The Great Cthulhu - Tournament Experience

So this past weekend I was able to participate in my first Call of Cthulhu tournament, at the Fantasy Flight games center store championship. I wasn't expecting to win since have only been playing a few months, but I was just looking forward to playing against people in person, and not just online. We ended up having 10 people participate, which although isn't amazing, was enough to have four rounds and a cut to the top four, so would at the very least get four games and was excited and ready to go. I know this isn't the ideal article for new players, however, with moving to the cities and getting ready for the event this week I didn't have time to think about something else to write about, but maybe can get someone excited to try to compete in a tournament near them.

My Deck

Character
Degenerate Serpent Cultist (TWB) x3
Fall Guy (DotU) x3
Henry Knoll (DotU) x2
Lord of the Silver Twilight (Core) x2
Lurking Deep One (AoA) x3
Naomi O'Bannion (DotU) x2
Patsy (Core) x2
Peter Clover (SoK) x3
Prepared Alienist (TKatG) x3
Ocean Crawlers (Core) x2
Martin Herring (DotU) x2
Tommy Malloy (DotU) x1
Isaac Miles (DotU) x1
Master of the Myths (IT) x2

Support
Dutch Courage (Core) x2
Flooded Vault (TiV) x2
Khopesh of the Abyss (TSS) x3
Gun Runner's Club (SoM) x3

Event
Calculated Mutation (DotU) x3
Immurement (DotU) x1
On the Lam (DotU) x3
Deep One Assault (Core) x2

With the Syndicate deluxe expansion just coming out it has been what I have been playing with the most, and since I wanted to use a deck I was comfortable with I went with this deck. Dutch Courage and Khopesh work great together and that was half the reason I went with Cthulhu as my second faction. I also really liked being able to splash in some cheap Terror icons since I was expecting a lot of Human faction decks. My original deck had more Arcane Icons with the likes of Tattoo Artist and such to really effectively use Calculated Mutation, however, I realized that usually just changing one or two icons is all that it takes to make a big impact. Well, lets take a look at how the tournament went.

Sorry in advance I don't remember everyone's name.

Round 1
Round one I faced Matt (I believe), Gigantis on the forum. He was running a Mono-Shub deck that seemed to just be playing solid characters and had cost reduction to play out bigger characters. I had a very strong start, I believe playing 3 characters out on the first turn. He was able to get a few characters out on his turn, but on my second turn believe I got out a Khopesh and took out characters of his and was able to place 2 and 3 success on two separate stories. I On the Lam another character the next turn and Deep One Assaulted his reducer to prevent him from playing what he wanted to his next turn. It was a pretty quick game had a strong board presence and he wasn't able to catch up.

1-0

Round 2
The Second round I faced Josh a employee for FFG (2 FFG employees competed to add numbers, they weren't able to win of course.) He was running a Syndicate/Hastur exhaust everyone with Seven Steps and the Conspiracy that allows you to only ready one character each turn. I went second and I mulligan into a bad hand, all I was able to play was a flooded vault, after he used a transient resource to play out Mentor to Vaughn to kneel my board out more. On his second turn he played out a neutral character that let him go get his conspiracy and it wasn't looking that great for me. When he attacked with Mentor though I paid one to put into play a Master of the Myths and he played a Tear Gas on him so he could kneel him with Mentor, however, I then I used my Flooded Vault to get a Khopesh and killed his two characters. Next I played out 2 characters with Investigation and was able to get 3 success on two different stories. Next turn he played the Seven Steps, however, I won a story the next turn and was all me from then.

2-0

Round 3
This was the best game of Cthulhu I ever had. He was running Syndicate/University so this was a very fast deck and he got ahead of me quickly. I was able to defend just enough here and there. We both had our Martin's doing serious work since both of our cost curve was very similar, so he was able to sneak past many guys on both side of the board. Luckily I was able to keep top decking into characters that were able to hold their own and I was slowly catching up. He was close to winning at 2 stories to my 1, and he had like 3 success on another story. Luckily I was able to defend on last push and on my last turn due to time I was able to win one last story to get to 2. I didn't realize the tie breaker was with how much success you had at the end so I was able to discard 2 Patsy's to get rid of the success my opponent had, however, I just attacked with everything at one story to be sure to win it so didn't get any other success on my turn so ended with a true tie. Yes a tie.

2-0-1

Round 4
Sorry this game is a bad write up. I faced Jeremy, the world champ, with his world's deck. It ended in like four turns with me never getting going. I had horrible start and he had a great start drawing like 6 extra cards on the first turn. He was able to mill me out before I even won a single story.

2-1-1, However, With my tie I was just able to sneak into the top 4 (: So mission successful got myself the playmat!

Top 4
I went up against a Cthulhu/Silver Twilight deck. He had a way better start I thought I was done, but wasn't to upset because got the playmat that I really wanted. However, I got Naomi out and things turned quickly. I played 2 On the Lam and a Calculated Mutation that I then I re-triggered with Naomi, being able to reuse three very powerful events was great! Fall Guy, who was an MVP all day, stopped his final push preventing him the extra success from shutting down his investigation struggle. Re-trigging an On the Lam with my last attack to sneak past his best defender was enough for me to win and get into the final match!

Championship
Sadly the day came to a very anticlimactic conclusion with facing the world champ again. Sorry nothing of note to say on this game it was even a quicker defeat. So in conclusion mill is lame, ha.

Overall the day was amazing and Jeremy was an awesome guy and brought a set of cards for four people to do a draft and that was a great experience, draft works so well for Cthulhu. Got a top four playmat and a deck box so that was great too and since was at FFG they also gave away extra alt-art cards giving away older ones was awesome. Was a fun first Cthulhu tournament experience.

Sorry this wasn't the most interesting article today, with having the tournament and actually moving and such this week was a pretty busy week for me. The next article will be more detailed and will be a much better look into how to build a solid CoC deck. Also, hope for those new players seeing a new player take second in his first tournament after just playing few months helps others feel more comfortable getting out there and try a tournament if they have the chance to do so. I hope you enjoy this article at least a little bit and look forward to a in depth future article.