Well it's the day after gencon and all the dust has settled. Overall it was a great weekend. I'm not sure exactly how many showed up for the Cthulhu tourney but it was close to 20. I ended up coming in 3rd with my hastur/syndicate mix. If I had played correctly in the top 4 game I would have been playing for a championship but such is life. That's not taking anything away from David because he played great I just forgot to play an ice shaft in my hand and it ended up costing me the game. Anyways, on to the tourney report.

1st round

I am paired up against David dboren playing a shub/silver twilight mix. I got off to a really slow start but knew I could catch up with my Marcus jamburg+ice shaft combo….except for Marcus never showed up. We played 5+ turns and I never saw any of the 3 copies in my deck. He ended up running over top of me with his weenie hoard and beat me 3-1 at the stories.

2nd round

I can't think of the gentlemans name but he was running a yog/hastur mix. From what I saw it was a rush deck that used cursed skulls and other sacrifice effects to deal with the opponents characters to try to go to the story unopposed. I was able to control his characters with ice shafts, rats, Stygian eyes, and infernal obsessions to win the stories 3-0.

3rd round

I get paired up against a mono syndicate deck. His deck did a lot of what I did but his was geared more towards rushing and mine is geared towards controlling. My insanity effects combined with taking control of his characters was too much for him to overcome. I won the stories 3-0.

After round 3 they cut to top 8 which I thought was really weird but whatever. Damon I believe said it was because of prize support. I was able to make it in to top 8 because David was undefeated. Woohoo!

Top 8

I get paired against another shub/silver twilight. The lady I played against name was Elena I believe. She had a nasty deck. I was very fortunate to get out of the match alive. She had a brutal start against me. She bounced my only character and then played 2 dreamlands fanatics to get out to a massive head start. I had to use a Stygian eye and a infernal obsession to take them both so I just didn't get trounced. She got an early story and then we fought over the village of ash until I was able to take it and another story in one turn to turn the tide back in my favor. After that I was able to win the last story relatively easy. I kept using my seventh house to exhaust her master of the myths when he came into play to go to the last story unopposed. I ended up winning the stories 3-0 or 3-1 I don't remember.

Yep, Elena had a pretty good Three Bells deck going and also made the final 8 where I got to play against her. She seemed to be emphasizing the Shub side more than I was and went lighter on the Silver Twilight but it worked well. I was fortunate enough to withstand it and you & I faced each other again in round 5 where we had a pretty close fought game.

Top 4

It's rematch time against David and his shub/silver twilight deck. This makes my 3rd time playing against silver twilight/shub in the 5 matches I played that day. Wtf!?! Where'd all this silv twilight come from? Lol! Anyways David looked surprised to see me after the ass beating he gave me in the first round of the tournament. Lol! I was able to put the control on his hand early making him discard 4 cards in 2 turns. He was top decking by turn 3. But unfortunately for me he was top decking some good characters. My master could only block so much. And again I couldn't get my Marcus ice shaft combo going until it was too late. The turning point was when he won the story that allowed him to get multiple copies of a character he had in play. He won that story in the first round as well. He was had 2 stories to my 0. With the help of stygian eye and David pan I was able to win a story. This put stories 2-1 in his favor. We battled a couple more turns and I was able to take another story while he was able to get 3 success tokens on 2 different stories. It came down to one turn where if I would have played the ice shaft on my turn I'm about 99% sure I would have won. He committed 3 characters to each story he had 3 success tokens on. I committed his ye te veo I stole with Stygian eye to block one story and removed one character with the cavern of flame and then on the other I committed master of the myths but it wasn't enough because he still had more skill and a guy with an investigation icon at the story so he was able to win. If I would have played the ice shaft on my turn I would hav been able to kill the guy with the investigation icon to get back to my turn. In hand I had the ice shaft, Marcus, and infernal obsession. I would have been able to kill everyone on his side of the field that was a threat and hold off to win the story on my following turn. But that is what separates the men from the boys. Congrats to David to playing an epic game. Thats what top fours are made of! The tourney was fun. Congrats to everyone that made top 8. Hopefully ill be able to make worlds.

I was playing a Yog-Shub discard deck. I'm dissapointed I missed the top 8 cut, but expected it since I had only won one story all day lol. Pretty sure I lost all the tie-breakers. Ended up 2-1. I will post the deck in the other forum.

I think it worked quite well, I lost the first game due to Combing the Archives, my opponent top decked an open for inspection and my support kill was on vacation. Probably the one card my deck had trouble with. Lost 3-1.

Second game I milled my opponent with two huge Curse of the Stones for 13 each, I forget his name but it was a fun friendly match. Won 0-0.

Third game was a personal highlight for me since I ended up playing Jim Black. Was a little nervous, but the deck was purring and he couldn't get through my blockers. Got him milled with a huge 15+ Curse of the Stone, and won 1-0.

Looking back there isn't much I would have played differently. I didn't make any mistakes which I was happy about, but I probably should have added Journey to the Other Side to help fish cards I needed.

P.S. Tom really is that good - I think he would have won the tourney with a random fist full of cards!

How do you get Curse of the Stone to hit so hard? Through Things in the Ground? I've been interested in trying to get Curse to work - particularly since it can be easily replayed through The Large Man or the T'tka Halot - but it seems difficult to get it efficient without giving up stories to the other side.

Yup, got Things in the Ground out early and used it every turn. I think at one point I had two out against Jim and the table had characters everywhere. I had ancient ones and master of myths to block and soak wounds.

It worked quite well, but in the end it was just too weak with investigation struggles and it cost me in the first match.