STogY: Tacoma regionals 1st

First of all, congratulations on your victory.

For Mists of Lethe, was it the game winning card for you by moving their defenders so you could win struggles and the stories? Or to stop their attackers from spreading out and force them all into one story?

Did you ever trigger the second ability on it?

If I personally had a choice of who Faceless Abductor would replace, it would be the Pawn Broker over the Obsessive Elder Thing. It keeps your icon count high, and between the draw of Vortex of Time and the Recursion of BRB and Carl Stanford, the control added by Abductor more than balances out the reduced draw from Pawn Broker.

Yes it does

For Mists of Lethe, was it the game winning card for you by moving their defenders so you could win struggles and the stories? Or to stop their attackers from spreading out and force them all into one story?

Did you ever trigger the second ability on it?

Mists of Lethe gets used in a lot of different ways. In one really close game, my opponent had won 2 stories and were attacking a story with a bunch of success tokens on their side, so I used Mists of Lethe to move attackers to other stories where they didn't have any success tokens so I was able to defend at the story they were about to win. I also use it to move around defenders, typically so that I will win terror or combat struggles, not so much so that I can attack unopposed. It's a really good card because 1) it has an effect that can be really good in the right situation, 2) it costs 0, and 3) because it costs 0, I can recur it without needing to worry about being able to pay its cost.

I never triggered the second ability in the tournament and only occasionally outside of the tournament. I usually don't want to, because then I can't recur it because it's back in my deck. Also, there aren't any good targets for it in my deck, unless I need to move a Frozen Time or Dark Passenger to another character or support card.

Does cost reduction work on X cost cards like Pushed into the Beyond?

I'm pretty sure it does. When you play Pushed, you choose what X is and the target is, then cost modifiers (penalties and reductions) are applied, then you pay the cost. So you choose X = 3 to push Dreamlands Fanatic, then cost is reduced by Wilbur to 2, then you pay the cost. I couldn't find anything specific in the FAQ or rulebook, just the general timing rules, but I'm pretty sure it works.

Congratulations on your victory!

Would you mind sharing a bit about the tournament with us, such as how many players attended? What kind of decks you faced (beyond Agency)?  How the event was organized? Were most of your games close or did you shut out your opponents? What do you feel was your best play/combo of the day? And so on... Thanks!

Congratulations on your victory!

 

Would you mind sharing a bit about the tournament with us, such as how many players attended? What kind of decks you faced (beyond Agency)?  How the event was organized? Were most of your games close or did you shut out your opponents? What do you feel was your best play/combo of the day? And so on... Thanks!

The tournament was pretty small, only 5 players. There were 4 rounds of Swiss followed by a cut to top 4, with no playoff for 3rd place. We were joking about how the eventual cut to top 4 would only drop one player.

Other than me, there was a Miskatonic explorers/other stuff deck, 2 Cthulhu Temple/Cultist/Gustaf Johansen decks, and an Agency Government deck with most of the usual suspects: Trial Judge/San Marco, The Foundation, Lt Wilson Stewart.

Both games against the Agency deck were close (the player was good). In both games, I started out a little slower and fell behind, then I eventually more-or-less stabilized and won, but not by much. I won against the Cthulhu decks relatively easily as my deck has good answers to their stuff: Frozen Time/Hanyatls to get rid of Temple, Pushed into the Beyond/Peaslee for Gustaf, Yithian Scout to sacrifice to Temple, The Claret Knight to not have to sacrifice to Temple. The game against the Miskatonic deck wasn't very close, but some kinds of Miskatonic decks can be hard for me to deal with.

My most memorable play was playing Temporal Slip, choosing investigation, to win the fifth success token on a story, my third story, that my opponent was attacking.

Thanks for the great report, I appreciate it.

I'm a little surprised at the low attendance.  And the TO had a cut with 5 players?  That's just wrong.  It clearly states in the FFG tournament guidelines that no cut is necessary with 16 or fewer players.  With only 5 I would've done a round-robin so everyone could play as much as possible, especially as the event cost $20 I believe.

Hopefully you can make it down to Portland for our regional on July 18th.  Entry fee is only $10,  there's no cut, lots of prizes, Cthulhu cake, and we usually have a good-sized turnout.  For our last 3 regionals we've had 20, 14 and 16 players, respectively.

I won't be able to make the Portland regional, unfortunately, but I think my friend who got second in Tacoma might be there to try his luck again.

Apparently, the Tacoma regional was at an event that was running for the first time this year, so maybe the low turnout was because it is a new event. The other people there knew a few other people who they were really expecting to come, but didn't for unknown reasons.

Actually "Black Dog" is restricted..  maybe  "Master of the Myths" ?

"Master of the Myths" is restricted too.

Two restricted cards is a serious issue with using the deck now. Cats of Ulthar is the obvious non-restricted switch for Black Dog, but it's markedly worse.
 

Btw, with 5 players, 4 rounds of "Swiss" is a round robin. Any playoff should have only been done to resolve ties, so a winner wasn't based off one of the various irritating tie-breakers.

Cats? Why not Dirk Sharpe? No one has any love for Dirk.

I like Dirk Sharp, but Cats are Fast and 2 Combat. Well worth the +1 cost imho.  Plus, a surprise addition to any story, especially on 'attack' is pretty sweet.

I prefer the surprise investigation and two cost. Keeping a 3 cost domain open is probably only going to happen late game.