Here are the round 1 pairings from our Highlander tournament.

Who do you think opened the event with a win?  Don't forget that story cards are used as tiebreakers, so scoring 2 stories on a loss is still an important factor.

1) Grant's "Can You Spell Mi-Go?" vs Christian's "Minions of Insanity and Chaos!"

2) Chad's "Straight Jacket" vs Katherine's "Dreams and Ghouls"

3) Nick's "Crazy Cthulhu" vs David's "Make Me Go Away"

4) Matt's "Lo Pan's Panacea" vs Mart's "Miskallaneous, Etc…"

5) Jason's "Femuhlhu" vs Greg's "Darius"

6) Jefferson's "Government Payroll" vs Gavin's "Skill"

You can find a detailed list of all the decks here:

www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp

GRANT (Shub-Niggurath / Yog-Sothoth)

An ambitious Highlander deck - both thematically and mechanically - that manages to cover all the bases. Character-wise, the deck has a good variety of early blockers, icon boosting and late-game heavy-hitters. It also utilizes the resource acceleration and support-card destruction of Shub, while at the same time taking advantage of Yog's card recursion and sacrifice effects. It achieves a nice balance between the 3 card types.

VS

CHRISTIAN (Cthulhu / Hastur / Miskatonic University / Syndicate / Yog-Sothoth)

The tournament's most complex deck in terms of faction-resource management, this has a little bit of everything. It can repeatedly drive characters insane, steal characters, exhaust characters, sacrifice characters, win the investigation struggle, discard, mill and recite from memory arcane and ancient manuscripts the likes man was never intended to read… in seven different languages, no less. Basically, it does it all.

QUICK GLANCE

This is a good match-up.  Both decks have card recursion, strong characters and decent sacrificing effects, with the edge going to Grant.  Christian's deck has investigation and it looks to be a little faster, but with so many factions will that slow him down?  Or will Grant's deck-searching, resource acceleration, and support card destruction be able to buy him enough time to seal Christian's fate?

CHAD (Mono-Hastur)

Bring on the crazy train! This deck is laser-focused on winning the terror struggle and driving opposing characters insane, with the added fun of some character theft to make things even nuttier.

VS

KATHERINE (Mono-Shub-Niggurath)

The most thematic deck of our tournament, it makes excellent use of the Zoog's resourcing abilities and Shub's cost reducers/resource accelerators to bring out some heavy hitters. This deck also draws upon the Dreamer subtype and Night to attack opponents from an unexpected angle. It is heavy on Support cards at the expense of Events.

QUICK GLANCE

Two mono-faction Highlander decks squaring off for a duel to the death. Chad's deck, with it's all-in gamble on the terror struggle, looks to be in trouble. Katherine has protection against terror, interesting resource management options, cost reducers, and some powerful characters. Chad's hopes for victory rest with his character theft options and his edge in Event cards.

NICK (Cthulhu / Hastur)

With a central theme of Byakhees, this deck has plenty to drive characters insane, steal opposing characters and power through the combat struggle. It also has a smattering of character destruction and hand discard/milling.

VS

DAVID (Mono-Order of the Silver Twilight)

This deck is all about character bouncing, burning through your own cards and characters to gain an advantage, and using a smattering of investigation to go into the stories unopposed for the quick win. It also has some higher-cost characters to give it stamina during longer games (which can happen in Highlander).

QUICK GLANCE

This is a tough call. If David gets the early momentum through card bounce, committing characters to the stories by surprise, and a little investigation on the table, he can seal the deal before Nick's deck gets up to speed. However, Nick's hand-discard effects may come in handy vs the Silver Twilight, along with his dominance of the terror struggle.

MATT (Hastur / Syndicate)

This sprint deck combines skill reduction, exhaustion/removal, and character theft with a hint of investigation. It's cheap, fast, and has just enough character removal to disrupt an opponent's tempo in the hope of a quick win.

VS

MART (Mono-Miskatonic University)

This deck includes the standard strengths of M.U. - cheap characters, multiple investigation struggles, superior arcane and investigation icons - with the added attack strategy of gaining extra success tokens through events and character effects, as well as stealing them from your opponent.

QUICK GLANCE

Mart has the upper-hand on investigation and skill, negating both of Matt's primary paths to victory. However, Matt's deck is more flexible in terms of the icon struggles, can remove or steal opposing characters, and plays very fast. Can the academics bust the crooks on tax evasion charges in the courtroom, or will it all come down to a back-alley beat down?

JASON (Hastur / Miskatonic University / Order of the Silver Twilight)

This deck's theme is "the ladies of Cthulhu" - hence the name. Jason put in as many female characters as he could find. It has investigation and a fair amount of terror and "drive insane" card effects.

VS

GREG (Agency / Miskatonic University)

A fast, cheap, character-heavy deck with plenty of combat and investigation designed to get rolling from turn 1 and wrap things up in a hurry. It also has a decent amount of control cards (either through direct damage or icon removal) to take out troubling characters early on. A classic weenie "G-Men Go to College" deck.

QUICK GLANCE

Both decks have investigation, with the edge on terror going to Jason, and the combat struggle to Greg. It all comes down to Greg's indirect character removal and Willpower, vs Jason's Silver Twilight surprises and Hastur Event cards. I expect whomever establishes board control early on will win this match.

JEFFERSON (Mono-Agency)

A well-rounded mono-Agency deck with lots of combat, solid support cards (weapons), some investigation and a few heavy-hitters.

VS

GAVIN (Hastur / Syndicate / Shub-Niggurath / Yog-Sothoth)

This deck utilizes the Syndicate's skill reduction, exhaustion and investigation, paired with the character theft abilities of Hastur, and the card recursion and sacrifice effects of Yog.

QUICK GLANCE

Both decks look to be fast out of the gate, with an equal amount of character removal options. The edge in flexibility goes to Gavin with his deck search, character theft, and recursion abilities. However, will those advantages be off-set by resourcing troubles from so many factions, especially against a streamlined mono-Agency deck? Perhaps that will give Jefferson the time he needs to gain an early lead and never look back.

 Based solely on these descriptions, I'll say Shub-Yog beats the 5 faction deck, Shub beats Hastur, Cthulhu Hastur beats OoST, Hastur Syndicate beats Miskatonic, Agency/Misk beats the Ladies (apologies for the phrasing), and 4 factions beats agency.

 I am ready to look like a fool

There's no looking like a fool.  This is mostly just for fun, and to A) report what happened at our tournament in a different way and B) start some conversation around here.  It's been quiet of late.  Too quiet.

What a fun idea! Thanks for putting so much work into these writeups, Yipe!

My guesses for the winners:

1. GRANT

2. KATHERINE

3. DAVID

4. MATT

5. GREG

6. JEFFERSON

Generally, luck factors can be quite high in highlander matches and resourcing decisions are very tough. Therefore I'd expect decks with many factions to have troubles. In the only highlander tournament I played so far, I used a Mono-Shub deck that basically included almost every card released until then which still worked surprisingly well, but it wasn't as good as decks specifically designed for highlander.

 resourcing is a bit of a snag for most people. what i in my deck was i have cards specifically for resourcing. like my highest cost characters, or support/event cards that were very situational. 

that way i can play almost all my cards and not have to worry about who im going to resource. it keeps the number of resources no higher than 3 unless you need a big dog to lay the smack down.

also depending on how you build your deck, i had 3 main strategies to do, you can just go with whatever strat you have the right cards for and resource the ones that wont help.

example if you have hastur lets say 6 "take control of character" type cards then its a good idea to go with that strategy and just resource the other faction cards. 

I'm going to go with:

1) Grant's "Can You Spell Mi-Go?" vs Christian's "Minions of Insanity and Chaos!"

GRANT

2) Chad's "Straight Jacket" vs Katherine's "Dreams and Ghouls"

KATHERINE

3) Nick's "Crazy Cthulhu" vs David's "Make Me Go Away"

NICK

4) Matt's "Lo Pan's Panacea" vs Mart's "Miskallaneous, Etc…"

MATT

5) Jason's "Femuhlhu" vs Greg's "Darius"

GREG

6) Jefferson's "Government Payroll" vs Gavin's "Skill"

JEFFERSON

 btw, thanks for the sheer amount of effort you put into all these reports. 

AGoT DC Meta said:

btw, thanks for the sheer amount of effort you put into all these reports. 

My pleasure.  The boards have been slow these last few weeks, so I figured this would spark some conversation while we're waiting for the Seekers of Knowledge boxed set to hit.

Plus, I don't think anything like this has been done for Call of Cthulhu before.  Like most game forums we get a lot of theorycraft, but not as much "actual play" reporting.

I'm going to reveal the first round results this evening (PST).  If you haven't voted yet then what are you waiting for?  Get in the game and post your picks!

jhaelen said:

jhaelen: that was pretty much my strategy. with a larger pool to work with i was able to fine-tune my selections and zero in on certain desirable effects over others, but for the most part it was as you describe. and i found that it wasn't as good. 

jhaelen said: