Lost Rites Is Now AvailableThe Newest Asylum Pack for Call of Cthulhu Offers Fuel for Fateful Struggles
In furrows between ridges are curious growths. Combs or wings that fold up and spread out like fans. All greatly damaged but one, which gives almost seven-foot wing spread. Arrangement reminds one of certain monsters of primal myth, especially fabled Elder Things in Necronomicon.
–H.P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness
Lost Rites, the fourth Asylum Pack of maddening Revelations for Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game is now available at your local retailer and online through our webstore!
Throughout the Revelations cycle, the game’s various factions have sought the dark knowledge tucked away in forbidden Tomes. Now as we enter the cycle’s second half, you must ask yourself a question: do you dare to dabble in the dark arts and Lost Rites you have uncovered?
Three Relic Hunters and two new Tomes enter the game with this Asylum Pack, along with strange Cultists, Attachments, and Independent operatives, who risk their lives for causes of their own. With these cards and two excellent conspiracies for Miskatonic University and Shub-Niggurath, Lost Rites offers power to those who are willing to seize it, but powerful rituals can lead just as easily to madness. In Call of Cthulhu, woe befalls those who begin rituals they cannot control!
Science, Sorcery, and Insanity
Among the new characters from Lost Rites, one stands out as a truly ravenous and terrifying creature of bestial ferocity. The introduction to the game of the Feral Elder Thing (Lost Rites, 78) may serve as a cautionary tale about the dangers of prying too far into secrets better left untouched. Or, if it can be controlled, it may lend the deciding advantage to a deck capable of anticipating its destructive appetite.
In Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game, if you can control, limit, or destroy your opponent’s hand of cards, you gain a measure of safety from terrifying surprises. You can also radically alter his card economy and can hinder or cripple his ability to contest you at stories. Players begin each game with the expectation that they’ll start with five cards in hand and draw two cards per turn. This usually means that as the game progresses, players can resource one card each turn. Players continue to play cards from their hand and work to build their resources for bigger plays later, but once the Feral Elder Thing enters the scene, these expectations are radically altered, and madness unfolds.
There are relatively few hand destruction cards in Call of Cthulhu, and the Feral Elder Thing immediately takes a place among the best of them. Though it eats cards on your turn, meaning your opponent has a chance to draw cards again on his turn, it reduces each player’s hand by one net card per turn. Played early in the game, this can quickly choke your opponent’s card options, but you’ll have to be careful with your own strategy. The Feral Elder Thing eats cards from hands indiscriminately, and if you can’t play all the cards from your hand on your turn, you’ll lose cards yourself. Also, because it must eat before it permits its draw, it can force your opponent to flush his hand of that pair of cards he was holding to surprise you during the story phase. In their place, he gets only a random draw from the top of his deck.
Appetite for Direction
On its own, a Feral Elder Thing is a maddening force, but it becomes truly terrifying when given direction by the forces of Hastur, with all its hand-destruction, or while guided by the strange rituals dreamt by Miskatonic University’s most eccentric professors.
With such cards as Alyssa Graham (Ebla Restored, 46), Apeirophobia (Never Night, 76), and Swooping Byakhee (The Spoken Covenant, 48), Hastur has gained an increasingly powerful grasp over the cards in its opponent’s hands. Combined with the Feral Elder Thing, these cards can possibly deplete your opponent’s entire hand during your turn, removing the element of surprise from his strategy, and freeing you to attempt stories with perfect knowledge of all available options.
On the other hand, should Miskatonic University’s professors employ science and sorcery to examine the potential a Feral Elder Thing lends to their bid to stave off the Ancient Ones, they may find synergy with such cards as Professor Rice (Dunwich Denizens, 63), Feast of Famine (Core Set, 37), and the Student Archaeologist (Core Set, 32). While these cards all force the Miskatonic player to discard a card at the same time as his opponent, they build card advantage through their draw, especially while Professor Rice oversees the grand experiment. Under his supervision, the Feral Elder Thing provides you as many cards as it takes away, and you can cycle your deck more quickly toward any powerful combinations – or to find key supports like Open for Inspection (Core Set, 34) at key moments.
Knowledge to Make All Things Possible
The Feral Elder Thing is just one of the twenty individual cards from Lost Rites (counting three copies of each), and it illustrates how the Revelations cycle is sparking new synergies with older cards even as it introduces new characters, Tomes, and secrets.
What madness will you unleash? Lost Rites is available now at retailers everywhere and online from our webstore!
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Lost Rites Is Now Available
