Tom Capor's 2012 World/National Championship deck

By Magnus Arcanis, in Call of Cthulhu Deck Construction

Just to add a couple of comments to what jhaelen said: my modifications were mainly removing the 1x of the cards. I don't like to play 1x in CoC, generally speaking. In this case, the 1x were Under the Porch, Nodens and the Corrupted Midwife. I played 2x Nodens, and 3 Under the Porch.

I changed other cards: -3x Faceless Abductor (I don't like to lose one char on the board to simply bounce, and the icons are good, but I prefer the Shub ghouls then), -2x Displaced Cthonian (slow for the effect, IMO), -3x The mother's hand (to double use the domain you have to pay 4 and at that point I just prefer to play something bigger for that cost).

I add: 2 copies of Under the Porch, 1 Nodens, 1 copy of Broken Space, Broken Time, 2 copies of Nug and replaced Nyarla with Eibon. Even though Nyarla is good, I prefer Eibon because it's another way to accelerate a domain to 4 resources on turn 2 and it's still on of the best char out there, IMO. Last, I add the other ghoul (I didn't do the math, but I was playing 50 cards so if you see more than 50 cards, just take out 1 copy of a ghoul).

The deck played well, as expected. I've been toying around with something similar for quite some time 5 months ago so I knew how to get the most out of it. Twilight Gate didn't give me the best feeling, since the resource choice in the opening hand is usually a couple of AO. And I prefer to keep my many angled thing in my hand, rather then resource it. Other targets are not so cool, in general. I liked, instead, feed her young. I didn't play often Under the porch-> Nug (only once, I think), but it is a good plan to accelerate and I'll definitely keep it in the deck. And Under the Porch is another tutor for Shub AO, so it's just plain good.

My main concern (which is one of the reasons why I stopped playing the deck) is how resilient it is against destruction. With destruction I mean a deck that is packing something like 20 or more removals (CdtA, Single Glimpse, Many angled things, Pushed into beyond, eventually kopesh/nodens, or Marcus/Shaft etc…). That was my deck until the last euro tournament, and I think it might be a tough match for this deck. In your version there is CM to recover some char from the discard, but it is definitely slow and not solid (1 sac off, and the CM is gone). Have you ever faced such a deck? Then, as you say, you don't take into account combo, which would be a complete disaster in the euro meta :)

Anyway, the deck is solid in doing what it is designed for and there are some cool trick in it (example from yesterday's tournament: turn 1, play Basil, turn 2 play double many angled thing, clean the board, go for stories unopposed…sweet :P ).

bye

Konx

I can vouch for the extreme weakness this deck has to destruction. I've been running such a deck since the June Regionals and its pretty poo against a Yog / Cthulhu with The Carpathian endlessly searching for the next Khopesh after all the sacrifices. Even worse is a Khopesh / Bast's Hunt combo. Granted if it has the right card at the right time it can sometimes hold off but also the biggest drawback to this mix is the lack of investigation. It doesn't finish stories quick enough I've found. My solution was to switch the speed of the deck for a huge amount of toughness and invulnerabilty ( as seen in the MONSTER MASH ), and it seems to play a little slower, but a lot better, as the lead up to this change was pretty much a carbon copy of the Worlds deck, and was repeatedly getting beaten by destruction.

Cool, I'm happy to hear you guys got some positive results (congrats to Konx for winning)!

Just a couple things.

Beings of Ib - Don't think I even considered that. Neat idea.

1x of Cards - I hate doing it too, but I treat them as additional copies of other cards. Such as Under the Porch is really +1x of each of my Shub characters. Broken Space, Broken Time is actually +2x of each Ancient One. CM is +1 or more copies of each of my characters. Since so many of my upper teir cards are Unique I enjoyed tool boxing them a rather than resourcing them as they make terrible Twilight Gate targets.

The Mother's Hand - I'm guessing Konx played the deck completely different than me. Which is fine and is obviously still very effective. However, if you don't abuse Feed Her Young and Twilight Gate to accelterate the main domain to 4 resources to be used on your second turn's operations phase then I agree, its not worth playing them. However, as designed, The Mother's Hand is a free character starting on your second turn, not 3+ per traditional resourcing.

vs Destruction/Sacfiice - Really, this deck is not much weaker than just about any other deck is against heavy board control strategies. It's one of the reasons why certain cards are there. For instance, The Mother's Hand + CM is a greater way to supply sacrifice fodder. Plus, most heavy board control decks are light on the character count and most of those characters have (easily) exploitable weaknesses at stories. Which is where this deck can really succeed. Heavy destruction decks can certainly draw out the game, but unlike most aggressive decks, this one doesn't get weaker over time. If anything it gets stronger, and with some sort of infinate loop of destruction AND the deck not finding a quick answer for it is pretty much the only way a control deck is going to win unless they're packing some sort of amazing trick. Still, not exactly always an auto win for this deck but I would give this deck the advantage against a control heavy deck.

Other faction instead of Yog - Doing so can obviously be made into an effective but completely different deck. The main reason Yog was used to pair with Shub was for Twilight Gate. Which was, at the time, the only (reliable) way other than Feed Her Young to accelerate a domain on turn 1 so it can be built up to 4 resources for use on turn 2. Which, if thats what your going for, it's irreplaceable.

Descendant of Eibon - Good choice, and defiantely was on the highly considered list. I would recommend against using him to accelerate to 4 though. Not having the hard 4 is rough. That being said, he is great for accelerating to 6 to hardcast Glaaki or on a seconday domain to cheat out a 3 guy early. What sold me to Nyarly was… 1. Anceint One immunities (expecting a lot of hastur and cthulhu), toughness (for staying power), 4 skill (was expecting a good bit of ice shaft this year), that and it can be fetched via BsBt. 2. I was expecting a lot fo dual and tri-faction decks, so tossing the wrench into their resource decisions paid huge dividends. 3. Who in their right mind would be expecting Nyarlathotep? So ultimately more of a meta game choice than anything else, but DoE is usually a better card overall.

Combo decks - Ya… you got to know your meta. If half the feild is bringing combo… I wouldn't bring this deck. :P Good news is, Logan+Necro isn't long for this world. Glimpse is still a thing, but at least we can fight that. Which, btw. Displaced Cthonian really shines in that match up.

In all fairness, this deck does seem to do better the faster my opponent tries to be. So the slower/more controling a deck is, the better chance it has provided that it is using the correct tools. From what I've noticed so anyway. Recalling some of my most grueling games… they usually invovled things like Turn 1 Glaaki, repeated uses of Azathoth, Jamburg+D. Rift. Sure, I ended up winning them anyway, but instead of a 10 minutes we're talking 40+ minute games and there was a high percentage chance that I wasn't going to be walking away with a win.

All in all though, this is a fun deck that found a hole in the World's meta. I expect by the time next year it'll be something else entirely as lot of new cards will be out between then and now. Add in that now peopl can be prepared for it and have so much knowledge against it… it's unlikely that we'd see it win a major tournament again… unless someone it becomes unstoppable of course. :P

EDITED DUE TO DECK POST