Hastur

Hastur finally gets blessed with Invulnerability. The hefty cost can be reduced substantially with the loonies on both sides of the board.

But most importantly Hastur will net you stories thanks to his wonderful ability and his high skill. 5/5

Give me a deck that can play Hastur 1-2 turns earlier, and I'll beat 9 times out of 10 an opposing deck that optimizes Hastur's terror ability with A Scheme of Byakhees, etc.  Hastur is a bomb - I don't need to help him once he goes off.  I just need to help him go off.

I think people fall in love - for good reason - with Hastur's terror ability, but we can easily forget that his printed cost is 8.  I think that his cost-lowering ability is the ability that should be optimized - his terror ability will mostly take care of itself once he's on the table.

So while my opponent is playing A Scheme of Byakhees in order to combo with a Hastur that he's still waiting to play, I've already played my own copy of Hastur and won myself another story.  By playing Hastur just one turn earlier, that's likely 5 success tokens for me (3 on offense, 2 on defense), maybe more.

There are 47 other cards in my deck that need help more than an already-played Hastur.  Helping to play Hastur sooner?  Absolutely.  Helping Hastur be more effective once he's already played?  Not so much.  A little bit, but not much.  Hastur is a 1-card combo, a game-ender.  If he can't be that for my deck, then he's way too expensive to be in my deck.