Pacta Arcana - The Sideboard Sideshow

Welcome to the fifth 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.

Shub's Party Tent

Last time on Pacta Arcana, we tagged along as the MU scholars studied the horrifying sign of Hastur. This week, I have a special edition discussing The Festival, the new champ card designed by Graham Hill, the winner of 2012 European Nationals. If you haven’t read his article yet over on FFG’s website, I suggest you take a look at it. It provides some valuable insight into the mind of a champion player. I believe that this single card will do more to open up the meta than ever before, and I hope to show you at least one example of how. Here’s one excerpt from him that I will focus on in my article today:

"The ability to search your deck for resources also means that you can easily run out-of-faction cards. Accordingly, The Festival permits a tradeoff of balancing versus hard-matched resources that should open more options for deck-building. The math here can get quite complex, but it is now very possible to add a small handful of cards from a third or fourth faction and be able to play them with a minimal reduction in the flow of your deck. Hopefully, this will give deck-builders with a knack for numbers a whole plethora of new opportunities." - Graham Hill

The Festival may be a Shub card, but it doesn’t discriminate against other factions. In fact, The Festival is the first real card (since the CCG era) that gives you the potential to dabble in all the factions - allowing you to create a real rainbow deck. This can allow you (provided your deck isn’t too slow) to pack the power cards of each faction or shore up weaknesses in your deck utilizing the strengths of other factions. Does your deck struggle with drawing cards? Throw in three copies of Gunrunner’s Club. Is your deck weak to certain dominant characters? Throw in some copies of Deep One Rising, or Sir Jeffrey Farrington. If you end up with one in your hand, all you have to do is use The Festival to bring out a second copy and resource it to get a match.

What do I get out of this deal?
Since The Festival is a Shub-Niggurath card, it will be our main faction, allowing us to play it turn 1 with no problems. Fortunately, Shub is a strong faction, so we shouldn’t have any difficulty putting in all the good cards and still leaving room for shiny toys from other factions. (I just want to add as a note that it is also possible to splash in The Festival if Shub is NOT your main faction, by running Hall of Champions and/or Museum Curator to put it into play.) But why is The Festival so wonderful?

In order to discuss this topic in concrete terms, I’m going to talk about two primary strategies for resourcing with The Festival, and a third secondary strategy:

• “Resource Flexing” - What I mean by this is using the color-matched resource for the card you want to play, and possibly pop The Festival on it with its discard-pile ability to pay the cost if necessary. Instead of trying to delay-match your card, if you have a hard resource match for a card in your hand already, you just need to bump up the domain with The Festival to pay the cost. In the big picture, this provides some flexibility for playing out 2-cost cards if you have only 3 factions in the deck (one faction for each domain).
• “Rainbow-domaining” - Another strategy for domains is trying to build up 1 domain with your rainbow of resources (one card of each faction in your deck),giving you all the resources you might need to play any single card in your deck. This is a better strategy if you have fewer higher-cost off-faction cards in your deck.
• Mixed approach - Trying to do both is feasible, although more difficult, since resource matches will be more random. A mixed strategy become more viable when you have more neutral jumper characters, or cards like Museum Curator that can put supports into play bypassing cost, or more lower cost cards of your main faction (if you have a main faction).

With those strategies defined, now we talk more about the card abilities in detail.

First, The Festival allows you to customize your resources for whatever cards you happen to have in your hand. If you have a MU card, such as Museum Curator, but don’t have that resource on a domian, it’s easy to tutor for another Museum Curator in your deck and suddenly have a resource match. The problem is that playing that card now will be delayed a turn, since The Festival requires you to attach it to a drained domain. (If you add in Basil Elton, though, you can get past this little hiccup on the same turn.)

Second, The Festival feeds your discard pile, setting you up early for recursion effects, or discard pile triggers introduced in the latest The Key and the Gate expansion. In Shub, this allows you to use cards like Hungry Dark Young and Rampaging Dark Young to good effect.

Last, The Festival provides a sort of resource-ramping, by tutoring itself and sacrificing a copy on one of your domains on two consecutive turns, you can use The Festival’s second ability to immediately place it back on another domain. I actually recommend using The Festival to tutor itself for the first time so that it gives you this flexibility to pay for 2 cost cards of off-factions, since you will then always be able to sac The Festival if you need to have an emergency +1 resource for any particular card in your hand. For example, your opponent may think he’s safe for a turn playing a support card when you only have a 1-resource domain open; and then you can suddenly use The Festival to bump up a domain to 2 to play Burrowing Beneath.

But how would this look in deck form? I’ve chosen to do the Resource Flexing strategy with Shub-Niggurath as my main faction, which means that I will have a relative majority of Shub cards in my deck, and small packets of off-faction cards.

Key Cards:
The Festival - Obviously.
Marcus Jamburg - To pull back resources sac’ed with The Festival
Basil Elton - To speed up resource matching same turn.
Museum Curator - To put into play off-faction supports for free.

Thoughts on Gameplay:
The focus of this deck is the supports. The characters are there just to slow down the opponent until you can trigger Museum Curator as many times as possible to get my supports into play. This deck will be tricky to play because of the resource flexing required. It will require a little bit of luck and a lot of playing to figure out what is best at any given time, since many times you have to think one turn ahead. And although it may be a little confusing for the driver, it will be even more confusing for the opponent! The coolest tricks, of course, involve resourcing shenanigans with The Festival, such as the following:

• Resource Museum Curator, then sac it with Festival and play Hungry Dark Young to trigger Museum Curator.
• Pull a Many-Angled Thing with The Festival, then play Twilight Gate to put it into play, and re-resource it to another domain.
• Discard a support card to put it into play with Marcus Jamburg.

The Deck:
Characters (26)
Museum Curator (TWB) x3
Hungry Dark Young (Core) x3
Grasping Chthonian (IotF) x2
Lord Jeffrey Farrington (TOotST) x2
Many-angled Thing (TGS) x3
Black Dog (WoP) x2
Dr. Mya Badry (ER) x2
Master of the Myths (IT) x2
Marcus Jamburg (WoP) x2
Basil Elton (KD) x2
Harvesting Mi-Go (TTB) x1
Victoria Glasser (Core) x1
Y'Golonac (Core) x1

Supports (13)
The Necronomicon (SoA) x1
The Cavern of Flame (ItDoN) x2
The Vale of Pnath (SftSK) x2
Guardian Pillar (SftSK) x2
Stygian Eye (IT) x1
The Festival (TkatG) x3
The Doorway (TBJ) x1

Events (12)
Shocking Transformation (Core) x3
Burrowing Beneath (Core) x2
Twilight Gate (TH) x3
Unspeakable Resurrection (Core) x1
Thunder in the East (KD) x3

A few notes on the deck:

• This deck absolutely depends on The Festival to make sure you are resource matching correctly. Because of this, you need ways to recur The Festival if it ever gets discarded. Marcus Jamburg is the best way to do that; however, since Neutral cards screw up resource matching, this is one of our only neutral cards, and we’ll only have x2 of him.
• Museum Curator is so, so, so, so good. He can get out a Necronomicon for free very early in the game, and any of your other supports for free. Common theme in my articles: “Free is good!"
• The Doorway is there to trigger your Hungry Dark Young and Museum Curator and Sir Jeffrey Farrington repeatedly. I’ve added just one copy since it isn't useful without having characters out first, and the added difficulty that it is steadfast.
• One copy of Unspeakable Resurrection? It's there just in case you need to get back Jamburg, and it's another resource match for Yog for Twilight Gate. I'd rather have it than another neutral Jamburg which can gum up your resourcing if you get him too early.

Building on a Budget:
Excuse me while I scoff at the idea of trying to rebuild this deck. Since the main cards are Dreamlands supports, if you don’t have these cards, the idea of my deck goes out the window with them. It would be a completely different deck.

I encourage you to try out your own take with The Festival, though, and post your thoughts below, and your ideas for maximizing its use!