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Compass Minh with ancestral knowledge and hiding spot. Probably a scroll of secrets(3) because ditching your weakness is always a good move. Big hand or fast draw are both great options, pair it with someone who can take enchant weapon and use it on the blackjack(2). You don’t wanna engage enemies in this campaign.
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Dec 9, 2021 21:34
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Thanks for the ideas. I’m playing around with an Amanda deck but might switch over to Trish. It’s been a long time since I went Rogue.
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Dec 10, 2021 05:11
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I’m curious what justify the means in Amanda’s deck could do. Give sister Mary the card that turns curses into blesses and trap everything or Hallow madly. Diana got sixth sense(4) and we kind of have to build turns around her getting 3-6 clues and eliminating everything that prevents her from doing that.
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Dec 10, 2021 09:08
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Prairie Bus posted:Anyone have ideas for fun Seeker/Survivor builds for Innsmouth? I’ll be going in blind, and I haven’t been paying attention to the new cards. I’d like to do a Calvin deck, is he strong enough now? Calvin is one of the stonger investigators in the game. You just need to both build and play him very different than what you are probably used to. You want to take a bunch of damage and/or horror, depending on your team role, real quick in each scenario so that you can Do Stuff without needing Trial by Fire or Rise to the Occasion. Then another large chunk of your deck is assets with soak (+ probably Perseverance) so you can sit at 4 or 5 damage and/or horror without being defeated. Probably also want some encounter card cancelling to go along with this theme. Once you get A Test of Will you go from doing stuff to having hilariously effective turns.
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Dec 10, 2021 09:34
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Orange Devil posted:Calvin is one of the stronger investigators in the game I maintain his lore suggests Calvin is functionally immortal by sheer force of will alone.
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Dec 10, 2021 20:15
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Made it through the train and Blood on the altar relatively unscathed. Undimensioned and Unseen will probably destroy us. But we're on the home stretch. Ursula is going practiced and Yorick now has Eucatstrophes, cause boy oh boy do I like pulling -4s.
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Dec 11, 2021 04:43
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I just finished the 7th scenario of Innsmouth and something stood out to me: In the memory you read afterwards, you and Dawson are being held down, about to be executed by the cult. As his throat is slit, Dawson's last act is to stealthily toss his car key to you. I guess this isn't a plot hole, but it struck me as a very strange last act. Why his car key? How did none of the cultists notice? Why give his car key to someone who is almost certainly about to be executed in a few minutes? If they'd needed a way for the protagonist to get the car key, maybe one could be found stuck to the bottom of the car in the prologue of Horror in High Gear, or something? In the end, I didn't even use his car. And why didn't the cult slit your throat before throwing you into the pit, if they slit Dawson's?
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Dec 11, 2021 05:04
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Cuz then you’d play as him.
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Dec 11, 2021 07:34
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Nebrilos posted:I just finished the 7th scenario of Innsmouth and something stood out to me: Because, After an enemy attacks an investigator at your location, even if the attack was cancelled, exhaust Thomas Dawson: That investigator draws 1 car Ubik_Lives fucked around with this message at 18:54 on Dec 11, 2021 |
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Dec 11, 2021 18:51
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We got absolutely pummeled in EOTE. Might not be the best move to put all your eggs in the “amazing five XP weapon“ basket.
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Dec 11, 2021 21:16
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We went through the new campaign with Bob Jenkins and a sled dog Leo deck. Bob and his best friend Joey are absurd, especially with the supplies you can get. I'd have occasional 9 action turns plus multiple eon chart move/investigate/Joey throws away the chart before pulling a token/scavenge the Eon Chart/put into play fast with Joey added on top. Leo was able to get through the entire campaign losing only a single guard dog, never lost a sled dog or the campaign reward dog. Mitch and priests had a less successful survival rate.
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Dec 11, 2021 22:20
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Golden Bee posted:We got absolutely pummeled in EOTE. Might not be the best move to put all your eggs in the “amazing five XP weapon“ basket. Yeah you need disposable assets to be ready to sacrifice no matter how amazing the Hammer is. KPC_Mammon posted:We went through the new campaign with Bob Jenkins and a sled dog Leo deck. I built a Leo deck to pair with Norman for a re-run of EotE. He's kind of perfect for it. Great stats, lots of soak, movement tricks from his Rogue side, etc. I thought about using Sled Dogs, but I was concerned about having to draw them to make them useful.
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Dec 12, 2021 01:18
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LifeLynx posted:I built a Leo deck to pair with Norman for a re-run of EotE. He's kind of perfect for it. Great stats, lots of soak, movement tricks from his Rogue side, etc. I thought about using Sled Dogs, but I was concerned about having to draw them to make them useful. It wasn't much of an issue. He had mausers and survival knives as back up weapons but rarely needed to use them. Calling in favors is great when you have 8 3 cost allies in your deck and the movement from sled dogs was a huge boon. In the thick of it let him start with two rods of animalism and an ace of swords, so dogs would only cost 1 to play and he could easily get them all out even without Mitch. Guts, daring, and overpower we're the extent of his extra card draw at 0xp but he eventually also took easy marks, stand together (3), and used adaptable to get glory. As Bob I could give him a lucky cigarette case (3) but that was pretty rare. We were often split up to cover more ground.
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Dec 12, 2021 02:58
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Tinkering in the deck workshop today, I tried doing something with William Yorick : EotE has been good to him, with these two becoming staples :  I wanted to do something with the Sledgehammer and it seemed like it could be a good fit for him, with Police Badge recursion and Live and Learn helping to mitigate the action cost and auto-fail risk :  Now I needed a place to test it out. I didn't feel like starting a whole new campaign, but there was one standalone I'd been trying sporadically over the years but never beaten...  Batter up! The 'trick' to this one is that the named enemies aren't Elite, so stuff like "Get over here!" (2) gets great mileage by pulling them away from the annoying Aloof enemies who protect them, or grabbing the guy with the monster buddy. Plus it's also good action compression for pulling something under a big hammer swing. Six damage is overkill on most of them but it's still worth using sometimes for the +5 attack bonus because the standalone bag has some scary tokens in it, especially if the Strength of the Abyss gets out of control. I started off partnering him with Monterey Jack, who has some pretty cool deckbuilding options. ArkhamDB seems to have honed in on Eon Chart (3) and Ariadne's Twine, but I tried Eon Chart (1) because I was building 19XP decks and it still seemed pretty good. I thought it was also interesting how his movement-based ability increases the Leo de Luca value proposition. I couldn't find a good way to mitigate the nasty Willpower treacheries, though, so after a few games I went looking for a new partner and came up with Gloria Goldberg.  I figured her ability to dumpster the really annoying enemies and rig the deck was exactly what I needed, and it worked pretty well. I went Green instead of Blue, too, for money and Intel Report because the heavy token bag and some high shrouds made regular investigation a bit less reliable than usual.  And I couldn't resist putting Stargazing in!  I know it's pretty bad but if anyone can make it work surely Gloria can. I actually dropped Drawn to the Flame because digging past the couple of known cards on top of the deck proved to be too dangerous. I replaced it with Read the Signs because with Alyssa Graham out (Gloria's best friend) that's a 10-point double clue action. I managed to beat The Eternal Slumber for the first time ever, but I decided to use the Explore rule from RtTFA so it was a bit easier than playing it as written. I wanted to try to maximize the XP by finding both copies of The Black Wind, thinking I could keep one under Gloria if it showed up early and then maybe play it late when I drew my weakness, but that idea didn't really go anywhere.  I started to wonder if Jim Culver might be a good fit here since there are three Skull tokens in the standalone bag and they're the Strength of the Abyss ones, but I'll leave that thought for another day. I made a mini-campaign by continuing on to The Night's Usurper (spending two of my five XP to advance, and taking the narrative results) and, um, holy poo poo! That enemy that shows up at the portal when you advance the act... I had nothing. I put zero fight or evade into Gloria's deck because of her ability to filter the enemies but this guy virtually requires some solid evade options. I peaced out here but I did glance at the backs of the other locations to find out what sort of tests I'd need to do if I wanted a good resolution and ironically most of them would've fit Monterey Jack pretty well. I did learn that the bad guy's boss is Nephren-Ka, aka the Dark Pharaoh, aka the guy from my favourite Eldritch Horror expansion, and if that's where the LCG is going next* then these two standalones might fit pretty nicely into that campaign. Here are the two decks. I kinda wanted Eucatastrophe or Third Time's a Charm for more Sledgehammer auto-fail protection but the bag has like 23 tokens in it so the odds are pretty good already. William Yorick (19XP) Gloria Goldberg (19XP) * the designers have put some visual hints into the art of some cards from a cycle which hint at the theme of the next one. The Innsmouth Conspiracy was originally supposed to come out before Edge of the Earth and it has a few Egyptian-themed cards or artworks, and some Dream-Eaters cards had some art which hinted at EotE's, uh, climate. edit : One take-away from the Gloria deck I wanted to mention is that it's not enough to just be looking at the top two cards of the encounter deck all the time. The next version will probably have Parallel Fates so I can dig deeper to make sure I extract as many enemies as possible. Kalko fucked around with this message at 10:06 on Dec 12, 2021 |
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Dec 12, 2021 09:48
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I know that pretty much any deck gets silly if you jam enough XP into it, but I would like to say that Silas is very amusing to play once you've got all ten of the upgraded core skill cards (him being the only investigator who can have all of them). Combining that with True Survivor to drag all my innate skills back out of discard and my boy Yaotl to use their skill icons while in the discard, you have a super flexible deck that spins up to speed very quickly. You can basically just vomit skill cards at any important test, including those of any allies when convenient.
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Dec 12, 2021 17:05
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I love cornered in Silas, because his card draw can be wild with unrelenting. Sword cane is amazing Gloria, covers up for a week stats for everything that you can’t nope by manipulating the encounter deck.
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Dec 12, 2021 18:17
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Orange Devil posted:I'm seriously wondering if Ward of Protection would still be an auto-include in every deck which is allowed to take it if a campaign had no Ancient Evils (or equivalent) in it at all. I've been thinking about this after running Gloria through The Eternal Slumber a bunch of times where I didn't take it. In theory her stacking the deck ability should minimize its effectiveness, but if you discard a card you end up with one unknown card for the next Mythos phase, and in that scenario the deck gets shuffled a couple of times when the agenda advances so you miss both draws there, though you can sort of recover if the first card you draw begins a test so you can use one of your fast abilities to scry. And that scenario does have an Ancient Evils tied to a Willpower treachery if you fail by four or more, which is reasonably likely in the late game. Thinking about my TCU run, it was invaluable for things like Watcher's Grasp, which can undo a defeat or evade on the Watcher, or Ghostly Presence getting shuffled into a small encounter deck and again undoing a Nahab defeat or just causing a lot of damage from an attack. And then there's Whispered Bargain at the end which either makes you place doom on Azathoth or eat a 3/3 attack, but there are other ways to handle that. I think I've had Ward in my last 3-4 campaigns (I actually took Forewarned on Trish towards the end of RtTFA) and I think my main argument for it apart from the Ancient Evils one would be that it mitigates compounding tempo hits. So if you're stuck dealing with a treachery for a turn or two you don't have to worry about another one hitting you and possibly triggering an exponential loss of action economy (which may be a rare occurrence, but I always try to build with an eye towards consistency). And the other side of that coin is that if you have it available you might actually choose to eat something that costs you 1-2 actions to deal with if you know you'll be safe from further hits over the next turn or two, but then that's kind of like saving it for a rainy day that may never come. How many turns should it sit in your hand to justify its slot in the deck? I'm rambling but I basically agree with you that it provides certain investigators with some much-appreciated Mythos phase resilience, but I'm hard-pressed to think of a campaign where I wouldn't want to take it. Maybe Innsmouth? It's still kind of fresh in my memory and I can't recall anything as nasty as that stuff I mentioned about TCU, at least off the top of my head.
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Dec 13, 2021 13:38
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Kalko posted:And the other side of that coin is that if you have it available you might actually choose to eat something that costs you 1-2 actions to deal with if you know you'll be safe from further hits over the next turn or two, but then that's kind of like saving it for a rainy day that may never come. How many turns should it sit in your hand to justify its slot in the deck? This is the main reason I'm wondering about it. I've been noticing that more and more often WoP just sits in hand "just in case" and/or waiting for the perfect hit (aka Ancient Evils or equivalent) so it's not actually actively doing anything to help win the game. What it is doing, as you pointed out, is making you feel more secure about taking risks knowing you've got a backstop in case you get hit with something nasty. Concretely this probably means you're spending less resources dealing with encounter cards then you would be absent the backstop, and then investing the difference in tempo. This does raise the question of, what if you would play as if you had WoP even if you don't have it, and instead WoP is replaced by another card, which presumably will also let you tempo more and/or increases the consistency of your deck? Instinctively I want to say this would increase variance, as your chance of being defeated increases on the one side but your tempo/consistency also increases on the other. But I'm not so sure, because if your increased tempo means you finish a turn earlier then effectively that's the same as if you had cancelled the encounter card you never had to draw (except you don't even take a horror for it). And that extra encounter card should also be increasing your chance of being defeated. Ultimately Ward of Protection is a card in the same category as healing cards and Dodge. All of which are generally garbage because they are so reactive. It's just in the very top tier of that type of cards, together with Deny Existence, and thus playable. But the only situation in which Ward of Protection is ever *good* is when it cancels an Ancient Evils or equivalent. So for example, if Ancient Evils wasn't in that campaign, why would you take it into Dunwich? Or Carcosa? Orange Devil fucked around with this message at 14:57 on Dec 13, 2021 |
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Dec 13, 2021 14:52
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Absolutely. In Carcosa, it can save you a minimum of two actions with the card that adds two doom to a location. And done which, it can block infinite corridor‘s which suck if they’re in the middle of the school, on the train, or in the lobby of the museum. Having a thing in your hand for later isn’t a huge problem unless you’re running some sort of big hand Daisy. Canceling a card that can: attach to location with haunted, summon enemies, attack your hand or assets, or summon enemies indirectly is one of the advantages of being mystic. We brought Diana to edge of the earth and she has canceled some real bruising encounters.
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Dec 13, 2021 17:34
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Well yeah obviously you'd still always run it in Diana and Agnes because they get other advantages from the card. But Akachi, Dexter, Mateo or Jacqueline?
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Dec 13, 2021 18:12
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In scenarios with bad tokens, canceling a skill test by itself, especially when you’re likely to fail, is a great use of your cards cash and horror.
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Dec 13, 2021 19:40
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Orange Devil posted:This does raise the question of, what if you would play as if you had WoP even if you don't have it, and instead WoP is replaced by another card, which presumably will also let you tempo more and/or increases the consistency of your deck? The question then becomes what other card offers an equivalent effect? Out of all the sources of unknown information in this game I would argue the encounter deck has the greatest impact on your ability to execute your game plan. There are a lot of ways to cheat or mitigate test results (and you sometimes don't even need to perform tests to accomplish your goals) or search/stack your own deck, but there are far fewer ways to mitigate or ignore the drawing of encounter cards, which is something you must do every turn. No matter what you draw from the deck (excluding enemies since I'm always playing the 2XP version) Ward's value scales in direct proportion to the impact that card would have, and while a failed test in some circumstances may have very little impact on your tempo, that same test in other circumstances may have a devastating effect. Ward's flexibility is its greatest strength and while I think your premise is sound I find it very hard to quantify its impact even in a campaign with a fairly benign set of treacheries because its value fluctuates in accordance with the game state. And regarding holding onto it for a long time, I would say that generally speaking the amount of time a card spends sitting in your hand is proportional to how situational it is (outside extra copies of assets and such) and it's certainly not incorrect to take some cards that have specific use cases. But if Ward is a situational card whose value changes every single turn and playing a game of AH is essentially a grand exercise in Bayesian reasoning, then perhaps Ward of Protection is simply a difficult card to play?
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Dec 14, 2021 10:32
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Golden Bee posted:In scenarios with bad tokens, canceling a skill test by itself, especially when you’re likely to fail, is a great use of your cards cash and horror. As Kalko points out, this is entirely dependent on how bad failing the skills test actually is. I think a big lesson new players need to learn in this game is that not every treachery card is actually bad. Combined with health and sanity being resources, it means there's plenty of tests or cards you can just ignore and take on the chin and move on. It's kind of similar to how in Netrunner the runner needed to learn to ask "what's the worst ICE the corp could actually rez on me if I facecheck it right now?" and (for new players) the conclusion from that was almost always to make more runs. The AH equivalent is that tempo is king in the vast majority of scenario's and the way to achieve tempo is by spending your resources (and indeed building your deck) towards achieving objectives and getting clues (very often the same thing) rather than defending against the encounter cards. Unless, of course, absolutely necessary to prevent defeat. I think I agree with everything you are saying Kalko. For sure WoP's value fluctuates heavily, perhaps more so than any other card (similar maybe only to Deny Existence?). I think playing it correctly is actually often very simple: don't use it for anything other than Ancient Evils or a card that could very plausibly (or even guaranteed) defeat someone right now. In scenarios absent Ancient Evils, that means it is much less likely that this "correct" opportunity actually presents itself. This means either it sits in hand doing nothing or you use it for a "lesser" case to grab some tempo. Whether that is worth it / the right choice might indeed be one of the most difficult to evaluate decisions in the game. Anyway, my point here is that given this, it might also be very difficult to evaluate if WoP should be in your deck at all, seeing as if we start using it for tempo there might be other cards better at achieving that. If, and this is key, Ancient Evils or similar effects didn't exist. Because cancelling Ancient Evils just gives you so incredibly much tempo it's a no-brainer. So what I think this lets us conclude is that the effect of Ancient Evils on the game is so large that it makes a card which otherwise might at least be a debatable include for some investigators in some campaigns an auto-include for every investigator who can take it in every campaign. Which is a really huge effect when you think of it that way. And to go a step further, I don't think having cards which are auto-includes in all situations is good for the game because it cuts down on deck and play variety. I think this is just another way in which Ancient Evils fails as a design. Although I do think being able to introduce uncertainty in turns remaining is interesting and fun. So maybe it's Ward of Protection itself which is too good? There are other encounter card cancellation cards in Seeker and Survivor for instance and they see play much less often. Though I think a big part of that is how WoP(2) can already always take care of the best targets for those alternative cards anyway.
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Dec 14, 2021 12:05
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Orange Devil posted:For sure WoP's value fluctuates heavily, perhaps more so than any other card (similar maybe only to Deny Existence?). I think playing it correctly is actually often very simple: don't use it for anything other than Ancient Evils or a card that could very plausibly (or even guaranteed) defeat someone right now. In scenarios absent Ancient Evils, that means it is much less likely that this "correct" opportunity actually presents itself. This means either it sits in hand doing nothing or you use it for a "lesser" case to grab some tempo. Whether that is worth it / the right choice might indeed be one of the most difficult to evaluate decisions in the game. Yeah, my thought process for RtTCU was basically, "Is Watcher's Grasp/Ghostly Presence/Hallowed Ground/[investigator defeat card] in the deck and would it punish me severely in the next few turns if I drew it?" If "yes" then hold it, and if "no" then use it on this thing in front of me. Maybe. The more thought you put into it and the more future game states you imagine the better off you'll be, up to a point, but in this situation I don't know if there's ever really a 'right' answer. This discussion has made me realize that this card is probably one of the most thought-provoking ones in the game. Deny Existence is an interesting counterpart because you can almost pin a Tempo value to each of its conditions. Preventing loss of HP or SP? Zero Tempo (unless you would've died). Preventing loss of resources, cards or actions? Now we're talking! I didn't take it in RtTCU but in the past I most often saved it for pre-emptive healing because Mystic HP pools are generally poor and damage is common, but only if I was already floating 4-5 damage on a 6HP investigator with no other soaks (I'm perfectly comfortable with 3 damage except if it happens within the first few turns of the game) but this is a pretty obvious use case because it's hedging against defeat. It does have some use cases I'd label as proactive, though, like mitigating the effects of an attack of opportunity or tanking an enemy for a round to gain an advantage. When I first played with it I remember double-checking its wording a few times to make sure what I was trying to do was on the list, and it felt like it was if not a very strong card then certainly a generous one. But now I do think it's a very strong card, but I will say as much as I love the 5XP one I do think it's kind of a luxury for most investigators.
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Dec 14, 2021 13:40
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Kalko posted:It does have some use cases I'd label as proactive, though, like mitigating the effects of an attack of opportunity or tanking an enemy for a round to gain an advantage. These are both good points. Another reason why Deny Existence is so good is the flexibility. All of the things it can do have value, though indeed some a lot more than others, but it can also just do so many things. Like WoP it's probably just too strong though, because I just don't see any reason why I wouldn't include it in an investigator which is allowed to take unlimited lvl 0 Mystic cards, and it's always a consideration for investigators that can take a limited number. I also agree that while the 5XP version is undeniably insanely strong, it is a luxury because the lvl 0 version already does the most important part of the card and 5 (more likely 10) XP is a lot, and honestly the only reason you might still end up with it is because you get a discount. The way to demonstrate that the lvl 0 version does the most important part I think is to imagine being hit with a "discard 3" effect. Lvl 5 turns that into a draw 3. Drawing 3 is great. But you will decide to play Deny Existence (5) in this situation almost never based on "do I need to draw 3 here?" and almost always based on "can I afford to discard 3" + "is there a worse thing that could happen to me for which I should save Deny Existence in hand" (aka, "am I currently at critical health and/or sanity?"). So you are effectively spending 5XP (or 3, sort of) on a bonus. A good bonus, but a bonus.
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Dec 14, 2021 15:17
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I know that Ward often sees play in our group, and obviously if Ancient Evils is in the encounter deck it is generally saved for that when possible. I don't know if I agree fully on the assessment on holding it in hand and the presumed lost opportunity cost from doing so. Sure, we often save encounter denial effects to negate specific targets. However, we definitely also use them to maintain or recover tempo in the course of regular play, even if something like ancient evils is a threat. Sometimes building or maintaining that tempo early makes dealing with those later threats less of a concern. Also, other classes have their own cancellation effects available, but if you can always just take those as well and start ignoring the threat of the encounter phase. We've definitely had campaigns where we've gone heavy on cancellation and denial effects where the encounter deck stops being much of a major concern. It can get kind of dumb though. We had a game where we also stacked that with a player building a seal deck as well. We'll probably avoid that in the future, since the last few missions more or less felt like we were barely actually playing the game.
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Dec 14, 2021 16:59
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I'm taking Ward of Protection on every blind run or if I'm running with a dumb 1-will Rogue. I'm not enjoying playing Norman. Astronomical Atlas plus his signature book sound awesome until you have to do it every turn. It's like playing Amanda, but with an extra mini-game attached.
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Dec 14, 2021 17:44
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Amanda is so much fun. I tried building big hands with her last time, and that’s less effective than building up good board state and using Eureka thrice or even four times if there’s an encounter card. Her and Silas are team skillz, and in some situations quick study is a +3 with very little cost, especially when paired with hiking boots.
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Dec 14, 2021 18:43
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So I made another pass on my Gloria Goldberg deck and it feels like there's a lot to learn here. I'm currently testing how feasible it is to achieve 100% curated draws, or in other words whether I can always hand out the encounter cards I want on every single turn of the game. It's tempting to just stack every scry effect you can fit into the deck because she's 'the scry investigator' but that's a fairly obvious trap. The hard part is working out exactly how much scry you can take when you also need to perform a primary role like cluever, which is what she's doing in this case. My current thought is that if I can curate the encounter draws sufficiently well I won't actually need any cancellation effects, thus saving deck space for the scry package, so no Ward of Protection or Deny Existence or anything like that (sidenote : scrying with the intent to cancel something feels kind of weird, like you're double-handling). I replaced the Rogue off-class pieces with Guardian for "Let me handle this!" and First Watch, and I also took Parallel Fates (2), which lets you stack the top six cards of the encounter deck or a player's deck, and if you choose a player's deck they can draw a card if they want to. Because of that last bit it feels like you always want to use it on a player's deck or you're losing value, and for that reason I did keep one cancel effect, Foresight, because its "play the card at -2 cost" effect can be used with this and Scroll. I'm starting to think, though, that trying to scry player decks and the encounter deck spreads you too thin because if the only scry card you have in play is the Scroll or Scrying (3) the encounter deck will always take priority. Anyway, applying the above theories to a real-game situation, I'll make some notes about The Eternal Slumber with the modified deck. The context is basically the same as before : I'm still trying to beat it with William Yorick and then proceed to The Night's Usurper, so I added some evade options to Gloria's deck for that scenario. I'll list card images for the treacheries here because I'm sure nobody knows what they do off the top of their head. The encounter deck contains three copies of these cards :  Of the Willpower treacheries, Abyssal Reach is the most dangerous treachery, but only if the Strength of the Abyss is four or more (it starts at two). Before then it doesn't really matter who draws it but I'll always give it to Gloria if I can. Terror Under the Pyramids is best handled by Gloria but sometimes it's beneficial for William to discard cards, and Eclipse is best handled by Gloria because even if she fails taking two horror is no big deal. Both investigators are fairly resilient to the Agility treacheries because William can often get by with the resources on Schoffner's Catalogue, and he can eat damage for days if Jessica Hyde is in play. Gloria can also sometimes take a Sandstorm to the face by discarding a spell asset with no charges left (or any of her other assets if it's really necessary). There are two copies of these in the deck :  Slumber to Gloria is a high priority because William will never get rid of it, though after the first agenda advances his actions are worth a bit less than hers and I'll always try to have a 'spare' Abyss Strength lowering action for when we're ready to advance to the final act. Dark Sacrifice goes to William first but it's not a huge deal either way, and The Black Wind is kind of a wildcard because I want to get both into the victory display by the end of the scenario but ideally as late as possible to minimize its impact. And for enemies, there are three copies of the first and two of the others :  Humble Supplicant is a non-issue and can sometimes be placed onto William's location during the first act to make use of Scene of the Crime right away and/or to give him a free use of his ability. Thing in the Sarcophagus is an auto-discard but William can deal with it using the Sledgehammer's big attack to minimize the chip damage. And Creature from the Abyss is absolutely, positively the most dangerous card in the entire scenario and the reason I switched to Gloria in the first place. It must be discarded at any cost. Honorable mention for the Abyssal Revenant which gets shuffled into the deck when the agenda advances. It's another auto-discard if it comes out early but if it shows up when we're ready to advance to the final act it's no big deal because it'll spawn 4-5 locations away from us and the game will be over by the time it catches up. So the take-away from all of that is that there's a fair amount of flexibility when it comes to handing out encounter cards to these particular investigators in this scenario. But if our goal is to curate 100% of the card draws there are a bunch of things that can get in our way. I'll list them along with possible mitigations in list form, under the assumption that we have Alyssa Graham in play and can scry two cards every turn : 1) Problem : No scry cards in opening hand. Solution : Mulligan for Alyssa Graham, or take draw actions until any scry card is found (it's very unlikely you won't have at least one in your opening hand). 2) Problem : Gloria's ability is used to discard one of the two cards, leaving one unknown card for the next Mythos phase. Solution : Use a backup scry effect like Scroll of Secrets (3), Scrying (3), or Parallel Fates (2). 3) Problem : Two encounter cards with a high affinity for Gloria (due to game state) are drawn. Solution : Use "Let me handle this!" to deal both to Gloria. 4) Problem : Two encounter cards with a high affinity for William (due to game state) are drawn. Solution : Yeah, I got nothing for this one, but it's much, much rarer than 3). 4) Problem : The agenda advances and there is no player action window to play scrying actions before the draw encounter card step. Solution : Use First Watch or, if the first card drawn initiates a skill test, use the fast action window to scry for the second draw. My conclusion after playing one game with the modified deck is that it's not really possible to cover 100% of the draws even with all of that taken into account, but it's possible to come pretty close. And I don't think it's really desirable to hit that mark anyway because going from 90% coverage to 100% would require compromising its core functionality by swapping in even more scrying or utility cards of dubious merit, whereas the current loadout already contains most of the good quality ones. You can see how cancel effects could still be pretty useful as a means for covering those times when you've got a blind draw or two, except when it comes to drawing enemies. And because there's three copies each of five of the treacheries and this scenario has two 'shuffle the discard pile back into the deck' triggers on agenda advancement I was considering "Fool me once..." because its main advantage is that it stops a card from going back into the deck. And so does Gloria's ability if you make use of it, which is something I haven't been doing enough of yet. I was also looking really hard at Second Wind since its condition could always be met and its cantrip value is a bit better in Mystic, but ultimately there were better things to try. For the next version I think I'll remove Foresight and swap Stargazing back in, which has the side effect of increasing the incentive to use Parallel Fates (2) on the encounter deck. Stargazing is pretty interesting for Gloria because while you're not gaining any actions overall (it costs one to play and grants one when it resolves) being able to choose the turn when you get an extra action (and/or giving the action to the other investigator) adds a decent amount of power to the effect. And you can also put it under her for when her weakness shows up, which is kinda funny but probably not the best use for it. Last thing I'll say is that while Guardian is the best off-class for adding more encounter card manipulation, Seeker access is really tempting because it helps you to leverage her five Intellect (with Alyssa Graham) and she's more likely to be fulfilling a cluever role rather than a fighter, so that's something I want to experiment with, too. I've analyzed every encounter card in this scenario as part of my deck-building process but in a proper campaign I don't think you really need to count cards or anything; just having an awareness of what the big threats are and playing the 'good' scrying cards is enough to get a lot of value out of her ability, and leaning too heavily into it is probably going to leave you with a suboptimal deck, or at least one with a very narrow focus, but then the same could be said for most other investigator abilities.
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Dec 16, 2021 09:15
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I've always considered Gloria's primary role as being a 'fighter' in that she can throw enemies in the trash directly from the deck. Why spend precious actions actually fighting when you can prevent them from existing to begin with? Couple that with dodging terrible treacheries and I'm okay with Gloria not getting many clues as long as she is paired with an effective cluever. I've widened the role of "fighter" to "encounter deck manager" because that is what fighters are much of the time. The deck throws the cluever an enemy, and the fighter needs to spend their time dealing with it because that's what they do. Gloria can do the same much more effectively, and much much more. The team will still need an emergency button way of doing damage if an enemy slips through or you get a scenario enemy Gloria couldn't dodge. But it sounds like Yorick can handle that from time to time. When I played Gloria, there would be times when I would barely move. I would simply sit around and completely turn off the encounter deck. My goal was to scry as much as possible. If I am dealing someone an unknown card, or something they might not be able to handle, that is a bad turn. Between the scrying and cancelation, Gloria didn't have many bad turns. She shines in a 3player game with a fighter and cluever, but is also good with a solid 'solo' investigator who can clue well, but also kill the odd big bad. You've got all your bases covered. The only way the game can hurt you is the bag. Later in the campaign I gave Gloria that spell that removes the auto-fail for a while, so the bag was less of a concern. The game was pretty neutered at that point.
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Dec 16, 2021 14:07
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Gloria was able to let us see and arrange every mythos card while discarding the bad ones in a four player game with scroll of secrets and scrying. Use the scroll after scrying.
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Dec 16, 2021 20:50
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Really? Assuming two copies that's only six turns of scry 4 unless you were running Katherine Twila Price? Which might actually be the first worthwhile use I've come across for her.
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Dec 16, 2021 22:53
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Rusty Kettle posted:She shines in a 3player game with a fighter and cluever, but is also good with a solid 'solo' investigator who can clue well, but also kill the odd big bad. You've got all your bases covered. The only way the game can hurt you is the bag. Later in the campaign I gave Gloria that spell that removes the auto-fail for a while, so the bag was less of a concern. The game was pretty neutered at that point. Yeah, I can see how she would be better at higher player counts, but she's already really strong with just two players and I do think it's mostly because she can discard enemies. I'm not sure she's OP or anything, though, because The Eternal Slumber is still pretty drat hard with her, but that could just be because that scenario is one of the most difficult ones in the game. Choice of partner matters too, and William Yorick isn't bad by any means but a lot of investigator combinations add up to more than the sum of their parts. I'm sure she has better/worse scenarios and campaigns too, like you said with ones that have bosses or enemies that spawn on act/agenda advancement etc.
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Dec 17, 2021 00:28
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So a Feb 2022 Asmodee price list has leaked which shows the name of the next AH Investigator Expansion (with no corresponding Campaign Expansion listed, which doesn't necessarily mean anything). Full list is here : https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jfUBFuYON8v0BAPsC-m5Sd4pI7c8NWzq/edit#gid=1463698931 It also shows the next few Marvel Champions packs, if you're into that. The AH box is called The Scarlet Keys, and the nearest thing it ties into in Arkham lore is something called The Congress of Keys, which consists of a secret society trying to collect relics and ancient knowledge from around the world (The Red-Gloved Man is one known member). The theme seems to involve globetrotting, so maybe the Egyptian artwork hints from TIC tie into it in that respect (or maybe it means nothing at all).
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Dec 18, 2021 02:29
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Does everyone get a key slot now?
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Dec 18, 2021 04:35
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1🔑 /party.
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Dec 18, 2021 05:41
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Well I shelved my Gloria Goldberg/William Yorick experiment because I couldn't make a dent in The Night's Usurper once you get to the final act. Since I've been on a bit of a Mystic kick lately I decided to try a new partnership : Father Mateo and Zoey Samaras. I'd never played Mateo before but it turns out you don't really need a high Willpower if you run heavy bless tech. I did a few more runs of The Eternal Slumber and it went surprisingly smoothly, but then Zoey with a Cyclopean Hammer is a very efficient killer. I also hit more natural Elder Signs than in any of my previous games, almost enough to make me a Believer, too. Then I went into The Night's Usurper and met this guy again and, nope, there is no God.  To be fair I didn't really have a plan other than "Mateo uses Sword Cane every turn" but I understand now that you need a very specific set of investigator tools to be able to make it through this one. Reliable, reusable Evade that works on Elites, so I'm thinking Trish or, um, Patrice with double Cornered? No Guardian can stand up to this guy every turn, except maybe Leo with a full kennel of Sled Dogs or something. I'll work it out one day.
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Dec 18, 2021 10:57
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Dunwich campaign ended in failure for Ursala and Yorick. It was all going good until undimensioned and Unseen happened and it all went downhill from there. On to Carcosa I guess.
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Dec 18, 2021 17:18
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You don’t lose the campaign if you lose that scenario, right?
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Dec 18, 2021 17:20
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Golden Bee posted:You don’t lose the campaign if you lose that scenario, right? You don't! The best way to deal with that scenario for most investigators is to just resign immediately.
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Dec 18, 2021 17:30
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