Yog 2.0

Doing some work on my Yog deck, I came up with some more changes.

This is more like Yog 4.0 or 5.0, but ‘Yog 2.0’ is the name of a very popular Netrunner icebreaker card. The card was actually named after Yog-Sothoth (him being The Key and the Gate and all), so it seemed funny to go with 2.0. 🙂

I need more characters. The Yogs themselves don’t really count as they are more like combo cards and not meant for putting into play generally. So I added in a couple more Yithians, the Keeper of the Great Library and the Scientist from Yith. These are cheap characters who have some synergy with the discard and each other and will help bolster my ranks. They aren’t sorcerers, but I am already using all the sorcerers in the set.

The Keeper gets better when other Yithians die, while the Scientist helps with the discard pile (and can also be used to look at my opponent’s deck).

I noticed that Wilbur Whateley is both expensive and a unique so I dropped him to two. He is a sorcerer which is supposed to help play Yog but he tends to just get resourced when I draw him.

I replaced the Spectral Hunter (it is a bit slow, taking at least one turn to do anything) with Dark Passenger which is a different kind of ‘removal’. It is also a transient resource. This means it counts as two resources, which is nice, but you only get to use it as a resource once and then have to discard it. Transient resources tend not to be very popular as the initial boost is generally outweighed by then being one resource behind.

Dark Passenger helps overcome this limitation by allowing you to play it instead of discarding it, so you get both the acceleration of being able to play a three-cost card on turn two and also being able to nerf one of your opponent’s characters in one go. Later on it could even help bring Yog into play a turn early. Also it is a Yithian which works with the Yithian Scientists and Keepers.

The Dark Passenger clears a character’s icons, and can be tricked into play while paying for something else. The Hungry Star Vampire eats everything in its way. If I ready it using an arcane struggle win, I can remove an opponent’s character with investigation.

I could do with more discard to get my sorcerers into the discard pile, as I found it is hard to kill both Nadine and the Oracle (who keeps going insane instead). A Hungry Star Vampire could help by killing my own characters, as could Fthaggua by flipping cards into discard. I decided to go with the Vampire as it is less conditional and if there is a draw for lowest skill I can choose to kill one of mine or one of theirs as I see fit.

The Rite of the Silver Gate is very good removal. It is a bit random, but always hits the bigger card. It does miss if the chosen card and revealed card have the same cost, but generally it is a good bet.

Rite of the Silver Gate should give you three removals of any type of card, even an ancient one. Rite of the Silver Key hopefully drops sorcerers in my discard to pay for Yog, and gets them back if something I really want is discarded.

Rite of the Silver Key puts stuff into discard and gets them back out again (even Yog if I save up long enough!). I will try this instead of the city of Ys, as I am not so bothered about protecting my characters.

I also need to play my spells more. I found I was hanging on to them and waiting for more impressive targets, but disabling some annoying early cards, such as Gustav, can be good too.

Elder Chasm is a bit poor, so dropped it.

Frozen time is a good card because it can disable a support card or an annoying character ability.

I could only find 2 copies of Frozen Time, so added in a third Dark Passenger. I will need to search for the missing one. It must be stuck in with one of the other faction’s cards, which is an awful lot of cards to search through. 😦

Total Cards: (50)

Character: (31)
3x Decrepit Wizard (The Key and the Gate)
3x Lost Oracle (The Key and the Gate)
3x Nadine Eskiy (The Key and the Gate)
3x Professor Nathaniel Peaslee (The Key and the Gate)
2x Wilbur Whateley (The Key and the Gate)
3x Yog-Sothoth (The Key and the Gate)
2x Claude Owen (The Key and the Gate)
3x Scholar from Yith (The Key and the Gate)
3x Scientist from Yith (The Key and the Gate)
3x Keeper of the Great Library (The Key and the Gate)
2x Hungry Star Vampire (The Key and the Gate)

Support: (9)
2x Frozen Time (The Key and the Gate)
3x Rite of the Silver Gate (The Key and the Gate)
2x Rite of the Silver Key (The Key and the Gate)
3x Dark Passenger (The Key and the Gate)

Event: (10)
2x Calling the Williwaw (The Key and the Gate)
2x Mists of Lethe (The Key and the Gate)
3x Temporal Slip (The Key and the Gate)
3x Vortex of Time (The Key and the Gate)

(*Update: I figured out where the third copy of Frozen Time was without having to trawl through hundreds of cards. It was in my Silver Twilight deck. It had been gathered up by mistake at the end of a game. Phew.)