The Great Cthulhu - Deck Building General Guidelines

This time on The Great Cthulhu, the article series aimed towards new and veteran players alike, we will be taking a look at the basics that I use when building a deck for Call of Cthulhu. Unlike some card games wherethere are clear Tier 1 decks vs the rest of the decks, or a certain faction that is better, in Call of Cthulhu there are many different directions you can go with building a CoC deck. This can be a challenge that can be both 1) fun and challenging (which is most important, and 2) frustrating and daunting. I am hopefully going to try to alleviate 2). that makes it first and most importantly a fun and rewarding challenge, but 2nd it is a challenge and can be frustrating and daunting and I am trying to hopefully ease that progress. I just want to tell Telling everyone in advance that this article will cover general/slight more advance deck building tips. I will be writing another article on this topic in future but it would take a very long article to go to much in depth, so will go over basics here and more of the advanced steps in a near future article.

The first thing that I do when want to build a deck is open up the Call of Cthulhu deck builder on this site found here: http://www.cardgamed...eckbuilder.html. I find using the deck builder online is a much easier way to go through your cards than sorting them all out and going through the cards one by one and putting them into the deck, just to take them out again. Also it is nice that they have an option to put in the sets that you own so I am able to take out the two cycles that I don't own (the Dreamlands and the Summons of the Deep). so I am not putting in cards that I don't own.

Okay The next step is picking the faction or factions you want to use. For the sake of simplistically simplicity I only picked one faction to use this time and that is Shub-Niggurath. Next, you have to have a small idea of what strategy you want for your deck. I have always wanted to build a deck that tries to kill everyone and then bring them back to give you the advantage and so I made an attempt at that kind of deck for this article. I then go one group at a time, character, event, support, and conspiracy cards and add EVERY SINGLE CARD that I even slightly consider for the deck and after I did that I ended up with this the below as my deck. When I mean every single card that could go into it there are some things I look for in cards. For characters I want a right balance of cost to icons/skill or a crazy ability. What I mean by that is most 3 cost characters should have 3 icons of any combination or if it doesn't have an effect that can effect the game in a big way. This is more of something will go over in the advance topic though but in general you know a good character when you see one. Events I try not to add to many high cost ones but still want them to have a great effect. The same with supports. Since I know what I want my deck to do I have a better idea of where to narrow my deck down to a little and may add cards that wouldn't put into a generic deck. If you don't have an idea of what you want the deck to do my best recommendation is to start with two factions and add every card you like. Once you add some cards you will begin to see some combinations you can make within those two factions. Any faction can work well together if you find a combination within those two.

DECK Step 1
Character: (68)
3x Ghoulish Worshipper (Ancient Horrors)
3x Priestess of Bubastis (Core Set)
3x One of the Thousand (Perilous Trials)
3x Savio Corvi (Terror in Venice)
3x Seeker of Mysteries (Secrets of Arkham)
2x Amaranth (Seekers of Knowledge)
3x Ancient Guardian (Core Set)
3x Antarctic Yeti (At the Mountains of Madness)
3x Arthur Todd (Touched by the Abyss)
2x Black Dog (Words of Power)
3x Corrupted Midwife (Ebla Restored)
3x Dark Druid (Ancient Horrors)
3x Harvesting Mi-Go (The Twilight Beckons)
3x Hungry Dark Young (Core Set)
3x Karin Marley (Ebla Restored)
2x Lucas Corn (Written and Bound)
3x Nug (Seekers of Knowledge)
2x Nodens (Kingsport Dreams)
3x Slavering Gug (Core Set)
3x Y'Golonac (Core Set)
3x Ya-te-veo (The Unspeakable Pages)
3x Shub-Niggurath (The Cacophony)
3x Ferocious Dark Young (Whispers in the Dark)
3x Watcher of the Woods (Core Set)
3x Bill Strauss (DotU)

Support: (18)
3x Book of Iod (Ebla Restored)
2x Dimensional Rift (Secrets of Arkham)
2x Terrors in the Dark (Secrets of Arkham)
3x The Necronomicon: Olaus Wormius Translation (Touched by the Abyss)
3x The Plague Stone (Terror in Venice)
2x The Three Bells (The Unspeakable Pages)
3x Altar of the Blessed (Core Set)

Event: (18)
3x Burrowing Beneath (Core Set)
3x Come to the Altar (The Order of the Silver Twilight)
3x Dark Rebirth (Terror in Venice)
3x Shocking Transformation (Core Set)
3x Thunder in the East (Kingsport Dreams)
3x Untimely Burial (Terror in Venice)

Conspiracy: (5)
3x Negotium Perambulans in Tenebris (Dunwich Denizens)
2x Dreamlands Conspriacy (Conspiracies of Chaos)

And then I of course play with this deck . I hope you know that I am kidding. I do this because it is easier I feel to take cards out of a deck than adding in pieces one at a time, so if you can decide the cards that even have a chance to make the deck, you put them in and will take out some later. I found out that I was at 112 cards and I was happy with that considering sometimes I am close to or over 300 cards sometimes if try to use two or three factions. The key things have to look at is how many of each card type you have though: I was sitting at 71 character cards, 18 support, 18 events, and 5 conspiracy cards. If you go by the basic idea of wanting 30 characters and 20 of the rest of the card types can get an idea of what I want to cut.

The first thing I do is go back and look at my characters. I do this for a few reasons. First is it has the most things I need to cut, and second is that you need to know your character base before you can fill in the extra pieces because characters are what really wins the games. I am not going to go card by card right now on what I cut I will be posting a second part of my deck shortly. The key though is to first fill out the cost curve. What I mean by this is you have to look at the cost of your cards (talking characters right now) and you can usually make a few cuts right away by noticing you have to many high cost cards, however, this deck is running a lot of cost reduction so I am using a higher cost curve then I would with almost any other deck. Also you have to then find cards that just don't fit the deck type your running. I found out after building the first step that I was going to be using board wipes and then using Dark Rebirth and The Necronomicon to bring people back, however, since didn't have as many ways to make it night that I would like I stuck more with the idea of using The Necronomicon, although I did keep one Rebirth in for now.

DECK Step 2

Character: (48)
3x Ghoulish Worshipper (Ancient Horrors)
3x Priestess of Bubastis (Core Set)
3x One of the Thousand (Perilous Trials)
3x Savio Corvi (Terror in Venice)
1x Amaranth (Seekers of Knowledge)
3x Arthur Todd (Touched by the Abyss)
2x Black Dog (Words of Power)
3x Corrupted Midwife (Ebla Restored)
3x Dark Druid (Ancient Horrors)
3x Harvesting Mi-Go (The Twilight Beckons)
3x Hungry Dark Young (Core Set)
3x Karin Marley (Ebla Restored)
1x Lucas Corn (Written and Bound)
3x Nug (Seekers of Knowledge)
3x Y'Golonac (Core Set)
3x Ya-te-veo (The Unspeakable Pages)
2x Shub-Niggurath (The Cacophony)
1x Master of the Myths (Into Tartarus)
2x Bill Strauss (DotU)

Support: (10)
2x Book of Iod (Ebla Restored)
2x Dimensional Rift (Secrets of Arkham)
3x The Necronomicon: Olaus Wormius Translation (Touched by the Abyss)
3x The Plague Stone (Terror in Venice)

Event: (6)
2x Burrowing Beneath (Core Set)
1x Dark Rebirth (Terror in Venice)
3x Thunder in the East (Kingsport Dreams)

Conspiracy: (4)
3x Negotium Perambulans in Tenebris (Dunwich Denizens)
1x Dreamlands Conspriacy (Conspiracies of Chaos)

So after going through the initial cards I was able to drop down all the way down to 68 and that was with adding a few cards that I though would help the deck out. I realized that my deck type will be a slower deck so I went with Negotium Perambulans as my restricted card. it greatly slows the game down as well as making Savio Corvi ability active. This is when the deck building really gets difficult and having to cut the cards that all have a spot in the deck. Here I am looking at mainly cutting the non-character cards first, however, I was actually already able to drop this deck down to 20 non-character cards so I was already set there for now, but in most cases that is where a lot of the final cuts take place. Not to be repetitive but you really just do the same process until you reach a playable size deck (less then 55 cards) and test it out.

Final Deck

Total Cards: (52)

Character: (32)
3x Ghoulish Worshipper (AH)
3x Priestess of Bubastis (Core)
3x Savio Corvi (TiV)
1x Amaranth (SoK)
3x Arthur Todd (TbtA)
2x Black Dog (WoP)
3x Corrupted Midwife (ER)
2x Harvesting Mi-Go (TTB)
2x Karin Marley (ER)
2x Nug (SoK)
3x Y'Golonac (Core)
3x Ya-te-veo (TUP)
1x Shub-Niggurath (TC)
1x Master of the Myths (IT)

Support: (10)
2x Book of Iod (ER)
2x Dimensional Rift (SoA)
3x The Necronomicon: Olaus Wormius Translation (TbtA)
3x The Plague Stone (TiV)

Event: (6)
2x Burrowing Beneath (Core)
1x Dark Rebirth (TiV)
3x Thunder in the East (KD)

Conspiracy: (4)
3x Negotium Perambulans in Tenebris (DD)
1x Dreamlands Conspriacy (CoC)


In conclusion I feel like this is an okay deck that seems fun to play. I have to test it out here still but when I do I will let you guys know the results in the comments. The key really is to play out a lot of guys and big guys with your reducers, hit the board with a board wipe and then bring all your guys back and watch your opponent try to catch up with top decking vs your flooded board. Obviously like all decks it does have a good amount of weakness but that is okay. I am sorry I didn't go into more detail but as you can see this is already a full article. I will write up a followup article shortly.

For some extra information though for those less experience players don't worry to much about the factions you're putting together. All of them can be combined well together you just have to realize the weakness and strengths that each one gives you. When you look at this deck you will notice two major weaknesses and that is I have a whole 1 investigation in the deck and only 17 arcane and although that isn't a terrible number most of those are from unique characters and some that even have more then 1 so it isn't spread out well. What that really means is this deck is slow and I mean real slow. You have to play defensively until you clear the board and reclaim your board position. So if you can just notice your weakness of your deck and work your way around it many decks in this game can do well. I hope this was an okay deck building guideline start and will have the more advance non deck specific stuff in future article.

I'm sorry kept it brief for a simple read if you have any specific question I would love to answer that specific question in the comments. Also I will be going over more advance deck building guideline I use for every deck and not just a specific deck very soon.



New Deck after FAQ:
Total Cards: (50)

Character: (30)
3x Ghoulish Worshipper (AH)
3x Priestess of Bubastis (Core)
3x Savio Corvi (TiV)
1x Amaranth (SoK)
3x Arthur Todd (TbtA)
2x Black Dog (WoP)
3x Corrupted Midwife (ER)
2x Harvesting Mi-Go (TTB)
2x Karin Marley (ER)
2x Nug (SoK)
3x Y'Golonac (Core)
3x Ya-te-veo (TUP)

Support: (12)
2x Book of Iod (ER)
1x Dimensional Rift (SoA)
3x The Necronomicon: Olaus Wormius Translation (TbtA)
3x The Plague Stone (TiV)
3x The Festival (TkatG)

Event: (5)
2x Burrowing Beneath (Core)
3x Thunder in the East (KD)

Conspiracy: (3)
3x Negotium Perambulans in Tenebris (DD)



After the new faq I found out that Negotium got unrestricted which was a big boon for this deck so had the availability to put in another restricted card into the deck. Before I was thinking to use Shocking Transformation, however, after some consideration being able to cheat in some high cost characters that I resourced earlier with The Festival into my discard to bring back was a very powerful option (also the Festival maybe my favorite card in the game). After some playing with the new version it did greatly increase its effectiveness and I'd consider it almost T1 now. You have support destruction to get rid of snow graves that ruins the deck and unless opponents deck is 1 very very fast or 2 have instant removal after I play The Necronomicon then it is very hard for my opponent to come back from their board having nothing to mine having everything.