The Key and the Gate Review Part 2

Welcome to part two of the Call of Cthulhu The Key and the Gate Review. You can find part one, covering the Yog-Sothoth characters, here. In this installment Danigral and dboren look at the Event and Support cards for Yog-Sothoth.

So lets get down to the card reviews, and let us know in the comments what you think of the cards!

[CRB='forums/uploads/coc/med_displaced-tkatg.jpg'] Displaced 5 out of 10

Danigral - 2 out of 5
Since it's loyal and requires Yithians to trigger, this will only be useful in a dedicated Yithian deck. I'm not a big fan of effects that sacrifice your own board position for a temporary benefit, and this is no exception.

dboeren - 3 out of 5
I'm not concerned about Loyal on a cost 2 card, the main drawback for me is that it's only viable in Yithian decks. You need cheap Yithians (like Scout) around, but the threat of at any time taking over one of their characters is pretty strong and you may be able to kill them off or use them to win a story or kill off one of your opponents other characters. Being able to put it on almost any character is pretty nice, there are some mean uniques out there these days...
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[CRB='forums/uploads/coc/med_one-in-all-tkatg.jpg'] One-In-All 2 out of 10

Danigral - 1 out of 5
This is just too situational to be reliably useful. It is really best on supports that don't kneel to trigger, since if it does kneel your opponent could just trigger it first. Most good supports have passive abilities so this card won't work for those. So we're looking at a small subset of supports where this might be useful, if you will even have a target for the effect if you can trigger it. The best use I can think of off the top of my head is Khopesh of the Abyss.

dboeren - 1 out of 5
Too unreliable. Your opponent may or may not have supports with triggered effects, and if he does, they might not be ones that are useful to you. In the right situation it might be great, but I can't justify its place in my deck on hoping.
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[CRB='forums/uploads/coc/med_elder-chasm-tkatg.jpg'] Elder Chasm 3 out of 10

Danigral - 1 out of 5
If you have a good control deck where you're keeping your opponent from having a lot of characters on the board (like Silver Twilight in addition to Yog), then this could be useful to keep your opponent from one story, but what's the point? They could still commit to other stories since this is unique.

dboeren - 2 out of 5
Limiting your opponent's ability to go to stories is always of some use, but the level of control this offers is not that great.
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[CRB='forums/uploads/coc/med_frozen-time-tkatg.jpg'] Frozen Time 10 out of 10

Danigral - 5 out of 5
When compared to Called by Azathoth, this doesn't seem as good since it's loyal and more expensive, but it has the added utility of targeting any card. It can target an Ancient One, a support, a story. This is the best blanking in the game now. You had better pack some support destruction or pack up and go home.

dboeren - 5 out of 5
Blank *ANYTHING*. Stories, Conspiracies, Ancient Ones, uniques, supports. Loyal is a very tiny drawback on a cost 2 card, I wouldn't worry about it.
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[CRB='forums/uploads/coc/med_rite-of-the-silver-key-tkatg.jpg'] Rite of the Silver Key 6 out of 10

Danigral - 3 out of 5
Situationally useful. I don't like supports that have to power up, but if you are using this to recur 0 or 1 cost characters, then this is very good. If you put this in a deck with a lot of sacrifice effects, like with The Three Bells and Beings of Ib, this will be very effective (if you can get past the Steadfast cost.)

dboeren - 3 out of 5
A good card, but too slow with anything other than really cheap characters unless maybe you can bring a Magical Theorist or something to help power it. I'm expecting more ways to place extra Ritual tokens in the future too. Best if you can also get some mileage out of loading your discard pile.
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[CRB='forums/uploads/coc/med_ys-tkatg.jpg'] Ys 7 out of 10

Danigral - 3 out of 5
Again a situational card. This is primarily useful for decks that revolve around a character that needs to stay in play, such as Nikola Tesla, until you are ready for them to leave play. But it is also useful to push through stories since you can redirect that lost combat struggle to another character on the sidelines or at another resolved story.

dboeren - 4 out of 5
Pretty good protection for key characters, especially since it works on destroy, sacrifice, return to hand, and even discard effects. It can ALSO be used to intentionally remove characters that need to die to trigger their special effects.
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[CRB='forums/uploads/coc/med_rite-of-the-silver-gate-tkatg.jpg'] Rite of the Silver Gate 7 out of 10

Danigral - 3 out of 5
While it is expensive, this can be very effective big-baddie control (including AOs) since their cost is so high compared to the rest of a deck. Which means you can just discard cards from play with very little effort. Since it's fated it goes back to your deck, and since it's a ritual suport there are ways to recur it, so you will always see this card throughout a game. Against a cheap weenie deck, this card won't be as useful, but still at least will mill a card.

dboeren - 4 out of 5
Fantastic card for getting rid of unpleasant characters, it tends to work well on anything cost 4+ and works reasonably well against cost 3. If there is a tie, it fizzles and no Fated token is placed so you have nothing to lose. I can't wait to play this with some future card that can remove tokens from it.
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[CRB='forums/uploads/coc/med_de-vermis-mysteriis-tkatg.jpg'] De Vermis Mysteriis 7 out of 10

Danigral - 3 out of 5
This will be great in my Yog/Syndicate skill reduction deck. It makes Tear Gas more effective, and makes it easier to defend stories, especially if you get characters down to 0 skill, so then you only have to worry about investigation struggles, and you can slow the game down to try to win by milling.

dboeren - 4 out of 5
Great card for discard decks, pairing with Hungry Star Vampire, or with skill manipulation decks. It's also a cheap Tome for effects that can make use of that.
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[CRB='forums/uploads/coc/med_lost-city-of-pnakotus-tkatg.jpg'] Lost City of Pnakotus 6 out of 10

Danigral - 3 out of 5
This is obviously to speed up your Yithian strategy to get more in your discard pile, but you could use it alternatively as a sort of mill on your opponent, such as in combination with Scientist from Yith to filter their cards and then have them draw as a sort of semi-mill effect.

dboeren - 3 out of 5
Great in a Yithian deck, but useless outside of that. However, it can mill, filter better cards for you, and load your discard pile so it's pretty versatile in that context.
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[CRB='forums/uploads/coc/med_dark-passenger-tkatg.jpg'] Dark Passenger 6 out of 10

Danigral - 3 out of 5
Nice. Yog's first transient, and the game's fourth. This is big for Yog, who has some great pricey characters. Transient has always been a double-edged sword, but this takes a little bit of the edge off since if you use it for transient, you actually put it into play. It will likely soon get discarded since the character could just go insane or get wounded easily, but it is some interesting character control. I wouldn't play 3 copies of it since it can screw up your resourcing, but maybe 1 or 2.

dboeren - 3 out of 5
At first you look at it and think “it's a little pricy”, but I think you're not intended to play it at full cost all the time. More commonly you'll use its Transient property and Response to pay for a big card and then automatically put Dark Passenger into play which is a pretty nice maneuver. Shame it doesn't work on Ancient Ones though...
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[CRB='forums/uploads/coc/med_song-of-the-spheres-tkatg.jpg'] Song of the Spheres 5 out of 10

Danigral - 2 out of 5
This is too conditional to see play, since there's better blanking at the same price in Frozen Time. This does get better as the game goes on, and there are more expensive targets, but I don't want to sit with a conditional, potentially useless card in my hand until I have the best opportunity to play it. You might get some use if your opponent put a big character into play and doesn't have the domain built up, but it will only be until they get enough resources for it. I think this is a meta-call if there are a lot of AOs.

dboeren - 3 out of 5
A fair deal, you get to blank both their printed icons AND text box, but in return they can get it off by paying the character's cost. So long as you put it on expensive guys, that's a significant effort for your opponent. Just keep in mind that your choice of target is important to get the most out of it.
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[CRB='forums/uploads/coc/med_summon-spectral-hunter-tkatg.jpg'] Summon Spectral Hunter 8 out of 10

Danigral - 4 out of 5
Along with all the skill reduction available now for Yog (in addition to Sydicate and a smattering of other factions), this will be very good point and click destruction for most characters. It is good simply for the terminal condition since there is a lot of skill reduction already.

dboeren - 4 out of 5
Thank goodness it says “not Day” instead of “Night” or else it would be much more limited! Targeted destruction is something Yog doesn't often have, although you do need to add some skill reduction (or insanity) to get it to work in a timely manner.
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[CRB='forums/uploads/coc/med_temporal-slip-tkatg.jpg'] Temporal Slip 7 out of 10

Danigral - 3 out of 5
It's not as cheap as Daring Buju or as flexible, and it is Loyal (which is good so that it's harder to play out of MU), however this can provide some very good surprises at a story. And the art is cool.

dboeren - 4 out of 5
This card has a great deal of flexiblity since you can mimic any icon struggle, and making it through the Terror struggle to trigger it isn't too big a problem. In the right situation you can cause your opponent's story position to collapse with a free Terror or Combat causing more losses downstream, but if this isn't possible you can always just grab an extra token or ready a character.
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[CRB='forums/uploads/coc/med_mists-of-lethe-tkatg.jpg'] Mists of Lethe 10 out of 10

Danigral - 5 out of 5
Holy crap this card is good. It is two events in one, both for free. Now you can have spot story control and have a way to bounce your Many-Angled Thing.

dboeren - 5 out of 5
Removing a targeted characer for FREE is amazing, even if he does get to go to another story. The Action part can potentially be useful as well to retrieve characters with enter/leave play effects or to load the card on the bottom in a Yog/Syndicate deck perhaps (although Yog can get it from discard just as well most of the time).
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[CRB='forums/uploads/coc/med_calling-the-williwaw-tkatg.jpg'] Calling the Williwaw 7 out of 10

Danigral - 4 out of 5
With some domain draining effects like Itinerant Scholar and others, you can seriously hamper your opponent's ability to field cards. This also shuts down the Aziz Chutuluka combo definitively. Will this Polar event be enough to resurrect polar immune characters like Albino Penguin and Antarctic Yeti? Probably not, but I can hope because penguins are my power animal, and yetis are just cool.

dboeren - 3 out of 5
Targeted destruction, but you have to wait for it and they can buy their way out of it. The good part is that it can destroy both characters and supports, but only ones with triggered abilities.
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[CRB='forums/uploads/coc/med_vortex-of-time-tkatg.jpg'] Vortex of Time 9 out of 10

Danigral - 4 out of 5
I love both of the double-use events. This draws two cards for one card, and then gives you a permanent way to filter the top card, similar to Prism. It does go down a little in utility the more you have in your discard pile since you may want to keep a particular card on top.

dboeren - 5 out of 5
Draw 2 cards, and you can filter your opponent's top card every turn? This is a great deal and works wonderfully both for controlling their draw or milling.
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[CRB='forums/uploads/coc/med_studying-the-void-tkatg.jpg'] Studying the Void 7 out of 10

Danigral - 3 out of 5
I can see this card getting the most effect in a ST/Yog deck that runs the ST conspiracy with 3 arcane struggles. If you have a deck centered on arcane, you can get the exact cards you want in your discard and know what you are getting for the next few turns for the rest of the game. Because it's situational on which faction you pair it with though, it's not higher than a 3.

dboeren - 4 out of 5
You get to filter your own cards when you win Arcane, which you should be able to do reasonably often. But you need big wins to get the best filtering! Easy to get into discard since it's cost 0 and fairly low Steadfast as well. The regular Action is almost a throwaway, just there so the card has one.
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[CRB='forums/uploads/coc/med_return-to-yith-tkatg.jpg'] Return to Yith 7 out of 10

Danigral - 4 out of 5
This could be good later in the game when you may not need characters in your discard pile, but on the board to close out stories. It's probably best to get back the draw Yithian in order to continue triggering it, or maybe a Peaslee that was untimely destroyed. Remember it gets back Yithian events and supports as well (like another copy of Return to Yith), so you always have the Yithians you want.

dboeren - 3 out of 5
Useful if you want to bring your Yithians back, but do you? So many of them are doing good work in the discard that I'm not sure it's as good as it might sound at first.
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[CRB='forums/uploads/coc/med_interstellar-migration-tkatg.jpg'] Interstellar Migration 5 out of 10

Danigral - 2 out of 5
Another double use, but both of these are counter-intuitive and situational. Maybe to protect a Yithian from reset? With some subtype manipulation, this could be an interesting bounce effect perhaps. But overall it's just a good one of in a Yithian-focused deck to push out the mill victory.

dboeren - 3 out of 5
Good milling card for late game but a bit niche.
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