GenCon around the corner

Alllllllrighty.

I know it's been a while since my last post, and I apologize for that. My laptop has been a little out of commission lately and work has been pretty steady for me. All that aside, my gaming hasn't slowed down much and I've been playing both Warhammer and Call of Cthulhu pretty steadily in preparation for both World Championships at GenCon. Let's start with what I expect to see for both games:

Call of Cthulhu:

Estimated Players: 15-20

I expect there to be roughly 50% Hastur decks of some form. I'm sure not all of them will run the full Dreamlands suite of locations, but I know I will be. I think Magah Birds + 70 steps is a little too powerful to not play. Unless something is banned or errata'd by next week, I'm playing the most degenerate deck that I can. For now, here is my Worlds deck list, though that could easily change by the weekend of the 7th:

Hastur Control:

3 Magah Birds

8 Alaskan Sledge Dogs

2 Giant Albino Penguin

2 Stealthy Byakhee

2 Victoria Glasser

3 Demon Lover

3 Crazed Arsonist

3 Descendant of Eibon

3 70 Steps

3 Caverns of Flame

3 Guardian Pillar

3 Agoraphobia

3 Blind Submission

3 Infernal Obsession

3 Power Drian

3 Devolution

The decks has tested extremely well (no surprise, obviously). You just control the board with the completely unfair Hastur action cards and win with whatever characters you happen to draw. If you do happen to get Birds + Steps opening you don't really need to do much more to win. The Dogs are on the chopping block at the moment. They will more than likely get cut for Performance Artists, more Penguins and Byakhee's, and whatever else I decide to play. I'd like to get Performance Artist in the deck as another way to counter a Bird coming into play. If you can go first with this deck, the win percentage is abnormally high. Going second it is still very, very good unless you play vs another Hastur deck.

What do you do in the mirror match? Win the die roll. I hate that the game has turned into this, but it has and I truly hope FFG does something about it soon or it risks losing a lot of players to non-interactive games. Every game with the hastur deck feels like you're playing against yourself and the only thing you can do to lose to just draw very poorly. All the hate cards against this deck typically either get countered by Power Drain or destroyed by Crazed Arsonist.

Now to Warhammer:

Players at Worlds: 20-25

What do I expect to see? That's a good question. Despite there being an automatic 9 cards in every single Warhammer deck, the metagame is pretty healthy. I feel that with the recent battle packs, Order is close to being on par with Destruction (at least until March of the Damned comes out). While I'm pretty positive most of the field will be Skaven Orc or Skaven DE, I think the biggest impact will be Dwarf and Empire decks. I feel that Empire got the biggest boost in power the last 2 sets. Derricksburg Forge, Gryphon Legionnaires, and Wilhelm are all very powerful cards and really give Empire a fighting chance against about anything rather than simply relying on Will of the Electors + Judgement of Verena to win games. Now you can Wilhelm their guys around the board and surprise assault them with Legionnaires at will.

Typically what ends up happening is you put Warpstones into one of your zones as a "give away" and then just put up Counterstrike walls in the other 2 zones so that you can't be attacked profitably. Wilhelming characters from the Kingdom zone to the Quest zone is also very good and can seriously cripple a decks development.

I skipped on any kind support destruction because any form of Bolt Thrower deck is extremely bad for you and even if you played with Demolish it wouldn't be enough. So, you hope to not play against any Bolt Thrower deck.

I also think Dwarves got a pretty big boost the last few sets. Mining Tunnels are obviously extremely powerful and makes Dwarves even harder to kill than before because you are constantly Developing and blocking attacks and never run out of gas. I've never been happier in my life to replace my Mountain Barracks with any other card. If you can turn 1 a Dwarven Demo Team into a Mining Tunnel it's going to be very hard for an opponent to keep up with you. It's mainly because of that I'm even considering Dwarves. Also, for the fact that you can randomly Judgement a player out of the game because they never see it coming. People who don't play at least 1 Judgement of Verena is any Order deck really need to seriously reconsider. The card is unreal and if not expected is an absolute blowout.

The 3rd deck I'm considering is Destruction Bolt Thrower which actually hasn't gained much the last few sets, if anything at all. It's still the same old near-unitless deck that wins by attrition and a powerful endgame. It's good because it stomps all over Skaven decks but it's less resilient against Dwarf and Empire decks. It tends to leave itself more open to Judgement of Verena because you're typically not Developing early on in the game. Sure, you'll develop here or there but Will of Electors will still get your Kingdom Zone and that's bad news. Order decks are more resilient to that play because you're developing the shit out of your Kingdom zone from turn 1.

Stay turned for later where I'll post all 3 warhammer decklists!

- SF