Pacta Arcana - The Meatgrinder

Welcome to the sixth edition of Pacta Arcana, in which we will explore the depths of deckbuilding with multiple factions in the Call of Cthulhu LCG. In each article of this series we will be looking at combining two factions (sometimes more) together to form a cohesive deck around a particular theme, combo, or strategy.

Last time on Pacta Arcana, we had a party with Shub-Niggurath at The Festival, and saw some of the fun things that can happen when factions lose some of their inhibitions. (Don’t worry Lord Farrington, “What happens at The Festival, stays at The Festival...”) This week, I put it to you (dear readers) to vote on the next pact. Fresh off the release of the new deluxe expansion for Yog-Sothoth, I knew that one faction would indeed be Yog-Sothoth. But the other, as it turned out, would be The Syndicate!

Yog-Sothoth and The Syndicate

I’m very excited about this pact simply because these are my two favorite factions, both in terms of theme and playstyle. I love the tricks that they can pull, and the unorthodox ways of gaining board advantage and achieving a win condition. Yog have lots of surprises that can come from you from “many angles” (harhar) whether it’s from discard pile, domains, deck, or hand. The Syndicate has lots of dirty tricks designed to let you survive and keep kickin’ like exhausting and reducing skill and stealing success tokens - and otherwise they are the jack of all icons, master of none. So combined you can see that they can pose a major headache for your opponent’s challenge math. Can he depend on that character if his skill is reduced? What if it’s bounced to hand? One of my characters will be removed, so how can I eke out a success at this story? This either forces your opponent to overcommit, leaving himself open on defense, or not bother committing, which leaves you open to perform tactical strikes on his characters to push through your own successes, or even just wait until his deck slowly trickles out.

What do I get out of this deal?
One of my favorite themes in a Syndicate deck is skill-reduction. Most characters don’t have investigation icons, so if you can shut down all the skill at a story, that’s potentially two success tokens you are denying your opponent, since he can neither get success for the skill check or for unopposed. Yog, likewise, has some good cards that decrease characters skill, but on a global level, instead of the tactical targeting of Syndicate’s skill reduction effects. The skill reduction effects for Yog were somewhat limited, however, the Yog box provides us with cards that flesh this theme out for Yog a lot more.

Key Cards:
De Vermis Mysteriis (TKatG) - This is a global skill reduction effect, so it reduces your own characters skill as well, but you have the tricks to take the most advantage of it.
Tear Gas (TTftS) - Before, unless you wanted to just destroy a 1 skill character, you had to combine it with Clover Club Torch Singer or Clover Club Bouncer, sucking up domains. Now with the global effects that kick in as passives, you could potentially hit a 2, 3 or more cost character all for 1 cost domain. And it isn’t telegraphed like Ice Shaft!
Summon Spectral Hunter (TKatG) - A somewhat pricier card than Tear Gas, although it is like a De Vermis Mysteriis and Tear Gas combined into one card, since over enough turns it can function exactly the same.
Ice Shaft (NN) - Hitting a 3 cost character is good enough, but now with skill reduction, almost no character your opponent has is safe.
Marcus Jamburg (WoP) - He can get back your De Vermis Mysteriis and Ice Shafts and Summon Spectral Hunters. He is essential.

Thoughts on Gameplay:
Considering the key cards, you want to have De Vermis Mysteriis in your starting hand, so mulligan if you don’t have one. The other cards won’t come into play until later. Having a couple of cheap characters like Cannibal Ghast and Miranda Keeper will also be great, since you can use the Ghast for defense, and Miranda to pull your Gun Runner’s Club or Bound and Gagged. Turn 1, you want to try to set up your resources evenly, so having a 2-domain with 1 Yog and 1 Syndicate resource, 1 domain with a Yog resource, and 1 domain with a Syndicate resource.

In general you want to get your skill reduction effects in play. When you start to get your skill reduction effects going, it will allow you to make more efficient use of Tear Gas, Faceless Abductor, and Hungry Star Vampire to stall out the game.

When you have the game stalled, use your destruction effects to target problematic characters. Snow Graves and Fthaggua will help ensure that you never see that particular character again. In particular, you should worry about cards like Displaced Chthonian, which has repeatable and hard-to-cancel support destruction. You would want to get rid of something like that pretty quickly.

After that, use your Elite Hit Squad and Mr. David Pan to win your stories and Marcus Jamburg and The Large Man to recycle your destruction supports and events, respectively.

Alternatively, you could stall out the game by recycling your cards into your deck with Gregory Gry and discarding your opponent’s deck with the De Vermis and other discard effects, but that would be very slow.

The Deck:
Characters (27)
Clover Club Torch Singer (Core) x2
Faceless Abductor (TOotST) x2
Fthaggua (TKatG) x3
Hungry Star Vampire (TKatG) x2
Mr. David Pan (CotJE) x2
Spell-bound Shoggoth (Core) x3
Cannibal Ghast (Core) x3
Elite Hit Squad (SoA) x2
The Large Man (TSS) x2
Miranda Keeper (WoP) x2
Marcus Jamburg (WoP) x2
Gregory Gry (JtUK) x2

Supports (18)
Bound and Gagged (TSC) x3
De Vermis Mysteriis (TKatG) x3
Summon Spectral Hunter (TKatG) x2
Gun Runner's Club (SoM) x3
Snow Graves (AtMoM) x2
Ice Shaft (NN) x3
Prism of Many Views (TTB) x2

Events (10)
Calling Down the Ancients (SoA) x3
Panic (Core) x1
Tear Gas (TTftS) x3
Journey to the Other Side (Core) x3

A few notes on the deck:

• De Vermis Mysteriis is non-unique, but don’t go crazy with it! Only trigger it enough to get a good global skill reduction like 2 or 3. It’s there to supplement your skill-based destruction stuff and force your opponent to only commit big dudes to hope for a slim success at a story. Honestly, you're odds of getting the effect are usually less than 50% without some sort of filtering, which is what Prism and Journey are for.
• Since Panic is loyal, it’s really only useful if you have multiple skill reduction effects in play, which is why there’s only one copy. The good thing is that you probably will only ever need 1-2 Syndicate resources on the domain used to pay for it, since everything should be reduced to 1 skill or less.
• Something worth noting is that attachments only check their play restrictions when played, so Bound and Gagged only checks that it is attaching to a character with 2 or less skill once - when it is played. After that, even if a character’s skill increases again, it remains attached. You can use this to lock down Ancient-Ones!
• Hungry Star Vampire, it’s worth noting, is typically bad since its low skill can often cause it to destroy itself, and your opponent can choose to not play another low strength character until the vampire cannibalizes itself. However, with skill reduction, it is almost guaranteed that there will be another character with lower skill. Another rules note: according to the FAQ, “at any time a card effect targets a character with the lowest skill and there is a tie, the card effect’s controller may choose which character is affected.” All the characters have 0 skill? I can choose anyone. {cue evil laughter} There are only two in the deck in order to give yourself some time to set up some skill-reduction effects.
• Once The Large Man is out, you really should be careful with how much you go to stories, since he can slim down your deck pretty quickly. He is really just to get back your Tear Gases to cement the lock on the board.
• Fthaggua should keep your opponent's discard pretty bone-dry, which hopefully will help against some popular tricks with Hungry/Rampagin Dark Young and the new Scholar from Yith. Snow Graves with help with recursion shenanigans.
• This deck is slightly above 50 cards, but I thought it necessary since you'll be doing a bit of discarding.

Building on a Budget:
The deck above includes cards from the full card pool, including 3 core sets, The Order of the Silver Twilight, The Key and the Gate, 2 Secrets of Arkham, Curse of the Jade Emperor, The Shifting Sands, Words of Power, 2x Journey to Unknown Kadath, The Spoken Covenant, The Unspeakable Pages, At the Mountains of Madness, Never Night, Spawn of Madness, and The Thing from the Shore. Once again, I’m presenting another version of the deck if you wanted to build one with similar concept, but on a budget.

Here is a decklist using only 2 core sets, 1 Secrets of Arkham, The Key and the Gate, and a few less chapter packs, including Curse of the Jade Emperor, The Shifting Sands, Words of Power, Never Night, The Thing from the Shore, and The Spoken Covenant.

Characters (26)
Clover Club Torch Singer (Core) x2
Clover Club Bouncer (Core) x2
Professor Nathaniel Peaslee (TKatG) x2
Fthaggua (TKatG) x3
Hungry Star Vampire (TKatG) x2
Mr. David Pan (CotJE) x2
Spell-bound Shoggoth (Core) x2
Cannibal Ghast (Core) x2
Elite Hit Squad (SoA) x2
The Large Man (TSS) x2
Miranda Keeper (WoP) x3
Marcus Jamburg (WoP) x2

Supports (13)
Bound and Gagged (TSC) x3
De Vermis Mysteriis (TKatG) x3
Summon Spectral Hunter (TKatG) x2
Ice Shaft (NN) x3
O'Bannion's Ledger (WoP) x2

Events (15)
Calling Down the Ancients (SoA) x2
Panic (Core) x2
Tear Gas (TTftS) x3
Parallel Universe (TTftS) x2
Gathering at the Stones (Core) x2
Journey to the Other Side (Core) x2
All Are One (TSC) x2

Cut
Snow Graves (AtMoM) x2
Gregory Gry (JtUK) x2
Gun Runner's Club (SoM) x3
Faceless Abductor (TOotST) x3
Prism of Many Views (TTB) x2

We lost a copy of Cannibal Ghast and a few other characters, so I filled it in with the new Peaslee (who has a skill-based ability!) and the Bouncer (more skill reduction!) I bumped up Miranda to x3, even though there are a few less Syndicate supports, simply because if you get her early that's still some sort of card advantage to replace Gun Runner's Club. I added in O'Bannion's Ledger as a sort of Dynamite (TAD) effect. You might hit your own character with it, but hopefully you can take out more of theirs. Parallel Universe rounds out the supports with more skill-based effects. This, combined with your Hit Squad (and Mr. Pan), you should be able to work through the stories pretty quickly. Gathering at the Stones will help you get back a support or event you need in lieu of Jamburg and The Large Man. All Are One is the poor-man's Journey, and replaces the Prism.

Thanks for reading! Join me next time for another edition of Pacta Arcana. Now, go and vote for the next pact!

Any feedback, suggestions, or comments are welcome.

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Danigral started hoarding Call of Cthulhu the same time as A Game of Thrones. While he’s played AGoT more competitively, he’s harbored a secret love for CoC and has played it casually and competitively for over 2 years. Initially drawn into the game through a fascination with Lovecraft’s mythos, he fell in love with the innovative mechanics and engaging gameplay CoC offers. And he wants to convert you. Cthulhu Fhtagn!