Aboleths

## Overview

*The Aboleths arise from the depths of the Far Realm's oceans. These psionic Elder abominations share a genetic memory which predates history,*

*and they add the memories of their victims to their eidetic network. Once the Aboleths have your actions in their mental grasp, they’ll drag you down to the deep to join the rest of their thralls!*

Aboleths are akin to the "blue mages" of Smash Up, remembering actions played by other players and then being able to play them right back. Beyond that, they have a wide playbook to suppress action plays - making people play them at inopportune times, and benefitting from other players hoarding cards instead of playing them. As they steal actions, Aboleths stack them on the bottom of their deck, which they can access for multiple different effects. Their upper tier engine minions have multiple ways to survive or return to the field after their base breaks.

Image Album: https://imgur.com/a/CAQI6Cq

## Details

#### General

* Name: Aboleths
* Author: ludichrisness
* Complexity: 4/5
* Version: 1.0
* Last updated: October 11, 2023

## Cards

#### Breakdown

Aboleths have the normal 10 minions and 10 actions. They have a total minion power of 30, or an average of 3.0 per minion. Among their actions, there are:

* 1 play-on-base action: The Eternal Ones
* 1 play-on-minion action: Enslave
* 8 standard actions (four of which could directly affect a minion, **in bold**): **Ascension**, **Darkest Depths (2x)**, Depth Charge, Genetic Memory (2x), Mental Grasp, **Psychic Link**
* 2 actions that directly increase a minion's power: Darkest Depths (2x)

#### Minions (10)

* **1x The Eldest (5)**: Talent: Draw a card you own off the bottom of your deck. You may play one revealed action. Return all other revealed cards to the bottom of your deck in any order.
* **2x Overseer (4)**: Place three Energy on this minion. Ongoing: After an action goes to another player's discard pile, you may remove an Energy from this minion to place that action on the bottom of your deck.
* **3x Balhannoth (3)**: Look at each other player's hand who has a minion here. You may choose an action there which they can play on their turn and have them place a stasis counter on it. They may not play their regular action on their next turn.
* **4x Aboleth Thrall (2)**: Ongoing: At the start of your turn you may place a +1 power counter on one of your other minions for each five cards in the hands of other players with a minion here.

#### Actions (10)

* **2x Darkest Depths**: Reveal the bottom card of your deck. If you own it, draw it, then draw two more cards. Otherwise, discard it to place a +1 power counter on each of your minions.
* **2x Genetic Memory**: Place an action from each player's discard pile on the bottom of your deck. Play an extra action.
* **1x Ascension**: Destroy a minion you own to play a minion with a different name from your hand or discard pile with equal or lesser power on another base and transfer any number of attachments between them. Special: Play before a base scores.
* **1x Depth Charge**: Play an action you own off the bottom of your deck. For each other revealed action, reduce the breakpoint of a base by 2 until the end of your turn, then return revealed cards in any order. Special: Play before a base scores.
* **1x Enslave**: Play on a minion. Special: Before any base scores, if you have a minion here with more power than this minion, take control of this minion, then you may place this card on the bottom of your deck.
* **1x The Eternal Ones**: Play on a base. Ongoing: Once per turn after one of your minions on another base goes to the discard pile, you may bury it here. The breakpoint of this base is increased by 2 for each buried card here.
* **1x Mental Grasp**: Play an extra minion of power 3 or less. You may place an action at its base on the bottom of your deck.
* **1x Psychic Link**: Move a minion of printed power 2 or less to another base. You may place this card on top of your deck. Play an extra action.

#### Bases

* **(30) Glimmersea (4 2 3)**: The breakpoint here is reduced by 1 for every two cards in each player's hand who has a minion here.

* **(18) The Outer Shores (3 2 1)**: After this base scores, each player chooses a different faction which is not being played and draws actions off the top of their chosen deck equal to their VP reward here. They own those cards for the remainder of the game.

## Clarifications

* **Ascension:** Attachments include counters and other cards played on the minion which is destroyed.
* **Balhannoth:** An action that can be played on the victim's turn means that they can play it with their regular action play (i.e. it does not only have an alternate mode of play like a Special before a base scores)
* **Darkest Depths:** If you draw two more cards, they are drawn from the top of your deck, not the bottom.
* **Depth Charge:** Note that the breakpoint is reduced until the end of *your* turn, not the current turn.
* **The Eldest:** The action you draw is not eligible to play, and is not returned to the bottom of the deck with the rest of the revealed cards.
* **The Outer Shores:** Each player chooses a faction, not just those scoring VP off of the base. Order of selection is determined by the current player because it is a mandatory event.
* **Overseer**: This triggers off of an action going to the discard pile for any reason - from hand, deck, stasis, or play. If an action goes somewhere else in the course of its ability like Time Walk, then it never goes to the discard pile and isn't eligible to be captured. If a modifier goes to the discard pile from Overseer's base, it is eligible to be stolen (as per the precedent from Clyde 2.0).

## Strategy

### General

Aboleths want to build up equity at the bottom of their deck in the form of stolen actions from other players. This is achieved with three key cards - Overseer, Genetic Memory, and Mental Grasp. These cards put pressure on rivals as they have a dilemma about what to do with their actions. If they play their actions, then these cards could steal them. If they hold their actions instead, then your Thralls can power up off of those collected cards. The minion Balhannoth is a gotcha, letting you see whatever they have been holding on to, while also picking their next turn's action for them, which will often be wasted without a good use. This is all part of the Aboleth gameplan of Action Suppression, stopping rivals from making the most of half of their turn, and reaping benefits either way.

Once you have stolen cards accumulated, you can use them for a few different things. The simplest and easiest is to be able to play them right back at people, with The Eldest being able to access the bottom of your deck as a toolkit of stolen actions, while also drawing cards to sustain you. The combination of Overseer and The Eldest both being in play is extremely scary, as players need to work around the possibility that whatever they play will be stolen and slung on your next turn. Persisting these minions is crucial to keep the pressure up, using cards like The Eternal Ones and Ascension. Both of those cards should be considered for reclamation with Genetic Memory if eligible, to make sure that The Eldest remains as a threat. By combining Overseer and The Eldest together, you can actually sling an action, then catch it again with Overseer to restock onto the bottom of your deck, letting you potentially tap the same action multiple turns in a row.

The second option for stolen cards is to burn them for fuel, which can often be the case for more situational cards or those which are just not playable in Phase Two. The card of choice for this is Darkest Depths, which can either draw you your own actions recurred by Genetic Memory, or burn a rival card for a quick Jolt of power. Aboleths have a real concept of Come At Me where they can build up a lot of persistent power on a base, then threaten to swing things in Phase Three if someone tries to overtake them. Thralls help a lot with this, as they can passively generate power for you every turn, sending that power anywhere to build a large minion. It's really satisfying to Ascend a buffed up minion like a one-shot Balhannoth into a larger minion on the scoring base.

Even if someone does Come At You, you have several backup plans, with one of the best being Depth Charge. This is your third payoff for stolen actions as it cares about quantity of stolen cards, and not exactly what those cards are. A well-timed Depth Charge can swing a scoring base, while also priming another base to score for you this turn or on your next turn. Depth Charge can be set up in advance with Genetic Memory for actions like Enslave to steal a minion on the scoring base, or even The Eternal Ones to immediately save something from the scoring base.

Managing your deck and discard pile is crucial to success as Aboleths - you need to understand what is on the bottom of your deck in what order, and carefully use cards which make the most of that information. They have some potentially very scary Specials, but they need to be prepared in advance. Antagonistic shufling can be a big challenge for Aboleths, but thankfully this is a rare occurance which they can definitely recover from - but it does mean that you will likely need to shift gears into a more aggressive style of play after losing certainty about what might be on the bottom of your deck, and instead focus on quick 1-2 punches where you can set up your bottom card and immediately pay it off.

### Partner Suggestions

Aboleths bring a wide toolkit, and they are often more about who they play *against* rather than who they play *with*. In general however, they like partners who can add power with their actions, as their own actions are more about timing, deck manipulation, preservation, and Specials than winning bases on their own Phase Two. More opportunities to play low powered minions can get a lot of Thralls out quickly, letting you access a lot of added power from rival hands. Some factions also banish powerful actions to the bottom of their deck (although I won't talk about Time Travellers) and these actions can be accessed with Darkest Depths and The Eldest to repeat them for significant effect.

#### Published

* **Ancient Egyptians**
* **Beauty and the Beast**
* **Big Hero 6**
* **Clerics**
* **Elves**
* **Ghosts**

#### Custom

* **Liches:** It's ironic that these two factions were developed around the same time as they both focus on suppressing half of your rival's turn - but the other half. Bleeding your rival of minions to play will encourage them to play their actions instead, which you can steal for your own gain. Both factions stack their deck with cards to delay a reshuffle. Liches provide some great opportunities to swarm and boost power off their actions, while Aboleths generate passive power and slow down rivals to reach the Lich endgame. This combo is incredibly demoralizing to play against and should only be deployed carefully if you want to keep your friends, but it is a lot of fun - for you.

## Author Notes

Aboleths have been swimming around in my mind for quite a while mechanically, and capture things I was hoping to achieve with an earlier Dancers faction. The concept originally was going to be themed as Dogs, until a discussion about custom D&D monster factions formed the perfect crystallization for me of Aboleths, and the remaining blanks in the faction on the action side almost wrote themselves. I really enjoy playing Aboleths because I like the feeling of collecting powerful actions that I know I'll be able to do something cool with later, even if I don't know exactly what that is right now. I view them mostly as a support faction because of the lack of power boosts from themselves, but they provide an intriguing mix of Phase Three Specials to support a CAM gameplan, together with deck manipulation, draw, stealing, information, stall, and more. I truly hope you enjoy playing as Aboleths, who I hope capture the idea of a blue mage in Smash Up well.