Just now getting into things with the Cthulhu LCG, and I'm liking what I'm seeing with Miskatonic a lot in the core set. Experimenting with some various combinations to compensate for their lack of combat strength… any advice? I'm going to be buying in slow, so I'm just looking for strategies and ideas, don't need card lists.

Some ideas for combat with M.U.:

• Surprise your opponent with events, e.g. Binding. Some M.U. characters have combat icons. If your opponent felt safe and only sent 1 character with 2 or more combat icons against your character, you can change things drastically.
• Pair up with a faction that's good at combat, e.g. Agency, or gives you invulnerability (Bred to Survive, althought Shub will be difficult because of villainous/heroic).
• Use cost reducers (Anthropology Advisor) to bring in someone who alleviates the lack of combat icons (e.g. Prof. Peaslee).
• Don't focus only on compensating the weakness of a faction, also use its strengths. Here, cheap characters with investigation icons (like Laboratory Assistant, but there are more outside the core set). Get some success tokens and stories early in the game to put pressure upon your opponent! Open for Inspections is also good for this. And M.U. is good at card draw (e.g. Student Archeologist, Ali Kafour). If 1 character dies every turn, but you can draw 1 additional card and bring out 1 more (cheap) character than your opponent, it doesn't matter that you're losing 1 combat struggle.

Especially scoring a story very quickly will be better achievable with additional packs. E.g. by picking up just 1 AP, Whispers in the Dark, you get The Red-Gloved Man, who can fetch you a conspiracy out of your deck, and the Locked Door, a conspiracy with an additional investigation struggle. Those 2 cards used in conjunction with cheap investigation icon characters can be pretty good.

First, you should understand that you don't HAVE to be good at combat. It's completely OK for characters to die as long as you're getting success tokens out of it. The guys playing (for instance) Cthulhu are going to be stronger than you in the Combat and Terror struggles. But you're going to be stronger than them in the Arcane and Investigation struggles. He has to put up with taking 3 turns to win a story instead of 2 for not having Investigation, you have to put up with guys sometimes going crazy or dying. It's all good. Crazy guys come back, and Miskatonic has LOTS of ways to restore them on demand. Dead guys stay dead, but who cares? You've got access to lots of cheap characters, it just doesn't matter so much if they die. And hey, you have more card draw effects than any other faction, so you can go get more out of your deck pretty easily to replace any casualties you take.

Each faction has its own strengths and weaknesses. You can shore up your weaknesses a bit, but mostly you're better off leveraging your strengths - or doing both at once. Try out some of Miskatonic's cards that let you skip certain icon struggles or turn them into different icons of your choosing. Then you can double-dip on Investigation or Arcane and not even do the Combat if you don't feel like it.

I think they pair up well with either Cthulhu or Shub. You just have to decide if you want to include Villaneous or Heroic characters.

If you're using Cthulhu you can use the Museum Curator to dig for the Khopesh of the Abyss, if you're using Shub you can make use of the Cthonian Stone:

www.cardgamedb.com/index.php/CoC/CoCCards.html/_/ancient-relics/the-shifting-sands/the-cthonian-stone-tss

Either faction will give you plenty of terror and combat icons and both are good at support destruction.

I should add that that next boxed expansion (coming maybe around November-ish?) will be focusing on Miskatonic and likely give them a lot of cool new options. A few cards have been shown, and from what we've seen there seems to be a theme of explorers and lost cities going on.

I've recently picked up the game again after a few years of hiatus, and I'm also looking for starter advice. I've been thinking about building a hastur/miskatonic deck (more forthematic reasons than anything else, to be honest). Anyone got any tips or pointers?

I realise that misk is rush and hastur is slow control (or at least they were when I last played) so they're not a match made in heaven, but surely it would be possible to let hastur play support by removing threats and keeping the pressure on the opponents while rushing for investigation-centric win somehow?

I think you can make it work. Actually, Tom Capor (the reigning champ) was playing a Miskatonic/Hastur deck at Gencon that seemed to work pretty well so there's one precedent

I'd recommend putting some take control cards in there such as Infernal Obsession and Stygian Eye. I've found these to be very useful against enemy decks that are resistant to insanity. Maybe look into some effects that drive groups of characters on both sides insane and then restore your Miskatonic guys with benefits. Extra Combat with Dr. Carson's Treatment, free token with Mad Genius, free card with Student Archaeologist, etc…

Great advice, thanks! The fact that I didn't even know what deck the reigning champion is playing just shows how embarrasingly out of the loop I've been…

I really like the idea off mass insanity/restoration combos. Cardsteal seems a great and very flexible strategy as well.

Will definitly give it a try. Now I only have to get hold of all those asulym packs I've missed while I was gone…

I should have made this a bit more clear - Tom was using Miskatonic/Hastur for the warmup tournament, which is mainly just for practice/fun. For the real tournament he had a Shub/Yog deck. However, both decks seemed pretty competitive though.

One great thing about this game is that pretty much any combination of factions seems like it can work well if you take the time to test out your deck and do some tuning.

Janus said:

I would definitely buy the Seekers of Knowledge deluxe expansion as that is focused primarily on the Miskatonic University faction. This will be the most bang for your buck with Nerds if you lack a large collection.

Conjecture seems to be that you should be able to create a decent monofaction deck with the Seekers of Knowledge combined with your core set and any other Nerd cards you own.

StrangeLibrarian said:

If Hastur/Miskatonic is the direction you want to go, then definitely pick up Seekers of Knowledge - it's mostly Miskatonic cards, but as I noted in the General Discussion thread, there are some strong options that combo well with Hastur. Misk U now has a lot of abilities that not only deal with insanity, but even benefit from it. "Double yellow" Hastur/MU decks should definitely be viable now.

Beyond that, I would recommend Beyond Tartarus, which has Stygian Eye - a critical card for any Hastur deck - and Archaeology Interns and Mask of Sthenelus, two very good cards for MU. The Ancient Relics Cycle and the Revelations Cycle generally have strong cards for Hastur and MU, although which individual packs to get will depend on what specific strategy you are trying to develop.