The Anderson Building

 

Danigral - 1 out of 5. This is just not worth the card slot with the current Shifting Sands story deck. It only works on 70% of the stories, and then is highly situational based on which stories are out if it will eve be harmful to your opponent. There might be some tricks you could do, like Will of Azathoth or some of those weird Cthulhu story attachments to limit which stories your opponent can go to. But that sounds more like a deck a troll would play to see how much he could annoy his opponent - the troll would still ultimately lose because he’s putting bad cards in his deck.

 

mnBroncos - 3 out of 5. Just because of the LOLs from sending characters to stories that kill characters committed to it (seriously only a 1 though, however, can drastically change if get new story deck). The problem with these is you put this in your deck but you don’t know what stories are going to be revealed. If chaos unleash is on the table it is way better (if you're the one triggering it more often). Few others that have nice interaction however, with not knowing what stories will be on the table and allowing your opponent to also gain the benefit makes this hard to actually play.

 

Obtuse - 0 out of 5. This card just isn’t playable in a competitive deck in my opinion, so I can’t even bring myself to give it a lowly 1. It will work against you just as often as it will work for you. And you have to drain a domain for it! I do think it’s an awesomely fun card to play casually for the, as mnBroncos called them, LOLs.

 

livingend 1 out of 5. It is important to note that The Anderson Building cannot trigger the effects of The Seventh Gate, Come the Dreamtime or A New Challenge. So you’re relying on certain combinations of stories to come up during the game in order for this to do anything in the first place. And even then The Anderson Building is a massive double-edged sword because it provides access to the same beneficial story triggers to everyone. As a general guideline to competitive deckbuilding, everything that involves or increases uncontrollable randomness is not worth pursuing unless the payoff is humongous. Verdict: Could be fun for casual play though.

 

WWDrakey & Ire - 3 out of 5. Well, this is a weird one. On the one hand, we have something that’s clearly meant to be a stall-engine (Within the Ice, 9th Plague and especially repeat-Village of Ash), and on the other we have a tabula rasa story that you can build at your own whim by adding in struggles with Relentless Stalker, Lightning Gun etc. Clearly there’s some potential to be unlocked, but that’s some pretty screwy potential. At it’s core, this seems to be screaming to be part of some kind of Control engine, possibly one where you attempt to nullify your opponent’s skills. Why? So that you can force them into specific stories, and then use effects to stop them from succeeding there… while reaping the benefits of Chaos Unleashed and the like on your own turn. This seems doubly-supported by the fact that with skill negation, the Conspiracy itself is actually often impossible for your opponent to win...

I'm looking forward to trying this out.  I finally relented into making a Mr. David Pan deck (I say relented because everyone has a MDP deck), and I included The Anderson Building mostly because I needed more Agency in the deck.  But I also figure that, in the event I can't get/keep Pan or Parallel Universe on the board, The Anderson Building will give my low-icon, high-skill characters a story to win until I can right the ship.  And since I'm rocking a bunch of high skill guys, the Building should hopefully work in my favor more often than in my opponent's.

I thought about The Usual Suspects instead, mostly for thematic reasons, but the effect seems to be wanting on that one.  At least The Anderson Building could make a serious difference on the board.  And if I don't want to play it because there are some likely back-fire potential, I can just resource the Building to support my splash of Agency cards in the deck.