CoC - The Breathing Jungle

[fatolaf]

Exciting times in the latest cycle...



Gilman could not have told what he expected to find there, but he knew he wanted to be in the building where some circumstance had more or less suddenly given a mediocre old woman of the Seventeenth Century an insight into mathematical depths perhaps beyond the utmost modern delvings of Planck, Heisenberg, Einstein, and de Sitter.
   –H.P. Lovecraft, The Dreams in the Witch House

Of all the phases you go through in a turn of Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game, the one most often filled with the sharpest action and richest drama is the Story Phase. After all, this is when your team confronts the horrors that await them–whether those horrors may be the Eldritch Horrors from the Nth Dimension or particularly angry government agents with tommy guns.

In order to maximize your presence at the scene as the action unfolds, you will need a strong balance of characters in your deck. Event and Support cards can be useful as well, but I tend to try and find cards that do double duty. For example, cards like Diseased Sewer Rats (Secrets of Arkham, 44). Both the Syndicate and the Order of the Silver Twilight factions have a myriad of characters that do a little something extra when they enter play. And then, after you get a bump from their special abilities, you want the tools to keep going.

A quick getaway

This is where the Lodge shines. With The Doorway (The Breathing Jungle, 63), you get a free escape route for committed characters, and the additional bonus of being able to reuse any abilities that trigger when they come into play. Sometimes, for even more synergy and craziness, you can even find abilities in the faction that trigger when characters leave play, like the one on Crystal of the Elder Things (Order of the Silver Twilight, 43).

Sometimes, you just need a quick escape from the dangers of The Breathing Jungle. Even when uncommitting is impossible, forcing your character to go back to your hand releases it from the state of commitment. Returning a character to your hand also clears it of any wounds it has suffered. Simply commit Puj-Dunk (Twilight Horror, 11) and–before you know it–he can return completely healed and ready for action.

There are lots of approaches to get the most out of this card. The combination of the Order and Syndicate Criminals like the Extortionist (Core Set, 71) is pretty obvious, but it's another cog in the Order's secret plans. It's not often you get something this powerful for 0 cost. Just remember that when the Order of the Silver Twilight is involved, each exit they offer only leads deeper into their web of intrigues.

[fatolaf]

With The Breathing Jungle the Syndicate gains the services of the nimble and skillful Border Runners (The Breathing Jungle, 65), each of whom has six skill and is Fast. Even without Mr. David Pan, these Border Runners can help you win stories with their Combat and Investigation icons, but paired with him, they make a formidable defense against forces seeking to trespass your expedition grounds... or an excellent smuggling team to raid your opponent's stories.

Of course, The Breathing Jungle also introduces an Independent scholar in the service of Miskatonic University who provides an interesting counter to Mr. David Pan and his control over story resolution. Vaage Randers (The Breathing Jungle, 55) is a master of tactics, sought by Miskatonic to help them gain an edge in the Combat struggles that so often lead to their undoing. While Miskatonic characters are not traditionally Combat powerhouses, they far outpace the other factions for Investigation icons. While Vaage Randers is committed to a story, he allows Miskatonic University to master Combat struggles through research and preparation. The struggles are resolved by counting Investigation icons. Note that they are not resolved by counting Investigation icons instead of Combat icons; they are simply resolved by counting Investigation icons. This means that Vaage Randers and his passive ability cannot be trumped by Mr. David Pan and his passive ability. Instead, the active player decides in which order the abilities resolve. In other words, if an active Miskatonic player commits Vaage Randers to a story, and a Syndicate player commits Mr. David Pan, the Miskatonic player can decide to have Mr. David Pan's ability resolve first, converting each struggle to compare skill, and then have Vaage Randers' ability resolve, converting the Combat skill check to a struggle resolved by counting Investigation icons.

Of course, you can avoid this complication and gain greater control over the ways in which struggles are resolved by forging an alliance between the University and the Syndicate that features both characters.