I picked up the new (and final) asylum pack at Gencon, but our room didn't have wifi so sorry this took so long to get posted. Sorry for any typos, I'm writing this with my laptop balanced on my lap on the bumpy bus ride home. I'll post a tournament report and deck list tomorrow when I have something stable to type on

Agency:

*Elena Belskaia, Character, Government, cost 3, AI3. Action: discard 2 cards from your hand. Then draw 1 card.
*The Necromomicon, Support, Tome, Relic, Attachment. cost 3. Attach to a character you control. Shuffle all other copies of The Necronomicon back into their owner's decks. Response: After you win a C struggle at a story where attached character is committed, sacrifice attached character and shuffle The Necronomicon back into your deck to wound each character committed to each story with skill lower than attached character.
Shadow War, Conspiracy, steadfast 2 A. cost 0, CCI. If you win this Conspiracy, wound any number of Cultist, Monster, and Servitor characters in play.

Cthulhu:

Naaginn, Character, Serpent, cost 2, T2. Response:After a support card is destroyed, put Naaginn into play from your discard pile.
Ancient Plans, Conspiracy, steadfast CC, cost 1, TCCA. If you win this conspiracy, search your deck for an Ancient One character and put it into play.

Hastur:

The Marked, Character, Cultist, Lunatic, cost 3, A1. Non-Ancient One characters lose all T icons. Disrupt: If you control 2 or more insane characters, drive The Marked insane to cancel a character ability just triggered. Then, that character goes insane.
*The Necronomicon, Support, Tome, Relic, Attachment. Cost 2. Attach to a character you control. Shuffle all other copies of The Necronomicon back into their owner's decks. Disrupt: When attached character would become insane, shuffle The Necronomicon into your deck to make each character with lower skill than the attached character also go insane.
In the Court of the Dragon, Conspiracy, steadfast 2 H, cost 0, TTTA. If you win this conspiracy, take control of each insane character in play.

Miskatonic:

Surprising Find (steadfast MM) Event, cost 0. Response: After an opponent draws 1 or more cards, draw the top 3 cards from your deck. Then, place 2 cards from your hand on top of your deck.

Faculty Advisor, Character, Faculty, cost 1, A1. Disrupt: If a student character would be wounded or made insane, instead sacrifice Faculty Advisor. Then, draw 1 card.

Shub:

*Arthur Todd, character, servitor, cost 3, TAA2. Action:Sacrifice Arthur Todd to reduce the cost of the next Shub character you play this phase by 5 (to a minimum of 1).
*The Necronomicon, Support, Tome, Relic, Attachment. Cost 3. Attach to a character you control. Shuffle all other copies of The Necronomicon back into their owner's decks. Action: sacrifice attached character and shuffle the Necronomicon back into your deck to put into play all characters from your discard pile with less skill than the attached character.
*Lord of the Woods, Character, Servitor, Invulnerability, Villainous, cost 5, TTCCA5. Action: sacrifice a Tome card to destroy Lord of the Woods. Any player may trigger this effect.

Silver Twilight:

Adept of the Second Order, character, Lodge, cost 3, AAAI3. Response: after a character is put into play through a card effect, choose and ready a Lodge character.
From the First Degree to the Last, Conspiracy, steadfast 2 ST, cost 1, AAAI. If you win this conspiracy, choose any number of conspiracies or stories. Return each character committed to those stories or conspiracies to its owner's hand.

Syndicate:

Street Tough, character, Criminal, cost 2, C0. Action: Pay 1 to choose a non-Ancient One character. That character gets -2 skill until the end of the phase. Then, Street Tough gets +2 skill until the end of the phase.
*The Necronomicon, Support, Tome, Relic, Attachment. Cost 3. Attach to a character you control. Shuffle all other copies of The Necronomicon back into their owner's decks. Action: sacrifice attached character and shuffle the Necronomicon back into your deck to exhaust all character with lower skill than attached character.
The Night Job, Conspiracy, steadfast 2 S, cost 0, CCII. If you win this conspiracy, restore and ready any number of characters. Then, choose and exhaust 1 character for each character readied in this way. Those characters do not ready during the next refresh phase.

Yog:

Pushed into the Beyond, Event, Spell, cost X. Action: choose a character card in play with cost X or lower. Then, shuffle that card into its owner's deck.
The Grand Design, Conspiracy, steadfast 2 Y, cost 0, CAAI. Characters with Elder Thing in their name can commit to this conspiracy while exhausted. If you win this conspiracy, return the top X cards from your discard pile to your hand, X is the number of cards in your hand.

Thanks for the spoilers! Not much else going on in the forums as those of us who weren't able to make it to Gencon wait for a review of the action over the weekend ( hint hint ) . . .

I'll have to take some time to review these cards in greater depth, but this seems like a very powerful expansion pack, and I think we will definitely be seeing more Conspiracies in play. Yog, Silver Twilight, and Agency have some very solid Conspiracies now . . . and it rather sounds like the designers are regretting not making "Elder Thing" a subtype.

I really like Pushed into Beyond for Yog. Spell/Event recursion just got more powerful, as if it wasn't already. Yog also now has a very reliable answer to Khopesh, which is great.

But getting to the really good stuff . . .

dboeren said:

For an insanity deck, this is just amazing. The Marked plus Lost to the Madness will send virtually the entire board to the madhouse, against anything but a Willpower-heavy investigator deck. If the Hastur deck is built with that combo in mind, e.g. including cards like Arkham Asylum and Descendent of Eibon, it could make for some very easy story wins.

One question would be how this combines with support cards or events that grant Terror icons, like The King in Yellow Folio - does The Marked's effect resolve first, or does the support card's effect resolve first? It's the difference between this card being a so-so combination with The King in Yellow (hey, at least it's a Terror struggle and not an Investigation) and an incredible combination depending on whether or not the Terror icon gets added before or after it's removed. Same issue with Library of Nalanda.

The Necronomicon is not quite as impressive, although it's an obvious choice for attachment to someone like Alyssa Graham, and combined with The Marked could cause some serious chaos. Also, since it's "lower skill" and not "printed", there's a Syndicate combination with their skill-lowering cards waiting to happen.

The Conspiracy should be a very easy Conspiracy for Hastur to win, and if there has been any success on the insanity front, goes a long way toward putting Hastur in firm control of the game. On the other hand, it can go horribly wrong if the other side wins it, so it's something of a gamble - Professor Sam Campbell, in particular, will have himself a very long laugh if this Conspiracy hits the table.

OK, working my way through the question on The Marked in play at the same time as The King in Yellow Folio. From the FAQ 1.11:

Even if not triggered at the same time, multiple lasting effects may affect the same card at the same time. The order in which the lasting effects take place is irrelevant – the net sum result of all lasting effects is applied to the card . . . Lasting effects that affect other character attributes (such as icons) work in the same fashion.

The problem here is, it's not a "sum" - one effect is to add [Terror][Terror], but the other effect is to remove all. The above would seem to apply to anything with the commutative property (that should warm the heart of a certain high school math teacher - thank you Mr. Shaw), but that is not the case here. The order of application is important. But, also from the FAQ:

When card effects, passive abilities, or forced responses would resolve simultaneously, all cards that are affected resolve in the order determined by the active player, one at a time. The player must fully resolve each effect before the next effect takes place.

That would seem to apply, as it is a combination of two passive effects. I really don't like this, though, as it would imply that the "active player" can determine the outcome simply by resolving the effects in different order - which means that the number of icons a character has would depend on whose turn it is!

I think we're going to need an official clarification on this one.

thanks dboeren! i'm grabbing my copy tomorrow, but the early peek is much appreciated in any case.

Awesome! The conspiracies all look really cool and very powerful, even the ones with abilities that aren't practically guaranteed to be useful (the Agency and ST ones) make it very easy for their respective factions to win. I like especially how powerful the "protected" (behind friendly struggles) investigation struggles are for the human factions which are generally weaker in the character department. Hastur and Shub got some really cool cards--Arthur Todd can bring out the first turn Shub which is just nasty beyond belief. Syndicate also did well for itself, and a new 1 cost drop for Miskatonic is really cool. What an exciting pack--really useful cards for every faction!

This T thingie needs more clarification IMO as quoted paragraph refers to adding numbers, not zeroing where order is quite key. It doesnt say printed so it should also affect other T icons, the problem is timing. When i asked about Palpable unhapiness Damon answered what i got as "it zeroes skill when you play event, any next modyfication including change of value from already present effect is calculated", with event its quite clear, but with passive its a bit weird. Id say it should zero all future T manipulating effects and new characters, but im often wrong on those calls. The character seems double edged enough to not worry me much until some good combos on this are proven to work.

Hasturs necro can be crazy powerfull, get your deck T heavy with one hi skill no T guy, get hastur with broken space broken time, pay 2 and drive opponents table insane no matter what it is. I guess i'm overvaluing such combos, a bit too many cards needed but it sounds really strong if you manage to do it.

Shub is getting ridiculous… turn 2 big Shub with just one sacrifice… destruction will own such small character count but all other decks…

I like miskatonic event card that would be really useful on draw deck with guys that do things when you draw them. Also things in the ground come to mind.

I'm not as worried about Shub forcing in a big Ancient One early in the game. They were already able to do that with Priestess of Bubastis and Y'Golonac - this just expands it out to include the other Ancient Ones in the Shub list, and reviewing the list, there aren't many, if any, that I would consider to be game-breaking. Getting an Invulnerable Terror character out fast is good, but again, they had that with Y'Golonac (and for other factions, cards like Carl Stanford, etc.) The main threat would be something like Shub-niggurath (Dark Mistress of the Woods) and paying 2 to drop a hand full of Dark Young on the table, but, well, Shub has always been able to flood out Dark Young. It's powerful, but not quite game-breaking in my opinion.

A passive effect worded in this manner would apply all the time. Each gained effect would add an icon and The Marked would remove it. In AGOT there is a classification called "constant effects" that for all intents and purposes are like a portion of CoC's passives (AGoT's passives are essentially CoC's Forced Responses). Whenever a constant effect is added to the mix all effects are recalculated, and in this case an effect that removes ALL of something would take precedent over one which adds a finite number to the mix.

While I am as certain as I can be that this is the correct interpretation an official clarification would be helpful. SOmeone should send the question in so it can be verified and included in the next FAQ.

My shub tends to get turn 2 gollonac, and cthulhu is getting Padma so maybe it will be fine. Shubs AO are quite bad now that i think of it (other than YGollonac ofc, hes crazy good, i think a 5 cost would suit him better - id still keep him but it wouldn't feel that cheap ). I got some discounts for AO in my deck and i didn't find anything really good for deck with no dark youngs. Nyogtha is quite bad, Shude M'ell has ok'ish icons + inv but limited ability, I guess only title character - shoulb is really nice, but core version is not that good; yugoth is much better though.. hmm i wonder how strong Dark young based deck on this would be, potentialy quite scary but needs testing. Best scenario of early shub getting all hand of dark youngs is crazy powerful but not really likely.

I wonder will Hastur and Yog get some similar tricks to get their AOs early. Both are really nice and really hard to get on table.

I think I agree with Penfold on the rules interpretation, which does take The Marked down a bit, as it means you won't be able to do super nasty combinations with The King in Yellow Folio, Library of Nalanda, etc. It does work well with Hastur's character-based and event-based insanity, however, of which there is plenty, e.g., Victoria Glasser, Deranged Diva, and so forth. It obviously combines very well with Hastur (The King in Yellow).

Overall, I suspect Hastur may be better served by insanity protection removal through other means - Hastur (Lord of Carcosa) is the best, but I find that Enchanted Wood and Rays of Dawn also work very well, and are much cheaper. But it's still nice to have The Marked as an option.

Hastur can get its titular Ancient One into play a bit faster through Seeker of Mysteries and Demented Phrenologist, although not nearly as quickly as Shub, and with not very good card efficiency. I would consider the ability to get a very quick Ancient One out to be faction-specific, and probably a good thing; a very early Hastur (Lord of Carcosa) could run rampant in the story phase.

I picked up the actual expansion pack the other day, like the well-programmed consumer that I am, and am overall very impressed. The new Conspiracies, in particular, are very compelling. I think FFG has done a good job of designing cards that are appealing in their own right, and specifically that invite new and innovative strategies. Well, except for Arthur Todd, whose ability is compelling . . . but the artwork! The new Conspiracies and Tomes, though, are practically asking to be considered in new decks.

I'm really warming up to the new Conspiracy for Hastur, The Court of the Dragon (nice reference, by the way). It's a relatively safe story for Hastur, and comes with a potentially devastating resolution. Definitely worth considering in a Hastur deck, although I could also see it in a dual Hastur/Cthulhu or Hastur/Shub deck as well.