thats one of the hardest parts of the game. keeping yourself in cards. and i try to design every deck to have either access to discard with some snow graves removal, cards like corrupted midwife, chant of thoth, etc., or cards which draw cards, like feed her young, thunder in the east, miskatonic students, yuggoth contract etc. of course some factions can't do this.

in saying that i will reneg on a statement, yes, character abilities can be useful, but they have to be at the right time and the right place and in the right faction. and certain cards can simply cancel them. ya-te-veo versus folklore professor for example. some factions WILL rely on character abilities as they have no access to aforementioned draw / discard, but shub is not one of them, and so ya-te-veo can be extremely tricky to use. its not a deterent if you have no domains to use !!

and i guess we play very different shub games. i rarely use y'golonac for example either. i never have the domains to make use of him.

i do agree there is a style of shub game that can utilize ya-te-veo and y'golonac and have 'spare cards' that may use the domain otherwise, but again, they can be very tricky to play and rely a little on luck of the draw, and against a quick deck, you may find yourself falling behind 'saving' these domains for character abilities.

and ya-te-veo can be useless against a deck with toughness. i'll gladly take a hit, or even sacrifice a character, knowing that you've just used your last domain to do it, and thus cannot possibly have a reply for an event ive been saving.
 

i will show you how y golonnac is strong so you'll never build a shubb deck without it ^^ but i don't want to make more HS in this thread

ok……………… show away - hahaha. good on ya KrissS666 !!! teach me the ways of the frenchman.

He also mentioned that the mini-shotgun consumes a domain which can be in short supply, although I don't agree that you should rarely use one on character abilities.  The important concept is more that a good deck should be using most of its domains (or threatening to use them) on most turns.  The mini-shotgun is also limited to skill 2 or lower characters and a wounding effect can be less useful against anything with Toughness or (of course) Invulnerability.

I see the mini-shotgun serving two main functions:

1.  Help against a rush of cheap low-skill characters

2.  Deterrent that causes opponent to choose differently who goes to what story

The Shotgun (full version) is feared because it can take out any character at the story, and you can generally assume it will be aimed at your strongest characters.  Ya-ta-veo can only take out little characters, or those who've had their skill reduced.  He's in a faction that doesn't have any skill reduction either, so I think it's safe to say that will be an uncommon case for him.  I'm generally OK with losing a little guy to get some success tokens or to take out Ya-te-veo.  He's not a roadblock by any means, more of a speedbump.

You ask if there are any other Shub characters that cost 2 who are as good as Ya-te-veo?  Yes - quite a few I think.  Opinions probably vary on these and of course it matters what deck they're in but here are a few I'd consider:

Albino Goat-Spawn, Black Dog, Collector of Sacrifices, Ghoulish Predator, Harvesting Mi-Go, Karin Marley, Twilight Cannibal, Wooden Homonculus

So, that's roughly half?  I'm not saying they're all unconditionally better, but they're all characters I'd consider of roughly equal worth.  Some others may be conditionally equal, say if you can ensure that it is Night.

The Combat/Terror icon combination is not hard to come by, several 2-cost Shub characters have that or better.  Nor is his Skill 2 exceptional.  Being a Dark Young has some value in certain decks, but mainly I think you're overvaluing the mini-shotgun.

.Zephyr. said:

I agree, although at this point the drawback with some of the cards mentioned will likely be that they will end up on the restricted list.

I admit that I love Apeirophobia, as it turns Hastur into a faction to be feared (ha!), which was not previously the case.  But it's still way too good.  Building a deck around Apeirophobia and forced discard is fine; but right now I can easily see it getting added to other decks that are neither primarily Hastur nor primarily control decks, which is a problem.  That's an indication that it may be a candidate for the restricted list.

I disagree on Stygian Eye.  It is powerful, yes, but has enough limitations to keep it in check.  It's unique, it requires a [Terror] or Willpower to be anything more than a one-turn card, can be removed with support removal, and returns the character control back after it leaves play.  It is not - like Apeirophobia - the sort of card where a player would be tempted to add it to a deck that isn't primarily Hastur or control themed just to try and get it in play.

Approaching a similiar effect from a different direction isn't neccessarily a power creep.

However, if you guys want a clear example of power creep feel free to use Hired Muscle -> Night Shift Security.

That being said, this game has very little power creep and when it does show it it is quite rare.

Also, not sure what everyone else considers to be a tier 1 deck, but I had Apierophobia in my regionals deck. ;)

would you describe hastur as a "control" type faction? i'm still looking for a way to recreate a deck i loved to play in MtG. it was a red/blue permission burn deck… mostly i just used cheap cards to cancel characters and events, or to just burn them away with destructive spells. i would run a few characters and they had the ability to buff up whenever i cast stuff… so i had the ability to sneak in for decent damage every few turns all the while maintaining a foot on the neck of their deck.

does this strike anyone as sounding particularly like a CoC faction combo or play style?

piszcadz said:

They have the equivalent of counter spells, and they also can directly take control of enemy cards so they're definitely the closest to Blue, but the closest to Red is probably Cthulhu (lots of destruction).

piszcadz said:

What you're probably looking for is a Hastur/Yog deck.  Hastur is excellent for countering events, disabling or taking control of characters, and forcing discards; Yog has some direct destruction abilities and some exotic abilities that synchronize well with Hastur.  Cthulhu and Shub also have some destruction abilities that could work well in a control deck.

 thanks runix. i'll check out hastur/yog. 2 factions i paid ZERO attention to up to this point.

I really like Hastur and Yog, but one caution:  both are weak on support removal.  You will need some ready means of support removal, as right now there are several very powerful support cards that really need to be removed quickly for any control deck to stay in control.