AGoT DC Meta said:

Umr at-Tawil is definately on the high consideration list. It does solve the recurring Jamburg problem (and Master of the Myths) provided that you can find an opening or get it before it starts recurring thigns. And, like Nyarly, take choices away from an opponent. He would probably be a 1x to start with for me as he can do a lot of positive things for the deck, but with, Nodens, Nug, and Glaaki all above 4 cost might keep him from being an auto include or at least force me to make a choice between them.

Though, pretty soon I bet I'll start to see Many-angled Thing leaving the deck. He's usually a resource anyway (excellent Twilight Gate target so I don't mind and at times prefer it). So ya, the deck changes a little when you add Seekers to the card pool. Exactly how I'm not sure yet, but feel free to have fun with it. :P

Magnus Arcanis said:

I think deck-filtering will be huge, since there are so many good combos right now and cards that trigger in-hand. The pool is growing and could really effect the meta. Inside Man, Gate of the Silver Key, Song of Charybdis, Prism of Many Views, Umr at-Tawil.

It may just be me, since I haven't played enough games where I actually saw Nodens in action, but I'd probably replace him with Perembulans as you said above, and fit in Umr. imo it's better to get ride of cards in their hand before you have to deal with them on the board, no matter its card type.

AGoT DC Meta said:

Before I go too much further, Many-angled Thing is probably one of the few outs I have against a D.Rift+Jamburg combo so… hard to remove.

As for Nodens vs Negotium… if you put in Negotium, doing so has two major problems. 1. No more Nyarly. 2. Deck does have a lot of 2-cost characters itself. Add in a third minor problem that its not a character. That being said, it is a way to go and would allow for more space, but to use Negoitum would probably shift around a lot of the deck space before I was dowe tweaking it.

Right now, with no formal testing. I would trade

1x Hungry Dark Young - > 1x Nug
1x Many-angeled Thing -> 1x Umr

My initial reasons behind such a move would be…

HDY - It normally takes a while for my discard pile to fill up with 2 cost characters, and being on of preferred resources for Twilight Gate trickery. I hate giving him up. However, having 3x can be unnecessary at times. So I'd start here for removing guys.

MAT - Rough loss. Since I really don't want to pull anymore away from Shub, things are pretty rough as far as adding non-shub things. Facless is more important in that he is an out of turn trick and can be far more disuprtive when needed (plus has better icons too IMO). Plus, each 2 cost or less card helps assure a that Feed Her Young doens't miss. Stalking Hounds… not gonna reduce those, and Pushed into the Beyond is too good to remove. Obviously we can't pull Twilight Gate either so… ya. I'm pretty firm right now on my "Other" cards and their counts as well. Nodens is really the only one that's suspect, but he's done to well for me to look there first.

I've been taking a look at Umr at-Tawil also.  With the resource speed of this deck it really seems like a solid include to me, at least on paper.  After seeing John Bruno dominate the AGOT tournament with hand knowledge/removal it has me wondering if a similar deck type is possible here.

Thanks for your thoughts, Tom. btw I wasn't suggesting that you change the deck to include deck-filtering tech; I was just saying that a lot of new recent cards may bring that to be very viable in the future. Umr at-Tawil is certainly powerful for hand management (unless the opponent has a lot of recursion himself). @badash - I thought the same thing re: bruno. :)

Hmmm, I'm a little unclear on the rules in this situation, but if you didn't have 3 cards in the discard, would you not be able to trigger Nug successfully? Or would this be one of those "as much as possible" situations?

What about that one Midwife that was your "fun" indulgence? ;) 

AGoT DC Meta said:

Nug pulls from the deck so no problem there.

Midwife… *sigh*. Can't reduce below 26 shub resources. Might be able to skim by with 25… but ick. Rather have more…. that… and… I love how versatile CM is. By mid game, CM is probably one of the biggest threats in the game and is just soo good.

Tweaking decks is fun though. Adding new cards to such a fun deck… how could I pass it up? Its fun to think about anyway.

 Ha! That's what I get for going by memory…

It's hard to change a champ deck, huh? :) There's always [gasp] 51 cards.

AGoT DC Meta said:

Blasphemy!

I'll consort with cultists, sell my soul for arcane power, and summon Anceint Ones to advance the cause… but 51 cards in a deck…. NEVER!

Actually I kid… I have played above the minimum successfully playing Duel Masters back in the day. Deck drew so many cards by the time I was ready to win I'd deck myself lol.

However, I don't have the pleasure of that problem with cthulhu…. yet. :P

Magnus Arcanis said:

I added two copies of Nug, three copies of the Beings of Ib, and two copies of Aliki Zoni Uperetria. I removed Nodens and the Porch, ending up with 55 cards.

The other player to use a variant of the deck was Konx. I don't know the exact changes he had made, but he used two copies of Nodens and replaced Nyarlathotep with the Descendant of Eibon.

Things were looking quite well for me in the beginning (getting out Y'Golonac with two Beings of Ib), although I was behind regarding resources. But then Nodens hit the table, followed by a Many-Angled thing and turned the game. A surprise play of the Descendant sealed his victory. Also, Konx is definitely a better player than me, so it was to be expected. He ended up winning the side-event without losing a match.

Anyway, I think there's really a lot of ways to tweak the deck or try something similar using other factions, e.g. by replacing Yog with Cthulhu.

I was really glad to see that Dark Initiate played a Mono-Miskatonic deck showcasing some of the potential of the new Seekers cards and utilizing some 'forgotten' cards to good effect. It definitely encouraged me to try getting a new deck featuring (mostly) Miskatonic ready for playtesting.

Just to add a couple of comments to what jhaelen said: my modifications were mainly removing the 1x of the cards. I don't like to play 1x in CoC, generally speaking. In this case, the 1x were Under the Porch, Nodens and the Corrupted Midwife. I played 2x Nodens, and 3 Under the Porch.

I changed other cards: -3x Faceless Abductor (I don't like to lose one char on the board to simply bounce, and the icons are good, but I prefer the Shub ghouls then), -2x Displaced Cthonian (slow for the effect, IMO), -3x The mother's hand (to double use the domain you have to pay 4 and at that point I just prefer to play something bigger for that cost).

I add: 2 copies of Under the Porch, 1 Nodens, 1 copy of Broken Space, Broken Time, 2 copies of Nug and replaced Nyarla with Eibon. Even though Nyarla is good, I prefer Eibon because it's another way to accelerate a domain to 4 resources on turn 2 and it's still on of the best char out there, IMO. Last, I add the other ghoul (I didn't do the math, but I was playing 50 cards so if you see more than 50 cards, just take out 1 copy of a ghoul).

The deck played well, as expected. I've been toying around with something similar for quite some time 5 months ago so I knew how to get the most out of it. Twilight Gate didn't give me the best feeling, since the resource choice in the opening hand is usually a couple of AO. And I prefer to keep my many angled thing in my hand, rather then resource it. Other targets are not so cool, in general. I liked, instead, feed her young. I didn't play often Under the porch-> Nug (only once, I think), but it is a good plan to accelerate and I'll definitely keep it in the deck. And Under the Porch is another tutor for Shub AO, so it's just plain good.

My main concern (which is one of the reasons why I stopped playing the deck) is how resilient it is against destruction. With destruction I mean a deck that is packing something like 20 or more removals (CdtA, Single Glimpse, Many angled things, Pushed into beyond, eventually kopesh/nodens, or Marcus/Shaft etc…). That was my deck until the last euro tournament, and I think it might be a tough match for this deck. In your version there is CM to recover some char from the discard, but it is definitely slow and not solid (1 sac off, and the CM is gone). Have you ever faced such a deck? Then, as you say, you don't take into account combo, which would be a complete disaster in the euro meta :)

Anyway, the deck is solid in doing what it is designed for and there are some cool trick in it (example from yesterday's tournament: turn 1, play Basil, turn 2 play double many angled thing, clean the board, go for stories unopposed…sweet :P).

bye

Konx

I can vouch for the extreme weakness this deck has to destruction. I've been running such a deck since the June Regionals and its pretty poo against a Yog / Cthulhu with The Carpathian endlessly searching for the next Khopesh after all the sacrifices. Even worse is a Khopesh / Bast's Hunt combo. Granted if it has the right card at the right time it can sometimes hold off but also the biggest drawback to this mix is the lack of investigation. It doesn't finish stories quick enough I've found. My solution was to switch the speed of the deck for a huge amount of toughness and invulnerabilty ( as seen in the MONSTER MASH ), and it seems to play a little slower, but a lot better, as the lead up to this change was pretty much a carbon copy of the Worlds deck, and was repeatedly getting beaten by destruction.

Cool, I'm happy to hear you guys got some positive results (congrats to Konx for winning)!

Just a couple things.

Beings of Ib - Don't think I even considered that. Neat idea.

1x of Cards - I hate doing it too, but I treat them as additional copies of other cards. Such as Under the Porch is really +1x of each of my Shub characters. Broken Space, Broken Time is actually +2x of each Ancient One. CM is +1 or more copies of each of my characters. Since so many of my upper teir cards are Unique I enjoyed tool boxing them a rather than resourcing them as they make terrible Twilight Gate targets.

The Mother's Hand - I'm guessing Konx played the deck completely different than me. Which is fine and is obviously still very effective. However, if you don't abuse Feed Her Young and Twilight Gate to accelterate the main domain to 4 resources to be used on your second turn's operations phase then I agree, its not worth playing them. However, as designed, The Mother's Hand is a free character starting on your second turn, not 3+ per traditional resourcing.

vs Destruction/Sacfiice - Really, this deck is not much weaker than just about any other deck is against heavy board control strategies. It's one of the reasons why certain cards are there. For instance, The Mother's Hand + CM is a greater way to supply sacrifice fodder. Plus, most heavy board control decks are light on the character count and most of those characters have (easily) exploitable weaknesses at stories. Which is where this deck can really succeed. Heavy destruction decks can certainly draw out the game, but unlike most aggressive decks, this one doesn't get weaker over time. If anything it gets stronger, and with some sort of infinate loop of destruction AND the deck not finding a quick answer for it is pretty much the only way a control deck is going to win unless they're packing some sort of amazing trick. Still, not exactly always an auto win for this deck but I would give this deck the advantage against a control heavy deck.

Other faction instead of Yog - Doing so can obviously be made into an effective but completely different deck. The main reason Yog was used to pair with Shub was for Twilight Gate. Which was, at the time, the only (reliable) way other than Feed Her Young to accelerate a domain on turn 1 so it can be built up to 4 resources for use on turn 2. Which, if thats what your going for, it's irreplaceable.

Descendant of Eibon - Good choice, and defiantely was on the highly considered list. I would recommend against using him to accelerate to 4 though. Not having the hard 4 is rough. That being said, he is great for accelerating to 6 to hardcast Glaaki or on a seconday domain to cheat out a 3 guy early. What sold me to Nyarly was… 1. Anceint One immunities (expecting a lot of hastur and cthulhu), toughness (for staying power), 4 skill (was expecting a good bit of ice shaft this year), that and it can be fetched via BsBt. 2. I was expecting a lot fo dual and tri-faction decks, so tossing the wrench into their resource decisions paid huge dividends. 3. Who in their right mind would be expecting Nyarlathotep? So ultimately more of a meta game choice than anything else, but DoE is usually a better card overall.

Combo decks - Ya… you got to know your meta. If half the feild is bringing combo… I wouldn't bring this deck. :P Good news is, Logan+Necro isn't long for this world. Glimpse is still a thing, but at least we can fight that. Which, btw. Displaced Cthonian really shines in that match up.

In all fairness, this deck does seem to do better the faster my opponent tries to be. So the slower/more controling a deck is, the better chance it has provided that it is using the correct tools. From what I've noticed so anyway. Recalling some of my most grueling games… they usually invovled things like Turn 1 Glaaki, repeated uses of Azathoth, Jamburg+D. Rift. Sure, I ended up winning them anyway, but instead of a 10 minutes we're talking 40+ minute games and there was a high percentage chance that I wasn't going to be walking away with a win.

All in all though, this is a fun deck that found a hole in the World's meta. I expect by the time next year it'll be something else entirely as lot of new cards will be out between then and now. Add in that now peopl can be prepared for it and have so much knowledge against it… it's unlikely that we'd see it win a major tournament again… unless someone it becomes unstoppable of course. :P

EDITED DUE TO DECK POST