So Tom mentioned in his post about his World Championship deck that it might be possible to sub Cthulhu in for Yog in the deck, the big plus for Yog being that it has Twilight Gate. It occurred to me that in the right deck, Por XV: 14:19, the Cthulhu prophecy, could theoretically work in place of Twilight Gate (providing you had cards that could be sacrificed--Aziz Chataluka, Lavinia Whateley, and The Three Bells jumped to mind). I've toyed around with the deck design a little bit, and it seems like Cthulhu might be slightly weaker in the earlier game than Yog, but it gets pretty severely destructive in the late game with Cthulhu, Cthylla, Deep One Rising and possibly Ghatanothoa providing some serious fire-power (I'm still toying with Ghatanothoa, but combined with Lavinia Whateley and maybe a Corrupted Midwife he seems pretty exciting).

I've just begun toying with the deck, and I'm having trouble balancing early-game defence with late game power. This is made especially difficult by the fact that I don't have Nodens. I really want Nodens. Oh well. Anyway any advice on what to include and what to leave out would be greatly appreciated.

One final general thought is that it might be worth sticking in Hastur to deal with pesky Explorers with willpower (this would not be an issue if I had Nodens damnit)

Here's the working decklist

CHARACTERS--34

2 Aziz Chatuluka

1 Cthylla

1 Bokrug

2 Cthulhu, Lord of R'lyeh

3 Ghatanothoa, Out of the Aeons

3 Priestess of Bubastis

3 Lavinia Whateley

3 Ghoulish Predator

3 Black Dog

2 Basil Elton

1 Corrupted Midwife

3 Grasping Chthonian

3 The Mother's Hand

2 Y'Golonac

2 Nug

EVENTS--12

3 Por XV 14:9

3 Feed Her Young

3 Broken Space, Broken Time

3 Thunder in the East

SUPPORT--4

2 The Three Bells (almost entirely to help guarantee my ability to sacrifice a character)

2 Under the Porch

GrahamM said:

I was also toying with a Cthulhu sacrifice deck, but not with Shub yet. I mostly wanted to see how easy it was to trigger Por XV to pop in Cthulhu. You're right: it's very slow. Temple of R'lyeh helped me hang in until I got the cards I needed, but it's also a slippery slope of sacrificing board position to hopefully force the Yog-Shub player to sacrifice their ancient ones.

Oh, and if you want Nodens: http://www.coolstuffinc.com/main_search.php?pa=searchOnName&page=1&resultsPerPage=25&q=kingsport+dreams

With Shub I've found it's actually quite fast--you're just about guaranteed to have an ancient one out by your second turn. The downside is there's going to be one turn where your defenses are pretty bad. This has been leading to losses to rush decks--one mono-miskatonic (the deck can't really stop mass investigation struggles until turn 4 or 5 and Dr. Shrewsbury is deadly) and one Yog-Silver Twilight (bounce is good). I think Nodens probably could remedy this problem to a large degree, but I can't be sure.

I've been experimenting with Por XV too and also found that my Shub+Cthulhu had problems with the early game ;-) Especially against M.U., of course. I tried your deck once, it's nevertheless a very strong deck with good combos, IMO. Some thoughts:

Removals:

• Perhaps remove the 3 Mother's Hand and replace with some other Shub cards (to retain a good Shub/Cthulhu ratio for Feed Her Young). IIRC, Tom Capor said that in such a deck, the cost of this card could be 0 as well. He's right about that, but it's still consuming 3 of 50 slots in the deck and you only draw 2 cards per turn. If the domains are developed well and you are in a strong board position, you don't need the Mother's Hands; but if you're weak, there are better cards to help you… So I'd replace them.
• The Black Dog surprise is dwindling, because of cards like Flux Stabilizer or the upcoming Prepared Alienist and because players will fear the Black Dog and adapt. Perhaps they can be replaced, too. The fear of the Dogs will still be in the minds of your opponents, and that's the biggest advantage of the Dogs, IMO.
• I'd remove Cthylla. Its action is best used in combination with Corrupted Midwife, but only 1x copy of each card is in the deck -> improbable.
• Generally, the deck focuses a lot on AO and how to bring them into play… Make sure the deck is not focussed too much on that.

What I'd add in:

• 2x Book of Iod. Card advantage for Shub? Wonderful :-) Plus it's a 1 cost card (-> early game) and the psychological aspect (your opponent will see what you're taking in your hand) is also pretty nice, especially if your domains are well developed.
• 3x Ya-te-veo to defend against a weenie deck. Especially if it is using Combing the Archives which has neither Terror nor Combat struggle. Even Ancient Ones seem helpless against the Archives…
• 2x Horrific Shoggoth. Your deck has a lot of Terror icons, its booster increases their usefulness. Urumi could be used as well, plus that's only a 2 cost card.
• An additional copy of Aziz to increase sacrifice options for Por XV and to increase probability for Aziz + Nug combo

Have you tested the deck against a milling deck? Nug, if brought into play with Under the Porch or Aziz, will reduce your deck about 6 additional cards in total (3x for Aziz and 3x for actually playing it in the next turn).

Have fun while experimenting with that deck :-)

The one concern I have about removing Mother's Hands is that an early Initiate of Huang Hun can really terrorize this deck--are there any other good anti-Huang Hun Shub cards? Cthulhu has a few, but as you mentioned its probably better to keep it all in Shub.

I'm not aware of a good Shub card against the Initiate of Huang Hun… so I guess 2x Shocking Transformation + 2x Dreamlands Fanatic would be a good option. Of course that means another 2 Cthulhu cards, but if bounce decks are a threat, they're worth it… perhaps reduce 1x Urumi/Horrific Shoggoth and 1x Bokrug for the Fanatics, then it's not even a change in numbers.

As an additional effect, the Fanatic can be brought into play for free if you use the Three Bells, and the Transformation could bring a Grasping Chthonian into play if you need support destruction immediately and not only in your next resource phase.

Ah, one other thing that I noticed now: Thunder in the East seems to be the better card compared to Burrowing Beneath in the first hand, but its operations phase restriction can be pretty detrimental. Perhaps swap 1 or 2 Thunders against Burrowing Beneath?