I have had this obsession with trying to work a minor Elder Things theme into a mono-yog deck when I first started playing the game less than 6 months ago. To me it seemed like a daunting task but here is my first attempt at what it should look like. I am sure some of you out there will have plenty to say about my noobish mistakes but I welcome you all to point out my errors, ask questions and make suggestions. I am looking forward to what you guys have to say.

Mono-Yog (Elder Things and "Friends" )

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Hey there. Nice deck. Just a heads up if you're new here and to posting. Sometimes there's not too much happening in the response department, especially when it comes to decks, and i've often found that it feels like i'm talking to myself throughout the post. A lot of people seem to prefer 'lurking', for whatever reasons are their own, so don't get to thinking in your 'future deck posting career' things like "Wow, did I just put up a deck that is so poo that no-one has the heart to tell me??" like I know I have in the past. Haha. Its just the way the forum rolls. Hundreds of views. A pittance in comparison of actual replies.

ON TO THE DECK !! Well, I prefer to let people discover the game themselves and learn their own play style and decks / cards that will suit it, so in that department I won't say much. What I WILL say is that I can already tell that you have a good grasp of what are some of the big cards to use when building a nice Yog base. You've obviously developed some insight into certain synergies and combos that lie within the faction, and so on that front, bravo and keep it up. I can see that you'll be making many fine decks in the future. As for whats good and whats not, playtesting is really the only answer. Sure, people can tell you, but getting in some game time will not only reveal what cards are not being used and what are ( against a variety of decks ), but more importantly, which ones are suiting the way you play, as each person will think some cards are better than others based solely on this, which is where outside input can sometimes confuse the issue. Also, I learn so much by playing others, as synergies and combos within factions i'm not really focused on become apparent, and the changes I need to make to my decks to now combat these. Just last week a newb showed me a little combo that hadn't even crossed my mind in an 'off' faction.

Anyway, like I said, that's a great start to go into such testing, You'll have fun tweaking it and molding a deck that you can be proud of and call your own !! And when you're done, you'll have a nice Yog base understanding to carry over into other decks

( And you can always jump on Lackey to do this. There's only a small following, and until I found a couple of people who's timeline suited mine, I found myself often just lurking and popping in and out to empty rooms. Now I'm getting around 4 - 6 games nearly every night. It took some time to set this arrangement up but I'm now pumping out the play time. With it's filters within the deck builder it's also a great way of making more decks !! ).

POSTSCRIPT: Honestly, I'm still a newb myself, so who am I to tell someone what to do ??!! Haha. And of course card 'suggestions' have been asked for, so fire away people with your views and personal preferences !!

Actually, to get the ball rolling, I will pose a question. Yog-Sothoth is a big card to have cost wise, and it seems that you have a cheaper card that can play cards from the discard. Can you think of any way of getting Yog into the discard ?? I only say this because in my experiences Ancient Ones rarely make the table in time unless you have some way to 'tease' it in at a discounted cost. It MAY prove too costly to be included, but there are some sneaky ways around this……….. Either that or you COULD try another certain Yog Ancient who does have some little helpers………….

I have noticed that actually. I have been "lurking" this section of the forum myself for a few months now. I figureded it might be worth it to post a deck idea anyways and see if I could breathe some life into the deck building forum, but alas, it is not so.

Well for me I was (still am to some extent) a long time MtG player. I have been playing MtG for almost 20 years so when I got into CoC I was able to identify which factions I would like to play the most bassed off of my previous expereicne with MtG. Yog appealed to my inner "johnny" so it became my go to monsterous faction for deck building. That and I have always loved the stories "The Shadow out of Time" and the novela "At the Mountains of Madness where the Elder Things are the central creatures within those stories. However I am straying off of the topic so I shall instead get back to the deck as it were.

I would love to test this deck in the flesh but my card pool is somewhat limmited at the moment, my only saving grace is that one of the guys I play with shares his card pool with me and I share mine with him, so I can at the very least be able to test the majority of the deck. If I were to redesign the deck to be more acurate to the cards I have avilibe to me, the core cards would be "highlander" in number as my friend is the one with the core set….I still have yet to get one. I suppose I could test the deck on LackeyCCG. There is of course the problem of me not having a microphone though, so skyping while playing on LackeyCCG is out of the question at the moment.

I would like to note that since I posted this deck it has gone through some reworking as I found (in theory) the deck was trying to do to much so I streamlined it so that it was more focused on the conspiracy aspect of the deck. Here it is! (Note: I am going to plug this baby into Lacky and then see if I can scrounge up a headset from somewhere so I can test it out against some people )

Conspiring with Elder Things

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Yes. Yog was my first ever and still remains love and my first real deck was a Yog / Shub mix. Perhaps it's a 'johnny' faction, because I'm certainly one of these 'personality types'.

It's also not totally necessary to have a headset for the first couple of games on Lackey, but it makes timing of plays etc a whole lot easier. It'll be worth the investment if you can chase one up.

Aye. I would imagine that I might be able to borrow a headset from one of my friends within the next couple of days. I had one but my ex-girl friend accidently ruined it by runing over the cord with the computer chair one too many times. Oh well. The other option I have is to hit up the local thrift stores to see if there are any there. It's long shot in that case but if I happen to luck out that is a headset for $1-3 bucks!

Alright now to breakdown the card selection of the deck (for those of you who are lurking) as I am sure you COCLCG are fully aware of why I made the changes to the deck.

Crazzy Eddie/Ol' Lazy Eyes/Amaranth : I think these cards are pretty self explanitory but I will still talk a little about them anyways. So Crazzy Eddie at face value is not that hot of a card. 0 cost 0 skill and no icons, resource fodder for the most part….except when you have a conspiracy in your oppening hand, which is a likely scenario when there are 5 conspiracies in the deck. However when there is a conspiracy in play and Eddie is as well he becomes a decent little attacker/blocker gaining +1 skill and [C][A]. Now Ol' Lazy Eeyes is a solid 2 drop for this deck as he helps to fetch up either a Grand Design or Endless Investigation when he enters play and then additionaly gains a [T] when said conspiracy is in play. He is an ideal early fetch and attacker/blocker for this deck. Now we come to Amaranth , she is a beautiful card for a few reasons. 1) She can commit to a conspiracy while exhausted. 2) She has good solid icons and good skill for a 3 drop. 3) She can dig for a conspiracy when you SUCCCEED at a story that she is commited to. Now you may be wondering why I did not include The Red Gloved Man, as he is superior to Amaranth with his ability to put a conspiracy directly into play. Well there are two reasons for that. the first and foremost reason is that my copies of The Red Golved Man are well situated in a ST deck that I am currently running and the second is that I have been wanting to make use of SoK cards.

Reawakend Elder Thing/Elder Thing/Forgotten Shoggoth : So Reawakened Elder Thing is one of those cards that looks like a crap card because of it's forced response which reads (for those of you don't know): Forced Response : After an event card is played, exaust Reawakened Elder Thing, if able. It is however an excelent choice for this deck beacuse The Grand Design alows me to commit my exausted Elder Things to it. It essentaly becomes a huge threat in this deck as it is a SKILLL: 4 with [T][C] for only 3. It also forces the opponent to seriously reconsider if they want to play an event card or use a support (to which I have answers to anyways ) to remove it. This is all in theory mind you as I have yet to actually play the deck lol. Elder Thing fills the Elder Thing Scavangers slot because I removed the cursed skulls from the deck and thus the Elder Thing Scavangers becomes a usless card as there are no longer any non-location support cards to scavange for. The Elder Thing does it's own scavanging with it's Response mechanic of pulling two cards from the discard pile and placing them on top of my library in any order. It also becomes a okay target for Twlight Gate for deffense, offense or setting up your next turns draw with some a few cards that I may need then. Now we come at last to the Forgotthen Shoggoth . It takes the Hideous Gaurdians place. I'll admit that this might not be the best of decisions on my part and after I do some real testing I might put the gaurdian back into the deck, but for now I am going to go with the reasoning of the shoggoth's ability to cyle cards back into my deck is a good thing. But maybe the Gaurdian is the better pick for saving my board position after a Catastrophic Explosion or Nodens drop. Hmm I think I am just going to have to test them both and see which works the best for this deck.

Umr at-Tawil : Fills up the spot that the Gaurdian Elder Thing was taking in the previous build. When I took the Hideous Gaurdian out I realized that the Gaurdian Elder Things usefulness had dropped signifigantly and I needed another 5 drop to put in his place. Yes I could have stuffed a Nyarlathotep into this spot, but once again my desire to make use of some of these new Ancient Ones from SoK took precedent. Umr at-Tawils function in this deck is to deny my opponent key cards through it's discard effect or to set up optimal targets for a well timed Open the Limbo Gates or Unspeakable Resurrection. And yes Umr at-Tawil can be used on yourself as the wording of it is as follows: After Umr at-tawil Readies chose a player . This is important because like I said two sentences ago, this can help set up the discard pile through choice discards for a Open the Limbo Gates or Unspeakable Ressurection.

The Endless Investigatiion : I think that this conspiracy is an auto include in almost any conspiracy deck strategy. When it's won (prefferably by me) I get to search my deck for another conspiracy card and put it directly into play! Neat stuff and an absolute must have for this deck.

All in all I still need to test this deck out a bunch of times to see how consitent it is. But that is half the fun of this game for me, playing and seeing my ideas work and if they flounder that just means that i have to tweak/refine the deck some until it does work on a consistant basis. The other half is deck construction. lol. Anyways I might see some of you on Lackey within the next couple of days as I am eager to get testing this deck out.

COCLCG said:

Well the only discard outlet I have in the deck at the moment is Umr at-Tawil, and he is on the expensive side as well. I had considered dropping the cost curve of the deck, so that it becomes more of a "rush deck" but I have a ST deck that is a control/rush deck and I really don't want to have another control/rush deck lol The other option would be Feral Elder Thing or Pawn Broker. Yes I could use Glaaki and his servants, but I'd rather not use him as I have another deck idea I am mulling over that has Glaaki in it. Actually the more and more I think about it I may just drop the Forgotten Shoggoth, put the Hideous Gaurdian Back in find some way to squeeze a couple copies of Feral Elder thing into the deck or go the rush route. Testing is what it all boils down to in the end

Dear dog! Lackey seems to be missing The Grand Design in it's database. Damnit all. Well there goes the idea of testing this deck in Lackey *pouts*

Scoezilla said:

Scratch that I discovered that I needed to update to the most recent CoC LCG database lol. Now to laern how to use the program ha!

I love Yog too, and have been looking into trying to make a good conspiracy deck, so I'm interested to see how this turns out.

Some of my feedback was to say that your deck may be too expensive at the 3-cost point, but adding in the Eddies and Lazy Eyes helped. I don''t know if Dampen Light is going to help stall enough while you build up. For that reason I liked the Faceless Abductors at 2 cost and to stall your opponent. I don't know if Single Glimpse will help either since it will probably just hit one of your Eddies or Lazy Eyes. What was your resource plan btw?

The only thinkg I would watch for if I were building this deck is that it seems to be pulling in two different directions: one that tries to get conspiracies out quickly and rush it with elder things, and one that stalls and tries to get your big dudes out. If the ancient ones are a contingency, you may have too many in the deck.

Those are my thoughts, but I hope playtesting goes well.

AGoT DC Meta said:

Right on! It's good to see another Yog lover amongst the forum goers here!

I have done a little bit of testing with the deck in offline mode on lackey (I am still a bit nervous to play it against someone) and what I have found is the three following things: 1) The AO's end up being resources as I am usually winning around turn 4 or 5 with the reawakened elders and conspiracies. 2) Open the limbo gate ends up being a dead draw and put to resources because of the quickness of the deck. 3) The Endless Investigation is not as usefull in this deck as I thought it might be, I rarely play it and it too ends up going to resources when I intended it to be played more.

You might be thinking of Calling Down the Ancients (Choose and destroy a character with the lowest skill) not A Single Glimpse (Choose an Opponent, that opponent must sacrifice an character, if able.). So A Single Glimpse is been quite helpful for picking off stragglers that TG'ed Many-angled Things and Faceless Abductors did not hit.

My resourcing plan? Well Constricting Elder Thing/Many-angled Thing/Elder Thing/Servant to the Elder Things/Forgotten Shoggoth are good characters to resource as they become great to decent targets for Twilight Gate shenanigans. Though I have yet to see how well the Shoggoth plays out as I have not drawn into a single copy in the games that I have played so far. Still considering putting Hideous Gaurdian back in…..but I first need to test it with the shoggoth a bit more. Then comes the lengthy deliberation of what I am going to be swaping into the deck for the AO's and Open the Limbo Gate.

Note: The testing I have done so far has been against a Hastur/Angency deck (gasp!), Hastur/Silver Twilight (it's a bit clunky still grrr) and my take on a Things in the Ground deck (heh, I personaly don't like it that much….to easy too play and too easy to play around).

I do have to say that you're going about posting decks in entirely the wrong way if you'd like more responses. You need to sound FAR more egotistical, be ready to argue until you're blue, and it helps if you say that you've never lost a game with the deck. ( hee hee hee ).

Yog's always a fun faction to me too. I must admit I don't use a lot of Elder Things though (except for Constricting). Most of them seem to me a little high priced for what they do or else have a significant drawback. Reawakened seems really good here though since you can get around his usual deficiency. Twilight Gate helps get around the high priced characters too - although I agree with Danigral that you may not have enough lower cost stuff that you can play conventionally. I would suggest trying the deck out against some sort of rush deck, my suspicion is that you could lose too many games before your deck gets going.

I also want to point out though that Shadow out of Time is mainly about the Yithians, rather than the Elder Things. Great story though, one of my favorites!

Scoezilla said:

You're right, I was thinking of the wrong card.

Regarding resourcing, I was curious how quickly you were able to build up, and if you've found it difficult to decide how to build up, since it seems you would both want to get to 3 quickly and have multiple 2s early.. Say you have 2-1-1 first turn and play Twilight Gate to get to 3-1-0, then what do you do? 3-2-0? It seems this deck would want those hard 2-resource domains, so you may want to do 2-2-1 or 2-2-2 before you build up your main domain, but that puts off playing those expensive dudes until very late (turn 4 or later). Don't you want hard 4 or 5 resource domains eventually? Perhaps you could just do the old Broken Space, Broken Time route and just build up to a hard 4 domain as the max?

dboeren said:

Suggestion noted! I hope to get some testing done later today against a MU rush deck.

True Shadow out of time is mainly about the Yithians, however the Elder Things are mentioned briefly in the story. It is also one of my favorite stories.

Danigral said:

No worries. ^^

Hmm well how I build up my reasources is highly situational but I usually like to have my main resource at 3 by turn two. How I go about getting there depends on what the opponent is doing. I am a bit of a reaction based player, but each reaction has a purpose that furthers my control over the board and the games flow. I had considered going with the Broken Space, Broken Time route for the AO's in the deck, which would mean I would need that hard 4 by turn two at the earliest, turn three by the latest. If I were to go with the later idea I may have to change the decks direction once more and I don't want to do that without testing it as it is at least 7 times, first.

If you haven't seen the announcement yet, Yog is the faction for the next deluxe expansion. So, in a couple of months there will be a lot more options for your mono-Yog deck

dboeren said:

I did see the announcement and I am more than thrilled about it. Hey the upcoming yog deluxe expansion will not only help flesh out my mono-yog deck but I would imagine that it will open up new possibilities for near future tournament deck archetypes and casual decks alike.

Now to play the waiting game! lol