David Boeren
United States
Marietta
Georgia
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If you haven't read my "Basic deck building for new players" or the first Deckbuilding example you may want to start there and come back.
For our second sample deck, I randomly picked Miskatonic and Cthulhu (I avoided reusing any factions we've done already). So that means our 3rd deck will
be some combination of Agency, Syndicate, and Shub...
Like before, the deck listing is hosted on cardgamedb here:
http://www.cardgamedb.com/index.php/CoC/cocdecks.html/_/coc-...
Anyway, back to the matter at hand - big green monsters and the researchers that summon them. I really want to include Cthulhu himself in this deck - and since I'm the one writing it I'm willing to bet that I get my way on this 
There are actually two version of Cthulhu, the one in the Core set, and a newer version included in The Wailer Below. You can actually use both if you want to, but being Unique (the little dot in front of his name), you can only have one copy in play at a time. Not one copy of each version, but one copy total of any cards named "Cthulhu". We'll find out later whether how many and which ones I put in.
Now, knowing that we have a big expensive character we want to fit in (Cthulhu costs 6 resources), I'm going to be looking for any cards I can find that can lower his cost, pump up our domains faster, or anything else that can help us afford him. Let that be my first step in fact. I'm going to browse the cards we have available right now (remember - just as in the first example I am only allowing one Core set, one Secrets of Arkham, and the six packs of the Yuggoth Contract cycle of which we hope to use no more than four in the final deck). Here's what I can find:
Lord of the Silver Twilight - Makes Cthulhu cost 1 less.
Seeker of Mysteries - Makes any Character who costs 5 or more cost 1 less.
Lord of the Silver Twilight is a Core card, so we only have one copy in our set, but Seeker is from Secrets of Arkham which means we have two copies of her. Between them and the big green man himself we've got maybe 5-6 cards already picked out.
Now, as we get into choosing some of our other characters you'll notice some tendencies. Cthulhu doesn't have a lot of cheap guys. Miskatonic on the other hand does (students are cheap) but also has some more expensive Professors. However, they can be a little thin in the middle-cost (3) area. So we're probably going to end up with more of our cheap guys (but not all) being Miskatonic and more of our expensive guys (but not all) being Cthulhu.
This may end up affecting our expected resourcing strategy, so let me explain my thinking on that for just a moment. At some point we're going to have to get one domain up to 6 resources if we want to put Cthulhu on the board. That means our other domains will probably be smaller. If after five turns an average deck is at something like 3-3-2 we may be more likely to be 5-2-1, 4-2-2, or 4-3-1. Now, what kind of cards can we play with those little domains? Cheap one. What faction are more of our cheap cards likely to be? Probably Miskatonic. So when you're making those resourcing decisions, keep that in mind. Try to start the game with your three domains as: Miskatonic, Miskatonic, Cthulhu if possible. Diversify them when you can, but the smallest domain is probably better off as a single Miskatonic card rather than a single Cthulhu card, because there will almost certainly be more cards you can play with it that way. With 2 out of 3 domains remaining small for a while, we might also want to have a bit higher proportion of inexpensive characters than typical.
Also, as you grow you've got a long way to go so don't skip resourcing until you're built up. My goal would be to build towards 5 resources on my big domain, and be ready to add the 6th card *AFTER* I have Cthulhu in my hand. There's no reason to build it up to 6 until you need to when that card could be helping some other domain that sorely needs it. Also, don't cripple your game. If you need to build up another domain to keep in the competition - do it, and work on the big domain later. Otherwise he might not arrive until after you're too far behind for him to make the difference. btw, when I say 5 resources, what I really mean is one less resource than you need. If you've got some of your discount Characters in play that 5 may really be a 4 or a 3. And of course, don't resource those important discount characters!
Alright, we've got a plan to summon Cthulhu. We've got a few helper cards to hopefully be able to summon him. But you know what would really help? If we could FIND those cards fast. The quicker we can get our discount characters out of the deck, get them into play, and get Cthulhu in hand, the less prepared our opponents are going to be. Now, we're not playing Yog who have more searching cards. Nor are we playing Shub, who's got some cards that turn one Character into another. But we *are* playing Miskatonic, and what they have is a lot of cards that let us draw extra cards which means we'll get to what we need sooner.
So what can we do to accelerate our draw?
Cost 1-2:
3xFocused Art Student - Draw a free card when she enters play, just what we need. Plus she has both Investigation and Arcane icons.
1xLaboratory Assistant - We certainly want a few 1 cost characters in the deck to ease pressure on our resourcing decisions
1xStrange Librarian - A versatile guy, he can filter our deck to find things quicker or filter our opponents to block their best cards
1xStudent Archaeologist - Another one that lets us draw a card, then each player discards
Cost 3-4:
1xDr. Ali Kafour - Draw a card each time he goes to a story
1xNatural Philosopher - Draw a card when he's played, then each player discards
Events:
1xFeast of Famine - Draw two cards, then both players discard
1xUnearthing the Ancients - Draw 3 cards
Support:
2xScientific Text - A reusable card drawing machine
So quite a few choices there. Both Events cost 3 btw. I don't mind including some of the pricy stuff, but I'd like to lean more on the cheap cards first. For now I'll pick Feast of Famine because making our opponent discard slows them down which gives us more time to summon Cthulhu. I think for what we're trying to do that may be better than drawing one extra card.
We may be relying on our cheap guys for a while, so let's dig into the Cthulhu Characters and pick out a few more. I'm going to go with:
1xInnsmouth Troublemaker - A cost 1 character with Toughness+1 to allow him to soak some wounds to protect the fragile Miskatonic guys
3xBrood of Yig - A fairly versatile character with some Terror but also some combat potential
1xYoung Deep One - Great combat for cost 2, but watch out for his zero Skill
That gives us quite a few cheap guys (and we may end up trimming a couple) so let's dig into the stronger characters next.
3xBackwater Deep One - a nice durable combat guy
1xGuardian Shoggoth - an even MORE durable guy, but less of a fighter
1xVisiting Author - Our first Transient card, which I'll explain below
2xDeep One Rising - A bit pricy, but a good character that destroys enemy characters when played
1xDr. Ali Kafour - Draw a card each time he goes to a story
1xNatural Philosopher - Draw a card when he's played, then each player discards
1xRavager from the Deep - Fantastic defensive Character
Where are we at at this point? I count 27 characters assuming 3xCthulhu (we still haven't picked what version yet). We need to add in just a couple more. While I'm here, let me explain the Transient character "Visiting Author". When a Transient card is resourced, it actually counts as TWO resources. Pretty awesome right? But there's a catch. You only get to use that domain ONCE, and the Transient card is destroyed. This is actually a big drawback, so why are we including him? Because he can let us catch our opponent off-guard by pumping up our domain and playing Cthulhu faster than they thought we could. It's a trick. It won't happen every game, and most of the rest of the time you may want to avoid resourcing him, but on the right occasion it's a useful tool to have in your box and I don't mind putting one of those cards in the deck. Sometimes it might be worth resourcing him to play some other strong card. But, do NOT play him as a resource too early in the game. A Transient card gives you a brief surge at the cost of putting you behind the resource race and you can't afford that to happen until your resources are built up fairly well OR if it's going to let you play something super-devastating like the mighty Cthulhu.
But, three more guys... We've got more Cthulhu characters at the moment so I'd like to put in a few more Miskatonic guys to even things up. The first one that look interesting is Athropology Advisor, he could really help us stretch our small domains since he makes all Investigator characters cheaper. But, how many of our characters are Investigators? Five total (so far). Maybe we can find some more? How about if we add Mad Genius and Professor Smith? Professor Smith gets extra icons whenever we draw cards due to a special effect, and we've got a fair number of those so I think we can justify him pretty well (besides, it's just one copy). There! That's 30 now, and 7 is enough Investigators to make me feel like Anthropology Advisor has sufficient reason to be here. In a bigger card pool we could theme more strongly around Investigator characters but this is fine for now. Besides, you're usually not going to get as many in a dual-themed deck because Agency is the only other faction with a significant number of Investigators. Actually, we're still a little too lopsided so let me replace one of the Brood of Yig with another Professor Smith. To help balance things out a little I'm going to try to emphasize Miskatonic more in the Events and Supports.
We've got some of our Events and Supports chosen already to help our card draw. I'm going to pick most of the rest to give us a general toolbox of abilities and shore up our weakness to Insanity, as even a lot of our Cthlhu cards do not have Terror. By adding Sword of Y'ha-tallo to grant a Terror icon and a few cards that can cure Insanity, we can help a lot with that. Some of the others I'm choosing to buy us time, or to put some pressure on our opponent by letting us grab extra success tokens or re-readying our characters so we can be strong on both offense and defense in a turn.
Before I forget, we've got to go back and resolve the Cthulhu issue, which version are we going to use? They both have identical icons and Skill, they only differ in their special ability. One automatically sacrifices a character every turn (including our own). The other sacrifices an enemy character but we have to pay 3 resources. We've got a decent number of cheap guys, so we might actually be able to afford to lose a character more than our opponent so I think I'm going to add our one copy of Cthulhu "The Great Old One" and then two copies of Cthluhu "Lord of R'yeh" for the three copies I was planning. I don't think there's much reason to have four, that seems like overkill. If we're lucky enough to draw both types we can choose which one fits our needs better but remember that once one is in play we can't play any more of them even if it's the other version.
So here's our complete list:
Characters: 30
1xInnsmouth Troublemaker - A cost 1 character with Toughness+1 to allow him to soak some wounds to protect the fragile Miskatonic guys
1xLaboratory Assistant - We certainly want a few 1 cost characters in the deck to ease pressure on our resourcing decisions
2xSeeker of Mysteries - Already discussed her, she makes Cthulhu (and any cost 5+ characters) cheaper
2xBrood of Yig - A fairly versatile character with some Terror but also some combat potential
3xFocused Art Student - Draw a free card when she enters play, just what we need. Plus she has both Investigation and Arcane icons.
1xLord of the Silver Twilight - Already discussed him, he makes Cthulhu cheaper
1xMad Genius - His ability to help win a story faster could be useful
1xStrange Librarian - A versatile guy, he can filter our deck to find things quicker or filter our opponents to block their best cards
1xStudent Archaeologist - Another one that lets us draw a card, then each player discards
1xYoung Deep One - Great combat for cost 2, but watch out for his zero Skill
1xAnthropology Advisor - Help make our Investigator characters cheaper to play
3xBackwater Deep One - a nice durable combat guy
1xGuardian Shoggoth - an even MORE durable guy, but less of a fighter
1xVisiting Author - Our first Transient card, which I'll explain below
2xDeep One Rising - A bit pricy, but a good character that destroys enemy characters when played
1xProfessor Nathaniel Peaslee - All around solid guy w/ combat and possible resurrection effect
1xNatural Philosopher - Draw a card when he's played, then each player discards
2xProfessor Smith - Gets extra icons whenever we draw free cards, which we hope to do a lot
1xRavager from the Deep - Fantastic defensive Character
1xCthulhu "The Great Old One"
2xCthulhu "Lord of R'lyeh"
Events: 13
1xBinding - A nasty story surprise for your opponent
1xDr. Carson's Treatment - Some protection against Terror driving your guys insane
1xGet it Off - Get rid of problem enemy attachments
2xPrimal Fear - Give us a way to nullify troublesome special abilities
1xSacrificial Offerings - Hopefully we can trade one of our cheap guys for one of their better ones
3xUnder the Microscope - Since we will likely have the edge in Investigation struggles
1xRestless and Wary - Get all your characters ready again
1xFeast of Famine - Draw two cards, then both players discard
1xUnearthing the Ancients - More card draw
1xDeep One Assault - Good versatile card that can destroy a Character or Support
Support: 7
1xSword of Y'ha-tallo - Just what our nerds need to beef them up for story adventure
1xArkham Asylum - Help deal with any insanity issues
1xTcho-Tcho Talisman - A leg up in the Terror struggle or some protection
2xField Research Station - Give us some more story threat
2xScientific Text - A reusable card drawing machine
Double-checking the deck, there are two things I want to call attention to:
1. Remember that the card Deep One Rising is a Loyal card. That means that only Cthluhu resources count on the domain you use to play it. So, you may want to try to specialize one of your two bigger domains with more Cthulhu cards - concentrating them there instead of spreading them out if you can. Not a big deal for only one Loyal card in the deck, but good to keep in mind. It's worth it though because it's such a useful card.
2. We actually have to fix this, because the deck is not legal as it stands. We have included Dr. Ali Kafour who is a "Heroic" character, and also Cthulhu who is a "Villainous" character. You cannot have both kinds in the same deck. We're not dropping Cthulhu, so that means Ali has to go and we need to pick out one more character card, preferably a Miskatonic one, to replace him. I'm going to go with Professor Nathaniel Peaslee from the Core set. The cardgamedb deck builder is useful, but as this shows it does not enforce any game-specific deck building rules - that's your own responsibility.
Now, let's take a look back and see if our assumptions about the cheap characters above holds up. We thought we'd have more inexpensive Miskatonic characters, remember?
Cost 1:
1xInnsmouth Troublemaker - A cost 1 character with Toughness+1 to allow him to soak some wounds to protect the fragile Miskatonic guys
1xLaboratory Assistant - We certainly want a few 1 cost characters in the deck to ease pressure on our resourcing decisions
2xSeeker of Mysteries - Already discussed her, she makes Cthulhu (and any cost 5+ characters) cheaper
Cost 2:
2xBrood of Yig - A fairly versatile character with some Terror but also some combat potential
3xFocused Art Student - Draw a free card when she enters play, just what we need. Plus she has both Investigation and Arcane icons.
1xLord of the Silver Twilight - Already discussed him, he makes Cthulhu cheaper
1xMad Genius - His ability to help win a story faster could be useful
1xStrange Librarian - A versatile guy, he can filter our deck to find things quicker or filter our opponents to block their best cards
1xStudent Archaeologist - Another one that lets us draw a card, then each player discards
1xYoung Deep One - Great combat for cost 2, but watch out for his zero Skill
So for cost 1 we actually have an even split of one each (and two Neutrals), and for cost 2 we've got 6 Miskatonic and 4 Cthulhu. So, not too lopsided but roughly like we were thinking. We also have one Visiting Author that *might* only cost 2 if we have Archaeology Advisor in play.
How about the four asylum pack target? We didn't use any cards from Murmurs of Evil, The Spoken Covenant, or The Cacophony. So we actually exceeded our target and only used three packs. Nice!
In this case, our main theme is the summoning of Cthulhu with support by our Miskatonic characters to research the proper ceremony as quickly as possible represented by our accelerated card draw, which I think we pulled off fairly well. I'm interested in seeing how it works out in practice but I think it looks pretty reasonable for an initial design. I'd like to keep an eye on how fast the characters come out and whether they need any more help surviving until the big guy shows up. If you look at the graph on the deck builder page you'll notice how our resource curve is skewed downwards to more cheap cards than our previous deck. A couple of tests should help reveal if we can afford to bump some of them up to slightly stronger characters or not.
The other thing I'd want to keep an eye on is our faction balance. We've got a higher proportion of Cthulhu characters, which is somewhat counterbalanced by having a higher proportion of Miskatonic Events and Supports. It's probably OK, and to some degree you can say it's playing each faction to its strengths, but it's worth watching for a couple of games.
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Daniel Ach
United States
Maryland
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Great write-up!
Just a couple things:
1) Villainous and Heroic characters can be in the same deck; they can't however be in play under your control at the same time.
2) You mention thinking about adding in a second copy of Cthulhu The Great Old One (making a total of 4 Cthulhu), but that would be against deckbuilding restrictions. You can only have 3 of the same title card in your deck, and subtitles don't count. I think you mentioned this earlier in the article...
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David Boeren
United States
Marietta
Georgia
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Thanks for pointing those out. In this particular case since getting Cthulhu on the table is a big goal for us, I don't think there's any situation we'd want to put Dr. Ali Kafour into play and directly block that goal so it amounts to much the same thing. But in general, you're right that you could mix them in the deck as long as they were not in play at the same time. I try to avoid it though.
Actually, there are even cards that let you bypass this restriction - the Syndicate character Tyler Scindere is in our pool and allows this for instance.
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Andy Mills
United States
Iowa
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It was my understanding that you could play Dr. Ali, then when you played Cthulhu, Dr. Ali would be discarded. So you could have the use of him until it was time for Cthulhu to eat him.
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David Boeren
United States
Marietta
Georgia
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That's actually not the case. Here's the snippet from the rulebook about Heroic vs. Villainous:
"During the game, a player cannot play (or bring into play via card
effects) a Heroic character if he controls any Villainous characters.
Similarly, a player cannot play a Villainous character if he controls
any Heroic characters in play.
If for any reason a player controls both a Heroic character and a
Villainous character at the same time, he must immediately choose
one to be discarded."
So, if you already have one in play, you cannot play the other. The second part is for special situations. For instance, you have a Heroic character in play, but he goes insane (which makes him lose all his text - he is no longer Heroic). You take advantage of the temporary absence of Heroic to play a Villainous character. When the Heroic guy is restored (and regains the Heroic subtype) THEN you suddenly have an illegal situation and you must discard one of them.
It can happen in lots of ways, because this is a game of special effect. Maybe you take control of an enemy Heroic character while having your own Villainous character in play. Hah! Now you can effectively kill off that pesky Hero
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Andy Mills
United States
Iowa
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Ah, gotcha. Thanks for the clarification!
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Posted Sun Jan 15, 2012 11:59 pm
