Tru’nembra

An original concept for an Ancient One, Tru'nembra will spare you the trouble of counting your terror icons.

No toughness or invulnerability is a letdown.

Cost reduction is always very welcome so let's try at least 1x in Artist heavy decks. 3/5

You have to drive the artists insane for the cost reduuction, rather than them bering insane already as for The Mark of Madness new Hastur, so this will only be really worthwhile if you has Hastur lined up to play next.

The more I've looked at Tru'nembra, the more I realize how necessary he is to an Artist/Hastur deck.  Such a deck is bifurcated into two conflicting strategies - drive your own guys insane for Patron of the Arts and to lower the cost of Hastur himself.  Once Hastur is out, win as many Terror struggles as possible (especially if you're also running Drawing the Sign).  Tru'nembra is where these two strategies meet.  Consequently, I think he's critical to making an Artist/Hastur deck work, and I see why FF decided to print him.

I'm still not convinced by Tru'nembra. He's not invulnerable and really only serves to help get Terror Wins=Success Hastur played, and then boost the Terror Wins. But Scheme of Byakees usually does the later better land cheaper so all Tru'nembra does is enable you to drive Artists insane (but perhaps delay playing Hastur till your next Ops phase if you need to use your ramped Domain to play Tru'nembar to drive your Artists insane).

But Sieur Piriou Louis can also drive your Artists (and your non-Artists, and sometimes your opponent's characters)  insane without having to play him to do it; he only costs 3; and he's more thematic being Hastur's Huntsmen.

I agree with your assessment, ibell.  Fill a deck with Scheme of Byakhees, Hastur 3.0, and lots of terrifying characters, and you'll probably win the game one or two turns after Hastur (or Drawing the Sign) drops.

My only point above was if you're trying run Hastur 3.0 in a deck with Artists/Lunatics, then it behooves you to include Tru'Nembra to ensure you can win the necessary Terror struggles.  Hastur 3.0 + Artists/Lunatics makes for a total of 3 Terror icons (all Hastur's), so you're far from assured of dominating Terror struggles.  Yes, Sieur Pirious Louis can help play Hastur 3.0 on your NEXT turn too, but you're still not doing any better in the Terror department.  Shub or another Hastur deck will still have a good chance to stop you.

So, why run Artists/Lunatics with Hastur 3.0?  Because I think you're more likely to reduce his cost than with the Scheme of Byakhees approach.  A Scheme probably won't drive many of your opponent's Shub/Hastur characters insane, so Hastur 3.0 won't come cheap.  When you just gotta have a guaranteed horde of insane characters on the board no matter who your opponent is playing, nobody beats the Loonies.

I think Tru'Nembra's value is he can both lower Hastur's cost AND ensure Terror victories like no other single card can.  He's a unique blend of two strategies that are usually distinct - the easy mass insanity of Lunatics, combined with the classic dominance of Terror struggles.  If nothing else, I think we can agree that Tru'Nembra was designed to enable Hastur 3.0.  Whether he does this better than Scheme or Sieur - we can agree to disagree.

Yes Tru'nembra's auto (T) win is useful but it only applies to the story Tru'nembra is committed to. Peter Clover can ruin your day here (though if you are facing Syndicate, (T) is probably not a worry) I tried to build an Artists + Hastur 3.0 deck but couldn;t get it to work against fast Yog decks and ended up replacing the Artists with cards better able to drive the opponent insane (Like Dangeorous Inmate which Tru'nembra can't help with) and win (T) . Otherwise the deck can;t get going till you have both Tru'nembra and Hasture in hand, and a bunch of Artists in play.