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Cthulhu Deck Archives - Shock and Awe (Rainbow Rush) at Worlds 2005, by Greg Gan I chose the name “Shock and Awe” for two reasons. “Shock” because many times I found myself playing Shocking Transformation in order to get a better creature in order to lock down the win that round. The “Awe” comes from the fact that people sit dumbfounded at the sheer number of powerful creatures I could drop round 1 and 2 and still have resources open to counter their actions and responses. So the deck works because it functions on dropping creatures fast and for free. The idea is to always have either a Wrack or Power Drain in hand to counter character removal and/or to temporarily thwart my opponent’s actions/responses from support cards – these cards were immensely crucial in turning the tide in many games especially against the dreaded Infinite Recursive Discard Deck. Associated cards such as Dry Gulch help to bounce temporarily blockers from stories so that I can get them unopposed and/or to thin out the competition. Two very corner stone event cards that have also helped to turn the tide and lock down the win for me are: Shocking Transformation and Seduction of the Tombs. The shocking transformation is there to pull out a Ghoul Khanum, Ravager or Professor of Archeology at the most opportune times to either kill my opponents committed characters or to rush win a desperately needed story. Seduction of the Tombs is just an all around useful card enabling an individual to drop a professor when needed to take the instant story win or to bring in surprise reinforcements from the grave. Background story When I first read about the prototype Rainbow deck from the message boards, I thought it was a great idea. I generated a version and introduced it to my meta where we deconstructed the deck and further improved the design. About 2 weeks before GenCon, our meta amassed every single control and/or speed deck to try and defeat one version (different from the one I have listed here) of this “rainbow deck” and at best we could only slow the rainbow deck down before it annihilated the opponent and took the win. My personal play style is one that prefers “control decks” to creature rushes and combo’s. Not being able to find the answer to this problem, I decided to instead become the problem and thus generated my version of the rainbow deck for GenCon. Some of Greg's tech At this point, half of my meta decided to bring the rainbow deck to GenCon for World’s. Fearing that the popularity and power of this deck would dominate World’s, I decided to introduce some tech against the mirror match. I eliminated the Military Escorts because of his high cost and the fact he lacked significant punch and decided to go with only the Professors of Archeology since they work so well with Seduction of the Tombs. I included On the Lam for sneak factor in case I didn’t have a Seduction – something I could use with an Expatriate Reporter or Ghoul. The Dread Curse of Azathoth was included in case I found myself staring down at a Shub deck (ironically the only deck that seemed to be able to beat the Rainbow rush deck) or another rainbow deck stalled with too many creatures on the table – this way I could discard their deck in mass and hope to deck my opponent in the late game. Finally, Shakedown, a very under appreciated card. Once again, against solid control decks or another rainbow rush, exhausting all their resources on their story phase prevents them from playing any event based destruction or surprises during my turn. The deck list (Note: This deck list is Greg Gans version played at the 2005 World Championship which was held after Eldritch Edition came out, hence the lack of cards from Masks of Nyarlathotep, Forgotten Cities and later editions)
The deck consists of 52 cards – not the traditional tournament min/max of 50 cards only so I’m sure people in my meta will be screaming at me for months to come. But hey, my deck held out against everything thrown at it so 52 can’t be all that bad. In retrospect, if I was to eliminate a card, I would probably consider cutting the Dread Curse of Azathoth out, but that’s only a consideration. At Worlds All-in-all, I’m excited to have won World’s. In all honesty, I wasn’t expecting to win – I figured someone out there had the answer to my Shock and Awe deck. I knew I’d play well and I figured I’d have a strong showing and place in the top 8. So you can only imagine the anticipation and the excitement I felt when I was squaring off for the number 1 spot against Chicago Regionals champion, Scott. Knowing he was playing a modified version of the Infinite Recursive Discard deck I posted months before, I remember him asking me 10 minutes into turn 1 if I was done. I told him that I needed to calculate out every card he could play and might play by turn 2 because I knew he would set up the combo and beat me otherwise either next turn or by turn 3. When he asked who I was and I told him I was the one who had originally posted the prototype deck, we got a good laugh and then turns 2 and 3 turned into a prolonged 30 minutes. In the end, Shock and Awe had the answers to blaze through and win all three stories by the start of round 3. Scott’s a good player and it was an honor to face off against him. I’m also glad I was playing optimally that day and that my deck was versatile enough to deal with the varied threats it encountered. In each of my 9 rounds, my opponents were all good players, professional and courteous, so my hats off to you for making World’s and my first GenCon a great experience. I’d also like to thank the Pittsburgh meta for all the suggestions, criticisms and late night testing – its definitely made me a better player over the past year. Although the absolute best part of winning the World Championship is the fact I’ll be designing my own card – I can’t wait!  - Greg GanMany thanks to Greg for sharing this with the community. I found it an interesting and fun article to read. Hopefully you did too. Just to point out. The so called "rainbow warriors" (EE U8, EE U39, EE U69, EE U162, EE U132 and EE U184) have been changed by the FAQ (see the Support page here), so this deck dont work anymore. It was just too powerful. Like all of us who played it found out, it couldnt be stopped except by errata. Seduction of the Tombs did also get errata in that same FAQ that came some time after Worlds. But its not easy to win mirror matches nor against all the other crazy decks that showed up at Worlds. You need to have built and played a good deck to win it all. Many congrats to Greg once more for winning the Worlds 2005. I look forward to seeing your card in print! :) - xedric
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