That sounds like a fine idea, perhaps I'll try that out next time I get to play.

Other possibilities:
Burrowing Beneath: but maybe redundant?
Eldritch Nexus: with discounts going even a 1 domain is handy.  However, I'll either outstrip my drawing speed or end up using it w/ Slime Covered Dhole
Moving the Scenery: Just sort of a general story grabbing card

Or, pick up another cheap Support card to fuel Telepathic Chthonian?

How about Artifact of the Lost Cities?  I can destroy it to destroy an enemy character AND draw three cards?
Dark Contagion?

With Voice of the Jungle - does someone winning the story count as destroying the card?

Any follow-up plays with this deck?

I'm currently building a Hastur/Shub monster deck with multiple terror struggles, as much invulnerability as I can manage, and Telepathic Chthonian for character removal.  I'd like to know which cards you thought worked the best?  Is Telepathic Chthonian worth including, or was it not central to the deck's success?  It would be my only non-monster character, so no discount from Ghoulish Worshipper.  Did you find that problematic at all?

Yipe said:

I haven't gotten to play the deck again, and the only solitaire test games I've done in the last few weeks was for that tuning article over on BGG.

So this is going to be subject to memory and therefore slightly less reliable than fresh info :)

Personally, I like Telepathic Chthonian.  It's true that he's not subject to the Ghoulish Worshipper discount, but I can use other discounts on him.  His ability is just great though - he's a force multiplier on every card in my deck that destroys supports.  Even though he's just one card type in the deck, if I were to take him out I'd probably swap out several more cards that no longer work as well without him like Ghoul Taint and Wolf Hunger.  Part of why I'm taking these is that if your opponent isn't putting out supports you can throw them out yourself for cheap, destroy them, and still kill their dudes.

sounds like a pretty strong deck, i never really used Shub, mostly because i never really liked the factions cards but the rush of monsters seems like a good way to cripple opponents fast and swamp them before they can develop their stragies. Hope it works out

Managed to fit in a game last night with this deck.  I won, but it was a LONG game and hard fought - both sides had 2 stories and 4 tokens on the last story when I took it.  Plus, I started out behind and had to use Village of Ash to prevent him from winning.

Some of the things that caused us trouble:

1.  Not enough combat icons (too many monsters have 2 Terror + 1 Combat instead of the other way around)

2.  Could have used more support destruction, both to fuel Telepathic Chthonian and to just take out troublesome stuff

3.  Need more events I think, we just didn't have the degree of nasty story surprises our opponents did and raw stats alone weren't doing it

Haven't had time to look into what changes to make.  Since Written & Bound should be out any day, I'd kind of like to wait until I get my hands on that in case there are some new cards I want to use.  I'll be going to the game store again tomorrow and if I'm very lucky maybe they'll have it or I can get in another game with this deck but there's only so much time...

Note that in part I did HAVE some cards in there with nasty surprises, but I didn't draw them this game.  For instance, I never got The Black Goat's Rage despite packing 3 copies which would have been greatly useful.

So, I'll start by reevaluating the Events I have and then deciding whether to shift 1-2 cards away from Character/Support to more Events.

If necessary, I can let 1-2 Neutral events slip in there but I'd like to keep it mono-Shub as much as possible.

What were you facing?

It was actually the Miskatonic/Cthulhu deck that I designed for the beginner's deckbuilding articles on BGG.  Here's the link to the full article:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/751383/call-of-cthulhu-deckbuilding-example-2-cthulhumisk

It was actually kind of cool to see it hold up well against something that had been made with an unrestricted cardpool, but eventually we just had enough monsters out to crush them under our sheer weight.

For a while he did well with a pair of Backwater Deep Ones and some cheap Misk Investigator to help nab extra tokens.  They were equipped with a Tcho-Tcho Talisman and a Sword of Y'ha-tallo which preserved them from insanity and they put up a lot of combat that way.  Stupid talisman kept coming back and getting put on new characters too.  He took good advantage of Arcane too, of which our characters had none, so they were able to stand up to a larger group of characters pretty well.

Eventually, Cthulhu himself came out (the pay 3 to kill someone version).  That rocked us back on our heels for a bit, until I got Antarctic Yeti which could blank him.  Yeti died in an unfortunate accident involving Binding which killed him and drove my other character at the story insane.  That tipped things back towards him for a while, until I got another Yeti and Y'golonac into play so we could start sucking Cthulhu into deathtraps.  For a while he could sacrifice other characters to our combat wins, but eventually it's gotta run out.

On the final turn it was 4-4 on the last story and we both just went all in knowing it would decide the game.  Yeti stripped away Invulnerability and we killed Cthulhu (the only defender) to take the story on skill.

Very good game overall, and very useful to point out some things that can be improved.  I'm probably going to fork this deck into an evolved mono-Shub version and then try to design a Shub/Yog version picking from twice as large a monster pool.  That should give me access to some abilities and Arcane which Shub doesn't have, better choices of special powers, and let me trade some extra Terror for more Combat if I wish.

Sounds like a great battle!  Thanks for taking the time to write up your report.

That Yeti seems to be your deck's all-star monster.  If you go with Yog, you could include Doppelganger and make even more of him.  I realize Doppelganger isn't a monster, but it's not too far off your theme as it would be copying a monster.  You could also copy Ghoulish Worshipper for even more monster-reduction madness.

Another option is to take Opener of the Gate and Yog-Sothoth, In Whom the Spheres Meet.

Yeah, that Yeti has been a useful tool to have, I like him quite a bit.  Or at least I do when he's 50% off :)

Opener of the Gate + Yog sounds like a potentially fun addition.  Opener is cheap enough that I don't care about him not being discounted himself.  With so many Monsters I'm not even sure I need that many Spell events, although it's worth taking them where you can.

I usually end up with my biggest domain being 3 unless things are going poorly and my Ghoulish Worshippers are being killed.  The Ghoulish Worshippers discount Ancient Ones also, so figure I have 1-2 more off his price.  That leaves 3-4 Spells/Monsters I need in my discard pile to get him playable.  Seems very doable with a moderate number of Spell events.

To help keep your Ghoulish Worshippers alive, perhaps Unspeakable Resurrection?

With Unspeakable Resurrection, if you already have a Ghoulish Worshipper in play, does it cost 1 less to bring back a monster character from your discard pile?

No, that doesn't work.  Ghoulish Worshipper only affects the cost to play a character from your hand.

I currently have Open Grave for such purposes, but it could be swapped out for Unspeakable Resurrection easily enough to shift the faction balance if I need to.

Last night I started working on a new version mixing Shub and Yog.

Most of the events have been shifted to the Yog side, with a number of character removal events being put in.

The monsters I've opted for are:  Crazed Shoggoth, Enslaved Yeti, Flying Polyps, and Many-angled Thing.  Enslaved Yeti is replacing Antarctic Yeti.  I've lost the Terror icon but gained an extra Combat icon and a lot of toughness.  Plus, his ability is a bit more flexible.

I've also swapped Y'Golonac for Glaaki, we'll see how that goes.  He provides a similar ability plus stripping icons, plus there's no cost to it.  I just have to afford his greater cost.

On the support side I put in one of my favorite Yog cards - Prism of Many Views.

It's a very rough prototype at this stage so I'm not posting a full list yet.  Also, it's a few cards over and I haven't figured out what to cut - that'll take a few plays.  Once it's a little more sorted I'll start a new thread.

dboeren said:

Very interesting read. I considered doing a combo Yog/Shub monster deck, but since I wanted to focus on Glaaki, I just doubled up on reducers and it turned into mono-Yog. I had to cull the monster stuff, since it seemed to make the deck too expensive. Seeker of Mysteries, Servants of Glaaki, and Doppelgangers, I could usually get Glaaki out turn 4 on average. Other monsters sure would help to stall, though.

Are you still working on your 'Monster-Deck'?

I have a quite similiar deck using  only Ghouls/Monsters and included a Night-Dreamlands mechanic to compensate my total lack of arcane symbols.

Haven't had a chance to for a while, we just got back from an trip out of the country that ate up a lot of time in planning and execution.

Where I'm at now is a rough draft of the Shub/Yog version but it's entirely untested and over 50 cards.  My usual procedure is to start a bit bigger and then take note of which cards don't seem that useful to gradually slim it back down to 50 after it's been tried against some variety of other decks.

If I do get a chance to try it out I'll post here on how things go.