Deck idea: Destroy opponent's resources via Torch the Joint! and Desertification. Recursion of Torch the Joint to keep opponent low on resources, while I can still play my characters. Lock down my opponent by having Negotium in play.

Cards:

2x Professor Herman Mulder (Agency, 1)
1x Unorthodox Psychologist (Agency, 2)
2x Musem Security (Agency, 2)
1x John Henry Price (Agency, 3)
3x Night-shift Security (Agency, 3)
2x Harvesting Mi-Go (Shub, 2)
2x Ya-te-veo (Shub, 2)
1x Grasping Chthonian (Shub, 3)
2x Corrupted midwif (Shub, 3)
2x Y'Golonac (Shub, 2)
3x Faceless Abductor (Yog, 2)
2x Many-Angled Thing (Yog, 3)
2x Flying Polyps (Yog, 4)
2x The Large Man (Yog, 4)
1x Yog-Sothoth, Lord of Time and Space (Yog, 6)
2x The Red-Gloved Man (Neutral, 3)

2x The Stone on the Peak (Shub, 1)
3x Desertification (Shub, 1)

2x Small Price to Pay (Agency, 1)
3x Torch the Joint! (Agency, 1)
2x Thunder in the East (Shub, 1)
3x Burrowing Beneath (Shub, 2)
2x A Single Glimpse (Yog, 2)
3x Speak to the Dead (Yog, 3)

2x Negotium perambulans in tenebris (Neutral, 1)
---
52 cards

Torch the Joint and Desertification (very nice against some strong support cards) remove opponent's resources. Speak to the Dead makes Torch the Joint recurring. The Large Man too, he is supported by Stone on the Peak (so I have control about what card is the topmost event card). Stone on the Peak is also in the deck to slow down milling decks.

If the core idea works, the opponent is having problems paying 3 cost or higher characters, and his low-cost characters are trapped in Negotium. Ya-Te-Veo should be able to kill some of the trapped characters. The Red-Gloved Man increases the probability to bring negotium into play, and is a 3 cost character with willpower and investigation at the same time. Faceless Abductor is in the deck to bounce some 3 cost characters (not many of them have skill 4) back to my opponent's hand, from where he can't bring them into play again because I'm destroying his resources. A Single Glimpse and Many-Angled Thing should help in dealing with the rest.

Harvesting Mi-Go speeds up my own resourcing, Corrupted Midwife can be used to bring back characters, especially those with enter-play-responses.

The rest is pretty usual - Burrowing Beneath, Thunder in the East and Grasping Chthonian for support destruction (especially Snow Graves), A Small Price to Pay for character destruction, Y'Golonac is pretty good on his own, Unorthodox Psychologist allows me to know my opponent's hand, Prof. Herman Mulder is a nice starting character or can be used as an Agency resource (Torch the Joint has steadfast 2). Similar with Museum Security and Night-shift Security - 3 skill characters, with the latter even being a 3 cost character (good for negotium). Flying Polyps is nice (invulnerable, fast); Yog-Sothoth is my late-game character (which might re-curr spells like Single Glimpse and Speak to the Dead).

The deck idea is pretty nasty, similar to recurring Glimpse of the Void each turn and shutting the opponent down. If the deck is running good, my opponent can't do anything. But it's very frustrating for him (he can't really play the game anymore); and my deck is pretty fragile, too: If I have bad luck with faction distribution in my starting hand / mulligan, I have to wait too long to Torch my opponent's resources and will likely lose the game. Negotium and Faceless Abductor help somewhat in delaying, but it's still fragile.

I won't improve or play this deck again as it is not fun to play against it if it is working ;-) But perhaps this is a strategy to be aware of when creating a deck.

Hi was trying a similar deck some time ago, but with a different direction. The problem I see with your take are the following:

- more than 50 cards: you have only 3 copies of your best card (torch the joint). You want to maximize the chance to see it. Ergo, play 50 cards

- not enough recursion: speak to the dead and the large man are slow. Where is gathering at the stones? Gathering is the only card that allow you to do: turn 1 torch, turn 2 gathering + torch

- desertification is nice but conditional: if the opponent is not playing locations, it's a dead card

- too may 2x

- 3 factions in a deck like this and you have the problem that YOU don't have the resources to play the cards, considering that, for example, you will never use a Torch as a resource (this limits your choice in the starting hand)

- some useless cards: why the flying polyps? what do they add to the strategy?

My take:

- 2 factions: yog agency. A third faction ONLY if it gives some recursion or card draw (right now, I would try miskatonic: arcane translation, the one that let you draw from the discard pile instead of the deck, is a good mid/late recursion, even better than speak to the dead in some cases)

- put in 3 Nyarlatothep: not only you destroy resources, but you also mess up with the resourcing phase. There is a reason why it is restricted.

- some acceleration might be useful: Local Sheriff is an option. Of course, not in the 3 faction version

- A journey to the other side is fundamental in such a deck! You see 5 cards, and you get to fix what you draw: long term planning is fundamental.

- with nyarlatothep, it might be worth trying broken space, broken time: a card with "broken" in the title and no one is using it. Something is wrong! You can add some singleton AO, like 1 Nodens, for example.

- negotium might be nice, but I would try to stop the fast deck in some other way. I prefer to have cards that are functional to my strategy (Nyarla) than cards that only slow down the opponent (Negotium).

hope it helps, my 2 cents

Konx

Having your resources toasted repeatedly would definitely be annoying, but I can see the tri-faction being vulnerable to bad initial draws as you were saying. I tend to play conservative on that front and limit very sharply my neutral cards for dual-faction decks just because it's frustrating to me to have to resource the "wrong card" or not be able to play something.

I think this combo is easier to break than Glimpse, so probably the opponent won't feel quite as helpless but I hope they've stocked up on good 1-2 cost cards

Desertification is kind of blah, but it does lock up that Support card so they won't use it much (if at all). If it's a unique support this can be better than destroying it but there aren't many of those. If it proves not that useful it can be cut to slim the deck down.

Thanks for your input!

Konx said:

If I remove Shub, I think there should be enough space for gathering at the Stones and Journey. (I initially had them in my whishlist-cardpool, but the number of yog cards are limited in a 3 faction deck. Although Gathering is cheaper (and cost 2 vs. cost 3 can be a big difference imo), Speak to the Dead has the advantage of recurring 2 cards (Torch + another Speak to the Dead -> infinite recursion) plus it gives me access to 4 more cards, therefore increasing my chance to draw Torch the Joint. So the decision went to Speak to the Dead. But yeah, the deck could do faster in destroying resources with Gathering).

Konx said:

Most of the 2x cards are not necessary to the strategy (e.g. Herman Mulder) but just nice to have. Exceptions are the Large man (4 cost card -> late, and with Speak to the Dead, I'm increasing my chances to have access to him) and perhaps Harvesting Mi-Go (but he only makes sense to play if there is at least 1character in my discard -> usually not a 1st turn character). Negotium actually has 4 copies considering the Red-Gloved Man. Stone on the Peak is required only after I have The large Man out, so 2x should be ok, too.

Konx said:

1st point: completely agree. 3 factions is difficult, at least at my current deckbuilding/playing skills.

2nd point: Flying Polyps is not completely unnecessary. With the small characters being trapped by negotium, I should have some good 3 (or 4) cost characters. Wilbur Whately came to my mind, but it's good to also have an invulnerable character. And somehow I just like that polyps card :-)

Konx said:

Haha

Konx said:

Yeah it helps, nice suggestions. When I thought of recursion, I immediately thought of Yog, but left out Arcane Translation. And Nyarlathothep + Borken Space Broken Time could be a good idea, too. Of course I have to abandon the Negotium trap then. And there is a risk of randomly resourcing Speak to the Dead. But I guess it's small - when I can pay 4 for Broken Space Broken Time, I should have completed my resourcing pretty much.

I'm not fond of Local Sheriff in that deck. My 3 domains are pretty much used up (1 for Speak to the Dead, 1 for Torch the Joint, and 1 card to bring into play) and a transient resource going into the discard sets me back for 1 turn regarding my resource-build-up. The idea of the deck is that my opponent should be low on resources, not me ;-)

dboeren said:

Yeah, I think it's easier to break than Glimpse of the Void. The opponent still has a story phase. A nerd rush deck playing Open for Inspection on Negotium could smash my idea.

dboeren said:

Hm, I'm not sure Desertification is that bad. There are some good triggerable location cards out there. Cavern of Flame, Arkham Asylum, Guardian Pillar, M.U. Museum of Natural History, Temple of R'lyeh, Gun Runner's Club, 7th House on the Left. If my opponent doesn't use such a location card, I'm hurting him, perhaps even his core strategy. But if I'd remove shub completely anyway, this will be no question any more.

HilariousPete said:

Well, it's a 1-cost card that more or less shuts down a subset of Support cards - those that need to trigger to do their thing. It won't affect ones with a passive effect. So, it's a bit of a gamble - does the opponent use or rely on such cards? If he does, this adds an additional cost to using them. Sometimes he may be willing to pay it without much fuss. Late in the game I may have a couple of non-useful cards in my hand and no longer be resourcing. I would have no regret to resource one of them so I could destroy it. In fact, it may give me an advantage - I can resource my useless card, destroy a good card from one of my domains, and now I have a better shot at recurring that card from the discard pile than I did when it was stuck in a domain.

So, I think it relies both on the opponent using the right sort of Support and also getting out early enough that building domains is still important for them which only lasts so many turns. The faster their deck, the shorter your window might be. Plus, he chooses the domain and card which is different from Torch the Joint where you get to choose it. He can pick a domain he wasn't going to use that turn, or one that's bigger than he needs right now, and he certainly will avoid turning a 2-color domain into a 1-color one to limit his options which would likely be something you'd look to do w/ Torch the Joint.

The price is right though, so if it happens that you CAN shut down an expensive or important support it will pay off. I'd just view it as more of a situational card in the deck and be ready to resource it if it doesn't look like your opponent is going to be vulnerable to it.

dboeren said:

Yeah, good point. I agree.

Presumably you're also right about Desertification only being situational - I don't know the meta well enough to judge if there are sufficiently enough triggerable location support cards (but I'd have guessed that they are used in 1 out of 2 or at least 1 out of 3 decks.). I'm looking forward to your GenCon decklist to see what people have been using, to know at least something about the meta :-)

A quick look at cardgamedb there are 87 Location cards listed. I guess the thing to do would be to go down the list and and see which ones have a strong triggered effect. A random sampling leads me to think about 2/3rd of them do have a triggered effect of some kind but it would take a while to analyze that many cards.

Desertyfication doesn't really destroy resources unless your opponent helps you. If your opponent will just not use it. (On forced response its quite brutal though, but only Cold Spring Glen and Vaporous isle qualify)

If it isn't unique you're better off with Thunder in the east, unless your opponent makes mistake of using it when he shouldn't have. If it locks down important triggered unique support its much more powerful, but how often that happens?