CoC - New Shubb

[fatolaf]

Crazy good!

It's a busy time for those who are aware of the Mythos. Not only is there a new faction coming, but with portals opening in Stahleck, Roseville, and even South Park, it's easy to forget that we still have a Mi-Go invasion to deal with as we are close to completing The Yuggoth Contract  in a final cacophony. And with it – as many have speculated – we'll see the final entry in the "Lord Cycle" which aims to bring terror to a new level by bringing more intimidating versions of your favorite Ancient Ones.

It's noticeable that Shub-Niggurath is the personification of growth and mutation. If we look at the Core Set version, Shub-Niggurath, The All Mother (Core Set, F121) we find an evocative Ancient One that is quite capable at birthing a thousand young. But this ability just got a little crazier.

One of the core strengths of the Shub-Niggurath faction is cost reduction and domain building. Seeker of Mysteries (Secrets of Arkham, F47) now has help from another 1-cost cultist: Priestess of Bubastis (Core Set, F123.) The priestess also helps in playing Ghoulish Worshipper (Ancient Horrors, F19) which in turn helps you in playing Shub-Niggurath.

The mutation? If we look at the stats for Shub-Niggurath, Dark Mistress of the Woods (The Cacophony, F114) we find that the Lord version has lower cost than the original and higher skill. Nice tradeoff. Also the cost of activating her ability has been dropped to only 2. While she now doesn't help you to find a singular Dark Young in your deck, she does allow you to find all of them in your hand and discard pile, and put them into play. All of them. For just 2.

The search function has become less relevant now that the number of Dark Young has been steadily increased since the core set. It slowly becomes more plausible to make a deck around them. She also is a very good carrier of The Yuggoth Contract (Whispers in the Dark, F12) while potentially offering an infinite amount of sacrifices. Sacrifice your Dark Young, draw cards to find more Dark Young, then play all of them at once so you have an entire army of ready characters, even after you had exhausted them to commit earlier.

With the physical manifestation of the circle of life and death on the table, it's hard to ignore Itinerant Scholar (Core Set, F30) who is always close by when things go in loops. While Shub-Niggurath doesn't have direct influence over the Scholars' reincarnation cycle, Hungry Dark Young (Core Set, F131) and Rampaging Dark Young (Secrets of Arkham, F21) are eager to bridge that gap. The Silver Twilight, with cards like Ritual of Summoning (Order of the Silver Twilight, F51) offers some opportunities for infinite sacrifices.

It shouldn't be hard to set up a degenerate economy between this new Ancient One, and the Dark Young. You will need it as before you know it you have thousand mouths to feed.