I'm trying to build some two-faction decks for my playgroup, and I'm looking for some recommendations on the best combinations of faction-themes to use:

In short: There are 8 Factions, if I make 4 decks with 2 factions, and don't reuse, what are my pairs?

My initial evaluation would be:

MU/Silver Twilight - Tons of low cost dudes for Rituals and Tome tricks

Agency/Syndicate - Attachments and Wounds

Hastur / ?

Shub / ?

Yog / Cthulhu - Cultists and Cthulhu meet Character Recursion

Thoughts?

i'd probably seperate the yog and cthulhu. it might be a bit strong for any other faction combinations. off the top of my head…….

yog / syndicate

hastur / agency

cthulhu / twilight

shub / miskatonic

all have a nice mix of all icons so players can get a feel for what they like best. its hard to say what the best mixes are because the general principle behind the decks idea will dictate what you need for it to work. as the players find out what they like and what works, they can start swapping them around i suppose.

First: Thanks for the fast response!

Second: Can you clarify why you choose those parings? I'm just going to pull a combined list and build the most obvious decklist from the resulting cards, but if you have any insight to the reason for your parings, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks.

no real reason. the pairing offer ( at first glance )

shub / miskatonic - weak and cheap characters with lots of investigation and arcane from miskatonic bolstered by lots of terror and combat from shub which is weak in investigation and arcane. also shub has a lot of resurrecting and support destruction. KEYWORDS - speed, survivability and support defence

hastur / agency - terror and arcane from hastur with combat and investigation from agency. some character control, insanity and limited wounding for a nice mix. not so good at support removal except locations. KEYWORDS - control, insanity and wounding

yog / syndicate - for a recursion deck, there needs to be an answer to snow graves, which thief for hire provides. shub and cthulhu are better at this but combined with yog can be pretty powerful. yog has lots of terror and arcane, a little combat, while syndicate has combat and some investigation. a mix of exhuastion, skill reduction, recursion and milling. KEYWORDS - exhaustion, sacrificing, skill reduction and recursion

cthulhu / twilight - destruction, destruction, destruction, and some bouncing. but probably the slowest combination to counter this. lots of terror from cthulhu if using serpents and combat from deep ones, and plenty arcane plus some investigation from silver twilight. a strong dck but can be slow to wind up. KEYWORDS - destruction, bouncing and some other stuff you don't see much of.

there may be a heap better suggestions still to come as i only really patched them together so hang about and see what other more experienced people might say. only reason i went with one faction from each 'side' is if introducing new players they can get a feel for both. if all else fails, try a few combos and if one seems too dominant, then switch-a-roo.

Here is what I would put for pairings:

Cthulhu/Shub: Cthulhu's specialty is character destruction, and Shub is very strong for support card destruction. They form a devastating combination that can effectively shut down the opponent's ability to keep cards on the board.

Hastur/Yog: Hastur and Yog both have enormously powerful events, and Yog in particular has ways of bringing events back into play. Combined, they have the potential to form an extremely potent control deck.

Silver Twilight/Miskatonic: Silver Twilight is very strong right now in my opinion, but they seem to burn cards very quickly. Miskatonic is weak, but they're great at drawing cards. Easy solution: use Miskatonic's card draw to feed the Silver Twilight engine.

Agency/Syndicate: I put these together because I didn't know where else to put them. But seriously, they both have cheap characters, and lots of ways to boost their characters; the idea would be to flood out characters, but add in supports and attachments to make them potent and keep them protected.

I think Runix's way produces decks that differ more in feel from each other, whereas COCCCG's method seems a little more intended to produce "even ground" where all the decks have comparable icon access. Either way seems fine to me.

Quite honestly, I'm happy with both responses, mainly because it seems I wasn't too far off in my own evaluation.

Thanks again everybody!

My basic idea would be similar to COCLCG's. I'd always pair a monster faction with a human faction to get a similar mix of icons for each deck. I think the goal should be to arrive at decks of comparable 'strength' but that's both hard to achieve and measure.

Here's my suggestion:

Agency/Hastur: I've seen this combo used successfully at the tournament level to create rush decks that can be very hard to stop. Take control of key characters or remove them from stories if you cannot kill them; be sure to add Seventy Steps to cement your early advantage.

Miskatonic/Cthulhu: This is the core of the deck I used at my last two tournaments. Use the Museum Curator to fish for the Khopesh or other nasty or neat support cards.

Silver Twilight/Yog-Sothoth: Bouncing & Recursion strikes me as a nice combo (I don't have much experience playing ST, though, so I might be wrong).

Syndicate/Shub-Niggurath: Combine Shub's Low-Cost/High-Skill characters with skill reduction and exhaustion; could also be centered around skill challenges (Mr. David Pan).

haha. yeah. misk / cthulhu is a great combo, which is why i didnt pair them as i wanted to keep them all fairly even and gave cthulhu something not so easy to work with.

i LOVE syndicate shub.

i've only ever mucked around with a skill based syndicate deck once with mr. pan and parallel universe, and it was mixed with shub.

personally, and i stress personally, i didn't muck around with things like the bouncer and torch singer, which are limited beyond their abilities, and instead focused on maxing out my skill instead of lowering theirs, with things like ghoulish predator, insect swarm, brazen hoodlum, border runners and jon pechon, along with miranda keeper to seek out the syndicate support goodies.

these characters operate excellently with pan / parallel but are also quite reasonable on their own.

johnny v's dame is a given, and hard case being brought in from discard with hungry dark one is nice.

you also get altar of the blessed for +1 skill for every character you own, shub or syndicate.

plus all the support destructions and shock transforming in tommy bananas who loves being paired with a shub co-hort for some insane combat struggles, or shock transforming in hack journalist just at the right time.

tyler scindere always makes it into my syndicate decks as he's excellent value for money and costs only 3 with johnny's dame.

and you can then use the underground conspiracy which for some strange reason is a shub domain card, and the tattoed thug for some cost 2 madness. tragic celebrity comes in handy then for 3 cards drawn per draw phase.

outback poacher for more cards if you're using ghoulish predator / insect swarm / dhole ant-lion, and richard upton pickman is always sweet.

triggerman and expendable muscle are very good as you must remember that pan / parallel won't always be available and you need a fall back if he gets taken out by destructions every time he pops up, which the aforementioned shub characters are good for.

far too much for one deck, but some handy ideas, and TOTALLY off topic.

Yeah, I used Syndicate/Shub last year at Gencon - it's a fun mix. I basically went with a lot of exhaustion plus Shub creatures rushing out to overwhelm anyone left going to stories.

syndicate shub also rocks because it's a nice red red deck. what could be better?