn or 2 ), and then him being
able to use multiples of ancients to take out other high cost opponent characters, along with pawn broker and
sacrificing / ya-te-veo to not rely on only him to get the ancients / opponents characters into discard for limbo
gate

-yog sothoths ability to recast the 8 spells. this effectively seems to give the deck the power of a 60 card
deck jammed into 50 cards. its just a pity he can't recast x cost spells - haha

-the lack of supports ( possibly rendering opponent cards useless ) and the ability to have recursion support
destructions ( practically unlimited with speak to the dead returning the copy of itself and a s.destruction or
2 s.destructions ) with t.chthonian linking with all of them. and now constricting elder thing also !!

-stalking hound and the deck FORCING the required activation with limbo gate but also great against uroborus,
master of myths etc, from hand OR discard

-the sacrificing / destruction potential, without being your run of the mill destruction deck or having this as
the main focus ( no cthulhu for starts ) with single glimpse ( recurring ) / magnus / ya-te-veo / many angled /
telepathic chthonian

-not having to go beyond 4 resources to play ancient ones, sometimes even for cost of 2

-speak to the dead being able to rush the deck along to the cards i need

-the deck now has no restricted card, so cannot be accused of winning due to using a 'broken' card

-the character flooding. with the ancients replacing events instead of characters ( though theoretically i still
have 21 events ) and also coming out early, there are also still a lot of low cost characters. priestess of bubastis,
black dog, hungry dark one, a line jumping stalking hound and finally shub niggurath bringing back 2 characters or more for 2 cost, make the deck seem to bring about a lot of characters at quite a reasonable rate of speed.

-blood magician and his annoying last minute investigation icons, or story manipulation

-and lastly, the fact that mill decks and hand milling actually benefits this deck, helping it to get the ancients
into discard and widening the pool for speak to the dead to grab what i need, when i need it. bring the milling
on, because this deck loves it !! an example is one of my regional games, where byakhee attack let me put yog-sothoth into discard to limbo gate next turn, winning me the game

i've played it only once since yesterday and it managed to win again, so although i've only had 8 games with it now
( 7 in a very small regional ), it still remains unbeaten !! but not for long i feel - haha. i'll playtest this version
along with one changing elder thing for corrupted midwife for even more recursion mayhem and get back to you

thanks for reading, hope you enjoy the idea, and feel free to muck around with it yourself !!

actually. make that 9 games so far. i did have a brief spaz with it a month ago which i'd totally forgotten about ( good meds ), but when i went back through the post i thought ' hey, thats right, that happened' - haha

also, this deck was made way back when before i got all into naming my decks, and i still haven't come up with one, so for now it's simply THE REGIONAL ( Version whatever )

you might also have noticed that grasping chthonian would seem a more logical choice with the t.chthonians, but really, for a more effective icon mix, the constricting elder thing appears to be the way to go, and will likely appear on board before the t.chthonians anyway

another thing is i'm simply trialling the black dog / ya-te-veo ( cp3o ) so it may become the ghouls for a better skill / toughness front ( though ya-te-veo does seem to be the designers shub answer to combing the archives - well done !! )

lastly, it might be a bit character heavy in the above version, but i've found that it in the initial games it made it very hard to keep up with when i had 16 events - now 13 ( especially with the effects bringing other characters with them, most often from discard ), so MAYBE 2 might go ( prob. elder thing ) for another event or something ( prob. walk the path for destroying the destroyers / bouncing the bouncers / scotophobia-ing the scotophobia-ers / milling the millers etc ). we shall see

so then it might look like this:

3 x Priestess of Bubastis
2 x Ghoulish predator
2 x Blood Magician
3 x Ya-te-veo
3 x Pawn Broker
3 x Hungry Dark Young
3 x Many-angled Thing
3 x The Mage Known as Magnus
3 x Stalking Hound
2 x Telepathic Chthonian
2 x Y'Golonac, The Obscenity
3 x Shub-Niggurath
3 x Yog-Sothoth

2 x Walk the path
3 x A Single Glimpse
3 x Burrowing Beneath
2 x Thunder in the East
2 x Speak to the Dead
3 x Opening the Limbo Gate

but as i said. early days of actually playing and refining it !!

I don't think I've done a Yog/Shub for a while, but I've had a couple recent Yog/Hastur decks and I must say that Blood Magician is a very handy guy - I'm sure you'll be happy having him along.

It gives you something useful to do with your small domains and if your opponent somehow doesn't contest you can always grant Arcane or Investigation.

This is actually sometime timely to the Serpent thread going on in main. The argument there is that Serpents are super-good because they can spend 1 to change their icons, typically from Terror to Combat.

Blood Magician is quite a bit more flexible than this. For the same price, he can grant or remove any icon to any character. Nor do they lose one of their existing icons to benefit from this as in the Serpents who "change" one icon to another.

yes, but as i've found out, having NO icons is a weakness serpents don't have. very easy to drive insane from the hastur backlines !! but yes, a nice card in a pinch and a staple of my Yog decks.

hahaha. serves me right for posting online. was playing one of my fun decks on lackey and got my arse handed to me by a cthulhu copy of the above deck !!!! it was very good, but i don't think it would handle snow graves as well as the shub version.

and to continue on with blood magician, the comparison i suppose is similar, but the poor magician is on his own. no cards to combine with or bring him back en masse etc.

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