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Cthulhu Deck Archives - Agency/Cthulhu Control, by Ron Kotwica (Note: The deck is designed by Ron, the article written by Greg and all has been edited and published by xedric) One of the first extremely potent control decks that hit the Pittsburgh meta was an Agency/Cthulhu deck designed by Ron Kotwica. The success of this deck was nearly without question for many months where the deck boasted over 100 confirmed wins and barely a handful of losses. It went on to win the 2005 East Coast Regional Championship and was further modified by Dan Luchesa to win the 2005 Midwest Regional Championship. In the end, it was shelved because our meta optimized Rainbow which was at the time, superior. Ron went on to take 4th at World's. Mr Nice Guy Games A little bit about the creator, Ron Kotwica. He's an old Magic Pro-Tour player with a reasonably decorated Magic history. Without a doubt, he's an alpha player who's intuitive, sharp and a killer deck builder. Taking from years of experience, he became quite entrenched with CoC during 2005 always engineering some great combo and control decks which have definitely helped to push our meta forward. He is the owner of Mr Nice Guy Games, a large retailer of Cthulhu CCG merchandise (check him out at GenCon) here in Pittsburgh and in general, I think we can say he's a pretty nice guy. So, the Agency/Cthulhu deck (often times referred to as the blue/green control) focuses on two major things: kill/destroy everything that hits the ground thereby controlling the board and then take the slow win with one or two creatures. For the most part, that really sums it up. Speed decks just can't keep up with it simply because the kill is contained in the deck is immense, combo decks can't keep up with it because the deck has the ability to control the board. Control decks are the only decks capable of going toe-to-toe with it. Dockside Speakeasy The corner stone of this deck happens to be the dockside speakeasy which accelerates this deck compared to other control decks. Turn 1 often finds you dropping at least 1 dockside followed by dropping perhaps a character or holding back preparing for the kill. At the end of your opponents turn, dockside 1 resource over to get a 3-1-0. On your turn, drop another resource to get 4-1-0 and then play Lurking Star Spawn, a very brutal behemoth by round 2 going after a story and acting as a wall. Now follow this up with smaller creatures and keep kill in hand. In theory, the deck has enough kill to sit back, wait and watch. (Note: One day I'll have to write an article about the Speakeasy. A much debated card in the early days, and now with the Eldritch acceleration an often forgotten card. Still really good) The deck list
So, why UT Cthuhlu? Ron's claim is that he becomes the ultimate stall for most opponents he hits the ground and the psychological factor as well as its sheer potency as a character stands. Needing location/support removal has become unnecessary because of the versatility of DOA and Rubbed Out. Furthermore, DOA becomes so much more effective with dockside since one can tailor what resources they need. Dan Luchesa's variant subbed out Keeper's in exchange for Elder Thing Scientists and he added 2x Shakedown (his mystery tech). He dropped 1x Forced Entry, added 2x Short Fuses and eliminated the Forgotten Isle. His game was a tight match which found himself squared off against Tom Kapor's (Magnus Arcanus) Shub Reanimator deck. Needless to say, it was a tense Pittsburgh regional championship watching these two excellent players go head-to-head. Weaknesses of this deck at first seemed nigh, but eventually many of us discovered and designed reasonable counters that could withstand and even beat this very effective deck (I'll cite Magnus Arcanus' Shub-thuhlu Reanimator deck, Greg's Yog-thuhlu Chaos Cup deck and the original pre-EE Scorched Earth Resource Destruction deck and Ron's Yog-thulhu Characterless deck). However, unlike most control decks, Ron's use of Dockside has been an immense boon when surviving against various resource destruction decks simply because it still has the ability to shift resources around giving it an opportunity to field creatures, thereby stabilizing itself (I give it 60-40 win:loss).  - Greg Gan
I like to read what the Pittsburgh meta comes up with, and Im looking forward to see what they make of 2006. This has been yet another Cthulhu Deck Archive looking back at the power decks of 2005. Hope you liked it. As always, I will be waiting on the message boards to discuss :) - xedric
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