So the deck is Cthulhu, Miskatonic, Silver Twilight. You have an Atwood Science Hall with Lodge Defenses attached. You use the Lodge Defenses (after you sacrifice a ST character, pay X to return a character cost X or lower to your hand) to play and sacrifice Dedicated Butler (After Dedicated Butler enters play discard a card from your hand or sacrifice dedicated butler) infinitely.

This gives Erasmus Manor (after a character you control leaves play, Erasmus gains CI until the end of the turn) INFINITE COMBAT, INVESTIGATION, AND SKILL.

NOW, during your story phase, you play Misguided Dreams, so all characters must commit to stories.

THEN, you commit Erasmus Manor and Halflings of D'Haz (the loser of the combat struggle must take an additional wound for each combat icon he lost by), and your opponent must commit all of their characters. With infinite combat you kill all of your opponents characters without invulnerability. With infinite investigation and skill you are guaranteed 2 success tokens! Throw in Parallel Universe for more zany fun.

HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY STOP THIS DEADLY COMBO!?!?!?!

GrahamM said:

It requires six different cards, two of them cost four characters and since it relies on recursion Snow Graves stops it dead. Erasmus Manor doesn't have Toughness or Willpower and you can play the Halflings only on your turn.

I also predict you wouldn't have a chance to win against any variant of Tom's most recent World Championship deck. Your opponent will definitely have invulnerable characters in play before you get the combo going and your support cards will be trashed by Displaced Cthonian.

Combos tend to look good on paper but unless you can get them into play in a single turn, your opponent is likely to disrupt it early.

Still it's a nice find since I like infinite combos (and FFG doesn't )!

Haha don't worry Jhaelen, I'm aware it totally would not work. Sarcasm is hard over the internets

BUT STILL, HOW EXCITING IS THIS COMBO?

It's a neat theoretical exercise and a nice find for sure, even if it won't work in a real deck.

Yeah, there are lots of cards that can disrupt it from happening or destroy part of the combo. Oops, Erasmus just got exhausted, or taken control of, uncommitted, destroyed, sacrificed, bounced, blanked, yadda yadda. But none of those simple cost-effective cards are as cool as your ridiculously pumped card you spent half the game getting set up just to watch it deflate like a popped balloon

There is one pretty obvious card that could end that loop… alone with all loops and every other freakin card on the board! which is dimensional rift. I hate dimensional rift.

You use any, and by any i mean any, form of character controll on • Erasmus Manor (destroy, exhaust, make insane, uncommit)… or the support, or lodge defences, or snow graves, any kind of anti-combo play really…

Halfings and Science Hall and Misguided dreams I would not consier, but their kinda not key so maybe some other cards could take their role.

The core is Lodge Defences + Butler loop that might base something else. ST only restriction is problematic.

I like Ritual of lance here for clearing the board of characters each of your operation phases for free. (if those supports are not destroyed)

And if opponent decides not to play many guys you can bounce and get uncontested stories.

The problematic part is keeping those supports on the table.

[Edit]

Misguided dreams + Halfings + commit only to 1 story on your turn is also a nice idea worth testing.

My two pennies worth, but if the opponent has characters with T icons, either Erasmus Manor or Halflings will have to become insane before launching the slaughter…

- choose Erasmus Manor to become insane and you lose your overboosted guy and his I icons (and one element of the loop) --> you will probably wound 2 or 3 characters, maybe a few more, but that's it, and maybe a success token for the skill, and maybe another because of uncontested story (if Halflings effect was large enough to clean up the defender side).

- choose Halflings and you will only wound 1 character, put 1 succen token for the I struggle, and maybe one more for the skill. Definitely none for the uncontested story.

Mmmmmh, tough choice…

The clear solution is to include Roald Ellsworth and then put False Papers on both Erasmus Manor and the Halflings of D'Haz