So I wanted to give Agnes a go for my groups latest
campaign (Path to Carcosa) and I came at the deck from a different angle than I
usually do. Rather than thinking of how the deck plays straight off the bat, I
focused on how it would play once we had accumulated some experience points.
With the upgraded spell cards taking up a bulk of experience I wanted to focus
on getting upgrades which would decrease the change of the level 0 spells
missing their mark. I’ll go into each point of the deck and then look at
upgrades after.
Arcane
So, Shrivelling and Rite of Seeking are the two basic
spells in the deck, obviously one for combat and one for investigating. Unless
we get an abundance of experience points, these will more than likely stay at
level 0, simply because there are so many cards which up your willpower value
and provide other little abilities too, however these cost experience, so best
to spend it on expanding your action base in my opinion.
Accessories
Only one here and that’s the Holy Rosary, I quite like
Agnes’s signature asset, however with not going to spell heavy overall in the
deck, it’s not going to get the use it deserves. So, the Holy Rosary will get
the slot, its extra willpower bonus and sanity buff is going to fit perfectly
into the build. I was tempted by the Key, however the minus 2 sanity really put
me, maybe see how these play and we can always amend where needed.
Body
Leather Coat was the only real option here, Agnes has a
low enough health value to make this a priority and as it’s o cost card, I
don’t have to worry about resources to get this into play. If we have enough left-over
resources this could possibly become a Body Armour, but will have to see.
Ally
Peter Sylvestre was the sure choice here, not because of
his level 0 version, but his level 2 version. The extra sanity buff he provides
and his willpower bonus makes him the perfect addition to this deck which is
trying to increase its willpower. I also threw in a couple of Arcane Initiates
too, as the deck doesn’t have a huge number of spells it made sense to play
cards which could go looking for them. It’s great having so many willpower
buffs but if we can’t get the spell cards out, they are useless.
Other
Ok, so Forbidden Knowledge and Painkillers take these
positions. As noted earlier her lower health means Painkillers was a great
include, healing health is always nice, also because it can be combined with
Agnes’s ability or even the ability of Peter Sylvestre to mitigate the horror
you take from using them. Forbidden knowledge can be used in the exact same way
to not only trigger your ability but to simply use Peter Sylvestre to negate
the horror being taken to gain a resource.
Skills
So not my usual payload of skills here, I only went with
Guts and Fearless. Guts is another great way of pumping your willpower stat and
then drawing a card if your test is successful. Fearless at level 0 is ok, the higher-level
version is better as its gives you two willpower icons, but the ability to heal
horror is great. In most of my builds I go skill heavy but I felt this deck
could manage without it.
Events
Some pretty standard choices here, Ward of Protection and
Lucky, were my first choices. Evading encounter cards is great when you don’t
necessarily have the ability to beat them and being able to add 2 to a skill
check when you would lose it is nothing to snub either. So these cards were
certainly staples for this deck. I threw in an Emergency Cache too so we could
make sure Agnes always had some moolah to hand. I added Drawn to the Flame to
give her some clue gathering power should Rite of Seeking not make it to the
board within a reasonable time, I can imagine this being one of the first cards
to be cut when upgrading. Delve Too Deep also got a sneaky include, I noted
that we should be trying to get as much XP as possible to use between
scenarios, and two copies of this in the deck could net us 2 XP a game which
again, is nothing to be snubbed. As William Yorick is on the Team he can
potentially add 1 XP each game too, so the potential for gaining XP is greater
with all these includes.
Ok, so that’s the build as it stands at 0 experience and
there is certainly some wriggle room for upgrades of cards already in the deck
and some new additions which can be added into the deck. Cards like Ward of
Protection have a couple of upgrade options now, Peter Sylvestre as previously
discussed, Fearless and Lucky all have upgrade options which give their own
little boost to the build.
Spirit Athame provide nice little additions when
upgrading, increasing your skill value by 2 when testing a spell card is a
phenomenal include and again is a cheaper alternative to upgrading the spells
in the deck. Book of Shadows is also a
welcome addition later on, to restock the charges on your spell cards or a
Grotesque Statue if you would rather increase your chances of pulling the right
token when you do utilise your spell cards.
From the Neutral card pool, I like the idea of the Key of
Ys and even the Relic Hunter card, some real potential there especially
considering the deck could have a few different accessory cards.
On the Survivor class front, there is nothing really
jumping out at me on the upgrade front outside of Peter Sylvestre and Lucky. A Test of Wills is one card that does intrigue me when
combined with Ward of Protection you get a good range of cards that allow you
to evade the encounter deck. Sadly I feel a lot of the experience points will be
spent on Mystic cards.
With our new campaign starting on 11th April
2018, I cant wait to see where this deck goes as the campaign progresses. I didn’t
manage to get much noted down from our Dunwich Legacy campaign, so I am hoping
to get some more noted and reported this time around.
Im Big Boss, I’m out.... peace.
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