Intro
I reached the end of my Ages Unwound play with chapter 2 decks. And you know what? While I didn’t quite cross the finish line in the end, getting beaten down and worn out as I headed into the final stretch, the two decks sold themselves well. A lot better than I expected, actually.
This is the first full campaign that i played with the new chapter 2 card pools, so i think it’s valuable to have a look back at the decks and the investigators. Did they perform as I expected them to when I made my “Hot Take Edition” reviews of the Core Set, of the Evergreen decks and my Investigator Tier List? Which cards were surprisingly good? Which ones failed to impress as much as i hoped?
Joe Diamond
Here’s the link to Joe’s deck: Joe Diamond Unwound. Note: In arkham.build, you can use the History tab to check out how the deck evolved, so you can get to the level 0 deck there as well as the one that entered the finale. Or any inbetween.
Joe was just super solid throughout. His innate card draw really came through big time and made sure that he not only found his stuff in time, but also that he usually was able to throw cards into tests when it made a difference. Reading over my evaluation of him in the tier list, that all reads still correct to me. I was certainly impressed by his ability to soak, the 7/7 split was doing a lot of work. His card draw was great, he was often discarding to hand size and i even cut my extra card draw that i originally included from his deck. The signature triggered its extra draw a few times, felt nice each time that happened. Overall, he definitely felt a good deal stronger than original Joe to me. I ranked him an A in the tier list, he is probably even hitting the upper bound of that range.
Some choice cards that overperformed are:
Bodyguard(2): Each time he showed up, he did excellent work. I was able to wring a lot of value out of this dude, using both his soak and his free 2 damage to good effect. I really liked him and will certainly play him more from now on.
Insidious Truths: I never really liked this sort of event that throws a bunch of cards away for just a single attack, but Insidious Truths really did shine a lot in these games. Joe Diamond is kind of the perfect investigator for Truths. It still uses combat to attack, not intellect and Joe has the best combat of any Seeker. It tosses your cards and Joe draws cards without even trying. Finally, the combination with Vicious Blow is nice, especially with the upgraded one where the massive bonus to the test from Truths makes sure that Vicious Blow gets its oversuccess. I think this card will prove to be A LOT worse if i were to put it into literally any other Seeker, but here it was very impressive and nuking that 5 health big boy in the final scenario in one action was an enjoyable moment.
Some choice underperformers:
Bounty: Dunno, didn’t really seem to do much for me all campaign. I think it’s likely a fluke, due to all the swarming enemies around that often only had 1 health individually. But i don’t think i ever got to play this for more than 2 resources and even getting 2 wasn’t always guaranteed.
Stock Ammo Reload: I mean, it did what it’s supposed to do, so i am not sure i can really call this “underperforming”. But i want to mention it here because only during one of the last scenarios i realized that this can’t put ammo on someone elses gun the way chapter 1’s Extra Ammunition can. I really wanted it to be able to refill Izzie’s Twins that one game and couldn’t.
The deck as a whole worked well. I think i went a bit too heavy on the combat upgrades. Thanks to Insidious Truths working as well as it did, i probably could have skipped the Stock Ammo Reloads and instead kept some extra horror healing in the deck. The second Psychoanalysis could have been nice or keeping the Psychology Student in the deck. I found myself with combat cards stacking up in my hand a few times when all i was looking for was some extra intellect icons to throw into investigations.
Isabelle Barnes
And here’s Izzie’s deck: Isabelle Barnes Unwound.
I got some raised eyebrows for putting Izzie into S-tier in my tier list. But i have to say, after this campaign, I stand by it. The amount of damage and horror she was able to take was exceptional and even when she was skirting death for a moment, she was able to recover from it very well. I even put Offering Bowls into her deck later on despite her 5 health because she was just shrugging off damage. She dunked on encounter tests left and right while also able to punch way above her weight in combat. I want to highlight her signature pistols which did A LOT of work in the first half of the campaign, dropping Myriad Men with little fuss. Her weakness was also quite manageable, turns out she is able to keep her horror minimal even though i was agressively using her ability and as a result the weakness usually only dealt a point of damage. The recycling part of her ability came up plenty of times as well, from having “Guts for Days” in early games to getting extra uses out of Timely Intervention(3) in later ones. The combo of using Arcane Initiate to keep fishing for Blood Curse and Soul Link in the deck after reshuffling them was also super neat.
Fantastic investigator, both fun and dynamic to play and super powerful. As easy for me to latch on to as Winifred was in chapter 1.
Some overperformers:
Aleksey Saburov: For Izzie, he’s better than either Jessica Hyde or Peter Sylvester would have been because she does indeed use both the horror and the damage healing parts of Aleksey very well. He’s been a key piece in making sure she survives and i should have played two copies from the start.
Offering Bowl: I only added these later on, but maybe Aleksey and Bandages can carry this from the start? Anyway, even if you treat this as a 1xp upgrade to only get once you also have Extra Rations, the effect an early Offering Bowl had on my setup was immense. Resources was the one weak spot of my deck, without drawing an ECache setting up with a weapon/spell, an ally and a support asset took some time or extra resource actions. Bowl instead made that super smooth. I didn’t expect to put this into a 5 health investigator, but this was great!
Timely Intervention(3): I knew this was a good card, but i didn’t expect it to be THIS good. Save one test, commit from the discard for 3 icons for the next test, shuffle back, do it again. Scrape By is probably better for other investigators, but for Izzie this card rules. The level 0 version is already good, but the level 3 is on a whole new level.
Some underperformers:
Longbow: This is just an awful campaign for Longbow. Like 95% of the enemies in this campaign fall into one of two camps: Swarmers. Or 4+ health. Only scenario 6 had some 3 health enemies (Sheldon’s Finest, Irregulars), but i didn’t draw Longbow in that game :D So yeah. Bad showing, highlighting the exact situations in which this card falters.
Something that performed just like i hoped it would was the Lucky Cigarette Case. Running LCC in Isabelle with Collector was a bit of a gimmick twist to the deck, but i think this worked well enough. The LCC did draw a handful of cards whenever it was in play and the deck size increase didn’t hurt. I feel like LCC helped with redrawing the skills that i shuffled back into the deck quite a bit, but it’s sort of hard to quantify that effect. That being said, a streamlined version without Collector and Relic Hunter that simply uses two copies of Canteen for the accessory slot would work perfectly fine, too.
In terms of upgrade strategy, I think I messed up a bit by removing the clue finding capabilities from her deck completely. I was hesitant of keeping the Second Sights once i had 4 cultists in the bag. That does make sense to me still, but in that case i should have at least kept the Will of the Cosmos around. That would have been super helpful in the final scenario for sure.
Moving on
That was it for this Ages Unwound playalong! Good times were had and i am happy that I both got to show off a cool custom campaign that i deeply enjoy and two good chapter 2 decks that were able to take on the increased challenge that comes from Ages Unwound being a bit of a bastard sometimes :D
Now i finally do have the time to check out Children of Blood. I won’t be documenting that in detail like i did this playthrough, but expect some sort of first impressions article in the near future. I’ll be playing that mini-campaign with Tommy and Marie, so hopefully I’ll be able to comment on their capabilities a bit as well once i am done.