So in case you're wondering, yes, this is my "oh look at me I just ran out and got Seekers of Knowledge before the rest of you" post.

Quick verdict: this is a great expansion, no question about it. Yes, it's very much focused on Miskatonic University - and honestly, with 37 (!!!) MU cards, it's a must-have expansion for anyone even halfway serious about MU - but there's a lot of great stuff for every faction. And let me say it: the artwork is gorgeous. Good job to the artists - some of the cards look so good I'll be looking for excuses to include them in decks.

By the numbers, although FFG may have already released them - 37 MU cards, 2 for each other faction, and 4 neutrals. But for non-MU players, there actually is some really good stuff, as each of the factions get a Prophecy along with another very solid thematic card. But the real gold in the expansion for non-MU players, in my opinion, is the neutrals. There are only four of them, but they are solid, and fit into a lot of deck compositions.

I actually think the composition of the expansion works really well. With an absolutely huge allotment of cards for MU, the designers had a lot of freedom in exploring the faction and adding a lot of useful tools to their tool chest. Also, the composition allowed for some neutral characters to be added, which is great, we hadn't seen significant numbers of them in a while. And while it may look like the other factions are getting short shrift, that just isn't the case - each gets a couple of cards that really amp up faction-specific characteristics. The days of Asylum Packs with two or three "safe", somewhat generic cards for each faction are definitely gone. The designers have a lot more freedom with this new format, and they're using it to good effect.

I simply can't preview all the cards, because honestly, 37 MU cards alone, really. But MU gets a whole slate of 2- and 3-cost characters, with a good representation of 0- and 1-cost to supplement. Most are relatively weak in isolation, but have lots of cool little abilities that work really well together. I particularly like this fellow:

* Lucas Tetlow ( Eternal Curator ) 2 [C] [A] 2 Faculty . Invulnerability . Disrupt : When a player would play a non-Location support card, discard one of your success tokens from a story to instead put that card into play under your control, as if you had just played it from hand.

What's that, a Khopesh of the Abyss? Why yes, we already have one in the collection.

And then there's this great card (anyone who's been one will appreciate it):

Overworked Graduate Student 1 [A] [A] 0 Faculty . Student . The cost of the first Research card you play each turn is reduced by 2 (to a minimum of 1). Action : Exhaust Overworked Graduate Student to reduce the cost of the next Student or Faculty character you play this phase by 1.

This is just one of several cards that boost Student and Faculty sub-types, so Student and/or Faculty themed decks are a very good option; here's another:

Campus Security Guard 3 [C] 3 Faculty . Toughness +2 . Disrupt : When a Student or Faculty character would be wounded because of a [C] struggle, instead wound Campus Security Guard. Disrupt : Discard Campus Security Guard from your hand to prevent a Student or Faculty character from going insane.

One new (I think) sub-type introduced is the Lost Civilization, a new type of Support card. I think they already previewed Atlantis, so here's another:

* Mu ( Cradle of Civilization ) 1 Lost Civilization . Response : After you lose an icon struggle, exhaust Mu to restore 1 character or remove 1 wound token from 1 character.

OK, I don't really want this post to go on forever, so let me get to the really good stuff: the neutral cards. I really like them all, so here they are.

* The Claret Knight ( Her Sworn Champion ) 3 [T] [C] [A] 1 Servitor . Immune to triggered effects. Response : After a Tactic card is played, ready The Claret Knight.

* Aliki Zoni Uperetria ( Resourceful Servant ) 3 [C] [A] 3 Servitor . Response : After Aliki Zoni Uperetria exhausts to commit to a story, choose and drain 1 domain.

* Amaranth ( Opener of Ways ) 3 [C] [C] [A] 3 Conspirator . Servitor . Amaranth may commit to conspiracy cards while exhausted. Response : After you succeed at a story where Amaranth is committed, search your deck for a conspiracy card and add it to your hand. Then, shuffle your deck.

* Er'nrawr ( Death and Entropy Manifest ) 5 [T] [T] [C] [C] [A] 5 Ancient One . Invulnerability . Fast . Er'nrawr's text box cannot be blanked or treated as if it were blank. At the beginning of a player's turn, that player must wound a character he controls or drain one of his domains.

I don't have room for each of the other faction cards, but let me do both of Syndicate's; as with the other non-MU factions it's only two cards, but I can see them going in a lot of decks.

Hanyatl's 12:3 ( "The horn blew and the hordes came." ) 0 [steadfast: 1 Syndicate] Prophecy . Play during any player's draw phase. Action : Place this card face up on your deck. Response : After a character has its skill lowered by a card effect, discard Hanyatl's 12:3 from the top of your deck to put a [syndicate] character into play from your hand.

* Peter Clover ( Playing the Odds ) 3 [C] [C] 3 Criminal . Action : Choose a character committed to a story and reveal the top card of your deck. If the cost of the revealed card is lower than the cost of the chosen character, uncommit that character. Then, either put the revealed card on the bottom of your deck or discard it. (Limit once per story, per turn.)

That's an amazing card - just being able to shut out high-cost characters from the story phase is great, but with a Bootlegging Operation running at the same time . . .

A couple of other random notes: Polar is back! Several Polar keyword cards included. Also, a couple of Day/Night themed cards, so they're not forgetting that either. A fair number of characters that interact with Prophecy cards (not surprising), and a whole lot of Explorer themes with cool effects. Oh, and a short story included!

Anyway, I'm short on time so that will have to be it for tonight. Hopefully this helps people get a feel for the expansion.

Whooooooooooooooooooooooooooah.

Well, you got home before I did Our store got the new expansion tonight too and I snagged one.

It's truly a great set and being able to design an entire box together has really let FFG do some amazing stuff that I don't think they'd ever have been able to do with monthly packs that can only have 2-3 cards per faction.

A lot of the Miskatonic characters are Explorers, who work a lot like Mi-Go with each Explorer buffing the others. Granted Willpower here, +1 Skill there, Toughness+1 from the other guy - it adds up. There are cards that protect Explorers from triggered effects, four Lost Civilization for them to hang around, and yet still a nice assortment of non-Explorer stuff such as Student, Faculty, and Scientist cards.

One thing though, all but one of the Explorer characters are Unique, so Miskatonic fans will probably be hoping for a few more non-Unique Explorers to come out in some future expansion.

Anyway, the goal seems to be to package enough Miskatonic cards in a single box that with this and a Core a new player can build a couple of decently competitive decks and they've certainly done that I think - trying them out they seem to fit together and work pretty well.

All the other factions got one Prophecy and one character each, with a lot of the characters being on the higher end of cost. Some pretty cool stuff there too.

A few cards I really liked:

Alternative Historian is a 1-cost character with no icons, 2 skill, Faculty, Investigator. When you play her you draw a free card, and you can discard a card from your hand to choose an icon struggle at any story and that struggle does not resolve. Miskatonic is good at card draw in general, and has some more ways to draw extra cards in this set - so a character that can turn those into a get-out-of-combat-free is pretty cool.

Catacombs Docent is a 2-cost character with AI2, Faculty, Lunatic. When one of your characters goes insane, drive him insane for a free success token on any story with fewer than 4 tokens. Sweet! And then there's also his twin brother the Ghost Hunter who does the same thing if one of your characters gets destroyed!

Roald Ellsworth is a 3-cost, AI2, Explorer, Faculty, also Loyal. All Explorers gain Willpower, and anytime an Explorer you control would leave play you can draw 2 cards or put 1 card from your discard back into your hand. He is, I think, one of the real cornerstone Explorers you'll want in your deck.

Sports Scholarship is a 1-cost support. Attach to a Student, they gain Toughness+2. Sacrifice attached character to choose and wound a character. What? Targeted character removal for Miskatonic?

Expert Testimony is a 2-cost event and Research. Disrupt: When an icon struggle would resolve at a story, choose a Miskatonic character and commit it to that story. Until the end of the phase, that character gains *Investigation*. That's an extra struggle, not the icon. The shenanigans you can pull with this are epic. It's not just a surprise Open For Inspection, you can actually duck the Terror and Combat struggles, and then when Arcane or Investigation are about to resolve suddenly show up at the story and nab a couple of tokens. Super-cool card.

Well hey, I'm being summoned away so that's all for now. Last thing I'm going to say is that my favorite Lost Civilization is definitely Ipiutak. Tell you why tomorrow

Interesting - Ipiutak definitely has some clear uses (it's a very handy anti-destruction card, for one), but I'm intrigued by why you think it's so useful.

One interesting thing I am seeing as I'm looking through MU's cards - they have a couple of Lunatic types and some "drive this character insane" effects. While most of MU's cards are oriented toward making mono-MU not just viable but strong, there's also some significant thought given to making double-yellow decks (Hastur/MU) viable. E.g.:

Catacombs Docent 2 [A] 2 Faculty . Lunatic . Response : After a character you control is made insane, drive Catacombs Docent insane to add 1 success token to a story with less than 4 success tokens on your side.

As a broader theme, it appears that they're trying to build out a Lunatic-central strategy for Hastur (with some help from MU, as per the above card). Hastur's big card for the expansion is:

* N'yog-Sothep ( The Nameless Mist ) 5 [T] [T] [A] [A] 5 Ancient One . Invulnerability . Villainous . Forced Response : After a non- Lunatic character is restored, it goes insane unless its controller pays 1.

That's just asking for a deck built around Lunatics and insanity effects.

I've got to get to bed, but one last card - and it's a big one. For Agency:

* The Company ( Arm of the Shadow Government ) 4 [C] [C] [C] 5 Government . Heroic . Willpower . Government characters gain Toughness +1 .

I don't often play Agency decks, but if I did I think that that would be the first card I would include.

Very nice! Thanks! Can't wait to tear into it.

Runix said:

So the card reads:

Response: After a character you control was chosen as the only target of a triggered effect, exhaust Ipiutak to copy that effect choosing another character as the target of that effect.

I see this as a great deterrent card. If your opponent has effects that target a character for destruction, insanity, bounce to hand, etc… then you can use Ipiutak to copy the same effect onto one of his characters - which may cause him to question whether it's worth using the effect in the first place.

Some effects are by nature not copyable, but a lot of the major ones are. For a 1-cost card, I think this is a pretty strong effect but of course we'll have to see how it plays out in more games.

Ultima Thule (exhaust to put an Explorer into play from your hand, returns at end of phase) may be better within the specific confines of an Explorer-themed deck, but as part of the larger card pool it's very situational as most decks won't have any use for it.

The Company is a really strong card with 5 icons and 5 skill for only cost 4, plus it has Willpower and grants Toughness to Government cards. Also, if you're running this you're probably running a Government theme and taking Special Agent Clarkston so The Company may only cost 3! I have a friend who's a big fan of Willpower/Agency decks and he's going to be very happy with this card.

N'yog-Sothep does look like a good pick for a Lunatic deck, although most Lunatics are low-cost so you'll probably want some more 3-4 cost characters to make it worth building a domain that big. Really, all the Ancient Ones look pretty decent. How about?

Nug: cost 5, TTCA5, Ancient One Invulnerability, Villainous. Destroy all Day cards. Forced Response: After Nug enters play, attach 1 card from the top of your deck to each of your domains as a resource.

You should be able to concentrate on one domain, pay for Nug with whatever discounts you can get, and then get 3 free cards added to get a pretty nice resource surge. I like it.

Carl Stanford is going to go into my next Silver Twilight deck too. costs 3, CAI3, Lodge, Sorcerer. The cost of non-Silver Twilight characters cannot be lowered. Action: Pay 1 to choose a spell or Ritual card in your discard pile and add it to your hand. Limit once per turn.

There's a whole list of decks that are going to be unhappy about their discounts not working, and recurring Spell & Ritual cards will work nicely with mono-ST, ST/Yog, and ST/Misk decks.

Really, there are great and interesting cards all over the place - if you haven't done so yet you've got to pick up this box

Runix said:

Runix said:

Those two cards are crazy good. N'yog Sothep is good even without luncatics as a way to choke your opponent (figuratively of course).

The Company is just very, very efficient. Veryveryvery efficient.

Specifically, Dangerous Inmate and Deranged Diva seem good with N'yog Sothep since they specifically drive other characters insane. Other Lunatics benefit only in a passive way by not being caught in the effect themselves.

This directly counters some of Miskatonic's un-insanity tech which is nice, and strengthens basically everything that causes insanity. The other piece to that puzzle then is that you've got to make the insanity stick which often means getting rid of Terror or Willpower and perhaps we'll see some more cards that help with that. The Marked is one way, but I'm sure whenever the Hastur box comes out we'll see more, and probably more ways to spread the insanity around too. Perhaps they'll get some kind of terror version of Ravager of the Deep that shows up at a story and scares everyone - that would be a great card for a Halloween preview

Wow, I just did a search on cardgamedb for Hastur cards with "Willpower" in the text box and there are only two! Hastur himself, and Keeper of Dreams who's hard to get hold of since he's from the Dreamlands cycle. Yeah, they can definitely use some more cards that remove Willpower.

What the heck IS that on the Keeper of Dreams card anyway? It looks like an albino winged dinosaur that's been shot in the forehead.

Cthylla (new Cthulhu Ancient One) has a pretty nice ability. Sacrifice a character to have each opponent sacrifice a character with a printed cost equal to or greater than the character you sacrificed. Limit once per phase.

Yog needs some of that, a sacrifice effect that doesn't just kill the weakest dude on the table

There are plenty of ways to get past [Terror] icons for insanity effects - Scotophobia is the go-to card for Hastur for that. A couple of other good cards in the same vein are The Enchanted Wood and The Rays of Dawn (I particularly like the latter, as most characters with [Terror] have only one, and Hastur has a large number of unique characters). Sweet Dreams is good but situational (and doesn't combo with The Rays of Dawn particularly well!)

Willpower is a lot more difficult to remove - Hastur (Carcosa) is the best and really the only option, as Keeper of Dreams is hard to find and annoyingly unreliable. There are also some alternatives for rendering text boxes blank, but most of them are not all that useful, e.g., like The Bootleg Whiskey Cover-up and The Night. Best option for Hastur against Willpower-heavy decks like Agency is to cross fingers and hope to hang in there until the Lord of Carcosa shows up.

I also like the new Carl "turned over a new leaf and not evil any more" Stanford. He basically has a built-in T'tka Halot, but one that requires a resource rather than exhaustion, which is nice, as it means he's available for the story phase. More Spell/Ritual recursion on the way - ST/Yog decks will definitely benefit. The elimination of cost reductions will also be really nice against Shub decks and against MU decks, which now have even more cost reduction than they did previously.

Runix said:

I can't wait to dust off Eureka! for 2-cost, or even Unearthing for 1.

Runix said:

Yeah, there are a variety of ways to get around Terror, but I think we could use another (less expensive than Hastur) card to help defeat Willpower sometime. Characters at this story lose Willpower, something like that? Exhaust to choose a guy to lose Willpower? Whatever, anything's fine. Of course in the meantime buff guys with Willpower make dandy targets for Stygian Eye

Runix said:

So I have to hang my head in shame here, I didn't realize until now that the character of Carl Stanford already existed in the CoC RPG and was a prominent member of the Silver Twilight Lodge. But, the LCG didn't originally have a Silver Twilight faction so he (and some other cards like Silver Twilight Temptress) got put into the Cthulhu faction instead. Anyway, what all this means is that Carl is actually just "coming home" to where he belongs. In fact, in the black-border days there were a few more ST cards in the Cthulhu faction too.

On a timeline, I actually fancy that the ST-Carl is the original man, and that he probably got corrupted and turned to Cthulhu later on. It might make an interesting story sometime.

It's a shame I can't attend Worlds, because I could definitely find a place for him in my revised deck.

Doing a little more research, there are actually a number of ways to blank out text boxes - Called by Azathoth, Bound and Gagged, Antarctic Yeti. There are also a few cards that specifically nullify keywords - Richard Upton Pickman, Elliot Ness' Handcuffs, Curse of the Putrid Husk. Problem is, none of them are Hastur. So combination decks can deal with Willpower without too much trouble (particularly Hastur/Syndicate), but mono Hastur only has Hastur (Carcosa) for that purpose.

It is interesting that they did a remake of Carl Stanford v.1 (quick trivia: what other unique characters have multiple copies?). I still like the original - he's a very solid, highly durable character, makes for a great blocker and is difficult to get rid of. Plus, he eats Cultists for lunch, and finds them rather nutritious. Still, even without the Invulnerability ( ) I find Carl Stanford v.2 to be slightly better, as he combos better with the faction he's in. And you're right - Silver Twilight is where he should be.

Now, if only Silver Twilight Temptress and Lord of the Silver Twilight can come back home . . .

I have to say that my biggest disappointment out of this set has to be the Cthulhu cards. I'm not a huge fan of the "sacrifice something to get your opponent to sacrifice something of theirs" tactic. I mean, c'mon, this is the Miskatonic expansion! They are the biggest thwarters of this mechanic in the game! That, and it seems to have the most synergy with Serpents, and I dislike Serpents (sorry Hata, and to a lesser extent Damon). Deep Ones are the way to go! My only hope is that in the Cthulhu big box expansion, we get super Innsmouth/Kingsport lore. I want my Assinath Waite, Zadok, and Temple of Dagon. Penfold, if you're reading this I keed, I keed!

AUCodeMonkey said:

You tell the missus to cry me a river over that one for me please? lol

The Cthulhu Prophecy card seems useful though, as a slower faction with a lot of expensive characters it's really useful to be able to pump up your domains. I haven't played it yet, just theorizing.

Anyway, when the Cthulhu box comes out I'm sure it'll be chock full of awesome cards too.

Hellfury said:

I will let her know your sentiments :-P Meanwhile, I will rock my new nerds in glorious fashion. She's also threatened a ST/MU deck with new Carl and an Initiate, so we'll see if we can get her to switch from the dark side!

EDIT: HF, she says you can't beat her without Magahs and 70 Steps. She said she will play you, and whine about whatever she wants, because she's a girl and that's what they do :-P

Runix said:

Being one of the last to recieve any new update to the game ( moan and lament ), I can only speculate based on the information I recieve from such posts, but this card is certainly interesting to me, and how they intend to balance out the mono Shub deck to deal with cards like this. The Marked has already been given the ability to strip it's terror icons ( one of it's main struggle threats ), and now it's cost reducers have also been targeted. With no directed character removal of its own ( except the outrageously expensive gug ) to my knowledge, and no character lock downs, it will be an eyebrow raiser how this will be compensated for, and whether mono Shub can recover from it.

One thing I have feared since the last cycle is characters being given some fairly significant passive abilities they neither require to pay or exhaust for, simply needing just to be present. The answer I suppose is MORE directed destruction / text blanking, and the lines between factions will need to blur together.

I do like his standard ability though, as it works in perfectly with the ST deck I'm working on !!

Well, here is a more exact description of the card at least:

*Carl Stanford, cost 3, CAI3, Lodge, Sorcerer. The cost of non-ST characters cannot be lowered. Action: Pay 1 to choose a Spell or Ritual card in your discard pile and add it to your hand. Limit once per turn.

As far as killing a character who never goes to stories, there are some Neutral cards you can use for this such as Hypothermia or Antarctic Wind. In a bigger picture though, I'm not sure it's intended that every faction should have an answer to every situation. Sometimes you just have to switch tactics, or look at taking cards from another faction if you don't want to have to worry about that.

Shub still has strong combat & terror to use against Silver Twilight, plus excellent support removal. They can survive losing their acceleration partway through the game (they're still likely to have it early on). Also note that it's a lot easier to say "this character just never goes to stories where it could be killed" than to actually do it. Investing 3 into a character that only provides a passive ability is expensive, especially if you want to play them early enough that the Shub player hasn't already gotten several discounts.

true true dboeren. im just speculating until i get my grubby hands on a copy and i can see him in more of a spell / ritual returning role. it'll be a race for the cost reduced y'golonac to draw him to a story !! thanks for the more indepth character description. i just hope they dont go crazy with the character passives.

I wouldn't think so. And some of them like The Marked have drawbacks as well. I mean, it's not like Hastur doesn't have terror icons on a lot of their own dudes too! You can also potentially deal with them using blanking or insanity.

I would expect that all the factions are going to get a whole bunch of new goodies when their box comes out, and Shub will be no exception.

I'm particularly interested in seeing what they come up with for Syndicate. I was making up a new mono-Syndicate deck last night and thinking that they rely perhaps too much on the same two themes of either super-exhaustion or David Pan skill decks (and once you've got some skill manipulation it's really kind of obvious that David Pan should be in there).

I'd like to see them shaken up a little and introduce some new themes. The "gambler" theme we see on Peter Clover is really cool and thematic, maybe we'll see some more effects like these. Actually, the whole Prophecy mechanic is something of a gamble too so more of those would fit in nicely.