Many know that hand advantage is crucial to a good deck, so what do you think is the best single card for each faction, and what is the best card combo for multi-faction builds?

That covers a lot of ground, but I hope we can find an answer for each combination. Obviously factions have different strengths, so for some factions (like Yog for example), card advantage might mean recursion, and for Shub it might mean search and put into play.

I can try to start it off:

MU - Forbidden Knowledge. Attach it to a worthless (insane?) character and immediately sac it to get 4 cards. Since it will most likely not stay in play long, it will be less likely to get discarded like Scientific Text.

Syndicate - Bootlegging Operation and Gun Runner's Club. Both are pretty much the same to me, but Bootlegging is probably better since it will always draw you a card…it doesn't matter if it's off the bottom or top, it's still a card!

Yog - Tindalos Alpha. Dear God, character recursion and two cards? Love.

Cthulhu - Most of Cthulhu's effects focus on board control, but I'd probably say The Carpathian. Sibilant Cry is better since they go straight into play, so it's card advantage (not hand advantage).

Shub - Shub's conspiracies are incredible, but perhaps not reliable. Even Here She Dwells can net some serious draw.

Hastur - Focuses more on hand destruction, which is hand advantage, so it counts. Apeirophobia.

ST - This one's harder, since they focus on board control and filtering. Recruiter for the Lodge?

Agency - Educated Officer, except it's a combo draw ability, so you need wounding effects. White Ship? Jenica Capra?

Neutral - Hall of Champions. Each turn it's a free card in play, but again, I'm bending the rules a little since it's going straight into play.

Combos:

MU/Agency - Obsessive Insomniac / Sleep Therapist - Not great since you have to kneel two characters to get two cards, but still decent.

Agency / Neutral - Educated Officer / Diseased Sewer Rats - Net 2 character swing and a free card during operations.

Thoughts?

For Shub The Book of Iod - definitely. It draws one of two, place it on Gollonac and it wont be that easy to take down, and also fuels your discard pile for Corrupted midwife. (I also have yog discard recycling in my deck soits even better) With price of 1 its as cheap as it gets and for me is the best draw in the game.

Forbidden Knowledge i find nice in my Hastur /Mu that focuses on board control with Dimension rift and character stealing attachments, then comes card control with hasturs discards. In this deck you can take controll, use and then sacrifice opponents character using forbidden knowledge. With Jumberg and Museum Curator it works really well. Theres always yugoth contract if you want to exchange characters for cards even more.

Just remember FK is not that great as it sounds, youre exchanging 2 cards for 4 cards, so net gain is only 2 and you need to drain domains. But with cards like Museum curator that are used for "enters play" effects only its really nice, curator if lucky can also become +3 cards for 2, but its not reliable, in my deck i have enough support cards to make him reasonable.

.Zephyr. said:

Yes! I forgot about the Book of Iod. Great card. Arguably better than or on par with many MU draw cards.

I find Yuggoth Contract inferior because it's a lot higher initial investment for the pay-off, and only if it stays in play. It's net 0 (and 2 domain) the first time, and then only net +1 every time after that, at the cost of board position.

Any other great combos?

Yog / Cthulhu - Laboring Gug / Khopesh - Board control and draw at the same time.

double insted of edit… i so hate this forums interface… why no delete last post option for post author?

Officer is quite problematic with his MU steadfast. He would be really nice without it, the need of Nerds in the mix makes him much harder to use. Maybe with the next Nerd expansion it will be easier to make a solid MU + Agency deck where he would shine.

Marcus Jamburg for any support heavy deck, he might not draw cards but recycling your discard pile with no card loss is quite insane.

Same thing for Corrupted midwife - why do you need draw when you can use your discard pile, with some discarding card effects they might become even stronger than normal draw.

I agree about Officer, he's a fairly niche card because he requires two specific factions to be in the deck. If you're playing that combo, you can take him, but it's a once-in-a-blue-moon thing. Sort of like Lodge Barkeep. He's awesome, but requiring two factions keeps him from seeing a lot of table time.

Seekers of Knowledge is out now and should be showing up in stores soon - our shop claims they'll have it when we meet there tomorrow for league. Anyway, with such a big influx of new cards I'm sure MU + *anything* is going to get better.

Marcus Jamburg is crazy good, wonder if he's heading for the old Restricted list someday? But for now, if you're playing powerful Supports, especially ones that burn themselves up like Ice Shaft, he's a no brainer.

Corrupted Midwife is pretty nice, but she does have to exhaust with each use which means you can't send her to stories and you can't use her multiple times per turn. I guess I'm a bit less of a fan than some people here are, but that's OK. Solid character, but not someone I reach for all that often. There is a plausible argument to be made though that if a character is in your discard pile that it's usually a better than average one. They made the cut to be played, and were perhaps also selected by your opponent to be killed too. Well, unless you have discard effects in your deck, then all bets are off but if that's the case you're at least opening up a lot of choices for her so she's more versatile and the tradeoff is well worth it. Doesn't take much quantity in your discard pile to make sure SOMETHING good is in there.

Book of Iod is fantastic, and also goes well with Midwife for the reasons I was just explaining.

I think Obsessive Insomniac is being a little short-changed here, he's a really nice card because he's simple. No combos, moving parts, etc… He's cheap, he works, and with Arcane you can potentially send him to a story AND use his draw ability in the same turn. He can even re-exhaust himself to block some odd effects like Y'Golonac. Doesn't come up a whole lot, but sometimes you'll benefit from some readying as part of something and he can help you double-dip. Stuff like Restless & Wary, etc…

Maybe not what you mean, but I think repeatable filtering effects that improve the QUALITY of what you draw are pretty nice too. Cards like Strange Librarian for instance, or Prism of Many Views.

I always overlook the steadfast on Educated Officer, but isn't it possible to run him tri-faction? It will be interesting to see if MU gets any destruction effects…I highly doubt it, but we'll see. Someone mentioned Educated Officer with Dynamite before. Since wounds are dealt one at a time, he would draw for each, I think.

Obsessive Insomniac is hard. Using his ability to stand him really at that point becomes a +1 with a filter, considering that you're using one of the cards you draw that you would resource. I think he's much more useful in longer games where you have hand advantage already.

What do people think of The Back Room and Professor Rice? Is it worth giving you opponent and extra card to give yourself one too?

So my general take on "both players get X" effects is that you have to build your deck so that you can take more advantage of the bonus than your opponent can (who of course didn't know that bonus would be there). In the case of drawing extra cards, it's a bit tricky to do this but in general I'd probably start by looking for cards that let you discard to pay for an effect.

Professor Rice is to me by far the better card because you CAN load your deck with things that let you draw and in this way leverage the bonus more than your opponent can. Then move on from there to find ways to put those extra cards to use with discard-for-effect stuff and maybe something like Eldritch Nexus to let you play more of the cards you draw.