Fthaggua

Chosen for CotD 1st August 2015, as Invulnerable characters outside of Ancient Ones are still not too common, and is also the cheapest available for Yog, I wanted to give Fthaggua some attention.

 

Forcing a player to choose between self-mill or watching a character get eaten can never be easy. If you have no way to get your characters out the discard pile, even then the problem is Fthaggua gets bigger and bigger. Eventually having multiple terror and combat icons mean you are winning anyway, but skill is always good to have more of.

 

I imagine it is good in a Khopesh deck with recursion, so you mill to keep your own characters, and then use recursion effects to make the most of your discard pile.

Fthaggua was used to good effect in a Khopesh + Thing from the Shore deck at the 2014 Portland Regional Championship. The deck came in 2nd place in a field of 16 (4-1).

 

Here's a copy of the deck list:

 

Feed Me

I have tinkered with it in a Tesla deck - cancelling the ability myself to get more ways to put my cards in the discard pile.

correct me if I'm wrong, but I would have decide about my Resilient guys first before Fthaggua's Forced Response would trigger. So if I didn't use the Resilient ability, and my opponent discarded two cards to cancel Fthaggua's ability, I wouldn't have a second chance to trigger Resilient, correct?

I don't see how Resilient would come into play so early. Isn't the condition for the Resilient option that the card "would enter the discard pile"? In this case, the forced response appears to take the destroyed card directly to Fthaggua: do not enter the discard pile, do not collect $200.

 

If someone discarded two cards to eliminate Fthaggua's ability, then you could exercise Resilient or not.

The way I understand it from the FF website is Resilient triggers anytime the Resilient card would leave play.  Since Resilient is a passive effect, it triggers and resolves first, then the Forced Response happens if the Resilient card is still in play.  That's how I understand it anyway.

 

If this understanding is correct, then I don't think I'd get another bite at the Resilient apple after I see if my opponent cancels Fthaggua.  At first, I got excited at the prospect that my opponent has to choose between 1) allowing Fthaggua to grow, or 2) allowing my Baka to return to the top of my deck.  For the reason I've already stated though, I think my excitement was misplaced.

Yep, you only get one shot at deciding.

But Fthaggua doesn't appear to care where the card goes post destruction though, so even if you select the Resilient option, the Forced Response should still go off.

Hold on, RP. Are you saying I can choose to send the Baka to the top of my deck (from Resilient), but before the Baka would actually get there, Fthaggua's ability would pull the Baka onto himself? And if someone discarded the two cards to cancel Fthaggua's ability, the Baka would then resume its trip to the top of my deck? That sounds a lot like the idea I had originally hoped for. I just have to choose to activate the Baka's Resilience, and then my opponent has to discard the 2 cards in order to confirm it; otherwise, Fthaggua will snatch the Baka before he can escape. Is that right?!

Yep, that is close to right. (correct result, off in minor details).

 

Fthaggua's is a Forced Response. Forced Responses happen after whatever they are responding to resolves. So normally for Fthaggua, the card goes to the discard-pile, then comes back to him (if the effect is not cancelled)(and you don't have a SnowGraves on you).

 

Resilient is a replacement effect. it optionally replaces "going to the discard pile" with "going to the draw pile". Replacement effects happen when the replaced effect would have happened.

 

So, if Baka is destroyed and you select the Resilient option, Baka goes to the draw pile. In the same action window that made that happen, the Fthaggua's Forced Response triggers at the usual time for Forced Responses, and Baka gets sucked back to Fthaggua. Your opponent's choice is to mill 2 cards to leave him on the draw pile, or have Fthaggua eat him. But your decision is first, and you only get one shot at making it, though using Resilient in that situation seems win-win.

 

Entertainingly, if you tried to cancel Fthaggua's effect yourself, Baka is on the top of the draw pile at the moment that cancel option is available, so would be one of the cards you would have to discard.

Wow! I can't believe it. That's so awesome. Thanks, RP!