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Neutral
Experimental
MAIN COMBOS
The main strategy of this deck is to use Ol' Lazy Eyes to fetch Opening Night on the first turn, stall on turn 2 and then on turn 3 use Shocking Transformation to grab A Scheme of Byahkees. When paired with Sweet Dreams... it can devastate your opponent's board position and/or discard their entire hand. Drawing the Sign provides an alternate story card win condition that is easy to trigger in a single turn through either Opening Night or The King in Yellow Folio, thus allowing you to win a surprise story where your opponent is heavily invested in success tokens (and likely close out multiple stories at once for the win).
RESOURCES
This deck works off a 3-2-1 domain structure, using your highest domain for Shocking Transformation or Savio, and then your lowest to pay for Black Dog, power up Ya-te-veo or play Sweet Dreams/Thunder in the East. This deck is more expensive than most I play, especially with x6 2-cost support cards. However, Shocking Transformation does help mitigate the cost of A Scheme of Byahkees, allowing you to play it on turn 3 (though be aware of the steadfast requirements).
TACTICS
For the opener, mulligan for Ol' Lazy Eyes/Opening Night, Savio, Shocking Transformation/A Scheme of Byakhees, and then cheap characters like Baleful Reveler, Ghoulish Predator and Ya-teo-veo.
In the beginning, the deck stalls with cards like Ya-te-veo, Ghoulish Predator, Black Dog, Baleful Reveler, Blind Submission and Savio Corvi, and then stays on defense until you can set up your combo through Shocking Transformation. Savio also provides added firepower in the terror struggle (and the all-important Fast) to ensure A Scheme of Byahkees will succeed.
To close out the game, commit A Scheme of Byahkees to Opening Night and then hit your opponent with Sweet Dreams... If Drawing the Sign is in play it's a bonus, but almost unnecessary at that point. Because A Scheme of Byakhees ability is a forced response, I found it very effective to resolve all 7 terror struggles at Opening Night first to ensure your characters at the other stories are then unopposed (this was especially true when paired with Sweet Dreams...). I also found that at cost 4 and skill 4, A Scheme of Byakhees is fairly resilient to most of Yog's tricks (Prof. Peaslee, Faceless Abductor and Pushed).
OTHER CARDS
Baka provides targeted removal of characters that grant blanket Willpower (which is 1 of the deck's major weaknesses). Primary targets for Baka are Clover Club Pit Boss and Marshall Greene, or those that can remove A Scheme of Byakhees from the stories, like Peter Clover.
Long-Dead Prince is the deck's Pervasive Toxemia defense as it can suck up a wound and then reset. It also pairs well with Baka.
Stealthy Byakhee kicks out troublesome characters (namely August Lindquist), most Ancient Ones or characters with terror to help A Scheme of Byakhees win at Opening Night.
Victoria Glasser and Obsessive Sycophant off-set the deck's lack of arcane, with Obsessive Sycophant usually granting double arcane to Savio, Ya-teo-veo or Black Dog on the block.
Thunder in the East is there for Stygian Eye or Frozen Time.
INSPIRATION
First, I want to thank Tusk and dboeren for their help with this deck. Their feedback was essential to its success.
As this would be my last official Call of Cthulhu tournament, I wanted to use cards from the new Mark of Madness expansion, as well as cards I've never played with before. Like Pervasive Toxemia, when I saw Opening Night I knew I wanted to build a deck around it. A Scheme of Byakhees was a natural fit, as was Drawing the Sign.
Originally I had planned to pair Hastur with Yog to use Faceless Abductor, Seer of the Gate and all the other Yog goodies, but decided on Savio for his Fast and terror buff. I was also afraid the deck would be too expensive and felt Shub would help me with ramping. This turned out not to be the case, and so I swapped out The Festival for Shocking Transformation to ensure I got out A Scheme of Byakhees as quickly as possible (or to hunt for Savio or Baka as needed).
The deck struggled until I cut Acute Melancholia for Sweet Dreams... At that point, it became a time bomb waiting to go off. The only trick was not to lose while I set everything into place.
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8 Comments
Really like this deck! Would have loved to see something like it at worlds
Yes, and I believe the same goes for the first half of The King in Yellow Folio (making Savio a poor target for that card, though it's great with A Scheme of Byakhees or a cheap character to generate tokens on Drawing the Sign).
I was actually able to use the Sycophant once on Savio against a mono-Syndicate deck. I played Ol' Lazy Eyes to grab the conspiracy first turn, but held off playing it as I suspected he would have the Crooked Attorney. On the next turn he played La Bella Luna, which meant he absolutely had the Attorney in his deck. I then put down Savio without the conspiracy in play so he wouldn't be destroyed in case the Attorney came out the following turn. When he didn't play the Attorney, I put down the conspiracy, Shocked A Scheme of Byakhees into play and went to Opening Night knowing I would discard all of his cards in case he was holding onto it to take out Savio.
Against certain decks I knew Savio would be safe for the entire game so I dropped the conspiracy right away, but against others (namely Agency and Syndicate) it can be a bit tense knowing when to activate Savio's text.
Thanks for the compliments on the deck. I'm not going to say it's a masterpiece (hence the "Experimental" tag) but it worked far better than I expected. The combo was easy to pull off, and I was able to trigger the Opening Night + A Scheme of Byakhees + Sweet Dreams... in 3 of my 4 games. Each time it wrecked my opponent as they would be top-decking and have few characters that weren't insane, meaning I could easily take the Scheme to Opening Night next turn and do it all over again. I think the fact that Sweet Dreams... really upends what most players take as a given is why the deck was so effective - it just blindsides players in a way they aren't ready to defend against.
All in all, the deck achieved what I wanted it to do. It included cards from Mark of Madness, old cards I'd never used before (or had ever planned on using) and a whacky combo that's just fun to play. Good times!
I really like this deck as it focuses on the Terror struggle in a new way. Ironically, I find that the Terror struggle is often ignored in the game. All you have to do is take Willpower, a few characters with Terror, or simply have a scrub character who will go insane and the Terror Struggle doesn't really affect the outcome.
The Scheme of Byakhees paired with Sweet Dreams makes the Terror struggle once again Terror-fying! I laughed heartily in our practice games when Cthulhu was driven insane by this combination! This deck will definitely make players think twice when going into the Terror Struggle. What a fun deck to play!
I forgot about driving dormant Cthulhu insane in our Temple practice games. Poor Cthulhu, he woke up and then went right back to sleep!
Making an Ancient One go insane is totally worth playing this deck even if you lose. Still, I think my favorite practice game was vs your Toxemia deck. Wiping out all those Mi-Go with toughness was so much fun.
EDIT: To give credit where credit is due, it was Tusk's idea to use Sweet Dreams...
Initially I had x3 Acute Melancholia. It looks decent on paper but I found it to be lackluster in play, at least with my non-Dangerous Inmate deck. When we were searching the database for a 1-cost Hastur event to replace it, Tusk suggested Sweet Dreams... and then everything fell into place. Thanks bro, you're the best.
The Thing in the Yellow Mask is a solid suggestion. Besides his ability, he also brings another arcane which I found can be important (though not at Opening Night, obviously).
On the downside, he's another 4-cost card. I'm miserly when it comes to card cost - I've actually never played a tournament deck with a card-cost above 3 before - and even taking A Scheme of Byakhees made me uncomfortable. However, I do have Shocking Transformation and the deck does function reasonably well on a 4-1-1 domain structure so I may give him a try.
As for what to cut? I would probably drop The King in Yellow Folio, taking x2 The Thing in the Yellow Mask and either another 1-cost character or a third Blind Submission. I included the Folio as a defensive tool against investigation-heavy rush decks, but I found I was always resourcing it in favor of Drawing the Sign or a character to stall my opponent (which is important if building up a single domain to play Scheme).
I played a pair of games against a mono-Agency Day deck running San Marco Basilica and The Rays of Dawn (resulting in some great back-and-forth Day/Night battles which rarely happen in Cthulhu).
Stage Fright proved too much for the Agency and I was able to trigger the Opening Night + A Scheme of Byakhees + Drawing the Sign combo in both games. I was afraid an Investigation/Combat rush deck with plenty of Willpower would jump to an early lead and then scratch out a third story through Investigation, but my deck is faster than I expected.
My initial characters have enough icons to hold the line, and with a timely Blind Submission or Black Dog, can stall long enough to set up the combo. Once A Scheme of Byakhees gets Shocked into play, it's easy to bring out Drawing the Sign on the same turn and sweep the board. I just have to be careful of cheap cards like Small Price to Pay, so timing the Shocking Transformation is crucial to success.
For these games I made some slight changes to the deck:
-3 The King in Yellow Folio
+1 Baka
+1 Baleful Reveler
+1 Blind Submission
I felt the deck needed a few more characters, targeted removal and tricks. Not only was the Folio expensive but it turned out to be a win more card, whereas Baka is pivotal in removing troublesome characters and Blind Submission can stall or grab me a little investigation to speed things up. Baleful Reveler is a cheap body and a good target for Shocking Transformation. Instead of the Reveler, I could see taking a third Performance Artist to negate The Plague Stone.
Speaking of tricks, playing Blind Submission in the Operations Phase and then bringing in Baka to wound the character you stole + another of your opponent's characters is a solid move for 2 factions that are notoriously lacking in targeted character removal. With Shocking Transformation it's pretty easy to pull off.
Update on recent games:
I faced 2 different mono-Hastur decks running various lunatics and artists, as well as a mono-Cthulhu Khopesh/From the Depths deck and a mono-Yog build using deck-manipulation and Things in the Ground to successfully bring in heavy hitters.
Once more I was able to trigger The Opening Night + A Scheme of Byakhees + Sweet Dreams in every game. I won all 4 matches and gave up only 1 story total. I'm continually surprised at how easy it is to grab all 3 parts of the combo, but Ol' Lazy Eyes and Shocking Transformation pull everything together. The real trick is getting Sweet Dreams into my hand, though it's not always needed. Still, I feel like it's held together with string as a single wound can take out the Byakhees. I've been waiting for all 3 of my opponent's domains to be drained before shocking them into play.
Other MVPs were Savio and Drawing the Sign. The deck doesn't have a lot of terror, so getting the bonus from Savio plus Fast is critical (and allowed A Scheme to beat Dormant Cthulhu at The Opening Night). Drawing the Sign helped me close things out before my opponents could find an answer, and with A Scheme's repeated discard/insanity lockdown, they usually only had 1 additional turn to do it.
After several plays, I'm confident that cutting The King in Yellow Folio for 2 more characters and 1 extra Blind Submission was the right call.