Best-Laid Plans: The Dunwich Legacy

Spoilers

This page doesn’t hold back anything. There are detailed spoilers for the full Dunwich Legacy campaign ahead, including the “Return to” box. I highly suggest that you stop reading now if you have not played this campaign once or twice before. Don’t ruin that blind run experience for yourself. Come back once you at least gave it a try. Don’t forget to share your Essex story afterwards in the comments, everyone has one of those.

Introduction

The Dunwich Legacy is the first of the big campaigns for Arkham LCG with the full range of scenarios stretched over a deluxe expansion and six mythos packs. As the first of its kind, it had some technical teething troubles that were widely adressed with the Return To Dunwich box. The campaign thematically follows up on one of HP Lovecrafts more popular stories, the Dunwich Horror. Mechanically, it’s a bit more restrained than the following campaigns, but does still offer a serious step up from the core mini-campaign and parts of it can actually be quite difficult even with current day card pools.
This article is meant to take a comprehensive look at the challenges in play when facing this campaign and to give some suggestions on meeting those challenges in terms of investigator choice, deck building and other gameplay decisions.
This article is not going to look at each encounter set and each scenario in detail, this site already has pages for those. Please refer to those for more zoomed in views on the single cards that make up the encounter sets and encounter decks.

Intellect

If Forgotten Age is the agility campaign and Circle Undone the willpower one, then Dunwich is the one focusing on intellect. This isn’t necessarily apparent from the encounter cards, those mostly key off of willpower. However, several of the scenarios require fast and efficient clue discovery to progress.

Miskatonic Museum for the most part consists of picking up clues from almost a dozen locations and spending them on advancing the scenes before one or more of the timers that are in place – the growing monster, the doom clock and Beyond the Veil – catch up with the players. Blood on the Altar works in a similar way with the doom counter pulling double duty there in not only drawing closer to the scenario end, but also removing allies from the campaign permanently. The boss fight can even be circumvented by collecting a large pile of clues instead.

The Essex County Express is the most obvious example of this, though. Failure to move from one wagon to the next in a brisk pace will not only fail that scenario, it will also possibly undo a lot of campaign progress and strip story assets from the investigator decks.

Finally, Where Doom Awaits features some locations that expect investigators to be able to pass tests against their intellect without being able to use alternate ways of investigating there, leaving mystics that were relying on Rite of Seeking so far without a way to progress. This luckily has been resolved in Return to Where Doom Awaits with a set of replacement locations, but anyone playing the base version should be aware of this being a thing.

Beyond the Veil

One major theme that runs through many of the encounter sets of the Dunwich campaign is discarding cards from the top of the player decks and then either triggering off of cards in their discard or from the deck depleting and having to reshuffle. The most important of those cards is Beyond the Veil, to the point where it’s campaign warping.

Part of the Sorcery encounter set, Beyond the Veil is used in four scenarios: Extracurricular Activity, Miskatonic Museum, Where Doom Awaits and Lost in Time and Space. All of those except for Where Doom Awaits also feature The Beyond, the other encounter set that is a major driving force for the deck discard theme.

While Beyond the Veil is primarily intended to provide a payoff for those other encounter cards, it’s actually most dangerous to any investigator that would draw a lot of cards on their own accord. Seekers like Amanda or Harvey will find themselves in trouble fast just from their own investigator ability. The same goes for Patrice, although she does have access to about the best card pool (and an amazing Elder Sign!) when it comes to defending against Beyond the Veil.

Possible answers to Beyond the Veil include:
Shuffling back your discard pile with Quantum Flux or Patrice’s Elder Sign to delay the damage trigger.
Negating its damage with cards like Deny Existence or Devil’s Luck.
Straight up canceling the card with a Ward or discarding the treachery from play with Alter Fate.
Tanking the hit using damage soak from body armors and allies to survive a 10 damage blow.
Using encounter manipulation like from First Watch or Gloria’s investigator ability to push additional copies of Beyond the Veil to those that already have one or are in possession of one of the other answers.

Having a plan for surviving Beyond the Veil is essential for some investigators, but really anyone should at least have some idea on how to address it. Even an asset focused guardian that only draws a single card per turn can find themselves threatened by this card following a Visions of Futures Past or two.

Deck Decay

Beyond the Veil is not the only payoff for this subtheme, though. Pushed into the Beyond (or its Return To replacement, Haunting Recollections) deals horror based on specific cards in the discard. This stacks up really well with the horror that is dealt for reshuffling the discard when the deck runs out, of course. There’s also a couple scenario specific enemies and treacheries around that care about this, like the Yithian Starseeker from Lost in Time and Space which add doom when attacking players with too many cards in their discard. Or the Rites Howled in Where Doom Awaits that make sure that weaknesses are put back into what little remains of the player decks.

The main driving force behind accelerating the deck decay are Visions of Futures Past from Sorcery and Arcane Barrier/Infinite Doorways from The Beyond. But again there are many scenario specific support cards going around, like Miskatonic Museum’s Passage into the Veil or the token effects in Extracurricular Activity.

Without Beyond the Veil on the board, the effects of this theme are mostly not too bad, but as is so often the case they stack up on each other and can escalate due to that.

Many of the relevant treacheries do test willpower to determine their effects, so that would be the best way of defending against this series of cards. Many of the silver bullets discussed for Beyond the Veil do apply to the larger deck decay theme as well, of course.

Story Allies

Not everything is bad for our investigator’s though. Throughout the Dunwich Legacy, there is a handful of potential allies to recruit, all with their own asset card to add to the players decks. Luckily Charisma was released in the Essex County Express mythos pack, otherwise that single ally slot would’ve been a bit of an issue!

Protecting these allies (with the exception of Naomi) is also a theme during the campaign. At first, they can either be “kidnapped” or “rescued”, which correlates with them available for players to add to their decks or not. After Blood on the Altar, they are either “sacrificed” or “surviving”, depending on whose blood ended up on the altar after all. Naomi arrives late to the party and is only available for the final two scenarios. She doesn’t play into the happenings that come to their close in Blood on the Altar at all.

Dr. Henry Armitage is rescued during the first Interlude, unless the players screwed up The House Always Wins so much that they had the final agenda run out. He’s a cheap ally with good soak and icons and an ability that allows turning card draw into cash in an efficient manner. Very useful for guardians and mystics to fund their expensive toys.
Prof. Warren Rice is rescued during Extracurricular Activities, but only if the players play this scenario first and finish it by spending clues at the Faculty Offices. Every other resolution will lead to Rice being kidnapped. He’s an ally that boosts intellect and draws a card for clearing a location from clues. He’s fine but has serious competition by Milan Christopher and Alice Luxley.
Dr. Francis Morgan is rescued during House Always Wins, but only if the players play it first and escape with him from the Clover Club. He boosts the combat skill and draws a card on defeating an enemy. Notably, he also has 4 stamina which is exceptional and makes him stand out from competing player cards.
Zebulon Whateley is added to the potential sacrifices in Blood on the Altar and will be available for the players should he survive. He boosts willpower and draws a card after resisting a willpower treachery. Also, he boasts an impressive sanity soak of 4.
Earl Sawyer is added to the potential sacrifices just like Zebulon. If he survives, he will join the player’s cause. As can be expected now, he boosts agility. He draws a card after evading an enemy. Evasion isn’t all that strong in this campaign, so he’s likely the weakest of the five story allies.
Naomi O’Bannion is an addition to the campaign for Return To Dunwich. If the players play House Always Wins as the second scenario and manage to save Peter Clover from his club, Naomi will be available starting with the setup of Where Doom Awaits. At 5 resources she’s expensive, but she boasts increases to both intellect and combat, excellent soak and a very powerful chaos bag manipulation ability. She also has very decent icons, but chances are you will want to play her if you got her…

Aside from Blood on the Altar which will permanently kill off one or more of the story allies whenever the agenda advances, the other important scenario playing into these mechanics is Essex County Express. Failing the scenario will cause the players to lose not only the Necronomicon, but they will also need to record Armitage, Rice and Morgan as kidnapped.

Player’s should take the existence of these allies into consideration when building their decks. Either they have to shell out for Charisma to get additional ally slots or they can cut back on running allies of their own.

There are various other story allies that players encounter during the campaign, but they are all scenario specific and will not get permanently added to any investigator’s deck. They also do not take up ally slots. Most of them require protection with more or less dire consequences for failing to do so.

Chaos Bag

The Dunwich Legacy starts out with a very tame chaos bag, using only two skulls and a cultist for symbol tokens (plus the obligatory elder sign and tentacle, of course). There are however several opportunities for players to add more to the bag. By knowing about these opportunities, it is possible to make more informed decisions on which routes to take:

Extracurricular Activities: Failing to save the students from the Experiment will add a tablet token to the chaos bag. To prevent this from happening, the players need to either kill the Experiment or evacuate the dormitories by spending the required amount of clues there. This means that it is not possible to rescue Dr. Rice without also adding the tablet.
The House Always Wins: The first act offers players the ability to once per round cheat the chaos bag. Doing so will add an Elder Thing token to the bag. Don’t do it, it’s not worth it.
Miskatonic Museum: Taking the Necronomicon instead of destroying it comes at the cost of having another Elder Thing go into the chaos bag. This is a much more enticing trade-off. The book is a useful asset and the story branches unlocked by it are also neat. Just make sure that you get through Essex Express without immediately losing the book again!
The Miskatonic Museum also has you “escort” someone through the scenario. Getting them killed will add a permanent tablet token to the bag, so that is obviously to be avoided. There are two possible story allies to get there, depending on how you enter the museum. If you spend the clues, you gain Adam Lynch who can save an action when activating the ability on the Security offices. If you break into the museum instead, you gain Harold Walsted instead. Not only does Harold have a way better ability (+2 intellect on investigations), but you also get him only near the end of the scenario so you do not need to protect him for so long. On the flip side, breaking into the museum does require a successful fight test against difficult 5, so that is going to be very difficult for many investigators.

Additionally, there are two points that add a numbered chaos token (depending on the difficulty) to the bag. These are at the setup of Essex Express and Where Doom Awaits. For reference, on Standard those are a -3 and a -5 token, so these are significant.

But even with those three extra symbol tokens (or four, if you let your museum ally die), the chaos bag is still not as punishing as those from more recent campaigns. And since at least two of the tokens are easy enough to avoid, this campaign can be played with a very lenient chaos bag. Potentially that could be used to do gimmicky decks that are built around cards like Winchester, to maximize chances of drawing specific tokens (no matter if its elder signs, skulls, blesses or curses) or to minimize the chances that some mystic assets like Shrivelling backfire on the spellcaster. Mostly, it just means that the bag is a bit easier, though.

Enemies

The Dunwich Legacy has some pretty terrifying enemies and evading them all is not really a possibility due to the cramped nature of many of the maps. Of course, there is also a healthy amount of small enemies around, like the Human Thralls or the Mobsters. But most encounter decks hold some very impressive enemies in addition, many of which would be considered Elite and/or Victory enemies in other campaigns.

The two most important encounter sets to be aware of with regards to big monsters are Hideous Abominations and Beast Thralls. Both of those add large Hunter enemies to the scenario and what makes them especially dangerous is that they are added straight into the encounter deck. So they are not triggered by some development on the agenda or scene, you might just draw a Conglomeration of Spheres or an Avian Thrall on your first Mythos phase. Something similar goes for the Yithians from the Agents of Yog-Sothoth. While they aren’t Hunters, they can be very daunting when drawn early. Potentially they could be the very first encounter card you see in the whole campaign.

There is also a number of rather chunky scenario specific enemies around, including the Hunting and Grappling Horrors on the Essex Express, the Pit Boss in House Always Wins and the Yithian Starseeker from Lost in Time and Space. Defeating The Experiment in Extracurricular Activity is optional, but rewards an extra 2 victory if you pull it off.

For that reason, players should bring the firepower to deal with these enemies. I recommend a healthy mix of melee weapons and firearms/spells. You will need to use melee weapons to not run out of ammo or charges halfway through a scenario, at the same time there are at least two good reasons to not go all in on Machetes, Knives and Baseball Bats: Both the Conglomeration of Spheres and the Avian Thrall punish players for using this sort of weapon against them and they are among the more nasty enemies in the first place.

A very, very different beast that players may need to be aware of is the Whippoorwill. At a measly 1 stamina it doesn’t look like much, but since it’s Aloof, killing it becomes a time sink. But if players opt to keep it around, it will make everything else harder on them, so that’s not really an option either.

A common solution to the Whippoorwill problem is using cards that can deal damage to enemies without engaging them. Beat Cop and Blood-Rite are good examples for that kind of player card. Using cards that can engage for free also work well, so “Get Over Here!” or the Riot Whistle could be worth considering. It’s certainly not vital for the success of the campaign to have a dedicated answer to these birds, but it does make the relevant scenarios a lot smoother. Those scenarios are Extracurricular Activity, Undimensioned and Unseen and especially Blood on the Altar.

Silas Bishop and the Necronomicon

For the conclusion of Blood on the Altar, the players meet Silas Bishop or – more accurately – the monster that became of him. They have the choice to either fight and defeat him or to collect all of the clues in his chamber. Depending on their choice and on whether the players have the Necronomicon in play, there are three (successful) ends to this encounter, all of which have some sort of consequence for Where Doom Awaits:

The investigators put him out of his misery: Defeating Silas with damage leads to this ending. During the setup of Where Doom Awaits, the Hideous Abomination set is added to the scenario. A Conglomeration of Spheres appears at the Ascending Path right from the first turn. This adds an extra XP to Where Doom Awaits, but also increases the difficulty significantly.

The investigators banish him: This is the resolution for collecting all the clues and not controlling the Necronomicon. Nothing special happens.

The investigators restore him: To do so, the players need to win by collecting the clues and also have the Necronomicon in play. Just having it in hand or in the deck doesn’t suffice, it needs to actually be in the play area as an asset. As a reward, Where Doom Awaits will use a special version of it’s act 2 card which leads to Seth Bishop not entering play on Sentinel Peak.

For the first two option, the state of the Necronomicon determines which other act 2 card is used at the finale of Where Doom Awaits. If the investigators lost the Necronomicon due to failing Essex or Blood on the Altar, Seth Bishop enters play on Sentinel Peak at full strength. The same is true if they never recovered the book due to failing Miskatonic Museum. However, if the investigators chose to destroy the book or successfully held onto it, then 1 damage per investigator is placed on Seth Bishop when he appears.

Experience

Dunwich is notorious for being very stingy with the experience it hands out. Players will find themselves fighting for every little bit they can get and still come up short for anything but their most important upgrades.

As a result, some decks are even borderline impossible to play in this campaign or need to get stripped down to their basics. Luxury upgrades like Deny Existence(5) or high level exceptional rogue cards like Double Double are probably not going to fit in the budget. Investigators that come out of the gate quickly without depending on certain high level cards have a definite edge here, an example would be something like Dark Horse Ashcan. Player cards that grant XP like Delve Too Deep can provide some relief as well.

Available XP per scenario/interlude:
Extracurricular Activity: 3 (locations) + 2 (Yithian Observers) + 1 (Wizard of Yog-Sothoth) + 2 (The Experiment) = 8XP
The House Always Wins: 2 or 3 (locations) + 1 (Pit boss) + 1 (Servant of the Lurker) = 4 or 5XP
The Miskatonic Museum: 5XP (locations)
The Essex County Express: 2 (locations) + 2 (Emergent Monstrosities) = 4XP
Blood On The Altar: 2 (Silas/Chamber) + 2 (resolution) = 4XP
Undimensioned and Unseen: 5XP (Broods)
Where Doom Awaits: 2 (Sentinel Peak) + 1 (Seth Bishop) + 1 (Crazed Shoggoth) + 1 (Wizard of Yog-Sothoth) + 1 (Servant of the Lurker) = 6XP
Lost in Time and Space: 1 (Servant of the Lurker) + 2 (Yithian Observers) + 5 (resolution) = 8XP

So you could in theory be entering Lost in Time and Space with 36XP (assuming 4XP for House Always Wins), but likely you will have gotten a good amount less due to a lot of the XP being tied to enemies in the encounter deck that you may not even draw. Similarly, Museum and Essex both have XP on randomized locations that may not be in play. Extracurricular Activities will have 1 less XP on its locations when played after House Always Wins. The total number of XP available in Undimensioned and Unseen depends on how well you did in Blood on the Altar: If a lot of unique allies got sacrificed, there will be fewer Broods in play during Undimensioned. The Servant of the Lurker will only be in the encounter deck during Where Doom Awaits if the players defeated Silas Bishop earlier. Restoring Silas will remove Seth from the game here, dropping the total on Where Doom Awaits to 4XP for that path.

Plan getting around 25XP, but make sure your deck works with the 15ish points you get for Extracurricular, House and Museum because from that point on you will have to pry every little point from the scenarios.

All of these numbers assume successful completion of the scenarios. The campaign hands out a few pity points for failing which can theoretically be (ab)used to get a higher total XP count. Notably, failing House Always Wins by having the doom clock run out will lead to Armitage being kidnapped and the investigators getting 2XP instead. Intentionally failing Essex Express after collecting all of its XP (including the Engine car) could net an extra XP, but comes at the cost of earning a weakness and losing all your assets… so that’s absolutely not worth metagaming around.

House Always Wins features a location that works in a very non-intuitive way. The Back Alley location which has the resign ability on it is also a victory location. However, when a player resigns, their clues are dropped onto the location, making it no longer count for the victory. As printed, the scenario features no way to get all victory location’s XP while still getting out with everyone.

You basically have three options if you do want to get that VP: Have someone intentionally die and drop all the excess clues on an irrelevant location like the Darkened Hall. The others can escape through the Back Alley. This will trade the trauma on one player for a point of XP for everyone.
Or have a rogue in your team run “I’m Outta Here!”. The rogue can carry the excess clues to a non-Victory location and resign from there using that card.
The third option (and the one i am personally going with) is just ignoring this nonsensical interaction which is likely not intentional in the first place. Sadly, the Return To box does not fix this particular issue, so you have to decide for yourself if you want to fudge this or not.

Return to The Dunwich Legacy changes very little about the XP numbers of the campaign. It adds two new Exhibit Hall locations to Miskatonic Museum for some randomization of the locations. One of these locations has victory, the other one doesn’t. So while the maximum rises to 6XP, it also introduces the possibility to only be able to get 4XP. A new enemy with victory 2 is added to Lost in Time and Space, but at that point gaining more XP doesn’t really do anything.

Extracurricular Activities and The House Always Wins

Players have a choice right at the start of the campaign: They can either play Extracurricular Activities first or The House Always Wins. The one they didn’t choose is then played as the second scenario. Only the story ally associated with the scenario played first can be rescued, the other is always going to be abducted.

In the base version of the campaign, it is commonly agreed that there are only few reasons to start with Extracurricular, but multiple for starting with House instead. Comparing the story assets themselves, we got Warren Rice on the one side, Francis Morgan on the other. They are roughly similar in their abilities, but Rice can be easily replaced by Milan or Luxley. Francis doesn’t have a close equivalent, the closest one would probably be Jessica Hyde who is an XP ally that is also available to only very few fighters who’d be interested in the combat boost.

What seals the deal however is the circumstance that saving Warren Rice is penalized with a tablet token for not saving the students from the rampaging monster. If the plan is killing the Experiment or evacuating the dorm, then you might as well do that as the second scenario and go save Francis first.

House Always Wins is also a fair amount easier than Extracurricular Activity. So being able to gain a couple XP before having to meet Yithian Observers, the Wizard of Yog-Sothoth or even the Experiment while Whippoorwills are fluttering about and Beyond the Veil is ticking down is certainly appreciated.

On the other hand, going for Extracurricular Activity first will offer the chance to save Peter Clover in House Always Wins. Doing so is not easy, but will remove the Naomi’s Crew encounter set from Blood on the Altar. This is of questionable value, however. The Return to Dunwich gives some much needed extra incentive for choosing this path by not only giving the players access to the extremely powerful Naomi O’Bannion asset, but also by making the Naomi’s Crew set be much harder during Blood on the Altar.

Another reason to go for Extracurricular first could be the higher XP that is rewarded by that scenario. While House usually rewards 3-4XP, you can expect around 5-8XP for Extracurricular. Extracurricular is the scenario with the most XP in the campaign and having the extra time for going there first can be instrumental in fishing for the victory enemies in the encounter deck. Going there second actually even removes 1 XP from the locations.

Personally, i find these two choices not all that equal even after Return To enhances the less attractive choice. Going for House first wins on pure efficiency in my opinion, mostly due to Francis being more useful and not coming with a tablet token attached. However, getting to add Naomi to your deck is really cool and certainly worth going for as well as a fun option to shake things up. I’d still not save Rice, though… sorry, he’s just not worth the tablet token.

Investigator Choices

Taking all of this into account, there are some recommendations that can be done for choosing your investigators. Due to Dunwich featuring both heavy fighting and the requirement for fast and efficient clue grabbing, a classic duo of a guardian and a seeker is a good start. Bigger groups will probably not want to rely solely on one person to hover up clues, unless that person is hyperefficient they might run into trouble with Essex Express otherwise. For that reason, having your enemy handlers be able to grab the occasional clue as well pays off.

The other big concern is Beyond the Veil. Some investigators are just very, very vulnerable to it and would have to devote a chunk of their deck (and maybe their XP!) towards safeguarding against it.

Finally, the investigator should be able to function with only few upgrades due to the low amount of available XP. If you want to play Sefina with Chuck Fergus and Double Double, you might want to pick a different campaign…

Some suggestions, i’ll keep it to two per class:
Roland Banks: Both guardian and seeker, Roland has all the tools available to him to shine here. His free clue generation gives him action efficiency exactly when it is needed.
Leo Anderson is an able fighter and at 3 intellect he can at least help out with clues as well. He’s also already very likely to run Charismas, so those story allies can be worked into his deck strategy quite well.
Joe Diamond is similar to Roland in that he’s sitting at the overlap of the guardian and seeker card pools and can equip himself very well for Dunwich.
Rex Murphy‘s main strength is baked right into his investigator ability, meaning he can do his thing without having to draw tons of cards like many other seekers do. Thus he doesn’t open himself up to Beyond the Veil more than necessary.
Preston Fairmont can run on a surprisingly low amount of experience. Many of his key cards are low level, like High Roller and Easy Mark. His survivor access gives him Alter Fate(1) to deal with Beyond the Veil.
Tony Morgan will have no shortage of stuff to kill, so (with the exception of the museum) he can play to his strengths. His intellect 3 and access to seeker or survivor events can make him surprisingly decent at collecting clues, too.
Agnes Baker is representing almost all the high willpower mystics here. They can use their spell assets to become cluevers and fighters at the same time. This is true for Dexter, Gloria and several others as well, but Agnes sticks out because her investigator ability means that Whippoorwills basically do not exist anymore around her.
William Yorrick, like many survivors, gets by with very few expensive upgrades. His signature event even allows him to generate one extra victory point per scenario. This will certainly be appreciated by the whole team.
Ashcan Pete: Another very undemanding survivor, no matter if it’s the Dark Horse version or not. His biggest strength starts right in play at the start of the game, everything else is just gravy. Just be aware that Duke CAN be kidnapped during Blood on the Altar, something you will absolutely want to prevent.

With the exception of Preston and Joe, all of the investigators mentioned above also have at least 3 willpower, which is somewhat important if you don’t want to just watch from the sidelines during Undimensioned and Unseen and at least helpful with most of the tests on the encounter cards.

On the opposite end are investigators to avoid because they either draw tons of cards (Patrice, Amanda) or are XP hungry (Sefina, Mandy). Generally speaking, evasion plays second fiddle to defeating enemies and agility isn’t tested very often from treacheries. So agility specialists (Finn, Rita) might find that they can’t always play to their strength.

I want to make clear that this is just some suggestions. The deck building in this game is open enough that you can make a lot of things work, even under the XP restraints present here. To give an example, i have played Patrice through Dunwich before myself. It required devoting a chunk of XP and deck space towards otherwise not terribly useful cards just as insurance against Beyond the Veil, but it is doable for sure. Similarly, evasion can certainly work as well here, especially in solo. However, that will leave you with even fewer XP because so much of it comes from victory enemies.

Notable Player Cards

To finish off this extensive look at The Dunwich Legacy, let’s take a peek at some player cards that are worth pointing out in the context of the campaign. I will try to mention cards that aren’t too obvious, you probably don’t need me to tell you that Spectral Razor, Ward of Protection and Pathfinder are good cards. As with the investigators, i’ll keep it to two cards per class:

Beat Cop, specifically the upgraded one, takes care of the Whippoorwills without any fuss and he supplements your fighting in other spots.
Well Prepared can leech icons of the story allies, so if you plan on running multiple of those, you could make them pull double duty with this. Armitage even has double wild icons.
Occult Lexicon is another card that offers an easy solution to aloof critters.
Miskatonic Archeology Funding gives you the ally slots to run Armitage and either Rice or Morgan while still leaving you with your original ally slot to use whatever you want in addition. This can save some XP over Charisma, very convenient.
Pilfer is generally a pretty great investigative tool, but shines particular bright during Essex Express.
Lockpicks is the other notable card in the rogue cards pool that lets them do a seekers job. It won’t help them with the intellect requirements of Where Doom Awaits, but everywhere else it’s gold.
Mind Wipe has a niche use during Undimensioned and Unseen. The Broods aren’t elite, so blanking their textboxes will make them vulnerable to conventional weapons. It will also remove the victory, though.
Quantum Flux has obvious applications in a campaign that has deck depletion running as a subtheme.
Alter Fate is yet another silver bullet for this campaign’s most game warping treachery.
Waylay is one of the few ways how a high agility can be leveraged to do something remarkable in Dunwich. There’s a bunch of great targets for it, spearheaded by Broods of Yog-Sothoth and the Servant of the Lurker. It’s also one of the most efficient ways to wipe a Conglomeration of Spheres from the board.
Charisma is almost essential if you want to make use of the story allies.
Fine Clothes are a good include in the initial decks at campaign start. Both Extracurricular Activity and House Always Wins expect players to parley someone and the Clothes make this trivial. After the second scenario, players can just upgrade out of them, they aren’t used for the rest of the campaign.

Surge

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