This is a set of five custom investigators. All of them share the same basic 5-2 type of deckbuilding that the Core Set investigators have. That means that investigators with these specific deckbuilding options do already exist in the official game. The custom ones are thus designed to fulfill roles that the official ones didn’t quite manage, to cover parts of those card pools that the original investigators weren’t able to properly engage with.
This is a first release that has all the playable bits. I still want to work a bit more on the aesthetics with some better images, flavor texts, text spacings and the like. Once that is done (and i maybe even gotten some feedback from anyone who tried them on TTS and incorporated that) i will also make some proper Print and Play files, of course.
EDIT: Initial responses
So, this set of investigators has garnered some really helpful immediate responses that will definitely help me improve these cards for the next version. I want to take a minute here to point out a few things that are likely going to happen: – Benedict is going to get his signature redone into a Permanent that gives him a bonus for spending resources. What sort of bonus is still open, likely a support type of ability. This should give him something to interact with even after turn zero. This addresses concerns about how fun he’d end up to play and concerns about his rather weak signature. – There is also some concern about Evie’s signature which is very swingy and too open-ended especially in four-player. Turning it into an asset that gives more incremental bonus instead of one huge payout might be the play here. The weakness was pointed out as punishing other players which feels bad. I might change that. – Gideon’s ability needs to be restricted to his own turn. Basically, it should work like Dexter’s in terms of timing. – I made a mistake on Mara’s weakness. It is meant to return to the top of the deck with its Forced effect at the end of the enemy phase, not upkeep. This gives the players an opportunity to defeat it to the bottom of Mara’s deck, instead of having it go back on top immediately.
There’s a bunch more feedback that i got, but those are the big bullet points that i wanted to share immediately. If you have more feedback, let me know. It’s all helpful to improve their design.
With that out of the way, here’s the investigators:
Benedict Hawthorne – The Heir
Benedict’s investigator ability is fairly simple: He gains all the resources that others gain over the course of the scenario right at the start. This means that over the course of a normal 15 rounds game, he technically doesn’t even gain something… but of course, resources are worth a lot more in the first turn than they are later on. How to best make use of this is left to your own imagination, i kept this one deliberately open-ended. One thing that i wanted to make sure with him is that he has the agility that Leo Anderson is lacking and thus unlock that large part of the Rogue cardpool that Leo is completely unable to use. His investigator ability gives him an incredible head start. With 20 resources at the start of the game, he could spend his first turn playing two Agency Backups and a Flamethrower… and then still have 2 resources left. Of course, he doesn’t have any further abilities and even has to lean on rogue cards for more income if he needs it. So he starts strong, then gets weaker over the course of the game… i think of him as similar to Sefina, except with resources instead of cards.
His signature allows Benedict to let the other investigators gain a portion of his wealth and nail a test as a reward for his good deeds. The weakness, Social Obligations, ties into Benedict’s inability to acquire further wealth beyond the initial pile. Since he doesn’t gain any in his upkeep, he has to use card effects for that… and Social Obligations will even eat into that.
Evelyn Jordan – The Mentor
An archetype that i always had a weak spot for is the support seeker. Evie combines the Seeker cardpool with the support side of Guardian for something very different from Joe Diamond. Her investigator ability works takes inspiration from the guardian card Safeguard, but instead of reacting to others moving and following them around, her ability puts her in the driver’s seat. It also allows her to move multiple investigators around with her instead of just one. This allows her to stay with the rest of team, so she can play her support cards on them. With her 4 intellect, she is of course able to do the usual Seeker things as well.
Team Spirit doesn’t do anything on its own, but when combined with other cards that gain resources or draw cards, it can provide a huge amount of those to the whole team. So she can clearly be a great boon to the whole team… but when she feels the Weight On Her Shoulders, she will keep everyone down for a turn.
Vivian De Ley – The Exile
Vivian De Ley may once have walked in the same social circles as Preston Fairmont, but that’s in her past. She did however learn how to use her money to get things done, with an investigator ability that can manipulate tests in a very Survivor way. Of course it helps that she isn’t stuck with a non-functional statline either, so she can use all those fancy Survivor cards to her benefit.
Like any self-respecting Rogue, Vivian carries her own personal gun. It’s not a particularly impressive shooter, but it’s cheap and does get the job done. More importantly, she can use it for her investigator ability in some aggressive negotiations. Being Ostracized from her old circles still weighs her down, severely impacting her abilities. Snapping out of it causes her to push her allies away.
Gideon Faulkner – The Ritualist
Gideon is a bit different than the other four in concept. He’s not born out of a desire to use parts of a card pool better – there’s nothing wrong with Luke after all. He’s also a good deal less open-ended and more built around a specific gimmick. He is a ritualist, gaining power through preparation. Triggering his ability will net him an action, play a card without resource costs and also dig a card deeper into his deck – a really impactful payoff. But to get it, he needs to engage with the minigame of his ability, matching cards in his hands.
The signature can help him prepare his ability by reliably pulling a specific card from his deck. As a Double, this is rather costly however. So you may even want to use other cards to prepare your deck before using this and draw multiple cards off of it. Be aware however that often, The Devil [is] In The Details and if you take too long crafting your hand you will get punished by having to drop your hand. The devil will then offer you a choice: Immediately refill your hand to the same count as it was before? If you do, the weakness will go straight back into your now probably fairly small deck however…
Mara – The Wildling
Mara doesn’t have a discard pile. All cards that would enter the discard, instead go straight to the bottom of her deck again. This does keep her from interacting with a certain bunch of Survivor cards, but Patrice who shares her deckbuilding has that covered well enough. What Mara offers instead is recursion in a different way than usual. Card constantly cycle back into her deck and at her own discretion she has the ability to shuffle her deck to potentially find those cards again sooner than normal. Playing out assets and keeping some cards in hand will lead to a deck that over time circulates the cards you want with higher probability than normal, but it does require some crafting of your hand and board first to take those cards out of the cycle.
Her signature plays a big role in tilting the chances in her favor when it comes to her decks contents. With each activation, she gets to remove a card from the bottom 5 out of the game completely, getting rid of undesirables. The other four cards go on top of the deck in random order, giving you further access to cards that you played earlier. With all of that meddling in the natural order, the Upset Spirits are bound to show up eventually. Just like all cards, they recycle back into the deck. If you decide to ignore them, they even recycle to the top of your deck, wasting every other of your draws unless you do something about them. That can mean defeating them to the bottom of your deck (where they will clog up Circle of Life) or using her investigator ability to pay for a shuffle. Nasty!
And that’s what i got so far! It’s not all set in stone at all, so let me know what you think!
Nautical Charts and Memories of Another Life were previewed by Arkham in the Aether on their Instagram. Eye of Ghatanothoa and Captivating Performance were previewed by Horreur à Arkham JCE TV on their YouTube. Locked and Loaded and Artistic Inspiration were previewed by will.i.game on their Instagram.
Guardian
Ah man. This almost is a thing. The Permanent keyword is hella strong, so even small benefits can do a lot of work. However, this reaaaaaally needed to be level 2 to be available to more investigators and to be less of an investment for what i would imagine it to be useful for. As it is now, it can be a late game upgrade for your Shotgun or Lightning Gun deck, giving you more returns from those high XP cards (and thus justifying paying the XP cost for this one). But those aren’t cards that really needed the help, right? They are also cards you play once and then keep in play, so you aren’t going to trigger that extra ammo from Locked and Loaded all that much. If you want to get that extra ammo multiple times, you need to couple it with cheaper disposable weapons… and Guardian famously hasn’t gotten a one-handed firearm since Carcosa. And the two that Guardian gets are so mediocre to awful that they aren’t worth buying specific support for in the first place. Good disposable pistols exist, but they are exclusively green (Bulldog, Lupara, .25 Auto, the new Luger) or red (.18 Derringer). So are the support cards that would also feed into that deck (Sleight of Hand, Act of Desperation). But since Locked and Loaded is level 3, the only ones that can use those together are Leo (who has ammo figured out), Tommy (who might just find a use for it) and Lola (who is Lola). Unless he comes with really weird deckbuilding, Michael is unlikely to be able to take this one either. Tony would loooove this for his Long Colts, but he of course only gets skills and events from Guardian anyways. So where does that leave us? I think the card itself isn’t even all that bad. But without some in-class reasons to play multiple guns per game, this is left without a home. I could see it in Tommy, the .18 Derringer(2) is really a nice weapon and Tommy can use them quite well. But that’s the only niche is see for it currently and it’s already squinting a bit. Maybe we get some cheap Guardian pistols worth playing this set? That would make this look a lot more attractive in some other guardians. Until then, this doesn’t move the needle anywhere.
Seeker
More support for the Exact Science archetype. Actually, this arguably shot past the target and ended up just a generically good card that helps with passing tests. It notably doesn’t have the same clause that Granny Orne(0) has that’d prevent it from turning a fail into a pass, so you can often just treat this as a generic +1 skill value. You need to reload the card in anticipation of another use when its use is spent which costs a card. Together with the initial cost of playing it, that likely keeps it from just being used as a generic +1 skill value. But it’s quite strong nonetheless and any oversuccess or Exact Science synergy quickly puts it over the edge. Between Steady-Handed and Artistic Inspiration, the Exact Science archetype should be really consistent once set up. Add Lucius or Agatha’s signatures into the mix and you are really cooking. This is Limit 1 per Investigator (like so so many other cards this expansion) so you won’t be able to count on it, but as a level 0 card you can just include it and you get your redundancy from Steady-Handed as you upgrade your deck. As a level 0 card, this also has plenty applications as an off-class card. As an example, it’s a fancy discard outlet for Survivor or help with oversuccess for Rogue. So yeah, good card that will see play.
Mystic
Pay 4XP and now your Holy Rosary will soak health damage instead of horror. That is pretty sweet and does fix a glaring weakness in the many Mystics or off-class Mystics with a 5/9 distribution of health and sanity. It’s not really worth 4XP all on its own, but there is of course more to Eye of Ghatanothoa. Knowing the top card of the encounter deck is pretty useful even if you don’t have any specific tech to make use of it. Alyssa Graham offers this effect on a level 0 card, but as a 4 cost asset that also takes up the Ally slot, she’s always been rather clunky. So the Eye could work as a replacement …except for Gloria, who uses Alyssa to trigger her ability. It’s difficult to estimate how valuable the ability to see the next encounter card really is just for general planning of the turn or the occasional card synergy. As an Exceptional, it’s also not really something you can build a deck around with Foresights or even Ambushes. It does make those cards better if you already happen to run them, though. It is pretty sweet to know in advance what Drawn to the Flame would draw you, as another example of how to take advantage of this effect. This is a potent package of things (+1 will, health soak, encounter scrying) that is worth 4XP. But you need to want all of them enough, as soon as you don’t care about parts of the card, the 4XP start looking more and more like a hassle.
Survivor
This is very good. Even without the clause to use it from your hand, just as a straight up investigation tool, this is brilliant. Turning excess cards into clues is quite powerful, in Survivor much more so than in Seeker. Absolutely already playable even just on a base level, it becomes even better if you have any sort of discard synergy going on. First action Nautical Charts, discarding Winging It for 2 clues, second action play Winging It from the discard for another two? And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. That first ability on the card allows it to be used as what is basically a zero-cost event. You pay the action and discard the card to investigate at +1. If you succeed you may discard another card for a bonus clue. Honestly, that’s a solid event by itself. Yeah, not much else to say here. 10/10, high marks all around? Thank god it exhausts :D
Specialist
This card can be played by: Agnes, Zoey, Sefina, Akachi, Mateo, Marie, Luke, Mary, Dexter, Lucius
Oh, this is a riot. A level 5 skill that only a very select range of investigators can use, but it’s super cool indeed. It’s an Unexpected Courage that, if you pass the test it is committed to, will allow you to just play any level 0 card from your collection. “At no cost”, which confusingly enough is yet another phrasing to exist alongside all the confusion around “without its action cost” and “ignore all costs”. That being said, “At no cost” seems to be a fairly clear instruction, so i would assume this to work for any costs to the card, including additional costs mentioned in the textbox. Or in other words, i believe this does indeed work to give you a free Bank Job or Thorough Inquiry if you so choose. The ability to grab a Thorough Inquiry puts this card on a level with the Rogue level 5 skill All-In already, but all the added versatility (pun intended) does of course push it far beyond that. Pass a test on the first turn and put a free Leo De Luca into play? Sure, why not. Draw this only very late when you don’t really need it anymore? Turn it into a Delve Too Deep. Need a specific silver bullet to deal with a troublesome treachery? There’s probably something for you in the level 0 pool. The amount of things you can do with this is staggering. You can also use it like a Versatile, to throw a Scavenging, Dream-Enhancing Serum or Peter Sylvestre into a deck that usually couldn’t run it. This card also sounds a particularly great use for the 5XP that Mateo starts with. Actually, now that i am typing this… imagine if Mateo didn’t have his bonus XP, but has this banger of a card as his signature. That’d be a legit cool investigator. That now exists. Huh. Endless possibilities. Of course, 5XP is a significant cost that will keep it similarly in check as it does All-In or Deny Existence(5). But when it gets played, it is going to be worth it, something that by far not all 5XP cards can claim.
This card can be played by: Agnes, Jim, Akachi, Lola, Marie, Luke, Patrice, Dexter, Lucius
Another Specialist card that can mostly be run by Mystics only. Sadly, i don’t think this one is all that good though. Technically speaking, getting this card to activate isn’t even all that difficult. However, this will require generous weaving in of resource and draw actions into your turns. If not as one of the first three actions, then likely as the fourth. Or in other words, this card draws you a card or gives you a resource here and there. Sometimes a Move. Which is all by itself fine, but it asks you to twist your turns around it in ways that will lead to either suboptimal play or skipping the use of the card for that turn. Considering that this isn’t a permanent, you will first need to make up for drawing, playing and paying for the card, too. Notice also how that final action is often going to be massively restricted in what it can do for you. Many actions you take during your turn have multiple action types. For example, playing a Read the Signs is both a play action and an Investigate action while attacking with a Machete is both an activate action and a Fight action. So at the end of the turn you will likely have more than three options no longer available to you. My initial take is that it’s a fun puzzle to play to this card’s tune, but i suspect this is very hard to do in a way that is actually worth it.
We keep moving through the preview season at a pace of one investigator per week. This week i had the pleasure of bringing you Agatha. Before that, we also got to check out a Seeker asset we’ve not seen before. And just today, we’ve also got Lucius and the Researched card of this set. So, prepare for an onslaught of Seeker stuff!
Sources
Mortar and Pestle(and Ready for Anything which we already saw in the announcement article) was previewed by Great Old Ones Gaming on their podcast. Agatha Crane was previewed by me on this blog. Ancient Evils! Yay \o/ She was also previewed by Restricted Collection on their podcast. Crane-ception! Lucius Galloway was previewed by PlayingBoardGames on their YouTube. Dial of Ancients was previewed by Strength in Numbers on their blog.
Seeker
It took us 10 expansions, but we finally got there. The cycle of 20 investigators with deckbuilding of level 5 mainclass, level 2 subclass is finally complete. Many people were looking forward to getting the Seeker5/Rogue2 for a long time because just based on that deckbuilding, it was all but guaranteed to be a banger of a character. With very strong card access like that and a pushed statline that makes excellent use of the cards withing, Lucius is a powerful investigator in a general sense. You can simply do a lot of things with him like Seeker/Rogue Curse that previously had to be built in Trish or Rex. On a base level, he is simply a good Seeker that also brings his own enemy handling, making evasion more efficient through extra clues. He’s also an incredible user of cards like British Bulldog and Dirty Fighting that can put him on even footing with Joe for a combat seeker. Aside from just raw strength, he also brings some synergy for specific archetypes. His signature card does a lot of neat things, powering up not only his own investigator ability, but also the whole Rogue oversuccess archetype and the Seeker “succeed by exactly X” archetype we have seen in the last expansions. Notably, as a tome, it’s easy to tutor for with Research Librarian, so if you want to rely on it for shenanigans, you can. It doesn’t even use a hand slot Oo Between his signature and Steady-Handed, he can use those Exact Science type of cards extremely well. The weakness is interesting. It reshuffles, but unlike so many others that do, it doesn’t eat up your actions. Instead, it hits into the one weakness that Lucius has: 6 sanity with 2 willpower, the good old Skids achilles heel. So Lucius will definitely need to have a plan for soaking or healing horror. Between Lonnie Ritter, Liquid Courage, Logical Reasoning and even Steady-Handed, these tools exist and they are very well able to keep the weakness in check. But you will definitely want one or more of them in your deck. The weakness is going to eat up some draws too, but to a Seeker that can run Lucky Cigarette Case and Pickpocketing(2) that should barely even register.
This takes a bit to pay off. After playing this, you need to trigger its ability twice just to pay its own cost. And then another three times just to get equal net value to playing an Emergency Cache. Another two times and it starts being worth its deckslot and opportunity cost. And since it exhausts, you can only get one resource per round on it, meaning it takes somewhere between 5 to 7 turns just to start being fine. Now, scenarios do however take a good deal longer than 7 turns, so if you get it early this can fuel your spell casting quite well. It’s at least better at that job than the Robe of Endless Night, which has a similar issue of taking long to pay itself off. Agatha is of course the obvious candidate here, with her ability to play extra spells from her discard she is definitely interested in the extra income to afford that. Generally speaking, Mortar and Pestle doesn’t help with setting up in the early turns, so this card is useful mostly for event based decks that expect to play spells all throughout the game and not just during the initial turns. So it doesn’t actually compete with ECache or Uncage the Soul for deckslots, it has a very distinct usecase from that, more akin to Prophetic. For this to be worth it, you really want to draw it early to allow it its time to spin up. Otherwise the loss of tempo from the card and the resources spent on this initially are unlikely to pay off in a manner that is worth the card slot. Is your Seeker deck able to find this within the first three turns? I’d say your chances aren’t actually that bad. I think this is not the complete coaster that it is made out to be by some early reactions that i’ve read. Even if you only drop this on turn 3 or 4, most scenarios go on for another 10+ rounds after that, giving you plenty time to net 7 or more resources out of this which is actually quite good. I can’t help but think of the rogue card Investments when i look at this. Investments is a card that sees next to no play anymore, but Mortar and Pestle is considerably better, both because you can take resources off of it at any time and because it can give you more than 10 resources if dropped early enough. It’s also not a rogue card, so it doesn’t have to compete with the best resource generation in the game. Yeah, not sure. I am leaning towards “Probably too fair to make the cut”, but i am at the very least least interested in at giving it a spin in Agatha. Maybe it can take off with Fine Tuning? Or some other way to ready it, to cut down on the number of turns before it goes to the moon? Don’t write this one off yet, it may very well find a home. If nothing else, i would call it a nice level 0 card that bridges the gap until you can upgrade your Magatha, Marie or Luke deck into Prophetic.
These three upgraded versions are very different, all with different timings and stuff. It’s like a crash course in what action types exist in Arkham Horror! That being said, there is of course a common thread here mechanically. Starting at the level 0, this is relatively easy to translate. Evade an enemy four times and done. This is clearly no problem for Lucius specifically, but many other Seekers will also find this achievable without too much of an investment. Agatha also comes with 3 base agility that can get her there fine. Notably, this level 0 doesn’t give you a reward for completing its minigame like previous level 0s did. Aside from a badass entry in the campaign log, of course. The first of the three evolutions to look at is Signs of Aberration. Four times, you get to redraw tokens during an attack or evasion attempt, however it needs to be one taken through the ability on the Dial. On a success, the Dial also deals a damage, so it’s at least a 2 damage attack when it hits. Interesting ability to have on your accessory slot, but i think i will usually plan on using this for the evade ability and let for example turn Lucius into Rita. Kinda neat! You do need to figure out how to get your agility or fight value up to snuff though, because aside from getting to redraw the token, the fight/evade action here doesn’t get a skill bonus which definitely limits the number of investigators that can use it. Signs of Cataclysm lets you trap the chaos token that caused a test to fail on it, hopefully improving your chance for the next time. This only takes charges if you decide to trap the token for longer than that turn. It works on the autofail, which seems quite good. Finally, Signs of Revelation lets you reveal additional tokens for an Investigate test and then pick and choose from them. This only works while an enemy is around, but even one will turn this into preemptive autofail protection. Oh, also it provides that investigation as a free action. Good stuff. These all seem reasonably interesting, actually. And balanced too, which has been an ongoing concern with Researched cards since… well, always. I like these well enough and they do look at least promising as an option for Seeker Agatha to get her ability to trigger more often, as each of them does either cancel, ignore or seal tokens in some way. It does share an accessory slot with her signature, but Relic Hunter and Occult Reliquary are both able to help there. They use charges, which opens the door for shenanigans as well. Overall impression: Solid! Possibly good even! First Researched card that i liked since… uuuh… i guess Dream Diary was okay? Bit of a shame about that “once per deck”, which already did hinder the Archive of Conduits from really taking off… but on the other hand it does mean that only 4 card slots in the set go towards this instead of 8, so i get it and accept it for the greater good. (the greater good)
Still kinda Seeker, but also kinda Mystic
I have given my take on Agatha in excruciating detail yesterday already, but to give a summary for this roundup: Agatha is an interesting investigator that requires a fair amount of dedication in the deck for her investigator ability. However, this is rewarded with an ability that amounts to an extra action and card advantage per turn which can be quite significant. Her gimmick of getting to choose between a Mystic and a Seeker variant doesn’t seem super valuable to me right now because the Seeker version lacks the support for token manipulation that Mystic Agatha has. However, this can certainly change at any point during the course of the preview season. Her deckbuilding combines Seeker and Mystic. Much of her kit supports an event based playstyle, but her niche in token manipulation can also open the doors to blurse synergies, sealing and other interesting stuff. Agatha looks quite fun to me and i can see a couple of different ways to build her.
We are well into Drowned City spoiler season. Today’s my turn to show off something cool. And well, I have the investigator Agatha Crane for all of you. We’ve seen a bunch of her in the initial preview article on ffg.com, but i can fill in the rest, in particular the her backsides with her two sets of deckbuilding rules. Hot stuff. If those are all you are here for, i won’t keep you for long. Here’s the back of Mystic Agatha. And here’s the back of Seeker Agatha. You can check out the full investigator and everything else we’ve gotten in terms of reveals on the Visual Spoiler as well, of course.
Still around for more? Let me just give you an overview of the character first, then get into some deckbuilding.
EDIT: A short Interlude
Hey, future BK here. As it turns out, i was not the only one who got an early look at Agatha. Head Librarian, a fellow creator who does the Restricted Collection podcast, was sent Seeker Agatha in error in addition to the cards he was actually meant to preview. An honest error, happens. This does however work to everyone’s favor in the end. He already had collected a bunch of notes on Seeker Agatha before i did my reveal and has now released an episode around them. So there’s additional Agatha content out there for everyone to check out, so feel free to get a second opinion here: [AH.018 Restricted Collection – Agatha Spoiler Review] He played a campaign with Seeker Agatha already, so unlike me he even has some hands-on insight into her.
Alright, back to the original article. Past BK, go ahead.
Overview
There are two Agatha Crane investigator cards in this expansion, allowing you to either play her as a Seeker or as a Mystic. The two front sides are identical, so aside from some really narrow interactions with synergy cards or the like, there is no mechanical payoff to this choice yet. We’ll get to that payoff with the back, though.
Her statline is pretty great and min-maxed quite a bit. With three of her skill being good enough to be useful, she has a good amount of options when contributing to the scenario while also having some strong defense against the encounter deck. Her statline works similar to Rex’s or Marie’s. Actually, it’s the exact same as on Marie. Her investigator ability rewards messing with chaos tokens. The reward is quite enticing, providing a bonus action and recursion at the same time. Without putting effort into your deckbuilding, you are unlikely to be getting this trigger every turn. Because even if you’d manage to seal, ignore or cancel a token every turn you’d also need a viable event in your discard to recur. But if we can manage to hit the ability often enough, it surely has a lot of potential impact. We are going to go deeper into that in a bit, my goal with her would be to get as close to a trigger every round as possible. For her Elder Sign, she is allowed to cancel it to enable her ability for the turn and also draw a card. However, a new token needs to be drawn, so canceling the Elder Sign this way risks ending up with a failed test in the end. Seems fine, but nothing that we’d want to build around with cards like Seal of the Elder Sign. Fair enough!
Agatha starts out with a decksize of 35, slightly larger than the regular one. So even after she ends up removing a chunk of cards with her investigator ability, there’s still a good amount left in rotation. This works both as a reassurance to the players who are always disproportionally bothered about “losing cards” and as a safeguard against more abusive play patterns that aim to reduce the deck size for frequent deck cycling. Her deckbuilding options are where the choice of Seeker class vs. Mystic class finally comes into play. She gets full 0-5 access to cards from her main class plus a choice of up to ten level 0 cards from the unchosen class. As a Mystic, she additionally gains access to Spell events from all classes, up to level 3. As a Seeker, she gets to run Insights from all classes, also level 0-3. Notably, Mystic Agatha can run a solid amount of Insights as well through the level 0 Seeker access, while Seeker Agatha gains access to a bunch of spell events that way. On paper, these two cardpools are more narrow than the ones of Daisy and Luke, the two closest equivalents from the 5-2 cycle of investigators. But trait-based access always has some neat cross-class opportunities that give an investigator options that weren’t available before. And the level 0 cards she can take from her subclass are not limited to events and skills like they so often are. This sounds easily good enough to make something from it. Then, as usual, we got our personal weakness, signature asset and a random basic weakness.
Ocula Obscura seems incredibly strong to me. Not only does it allow triggering her ability several times over the course of the game, which is valuable all by itself. It also provides a repeatable Premonition-like effect that will help immensely with passing tests. It notably only triggers on non-symbol tokens, so there’s no double dipping on curses, blesses or Elder Signs for profit. It’s a bit harder to find than usual due to Agatha’s increased deck size, but on the other hand it’s an Item, so at least anyone who owns Backpack(2) from the Return to Forgotten Age should be able to dig it out of their deck fairly well. Everyone else will have to just trust that Seeker draw is good enough. To be fair, it probably is.
To balance out the Ocula’s strength, Glimpse the Void is a pretty awful personal weakness. Having to draw and resolve another token for each test will not just make passing those tests a lot more difficult, it will also make those bad symbol effects stack up rapidly. And getting rid of it means shuffling back into the deck where it will just haunt us again sooner than we’d like. Truly awful.
So, to summarize, Agatha lives in a similar Seeker/Mystic space as for example Marie or Luke who can use both their willpower and their intellect proactively. She has a bit of a focus on events as she can play them twice without having to spend a draw or an action on the privilege. The necessity to enable this ability through messing with chaos tokens does however require her to use some specialized tech cards that seal, ignore or cancel tokens.
Getting the most out of her ability
When faced with a new investigator, there are two things i immediately check for. One, how do i maximise their special investigator ability? Two, does their card pool enable something fancy we didn’t have before? So let’s start with that flashback recursion ability.
If we wanted to maximise it, we’d shoot for triggering it every turn, so we can cash in on that extra action as often as possible. Doing this isn’t trivial though and it will require us to build the deck in a certain way to get as close to that ideal as possible.
First, we need Insight and Spell events to recur. Since they are removed on play, we do need a healthy amount of them actually. Considering that the average scenario lasts somewhere around 12-15 rounds, shooting for 15+ events in the deck sounds like a solid start. We might even go a bit higher to give us a bit of wiggle room. Luckily, both Spell and Insight are very common traits in the Mystic and Seeker class, so finding enough of them worth playing isn’t that difficult.
What are we looking for in these events? Well, first off they should be cheap. Playing events twice does dig into our funds, even something with modest costs like a Preposterous Sketches. We don’t want to be left unable to trigger our ability just because we ran out of resources. Of course that means that any event that can actually generate resources is extra welcome here, and double playing them will give us a nice income spike when desired.
In theory we are free to use that extra action to do anything, from seeking over drawing to fighting. In practice, the particular timing at the end of your turn makes fighting a bit awkward. It requires us to end our turn with an enemy at our location which is quite a bit more effort to engineer than ending your turn on a location with a clue or two. For that reason, i would focus the event pool meant for recursion around either general value generation (card draw, resources) or clues (direct discovery, Investigate actions). That shouldn’t stop us from packing our Spectral Razors, but they are notably harder to use through her ability than a Read the Signs or Burning the Midnight Oil. Of course, a fighting Agatha might very well work, too. But the play pattern would look a bit unusual as you may want to engage enemies only with your last action, trusting that the Razor, Whispers of Doom or whatever else you are relying on to come back from the discard is going to do its job.
Obviously, any events with very specific timing, like Scene of the Crime or Hypnotic Gaze, aren’t interesting to us. Well, at least not in the context of her investigator ability. It’s not like Ward of Protection or Crack the Case are suddenly bad just because we can’t play them a second time from the discard. This does include Dilemma events which can not be played from the discard at all. Speaking of her ability’s timing, “When your turn ends” is still inside of your turn. So you are indeed able to play cards that have the rider “play only during your turn” (like Hand-Eye Coordination or Cryptic Research) from your discard with her ability.
The other side to her ability is having to trigger it through the seal/ignore/cancel of a chaos token. The pool of cards that we can use for this is relatively small, especially for Seeker Agatha who can not pull from the upgraded Mystic cards. Even rarer are assets that allow repeatable manipulation of chaos tokens that would enable several uses of her ability. Depending on the cards for this role and how reusable they are, we don’t need to throw 15 of them into the deck, of course. The signature can provide several triggers, an Olive McBride, Grotesque Statue or even a Heavy Furs can also last for a couple. Overall, i’d dedicate around 7-10 cards in the deck to this. Luckily, her signature asset does help with this part, if we are able to dig it out of our deck.
As we can see, we need to dedicate a significant portion of the deck to enabling her ability. But due to her increased deck size, this still leaves us with a solid 10-15 cards for skills, allies and various other assets that we might want to run. Easily enough to go on all sorts of weird tangents with our deck if we choose to do so.
Card Pool Depth
The other question i asked was about the deckbuilding rules and what they can enable. The card pools are overall more shallow than the ones of Daisy and Luke, with the subclass clipped to level 0 instead of going up to 2. Seeker Agatha tries to make up for that stunted Mystic access through the Insight trait, which gives her some neat nuggets like Salvage, Hand-Eye Coordination and Into the Crossroads that look promising as something to play and/or recur from the discard. Mystic Agatha doesn’t get the same broad Seeker access that Luke gets, but can pull from Spell events across classes. Unlike with the Insights, there’s not a whole lot of those. Standouts are Enchant Weapon, Alter Fate and Riastrad. Notably, there’s also Hallow, Hand of Fate and Radiant Smite… if we somehow end up doing something weird with Bless tokens (likely involving Tides of Fate).
Overall, i don’t think that Agatha’s card pool directly enables something too new or special, or at least i am not seeing something right now that only she would be able to do just off the back of her card access. So I’d want to heavily lean into her ability instead. The general Mystic/Seeker pool has some concepts to it that are well worth exploring for overlap with her ability. There’s curse decks, of course. Notably, neither the Mystic nor the Seeker Covenant enable her trigger directly but there is some synergy to be found between a curse strategy and the chaos token manipulation that Agatha rewards. Another archetype shared between the two classes is assets with Secrets. This is rather promising. Agatha can get double use out of Truth from Fiction and the new Correlate All Its Contents, enabling a secret based strategy that doesn’t require the use of clunky and expensive assets like Ariadne’s Twine or Eldritch Sophist. While this doesn’t allow the sort of infinite use of secrets that those assets enable, that is rarely even necessary. Agatha could use those events to rapidly dump a stack of secrets on a card without losing much tempo and just close out the scenario before she runs out.
Time to build some decks? Sure, let’s. Note that none of the following decks has put a lot of time into it, this is me throwing some stuff at the wall to try and see how the results look. I am more interested in concepts and basic frameworks than exact card counts and card choices for now.
Agatha Deals With Devils
For the first deck, i want to dip my feet into the Secret archetype. Specifically, I have my eyes on Dayana Esperance whose ability is to get more than one use out of spell events. This obviously has a lot of overlap with what Agatha does herself. The hope is that we can squeeze a whole lot of value out of our cards, reusing our best spells over and over. Since we want Dayana, we have to pick Mystic Agatha.
2x Grim Memoir 2x Grotesque Statue(2)
2x Dayana Esperence(3) 1x Olive McBride
(1x Ocula Obscura)
1x Heavy Furs
2x Premonition 2x Correlate All Its Contents 2x Counterspell(2)
2x Read The Signs 2x Drawn To The Flame 2x Burning the Midnight Oil 2x Spectral Razor
2x Deep Knowledge 2x Voice of Ra 1x Alter Fate(1) 2x Truth From Fiction
2x Guts 2x Perception 2x Enraptured
(1x Glimpse the Void) (1x Random Basic Weakness)
That’s 35 cards (+signature and weaknesses), with 15XP invested in the deck. There’s obviously more that can be done here. A Charisma to enable McBride alongside Dayana. Relic Hunter for another accessory alongside the Ocula. Mystic Agatha has to make do with just basic Perception and Deduction, which is why Deduction barely missed the cut here due to the limit to 10 non-Spell Seeker cards..
This deck runs the full suite of events and skills that add secrets: Truth from Fiction, Correlate Contents and Enraptured. We use this to fuel Dayana for a staggering amount of a certain spell, like Read the Signs, Spectral Razor or even Alter Fate, Counterspell or Voice of Ra. Grim Memoir is present as a way to use secrets if we don’t manage to draw our key ally.
Enablers to trigger Agatha’s investigator ability are the one-shots Premonition, Correlate Contents and Counterspell, to support the asset based triggers from Grotesque Statue, Olive McBride, Heavy Furs and the Ocula Obscura.
The deck is meant to be played as a focused Seeker. Aside from just a pair of Razors, the deck is built around taking Investigate actions through Grim Memoir and get a bunch of acceleration and clue compression through the investigate events and the bonus action from Agatha’s ability. Just to throw the option in the room, there is probably an powerful support version of this deck possible that sticks Ward of Protection on Dayana and gets to play it every turn. Not something i went with for this one, but definitely a direction to explore as well.
Agatha Glimpses the Void (and cuts you with it)
Here’s another Mystic Agatha, using Shards of the Void. Shards is a relatively forgotten combat spell asset from all the way back in Forgotten Age that seals “+0” tokens on it to empower it. Sealing a token triggers Agatha’s ability, making it more worthwhile to jump through the hoops of enabling Shards than it has been previously. To do this, we are going to make use of the infamous Rod of Carnamagos ruling that supercharges all token fishing. We are mostly going to stay away from curse tokens, because we want to keep the token bag as lean as possible to improve our chances of picking out the 0 tokens. A few curses are perfectly fine however, it’s not like we mind placing the occasional Rot on an enemy either.
2x Rod of Carnamagos(2) 2x Grotesque Statue(2)
2x Shards of the Void(3) 2x Shrivelling(3)
2x Olive McBride
(1x Ocula Obscura)
1x Heavy Furs
2x Premonition 1x Read The Signs 2x Drawn To The Flame 2x Spectral Razor 2x Whispers of Doom
2x Call The Beyond(2) 2x Burning the Midnight Oil 2x Voice of Ra 2x Deep Knowledge 1x Alter Fate(1)
2x Promise of Power 2x Guts 2x Analysis
(1x Glimpse the Void) (1x Random Basic Weakness)
This is a stab at a fighty Agatha list. 25XP as presented above. There are a few clue events still left in the deck, simply because the promise of playing them through the bonus action is too good to pass up. But this deck does plan on replaying some of the fight events as well.
Rod of Carnamagos, Grotesque Statue and Olive McBride can all be used to increase the number of chaos tokens drawn during the activation of Shards of the Void and they all stack. This should give a more than decent chance of finding a “0” token for the extra damage and bonus action trigger. Between Shards, a pair of backup Shrivels and the fight events, this deck can put out a good amount of damage while generating some extra value from the bonus event plays.
The resource situation is a bit more shaky with this deck than with the previous one. We rely heavily on Voice of Ra giving us the necessary funds to play cards like Whispers of Doom. We might find that including Crack the Case or even plain ECaches is necessary here.
To make sure the deck hits its critical tests, it can not only fall back on the Heavy Furs, but also on Promise of Power and Analysis. Final note: Call the Beyond is not a Spell, it is a Ritual. It is thus not a valid target for Agatha’s ability. Still, as a way to recharge either your spells or statues it seems pretty good. It’s also one of the few cards that produce curses. One could go a lot deeper on curses, but i decided to stick to just Call, Deep Knowledge and Promise of Power. That way, you shouldn’t get too much of a problem with your tests while still having a chance to occasionally hit a curse with Rod of Carnamagos.
Agatha lends her Support
For Seeker Agatha, i am going with a support build that makes sure that everyone has plenty of cards in hand at all times. Of course, the deck will still be able to pick up clues.
2x Alchemical Destillation (7XP, Refined+Perfected) 1x Old Book of Lore(3) 2x Grim Memoir
1x Abigail Foreman(4) 2x Medical Student 2x Calling In Favors
2x Backpack(2)
(1x Ocula Obscura)
2x Premonition 2x Read The Signs 2x Drawn To The Flame 2x Burning the Midnight Oil 2x Voice of Ra 2x Salvage(2)
2x Deep Knowledge 2x Cryptic Research(4) 2x At the Crossroads(1)
1x Analysis 2x Perception 2x Deduction
(1x Glimpse the Void) (1x Random Basic Weakness)
That’s a 32XP deck, a large part of which are spent on two Cryptic Researches and the Perfected upgrade for the Destillation.
This deck has a much harder time triggering Agatha’s ability than the two previous ones. I decided to put my trust into the Ocula Obscura here, to the point where i use two Backpack(2) alongside a hefty dose of card draw to find it. Analysis, Premonition and Crystallized Elder Sign are able to bridge some of the gaps left by that plan and allow getting a few ability hits before the Ocula is online.
The general idea of the deck is throwing cards around to everyone. Deep Knowledge, Crypic Research and At the Crossroads all can target another player. So can the Alchemical Destillation and Old Book of Lore, of course. While we are setting up everyone, we gain some clues just by virtue of our stats, the occasional event and – once we find her – Abigail with Grim Memoir. Don’t hesitate to liberally use your Memoir, OBoL and Destillation charges, we can always Salvage them back later. There is one particular bit of awkwardness that i need to point out here: Despite it being an Insight event, you can not play At the Crossroads from the discard through Agatha’s ability. Dilemma cards can not be played, they only resolve when they enter your hand. Crossroads is still a fantastic card of course and plays very well into what this deck wants to do. But you won’t be able to double dip on it.
Agatha Staples and Notable Cards
With three decks behind us, some trends are noticable. So, i want to draw attention to a couple cards that I believe to simply work very well for Agatha.
Premonition: This is a card that people have consistently been fairly hyped for ever since its release but that rarely made the cut for me personally when building decks. It costs next to nothing which is certainly great, but the ability to walk into a test with perfect knowledge always seemed to me like something that i don’t need when i can just throw a Promise of Power or other highvalue skill at the problem. For Agatha however, this also triggers her ability. When Premonition gives you an additional action on top of its skill-like effect, then it’s very, very good. I think it’s likely that every Agatha list wants a pair of these.
Voice of Ra and Burning the Midnight Oil: These are the two excellent resource generating events that Agatha can play from her discard pile. More resources is always good, having a target for your ability that can pretty much always be used is as well. Burning the Midnight Oil also investigates, so it’s even clue compression when played from the discard. These are two cards that i also foresee putting in every Agatha list simply because they are efficient and good value.
Cryptic Writings: Not quite as good as the previous two, but definitely gains a lot of value from being able to be played from the discard as well. Draw heavy lists might even play this over Voice of Ra. Even when you don’t draw it in your turn, you can use it as a double intellect icon and then cash out on it with the flashback from the discard. Seems solid! Mortar and Pestle: The condition to gain a clue every turn is not much of a condition at all, most Agatha decks will want to do that anyways. So M&P can just consistently net you some extra income. Drop it in your first couple turns and over the course of the game it will passively pay itself and four to five plays of Read the Signs, Whispers of Doom or whatever else you are doing. That seems very valuable to me, especially if you are doubling down on spells with Dayana and her ability like i am doing in the first decklist. As a card that continously hands out resources it gives a payoff over the course of the game that rivals or even exceeds many Rogue options and that is well worth exploring.
Correlate All Its Contents: Much of Agatha’s deck is torn between either being an enabler for her ability or being a target for it. This card is notable for being both an enabler and a target at the same time. So if everything works out the way you want, you can rather painlessly gain two investigates and 2-4 secrets for just one card which strikes me as great value. Gaining that full value out of this card requires a way to use the secrets, but that’s not too much of an ask. Grim Memoir is my baseline for the value of a secret and it’s a card that Agatha can run very well. Old Book of Lore and Dayana Esperence are two of the highlights once you get into assets that cost XP. To my knowledge, the only other event that Agatha can play that would be able to both set up her ability and also act as a target for it is Radiant Smite. Which is a card that requires heavy investment into Bless, which means it’s going to rarely be what Agatha is looking for. So that puts Correlate at a somewhat unique point where it synergizes very well with all the parts of Agatha’s ability set.
Olive McBride: Is this the only way to reliably trigger Agatha’s ability every turn that doesn’t involve uses? I believe it is. McBride does come with her own drawbacks of course, as she will make tests worse if you don’t have a way to profit off of the extra token reveals. She definitely needs to be on our radar as a potential way to hit our ability every single turn, though. If you can turn the ability into an upside, you do of course really start cooking with gas. Heavy Furs: A bit on the “too fair” side for most investigators, but honestly this thing is more than solid for Agatha. Secures two tests while giving you two triggers for your ability. This might actually be a two-off in many lists because that package deal is pretty nice. Grotesque Statue: No matter if you use the level 2 or level 4 version, this offers the token fishing of Olive without messing up your tests. A very powerful tool and when it can also offer you three or four hits on your ability, then the XP seems well spent. Only available to Mystic Agatha, but it’s a very heavy consideration there. I think the level 2 is going to be good enough for most decks, but the level 4 does have enough of an upside to be worth considering too. Even if it’s just as a late-campaign upgrade.
Overall impression
I have a thing for event-based investigators and Agatha certainly fits that description. While i am not sure that she’s necessary as powerful as many of her Seeker and Mystic colleagues, she does have a unique playstyle going for her and her deckbuilding puzzle is interesting to figure out. Before i actually sat down and made some decks, i was worried about her being somewhat limited in her options, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. There is a decent amount of different things that can be done with her before we have even seen anything that the new expansion might support. And it’s stuff that you can’t just replicate in Daisy or Luke either. The pool of cards that enabler her to do her recursion thing could certainly be a bit bigger, but since we haven’t seen all of Drowned City yet, I of course want to wait on my judgement there until we get the full picture. A few high profile ways to repeatably seal, ignore or cancel a chaos token could go a long way towards opening up even more lines of play for Agatha. As for her gimmicks with the two investigator cards, i feel like Seeker Agatha is left with way fewer options to enable herself than the Mystic version. The whole token manipulation thing is simply something that is rooted in Mystic and any Seeker-side support would need to come from this set. As a result, the two sides to the investigator seem somewhat uneven with each other. Granted, we’ve already seen a hint of that Seeker-side support with Correlate All Its Contents, but Seeker Agatha is basically playing catch-up to her Mystic sister from the beginning. Fingers crossed for a game-changing asset in the spoilers to come! But still, that’s nitpicking and overall, this investigator looks fun to figure out. Anything that gives the Seeker gameplay a new facet away from just testing intellect against shroud is welcome. And so is any Mystic that isn’t just riding Shrivelling and Clairvoyance to victory. Deckbuilding for this article was fun, and i feel like i still have plenty space left to explore. I enjoy how Agatha’s investigator ability lets you look at some cards in a different light than before.
In any case, that’s all i have for you today. For more info on what’s still coming up, check the schedule. And you can of course follow along with the weekly spoiler roundups and the Visual Spoiler on my site as well! Next up are PlayingBoardGames and Strength in Numbers, both in two days.
Happy Holidays and enjoy the rest of the Drowned City preview season. :)
This week’s card previews are brought to us by the Mythos Busters and Los Archivos de Arkham, both heavy weights in the community. Are the cards they are regaling us with similarily noteworthy? And are the names of those cards able to be turned into new blogs and content channels, promoting the natural circle of life content? Let’s find out.
Sources
Gloria Goldberg was previewed by Mythos Busters on their Twitch. Spiritual Echo and Crowbar were previewed by Archivos de Arkham on their YouTube.
Guardian
A tool? In Guardian? This really is the season for miracles. The obvious first comparison that comes to mind is Lockpicks, a card that was transformative for Rogue when it came out back in Carcosa. Now, Crowbar is not going to be anywhere as important, of course. But the ability to use a tool to investigate with your best skill is nonetheless notable. The numbers on the card are conservative enough that you are probably not going to run this card without some other synergy. But once you add things like Tinker or Hand-Eye Coordination into the mix, this starts to look good. I don’t think you really plan on ever using that fight ability, but who knows. It might come in handy to smash a cultist at some point. Mostly you want to be able to pick up clues during the turns where your Guardian doesn’t have a monster to smash. The two tool investigators have intellect equal to their strength, so this probably isn’t that great of a pickup for Kymani and Wilson who can go for non-Guardian clue tools instead. That being said, Crowbar could be a great card to put Ad Hoc on with Wilson? Overall, this does add some good range to what Guardians can do and for a level 0 card, it’s well balanced. Alright then, FFG. Bring on Crowbar(2). Let’s blow off some hinges and give this thing some sexy numbers.
Bloggability: 2/10. Unless you plan on writing about a bar where crows gather to play Arkham cards, there’s not much here to build a site on.
Mystic
Four years after her debut as a book promo, Gloria does finally get her official release. The text on the investigator card hasn’t changed and much has been said about Gloria over the years. But just for completeness sake and to catch all those of you up that didn’t yet have the opportunity to experience Gloria, let me give a quick recap. She is widely regarded as very powerful. She has an excellent statline and flexible deckbuilding, of course. But what really sets her apart is her ability to manipulate the encounter deck to a point where she neuters a lot of the innate challenge that scenarios are built around. Depending on circumstances, she can even feel “unfair” towards the game trying to stop her from just doing what she wants. Her power is fairly dependent on player count, however. While it’s easy for her to control what happens when only one or two cards are drawn from the encounter deck each turn, this becomes a lot more difficult for her when there’s four players and thus four cards drawn per turn. The other limiter to her power comes from the rather small number of cards that enable her to look at the encounter deck. I do expect that we might get another tool or two for her in this box, but i don’t expect them to move the needle much in that regard. Something in Rogue would be nice, i don’t think there’s actually any ways to look at the encounter deck with green cards right now. But even at her worst, she is simply a very powerful mystic that can make fantastic use out of most of the purple cardpool thanks to her maxed out willpower. So if a campaign gives you grief and you want to pull out all the stops… Gloria is a good start.
This part is new even to veterans of the game who have been playing with Gloria all along. Instead of the (somewhat unspectacular, but fine) signatures and weakness of the book version the canon version of Gloria shuffles 3 copies of Psychic Sensitivity into her deck. And 3 copies of Prophecy of the End into the encounter deck. That new signature looks absolutely phenomenal. The ability to neuter an encounter card while also drawing a card from your own deck is amazing, as any rogue with Counterespionage can tell you about. Unlike the Rogue card, this one doesn’t cost 4 resources though. It’s free. It does come with the condition of only canceling a copy of whatever is under her at that point, but that’s something she can definitely set up. Again, worst case, she gets three copies of a +3 willpower skill. Hot stuff. The weakness is very interesting and i find it hard to judge. I expect that a defeat through it will not actually happen all that often, but blocking slots under her is definitely a concern as it will not only limit her in using her ability, but also in the effectiveness of her signature. Speaking of the signature, should her or another player draw Prophecy while Gloria already has another copy under her, she can use the signature to send both to the discard, canceling everything including the Surge on Prophecy. I do wonder about how this weakness scales with player count for that reason. More players makes it more likely for someone to draw Prophecy instead of revealing it for the ability, effectively discarding it without effect. At the same time, higher player counts also cycle the encounter deck faster, so the weakness will come up more often. My initial feeling her is that the weakness becomes less impactful in fuller groups, somewhat counteracting the player scaling on her investigator ability. But i am not sure about how that works out at all. In any case, nice to have her around. This new set of signatures and weaknesses sure looks more interesting than the book versions. I don’t think they change how you build her deck, but that’s perfectly fine of course!
Bloggability: Psychic Sensitivity doesn’t really make for a great blog name. Can’t really imagine a video series with that name either. 2/10. That being said, Prophecy of the End? That’s some good stuff. With how often people have predicted this game to die any moment now, the doomsayers might as well make a blog from it. Let’s reserve Prophecy of the End for them as a name. 9/10. May the blog run for a long time. Just like the game.
Fancy card. What can we do with this, though? The two immediate things this does is saving an action for a later turn. The other is projecting an ability to another location. That doesn’t seem enough to me to spend 2xp on the card, though. It doesn’t even ignore activation costs except for one action, so you can’t use it as an extra charge either. Using it on an ability that exhausts as a cost is completely out. Honestly, i am not really seeing much of an appeal here. It works with Haste, i guess? Very narrow, and awkward to use in a similar way to the trap cards in Survivor and Rogue. I am not sure that i’d find a home for this at 0xp, but at 2xp … nah. I’ll be happy to be proven wrong, but this card is just a straight up miss to me right now. Not a great blog name either ;_;
Coming up next
Next week we have two more previews scheduled. Great Old Ones Gaming on Monday. And on Friday, it’s actually my turn to share something cool. And it is indeed something cool. Both of the cards i have for you are pretty sweet and i am very sure that one of them will see lots and lots of play. And the other one at least a decent amount. Obviously i can’t tell you anything too useful in advance, but just to give a teaser, here are some hints that i dropped in Discord over the last couple days already: – it’s two cards – of them is Seeker – one of them has no resource cost and is not a skill – George Barnaby can’t run them
Let me add another two now: – one of them has Agatha in the artwork! Hype! – neither of them work as a blog name
Man, so far this has not been a great expansion for new blog names, huh? Except for “Correlate All Its Contents” of course, that name was tailor made. Honestly, that’d been a sweet name for the spoiler roundups. Maybe next spoiler season, if nobody claimed it till then :)
Here’s a list of the community sites involved in the Drowned City previews and where you can find their stuff. For the dates in the past i also list the cards that were previewed. For images of those cards, please refer to the Visual Spoiler.
[EDIT: Hey, we are done! This was good fun, i hope you all enjoyed spoiler season as much as I did. Below you can find links to all the reveals that were part of it and the cards that were previewed there.]
Nov 21 – Little Geek – YouTube – Mob Connections, Lawrence Carlisle
Nov 28 – Drawn to the Flame – Podcast – George Barnaby
Dec 3 – Until End of Time – YouTube – Luger P08, Sound Support
Dec 6 – Tengo Un Plan – Blog – Forbidden Sutra, Good Weather
Dec 13 – Mythos Busters – Podcast – Gloria Goldberg
Dec 14 – Los Archivos de Arkham – Podcast – Crowbar, Spiritual Echo
Dec 16 – Great Old Ones Gaming – Blog – Ready for Anything, Mortar and Pestle
Dec 22 – Strength in Numbers – Blog – Dial of the Ancients
Dec 22 – Playing Board Games – YouTube – Lucius Galloway
Dec 23 – Arkham in the Aether – Instagram – Nautical Charts, Memories of Another Life
Dec 24 – Horreur à Arkham – YouTube – Eye of Ghatanothoa, Captivating Performance
Dec 29 – will.i.game – Instagram – Locked and Loaded, Artistic Inspiration
Jan 1 – The Restricted Collection – Podcast – Transfiguration, Library Pass(5)
Jan 4 – El Mito del Caos – YouTube – Where’s The Party, Anchor Chain
Jan 5 – Quick Learner – YouTube – Short Rest, Tankgewehr
Jan 6 – Arkham Horror Memes – Instagram – Hardboiled, Doppelgänger
Jan 7 – Discipulos de Armitage – YouTube – Michael McGlen
Jan 10 – Valentin1331 – ArkhamDB – Dakota, Quick Shot
Jan 13 – Northern Lights Over Arkham – YouTube – Blood of Thoth, Scientific Studies Grant, Lost Arcana
Jan 14 – Bradley Galbraith – YouTube – Double Down, Gift of Nodens
Jan 19 – The Barnaby Files – Blog – Cosmic Revelation, Obscure
Jan 19 – Tatort Arkham – YouTube – Hand Hook, Bum’s Rush
Jan 25 – Arkham Chronicle – YouTube – Sacred Oath, Working a Hunch(2)
Feb 7 – Release of The Drowned City Investigator Expansion :)
[EDIT: Actually, the release seems to have been delayed? I heard March 21st as the new date.]
[EDIT#2: Actually actually, the Asmodee site now claims February 21st. That’s not so bad then.]
[EDIT #3: Actually actually actually, it’s now moved all the way back to March 31st, with the campaign expansion shortly afterwards on April 4th. Welp.]
[EDIT #4: Actually actually actually actually, now the investigator expansion sits at March 7. Campaign expansion still at April 4th. Exciting, let’s see if there’s a new date on the Asmodee site tomorrow in this ever-shifting nightmare. Props though, very lovecraftian.]
Specialist Cards are a new class of cards, premiering in the upcoming Drowned City expansion. While we are still waiting on seeing most of them, i want to take the opportunity to talk a bit about them in general. How much potential do Specialist cards have, how are the revealed cards meeting this potential so far? What would i look for in a specialist card and what are things i would hope to avoid?
Disclaimer
According to what some community members glean from the card numbers of the reveals we’ve seen so far, The Drowned City will have more than 20 Specialist cards in it. Of those, we have seen six. So a good deal of this discussion will be theoretical and might be worth a revisit once we see the full picture.
What are Specialist Cards?
Specialist cards are neutral cards, but they can’t just be taken by any investigator with Neutral 0-5 access. Instead, they are limited to a number of traits. An investigator needs to have one of those traits to be able to pick up these cards, no matter what else their deckbuilding options allow. This makes these cards exist outside of the usual class constraints (Guardian, Seeker, Rogue, Mystic, Survivor), adding a new layer to the deckbuilding options of investigators through their until now mostly mechanically irrelevant traits. The specialist cards we’ve seen mostly have three traits associated with them, but there is one with only two traits as well. All the specialist cards known to us right now are at least level 1, going up all the way to level 5. No level 0 specialist cards so far, but it’s a possibility.
General expectations
This mechanic has a lot of promise. As someone that values the deckbuilding portion of the game highly, i appreciate more layers that might make it so that investigators from the same class are more distinct from each other.
It’s adds some slight awkwardness to the deckbuilding process, however. The logistics for investigators like Roland or Wendy are easy enough: Pull out the binder for the main class, the binder for the subclass and you can easily see your options right in front of you. Trait based access, like for example on Wilson or Akachi are already a bit more complicated and in practice they require me to use arkhamdb.com and no longer let me do it straight from the physical cards in front of me. Because while i think i do have a pretty good overview of the card pool in my head, there’s no way i remember every Tool, Spell, Insight or whatever outside of their primary classes. And Specialist cards will add another wrinkle to the deckbuilding, with another axis of access. For now, each investigator will probably only have two or three specialist cards that apply to them, so it’s going to be easy enough to keep track of… but potentially that could make things a smidge more complicated, so we’d want it to add something that makes the additional overhead worth it.
We’d expect each specialist card to be able to go into a decent amount of investigator decks, similar as if they’d be part of a class. And that does seem to check out. The known specialist cards being available to around 10-15 investigators, which is roughly the number of investigators that can take a level 3 card in a class. Obviously, what matters in the end is how many investigators can use it meaningfully as part of their strategy and that number will usually be much lower, but it’s at least a good early indication. We wouldn’t want to have cards that can only be taken by five investigators out of the more than sixty that we have.
To gain meaningful deckbuilding choices out of this, i’d ideally want to see mechanics on specialist cards that hit slightly different depending on which class the investigator that is using them has. Since they transcend class barriers, they might be played in certain Rogues, certain Guardians and certain Mystics… and ideally that distinction matters.
The reveals so far
Let’s get into details then. We have six specialist cards previewed at the time of writing, that’s few enough that I can just check out each of them. Note that i am not interested in power level or balance here. I want to go into the design of the specialist part and what it adds to the card (if anything).
There’s ten characters able to use this one, eight of which are Seekers. Right off the bat, this illustrates a problem that i have with some of these specialist cards. The traits this card cares about are heavily coded to one class, with only Kohaku and Rita (and half of Agatha) entering from outside of the Seeker bubble. Add to that the focus on Tome cards in the effect of the card and there seems little reason to me why this isn’t just a Seeker card. Instead of using the Specialist thing as a way to enable more interesting deckbuilding options, it was used here as a limiter to keep this out of the hands of some investigators that may have been interested in this. One could try to justify the use of the specialist mechanic on this card by talking about how Rita can use the Pass to do fancy things with a Schoffners or something like that… but ironically this card would be open to more survivors if it was a Seeker cards than it is now. I feel like the Library Pass is not really a great fit for the specialist treatment, every bit of its abilities and flavor want it to be just a straight-up Seeker card.
Regretably, a similar thing goes for the Forbidden Sutra. The traits actually suggest that this one is a bit wider in appeal. While Sorcerer is a Mystic only trait, Blessed and Cursed are spread much more across classes. However, it is a card keyed around playing Spell events. And that’s something you will find difficult to do in a meaningful capacity without being a Mystic anyways. While it’s not completely impossible to imagine a world where Calvin spends horror to gain advantage on playing Blood Eclipses, there’d need to be a good deal of further support for a deck like that before it actually becomes desirable. So this more or less is also just a Mystic card that got kept out of many investigators that could have really used this well. Sefina? Agatha? Jim? Sucks to be them, i guess. This is probably the most frustrating use of the Specialist mechanic that we’ve seen so far, it’s purely a downside and it’s not like this card is particularly pushed in a way that it would be necessary for balancing purposes to restrict it.
So let’s get this one out of the way as well then. What i said about the previous two cards applies to this one, too. Insights? Secrets? He’s a lecturer? This is a Seeker card through and through. There’d need to be a massive shift in the card pool before Hank or Carson (both of which are Assistants thus technically allowed to run him) ever look at this type of ability.
Alright, that was a surprising string of negativity. Thankfully, there’s examples that work a lot better as well, so let’s turn that frown upside down.
True Awakening avoids the pitfalls i talked about in the previous three cards. Its trait access is broad and the 15 investigators that can run it cover all classes except Seeker. Its abilities are generic, giving it a large boost in flexibility. Depending on the actual class of the investigator that uses True Awakening in their deck, the options vary in how desirable they are. A guardian will probably find the card draw particularly appealing while a mystic might find that they use this to mitigate horror more often than not. As a card that plays slightly different in Marion than it does in Lily and yet again different in Alessandra, i’d call this a good use of the Specialist mechanic. One could argue that the options on the card are so generic that this would possibly work as a straight up neutral card, but i think limiting it to those traits is already justified through giving us a “Discover a clue, draw two cards” event that Seeker can’t take. Let non-Seekers have a good thing just this once.
Unlike True Awakening which gives extra access to a variety of generic effects, Sound Support takes a very specific one (healing/damage prevention) and bleeds it into multiple classes. If Michael McGlen ends up being a Warden, there’d actually be someone from each class that can take it. Healing is an ability that is definitely interesting for all characters from any class, so that’s a good start. The specific mechanics on Sound Support, especially the part where it can play support and tank for other investigators too, are usually only found on Guardian cards. Sound Support then gives a select group of investigators the ability to access such a card even if they don’t have guardian access which is a win for support archetypes for sure. At the same time, this card would be hard to imagine as a pure Neutral card due to its relative powerlevel to comparable Guardian cards. I like this one quite a bit as a showcase for how a Specialist card can work. Bolsters specific investigator types (support characters) and is afforded a powerlevel that a neutral card couldn’t have otherwise.
This is my favorite implementation of the Specialist concept in the currently known cards. Like Library Pass, Sutra and Archibald, this card is keyed to a certain trait. But unlike those other three, the trait is one that is actually relevant to multiple classes. Tool is a trait on various assets in all classes and as a result, Nose to the Grindstone changes its context significantly depending on which of the available 19 (!) investigators picks it up because they each have different Tool assets in their card pools. What’s more, the effect of the card is an enabling one. An investigator that previously might not have been able to wield a Thieving Kit or Sledgehammer competently can suddenly make use of this to gain the skill required. This is the type of effect that can make decks possible that otherwise wouldn’t be able to exist at all. Or at least widens the options for those investigators. As a final point, the Specialist treatment on this card enabled the designers to put a card into the set that gives both of the Tool investigators Wilson and Kymani a (needed) bump without having to make the card a Tool itself. I think the Specialist mechanic works incredibly well on this one.
Summary
Most importantly, the look at the already known Specialist cards has demonstrated to me that there are two ways to employ the mechanic: Either as an enabling device or as a restriction. Cards like Sound Support and Nose to the Grindstone spread an effect around multiple classes, bleeding that effect into classes that would usually not get that effect (or in only a much weaker form). Meanwhile, cards like Library Pass and Forbidden Sutra are still effectively locked to a class through their effect and/or key traits. On those, the key traits limit the availability of the card to a subgroup of that class. Obviously, the former feels a lot better than the latter. While there is absolutely a place for limitations, too much of it can push a card into obscurity that would have had a solid niche if it were just available to the whole class. To use the example from above, I believe this to be the case with the Sutra. It could have been a way for Jim to fish for skulls, for Agatha to enable her ability, for Sefina to enhance her events. Instead it’s just kinda… eh.
It’s fortunate that the three cards that make a better impression to me all showcase a different way to implement Specialist well. One is a card that offers a choice between generic effects. Depending on the class, some of those effects change in value relative to another. One bleeds a specific mechanic into other classes, bolstering a type of investigator that can be found across classes (support investigators in this case). The final one is keyed to a trait that can be found across classes and thus has different assets to interact with, giving meaning to its cross-class availability. All three of them are also a bit more powerful than one would expect from a pure neutral card, paying off for the trait limitation.
So that leaves me with an impression that is split right down the middle. Of the six cards we’ve seen, i don’t really like the Specialist mechanic on half of them while i think it’s quite nice on the other half. I definitely see a lot of promise in the concept itself and am eager to see the rest of them. We have not even seen a third of what Specialist cards are (likely) going to be in the box, so it’s way too early to make any sweeping statements around how well they are implemented as a whole and whether they’d be something that i’d want to return in a later expansion. The variety and range shown in the three “positive” examples let me hope for more stuff that lean on the mechanic as an enabler for cool things as opposite to using it as a limiter to keep it out of the hands of those that would be able to use it.
The full schedule for preview season is up. Seems pretty stacked, especially once we go past Dec 12th we got previews almost every other day. So it looks like i will indeed be doing one of these roundup posts every week until February. *cracks knuckles* Bring it! Before the real crowded weeks begin, we are still ramping up with two creators presenting some cards, for a total of four spoiler cards. Oh, actually… make that five. The lead designer also showed off a card on his instagram.
Sources
The Luger P08 was previewed by Until The End of Time on their Youtube Sound Support was previewed in the COTD channel of the Mythos Busters Discord Deliverance was previewed by Duke on his Instagram. Forbidden Sutra and Good Weather were previewed by Tengu Un Plan on their Ko-Fi
Rogue
This is a fancy little unassuming weapon that might just be a lot better than it looks at first glance. It allows shooting without spending an action twice for 1 damage, then an action has to be spent to reload it. So you end up with 2 damage for an action in the long run, which is the standard rate. You do have little upfront cost on the weapon however and it does combine pretty neatly with another weapon you have in your other hand. As a way to attack without spending an action, even outside of your turn, it has some interesting applications. For example, you might consider it as a target for Enchant Weapon, which will give you the ability to shoot down 2 health Hunters during the enemy phase before they get to attack when they move into you. It’s a gun that lives off the established grid for firearms which is very interesting. At 0XP and just 2 resources, there’s not much opportunity cost to giving this one a good try, no matter if it’s gimmicked up in a Leo deck or just played straight in Tony or Michael. Speaking of Michael, we know that he interacts with Firearms and ammo in some way… and investigators often have cards in the same expansion that work exceptionally well with them. So there might even be more here than meets the eye. In any case, this is a cool addition to the card pool, i am very happy with it.
Mystic
Oh wow, this makes a huge splash when it hits the table. The Mystic that plays this has one really wild encounter phase where they draw everyone’s encounter cards. And a surge for good measure. In exchange, the next mythos phase is skipped completely. As a result, all the Mystic’s teammates have two full turns of peace and quiet. This can be an incredible ace to pull to guarantee that your seekers and fighters are able to fulfill their jobs unhindered. Just in terms of encounter cards drawn, the scaling is a bit uneven on this. Solo, you draw two encounter cards over the course of two turns, same as before. So that’s hardly all that useful. At 2p, the Mystic draws 3 encounter cards, one less than would otherwise have been drawn over the course of the two turns. At 3p, it’s 4 cards drawn vs. 6 per default. At 4p, it’s 5 cards drawn at once instead of 8 spread out. So, with a larger group, this effectively prevents one, two or three draws from the encounter deck which is fairly nice. Of course, having up to 5 cards at once thrown in your face all at once can be backbreaking depending on the draws. This seems like a rather powerful card to me. It’s rightfully limited to twice per game (across all copies of the card and across the whole group) to stop overly abusive shenanigans, which makes me think of this as a nice one-off in Mystic decks that are capable of passing most encounter tests. High Willpower is of course very common for them, but some like Agnes can also get very solid amounts of agility as well. For many encounter cards, like Ancient Evils, Deep Dark or most enemies, it also doesn’t really matter who drew the cards. So it’s probably not too hard to engineer situations where this card simply skips a few encounter draws. And that’s without getting into specialized things like setting up the encounter deck with Gloria, Scrying and/or The Stars Are Right. Deliverance also sets up things like Dynamite Blast or Storm of Spirit. Side note: Surge on cards doesn’t stack, so if your first card already naturally has surge, then it won’t be getting an additional instance of surge from Deliverance. So effectively this will then mean you won’t have to draw that extra encounter in that niche case. Well, i say niche case, but tbh Gloria can probably set that up quite reliably. Side note #2: When Luke draws an enemy without spawn instructions while in his Dream-Gate, the enemy is discarded. That interaction can also tip the scales in your favor when you suddenly end up drawing 5 encounter cards in one go. I worry a bit about the player scaling, this seems a lot more enticing for full groups than for smaller ones. As someone that exclusively plays 2p, i am not sure how often i will want this one as the net benefit without shenanigans isn’t that big. But it’s a flashy and interesting card for sure. And in a full group i would definitely run this as a one-off to fire off in an opportune moment.
Survivor
Oh neat, Myriad is back. This seems like a really good card. Getting multiple Courages worth of skill bonuses out of this card shouldn’t be too difficult, even in two player games. And as a Myriad card, you do get three copies for the price of 2XP. That’s super solid. I see this as a great way to enable big turns when facing a boss elite or everyone needs to pitch in for the clue effort. But even just to help one player fight and give them +2 to two of their attacks can easily be worth firing off this card as it doesn’t cost an action to play. It even has a wild icon if you want to use it out of its natural timing, for example for an important Mythos test. The timing on the card means you need to proactively play Good Weather in the previous investigator phase if you want the +2 bonus to carry over into Mythos. But that could even be a neat thing if you want to prepare for a big Deliverance turn. I like this card a whole lot. It’s not moving mountains, but it’s a generically powerful card that rewards looking ahead. I also appreciate that its a card that scales well with higher player count, but is still rock solid in two-player games.
Specialis
This card can be run by: Minh, William, Mateo, Carolyn, Tommy, Mandy, Lily, Carson, Vincent, Hank, Nathaniel… and possibly Michael if he ends up with a Warden trait. Quick reminder, since we haven’t seen Specialist cards since the original announcement a while back. These are neutral cards that can not be run in any investigator, only those with the correct traits. That gives them a new axis on which they influence deckbuilding in addition to the investigators with their class and trait based deckbuilding options. Note that the trait restriction overwrites any permissions from an investigators deckbuilding options. Parallel Jenny might be able to take Talents, but since she is neither Assistant, Medic nor Warden, she can’t use Sound Support.
Sound Support seems pretty pushed in some aspects and then just a tad too fair in others. To start with the selling points of the card, this takes the regenerative soak abilities that we’ve come to appreciate from Peter Sylvestre and Jessica Hyde, combines them together and puts them on a slotless asset. That is pretty sweet as it can offer a great amount of soak over the course of a scenario in a way that usually requires the ally slot to achieve. However, there are some strikes here that let it appear a bit unfavorable. Three XP is a lot for a healing card. It can definitely be worth it, no doubt. And i believe that it would be undercosted at 2XP, so this is exactly right. But that’s where i usually want to achieve something very specific with my XP instead of just getting generically good defense. There is also the whole issue of being Limit 1 per investigator which means you can’t really count on it if you want to rely on it to survive. As a Talent, it’s not all that easy to peel out of your deck either. A typical reason for me to spend a bunch of XP on a heal/soak card is mounting trauma that forces me to do something about it. Sound Support is not really a good card for this type of thing, as you want your emergency card to be able to tank a big hit for you (like an autofailed Grasping Hands). Instead, Sound Support shines when you expect a steady flow of small hits. This can be due to the campaign you play (Deep Ones constantly engaging you for points of damage and horror) or self-inflicted (like Agnes often does). Since it can tank for the team, it’s going to be particularly great at the campaign protection. There’s barely a turn in Innsmouth, Scarlet Keys or Hemlock Vale where you aren’t getting pinged with chip damage or horror. Sound Support can make that a lot easier to bear. I have been pleasantly surprised by the card Flesh Ward in the past which similarly will tank either horror or damage for you. In many ways, Sound Support is a vastly upgraded version of Flesh Ward that doesn’t run out and also applies to the team which is definitely notable. Since this regrettably doesn’t interact with most things you’d want it to (like Vincent’s or Caro’s investigator ability), i would ultimately classify this one as campaign tech. Buy one with In the Thick of It before you go into the Pit of Despair and that scenario could potentially become a whole lot easier. With its broadly applicable abilities and not taking up a slot, it has a lot of raw power bundled into itself and it’s priced correctly. So i think this will at least find a niche somewhere. But i don’t see myself going for this card as part of the actual deck strategy all that often.
This card can be run by: Agnes, Akachi, Calvin, Marie, Patrice, Mary, Dexter, Amina, Kohaku and a couple of parallel investigators.
Hm, i don’t know about this one. Even if we ignore all that unpleasantness about the Carnamagos ruling, this isn’t suuuper exciting? Spirit Athame is a card that already exists since all the way back in Carcosa and it isn’t exactly a much played card. Forbidden Sutra adds a bit of token manipulation on top to justify the additional XP, smaller skill bonus and restriction to events when compared to the Athame, so that will have to be the reason for Sutra to see play. And it’s … fine? Like Tengu Un Plan point out in their reveal article, the interaction with the upgraded Razor and Signs is pretty neat. The horror could be a thing that Agnes weaponizes. And knowing that you can beat the autofail by spending a point of sanity can be a nice security blanket for sure. I have two gripes with it that i feel like i need to mention, even if they don’t directly impact the playability of the card: One, the controversial Rod of Carnamagos ruling poisoned all attempts at token manipulation from the start. This is especially obvious when we get another handslot item like here that overlaps with what Rod does. Errata that stupid thing already and reclaim the design space. Two, it is incredibly unfortunate that they put a repeatable source of token ignore with spell event synergy into the same set as Agatha, a spell event focused investigator that needs a repeatable source of token ignore to enable her ability… and then make it so that Agatha can’t take the card. In fact, no investigator in the box can take it. That just feels very bad and is borderline insane to me to put into the same box. But gripes aside, this is not a bad card as such, but it’s not one that particularly stands out for me. I do appreciate the conscious support to event based play in Mystic though.
Finally, the most important question
As we all know, new Arkham sets mostly exist so we have a pool of names to pick from for our new podcasts, video channels, article series or blogs. But how suitable are the new offerings? Can we sustain the ever growing community for another year from this?
Luger P08: 0/10. Completely unusable, not even as a joke. Deliverance: 4/10. Too abstract. Deliverance of what? Content? Meh. Good Weather: 2/10: Not enough of a relevance to Arkham. Sound Support: 8/10. Clearly this is a Youtube channel with videos such as “Top 10 pieces of music to listen to while playing Wages of Sin” and “5 songs i wish i listened to before attempting Fate of the Vale.” Forbidden Sutra: 7/10: A nice name for a blog in principle, but first you need to find the overlap of Arkham content and a tangible connection to Hinduism or Buddhism.
