Agnes Baker: The Waitress

A waitress by day, a powerful sorceress by night.

While Agnes seems to be just a shy waitress, there is more to her than meets the eye. She used to command forces of seemingly unlimited power bringing doom to her foes. Even though she's scared of these memories and the power they bring, she will not hesitate to use it against the evil forces, threatening to destroy mankind.

Legacy: Agnes has always been designed as one of the most proficient spellcasters (if not the strongest one indeed). Her stats were maxed for handling the arcane, her abilities were either strengthening her spells (Arkham Horror), enabling her to gain more of them (Eldritch Horror) or making it easier for her to successfully cast them (both). She was considered one of our favourite characters¹.

Her vision is no different in AH:TCG – her stats make her a perfect spell-casting monster-wracking machine. Both her class and her signature card encourage building her deck around spells, too.

Skill Values:

As I've already mentioned, Agnes is born to wield the art. Will of 5 precisely defines her area of interest. Each time she is to use a spell you can be sure it'll be cast at a proficient level. Both her Combat and Intellect are negatively affected by this specialization - with a value of 2 (lowest Intellect so far, along with Zoey) she needs to rely on magic for both fighting and discovering clues.

Agility of 3 helps Agnes in two ways. It allows her to evade enemies, while she's gathering and playing her magical assets. Secondly, together with her superior Will, it provides her with a great protection against the Encounter Deck. This is exactly what a witch needs.

Such specialization allows her to handle all kinds of situations perfectly with an appropriate spell If she fails to draw the correct one, however, Agnes can easily find herself in troubles. This is exactly what a pure spellcasting investigator should look like, though.

Strength

Theme

Special abilities:

Agnes’ ability enables to put her sanity loss to a good use, dealing damages to enemies. First of all, it allows her to get a benefit from purely negative costs – sanity lost on casting spells, using Forbidden Knowledge etc. Secondly, it allows her to strike back, when attacked in the enemy phase (her ability works once each phase!). Last, but not least, when she’s left with no means of fighting, she can at least do some damage with her ability.

Unlike Roland’s or Wendy’s ability, Agnes’ power needs careful planning, particularly during the deck creating. It is worth to create as many opportunities to use it as possible, even more so if you can decide yourself when the sanity loss occurs (like in the case of aforementioned Forbidden Knowledge). Consider using some sanity recovering cards (Fearless, Clarity of Mind).

You must also carefully plan using the ability, while playing. Remember about the limitation and do not decide to lose sanity, before it’s necessary. First check if spell caused you to take horror, before you do action, which outcome is surer.

All in all, her skill might come extremely handy in sniping one-health enemies, or wearing down bosses. Enemies are bread and butter of AH:TCG, hence it is used quite regularly. Still it comes with constraints, as Agnes Sanity is not limitless and sometimes she is forced to take horror without benefiting out of it.

Also, one easily missed rule – horror must be placed on Agnes, not one of her assets to trigger the ability. Therefore I almost always put all the remaining horror on assets (unless it’d destroy them).

Absolute must-have in every Agnes' deck.
provides means of playing her expensive assets.
And deals damage whenever you need it.

I still remember reading Agnes’ ability for the first time and struggling to understand, what it is supposed to thematically represent. Unlike most of the abilities it does not have a very clear connection between the gameplay result and the thematic event it is supposed to symbolize.

A picture started to slowly appear in my mind, when I was reading descriptions of the spell cards. Just like in previous Arkham Files games, Agnes casts spells with an added efficiency, dealing extra damage. Even more of an individualized meaning emerges upon reading her story. I imagine taking horror uncovers previously locked (suppressed) parts of her memory, containing unnatural arcane knowledge. Using the freshly regained wisdom, Agnes slays every evil being opposing her. One must really appreciate this sophisticated yet precise design.

Agnes’ Elder Sign effect is rather a boring one. It pretty much follows Roland’s design – unnecessarily high positive modifier. It’s consistent with the “theme” of horror and the idea of Agnes growing stronger through unlocking her memories.

Strength

Theme 

Signature cards:

Agnes’ signature card seems not to get too much love around. I could easily understand that sentiment earlier on – it wasn't particularly strong with only base set cards around. There were too few spells available to regularly benefit from her necklace. Dunwich Legacy, however, brought 2 more level 0 spells and additional one with level of 2. Now you can easily have 8-10 Spell cards in your deck, which might result in drawing quite a number of additional cards.

It still has some drawbacks, though. Necklace is far less useful if drawn later on, almost making it an auto-commit (and its icons are not too impressive). It is also rather a costly asset. Moreover, Agnes has access to two other assets for the Necklace slot – Rabbit's Foot and Holy Rosary. Particularly the latter is tough to pass on, as it boosts her Will. Ironically, using her precious Hyperborea witch necklace makes her less potent at spellcasting.

While it's a great reference to Agnes’ story about the recently discovered Hyperborean artefact, her signature card is not an overwhelmingly thematic card due to its questionable interaction with Holy Rosary.

You should have listed to your mom when she said:
"Don't play with magic!"

I very much like the design of Agnes' weakness. It's a spell, very clearly on the dark magic side of the sorcery. Even though it is a weakness, it might be used to your advantage. If you decide to postpone playing it, you might make use of Agnes' ability. It comes at a hefty cost of two sanity (so basically double the cost), yet when back against the wall, you might consider it a good trade. When you decide to play it, you might just take advantage of Heirloom of Hyperborea to replace the drawn weakness with a "real" player card. Still these options are just a minor consolation price, when you realize you just payed two resources and an action to add a doom token. And you can't play it cleverly, timing it in a way that would not hasten agenda's progress, as the card clearly states it can cause agenda to advance.

The thematic implications of the gameplay options mentioned above create a great thematic experience. Even just the straightforward results are quite thematic. They remind you, that you can't use magic without paying its cost. In the end it always works for the benefit of the evil forces, advancing their agenda.

Strength

Theme 

Class/Deckbuilding options:

Choice of Agnes’ class is rather obvious, considering her spellcasting theme. The addition of a Survivor subclass creates a very interesting mix. It does not only match very well thematically (Agnes is just a simple Waitress, who just become aware of her previous life). It also provides her with great deal of useful cards.

Main problem with playing Agnes is – you usually cannot do well in a given area without an appropriate spell. Without Shrivelling or Blinding Light you struggle with enemies. Without Rite of Seeking you have hard time investigating etc. Here red cards come as a perfect help. Survivor weapons are suboptimal as a first choice, but perfect if you add them to increase a chance of drawing anything to handle enemies, while biding your time and waiting for stronger options. Both Baseball Bat and Fire Axe have their downsides, yet are able to provide decent enough bonuses to Combat to offer Agnes fair shot at fighting. Look what I found cannot be the long term source of clues, but makes it possible to do some investigation, while waiting for purple cards to come to your hand.

Some other survivor cards match her needs as well – Lucky! is one of the strongest events in the game, so no surprise there (and the upgraded version helps going through the deck), but you might also consider a Leather Coat to help with her slightly lower Stamina or 2XP version of Peter Sylvestre to help with spellcasting, some evasion cards allow to allow her for sneaking around if you choose to… list of matching cards is truly astonishing.

Strength 

Theme 

Agnes is a perfect thematic representation of a magic user, who is almost powerless without the arcane forces. First Mystic character sets high standards for the next ones and proves fun and efficient, even more so with the freshly expanded card selection.

Powerful card by itself with an added synergy with Agnes' ability.

I am waiting to see bit more punch for the fight capabilities of spellcasters. Once it’s there, I am sure Agnes will excel at it, just as she excels at all other areas of magic. You can shape her according to your preferences – while making her the main fighter is pending arrival of another monster-wracking spell, she can easily handle investigation (with a combination or Rite of Seeking, "Look what I found!" and my absolutely favorite Drawn to theFlame), be an all-round or a support investigator.

Strength 

Theme 

¹For both Arkham Horror and the Eldritch Horror we come up with a drafting idea to ensure – good balanced team and sharing the characters quite evenly, when it comes to the fun factor (we usually play 3 each). We first draw 3X investigators, where x is number of investigators each of us controls. Than we choose a team, making sure we have appropriate number of fighters, gate closers, support etc. Once they are selected, one person chooses one investigator to play, the other chooses 2, again first person chooses 2 and the third gets assigned automatically.

²It is sometimes overlooked, that drawing a weakness not only forces you to deal with it, but also robs you of a player card.

All images are courtesy of cardgamedb.com and fantasyflightgames.com

Undimensioned and Unseen Preview

When it comes to board games I am quite an addict. I read rules for fun, check for new games on regular basis and read forums related to all my favorite games. Some of them multiple times per day (I hope my manager does not read this blog ;) ).

I regularly open FFG main page to check for updates. I was very thrilled to see another expansion pack announced - Undimensioned and Unseen.

 

I don’t like to spoil myself even a tiniest bit of encounter deck. I love, however, to read preview of new player cards. This time we were presented with 2 new cards, which seems quite a standard practice of Fantasy flight Games.

"Turn left! I meant right!"

 

Quick Thinking is a very thematic card, which continues to build an interesting archetype of Rogue investigators as decisive, adaptive and versatile (all of their skill cards so far feature a Wild icon!). It also expands the idea of extra action, as well as succeeding by 2 or more (both being mostly related to the Rogue class). Its biggest strength is having multiple of possible uses, one of which (interrupting a turn of fellow investigator to help them with an enemy).

There is a slight drawback/cost. Technically speaking the card does help with passing the test. However to use it primarily for this purpose is a waste of card’s potential (although when it’s desperately needed, it’ll be used as poor man’s unexpected courage). In order to get the extra action you need to succeed by 2, which means, you need to overcommit to a test (and unless you have a way to control the draw of Chaos Token, overcommit by a wide margin). This means spending cards and/or resources. So in fact, it would mean it’s just a way of turning them into extra action through the use of Quick Thinking. Action is of course not equal an action, sometimes they are more valuable and Quick Thinking helps to get one, when it’s most urgently needed (bit like Shortcut, though both also feature tricks of their own). Another scenario is, where you actually want to succeed by a wide margin (.41 Derringer, for instance). Also note, that when used by the active investigator it nicely stacks with Opportunist.

This is exactly kind of design I’m looking for – thematic, encouraging team playing and presenting with multiple options, both for deckbuilding and playing. I am very keen to put it in my deck, just need to be patient.

I have mixed feelings for Rite of Seeking (Level 4). I wouldn’t like the character’s development to move in a direction, where simply the difficulty of skill checks grows and so does the skill value. Consider two scenarios. In the first scenario, you fight a monster with Fight value of 3, having combat of 5. In the second one monster with Fight value of 7 is faced by investigator with Combat of 9. They are not really different, are they? It does not create a new experience or any interesting choices.

On the other hand, such cards seem to be necessary and playing their role. First of all, they encourage specialization. You need the team fighter with high Combat, to take down the monster with fight value of 7 (to continue using my previous combat-related example), fragile Seeker can handle less and less enemies on his own. And specialization also contributes to importance of team work. Moreover, on the deck-building level you need to decide – do I take stronger Rite of Seeking or a stronger Shrivelling (not there yet, but kinda bound to happen)? Which side of my character should I boost? 

What do you think about the recent preview?

An (Un)likely Duet

Ladies and Gentleman,  humans and otherworldly creatures, welcome to first installment of the Duet Deck series!

As I mentioned in the introduction I play all my games in a two player setup with my lovely wife. Therefore we strive to create 2 matching decks. You can achieve this result in few different ways. The most straightforward one is to divide two main tasks of the game – investigating and fighting.

The specialization doesn’t necessarily have to be full. First of all, you have to split sometimes, so you need to be able to cover the other side of an investigator’s job, as well. Also, if your main assignment is suddenly not important (no skulls to crush around or maybe sudden appearance of a horrific being made picking up clues definitely a less urgent task) you need to be still useful, at least to a degree. Therefore price for full specialization might be hefty.

First duet to be presented to you might strike you as bit surprising. After all, Roland and Daisy share part of their deckbuilding options. However, for the base set they are pretty much the toughest fighter and the most curious mind. Additionally, as mentioned in my previous post neither of us cares deeply about Skids. 

Both decks are created with a certain balance in mind – with his ability and handful of investigation related cards Roland can pick up some clues (Ability and Evidence enable to gather some even in high shroud locations, read Roland’s part for some tricks). Daisy can dispatch minor enemies or offer some minor support with bosses as well, provided she draws some of the fight-related cards (more about drawing in the Daisy’s part).

Unfortunately, the decks cannot be created without 4(!) copies of Base Set (and also additional Shortcut from Dunwich Legacy) or some proxies, which is one of their major drawbacks.

Assets (13)	Events (8)	Skills (10)	Weaknesses (2)
1x Roland's .38 Special 2x .45 Automatic 2x Knife 2x Machete 2x Magnifying Glass 2x Beat Cop 2x Physical Training	2x Dodge 2x Emergency Cache 2x Evidence! 2x Shortcut	2x Deduction 2x Guts 2x Overpower 2x Unexpected Courage 2x Vicious Blow	1x Cover Up 1x Random Basic Weakness

Overview: Roland works as the main hitter, obviously. That’s why he gets 7 weapons (though 2 Knives are there just to ensure he gets a weapon of any kind and possibly work as a way of dealing damage without using ammo). He still manages clues very well.

Notable weaknesses: This deck is quite expansive, so you might find yourself struggling for resources. This explains some choices made with cards (read further to learn about some decisions I made). Obviously bad luck of draw can screw anyone, Roland suffers mostly if he fails to get a weapon, however this should be mitigatable with Daisy’s help.

Opening Hand: I'd heavily consider mulligan if I draw no weapon, as this makes the team way to vulnerable. 2 out of Beat Cop/Physical Training/Knife should be good enough, though - even more so as muliganing such a hand would hamper chances of drawing them at all. You shouldn’t be too concerned about not drawing any cards for investigating – Daisy should cover it well enough. 

Choices: You might be bit surprised with some selections I’ve made, particularly with the exclusions. Let’s consider them one by one. 

I gave up on Dr. Milan for 2 reasons – Beat Cop is crucial for the deck and while you might consider using both in solo decks or when tasked with picking up clues, here Roland’s main job is fighting. Also, as he is unique, it’d stop Daisy from using it. 

Flashlight was ditched to free a hand, in hopes that Magnifying Glass will prove to be good enough (and it mostly is – though 3^rd scenario complicates matters a bit).

I decided not to include Hyperawareness also for two reasons. First of all, Agility is not very useful for Roland. Secondly, Roland usually lacks resources, thus wouldn’t be able to spare some for boosting his Intellect. 

Dynamite Blast also missed the list due to its cost. I have also found it to be highly situational. You can’t use it to help Daisy with enemies engaged with her, as it’d cripple her health, too. You don’t want to use it on your location, neither. And it’s almost never worth to use it on single enemy, anyway.

Using it is not really a blast

Last, but not least, I chose Knife for the backup weapon instead of Kukri or a Blackjack. I did it mostly due to its second use. You can discard it before replacing with a better weapon/Magnifying Glass for a strong use. Also, if you’re unlucky enough to have to use it as your main weapon, you can always as a last resort throw it at your enemy and hope to get a new weapon soon. Blackjack’s only advantage of not damaging the teammate does not excite me too heavily, I wonder what your opinions are.

Tricks: My favorite trick is luring enemies on locations with clues. It can accomplish a variety of goals. Obviously, it allows you to use Roland’s ability. Moreover, it also enables play of Evidence (1 shot to kill the enemy AND get 2 clues!). Finally, you can use it to take full advantage of Roland's .38 Special. I do it on a regular basis in The Gathering – leaving just one clue to get an extra edge against Ghoul Priest. The clue is not even wasted – you pick it up upon killing him, securing location’s victory point! If you “just” aim for clues, you should obviously target high shroud location (or in other ways tougher to investigate as explained in post about Roland)

To spot this card's true potential I had to force myself
to put into into my deck for trying out

  While luring hunter enemies is easier (though comes at a price – they attack you upon meeting) you can very well use Shortcut to move when engaged at cost of 0 resources and 0 actions! It also doesn’t cause any Attacks of Opportunity. If needed, you can also move Daisy with the enemy engaged with her. Otherwise Shortcut provides a way to “store” an action and use it whenever necessary and turned out to be very effective, much more than I anticipated upon seeing the card.

Beat Cop can be used not only to finish off bigger fishes, but also to snipe out weak enemies without spending an action (especially the upgraded one).

Upgrades: First picks for me are 2 XP versions of Beat Cop, as it triples (!) the amount of damage you can deal with this card. For me, Police Badge comes in next; with a Will of 4 all regular encounter deck threats should be dealt with quite consistently.

Monsters devouring civilians? Not on my watch!

Upgraded Magnifying Glasses come very handy, too. Reduced cost is a plus, as with such an expensive deck every resource comes. Additionally, freeing hands whenever needed might provide you with a free slot for a weapon. Even if the hand won’t get free, you can commit the Magnifying Glass and gain some extra clues. Out of the low-cost cards Extra Ammunition is very useful for Roland, as he has 3 guns in his deck - I'd put it, removing Knife, or two.

You should definitely consider an Elder Sign Amulet, even before 2nd copy of Extra Ammo (if your experience allows it). It competes with the badge for a slot, but it's not a huge issue. Even if you happen to draw both, you’re not stuck with a dead card. You can either commit one of them (quite strong set of a Wild icon and a Will icon) or use Badge’s ability first. Roland’s sanity is on the lower end, the amulet comes handy especially if he suffers a mental trauma (due to a defeat or failing his terrible weakness). To make room for both badge and amulet, you can get rid of Guts.

Shotgun is hard to pull off, as it occupies both hands.

Assets (16)	Events (9)	Skills (6)	Weaknesses
1x Daisy's Tote Bag 2x Magnifying Glass 2x Medical Texts 2x Old Book of Lore 2x Shrivelling 2x Holy Rosary 2x Dr. Milan Christopher 1x Research Librarian 2x Arcane Studies	2x Blinding Light 2x Emergency Cache 2x Mind over Matter 1x Shortcut 2x Ward of Protection	2x Deduction 2x Guts 2x Unexpected Courage	1x Random Basic Weakness 1x The Necronomicon

Overview: Daisy’s deck is heavily focused on clue gathering and support. It’s filled with tomes, out of which Old Book of Lore is the key one, allowing picking up missing cards.

Notable weaknesses: Deck relies quite heavily on pulling Old Book of Lore early on. Once you have it, you can mitigate lack of luck for both you and Roland, but you need to get it first. Therefore…

Opening Hand: I almost always mulligan if I don’t get OBoL (Or Research Librarian) . If you draw an otherwise asset full hand and Roland was also lucky enough to secure a strong weapon, you might keep it. I’d still spend an action for drawing a card every now and then until one of above is secured.

Almost a custom made card for Daisy

 

Choices: I went with bit of a spellcasting thrown into the mix, hence Arcane Studies (truly for Will mostly, as Daisy consistently manages even shroud of 4, thanks to her other assets), Guts and Holy Rosary are added to ensure successful casting. Daisy’s Agility is very low, so I decided to give up on any Evade attempts (unless with Blinding Light) so no boosts for Agility are included (No Hyperawareness, Manual Dexterity etc.) You should be able to either draw some means of dealing with minor opponents or wait for Roland to come and help.

Guts in both decks can be used on either of Investigators, sometimes helping the other in need. I chose Guts over Fearless, as the extra icon comes in handy much more often (Daisy’s Sanity is high anyway). Being able to for sure pass the test for Shriveling is of higher importance.

I gave up on Drawn to the Flame, as it typically only saves one action (Daisy should be able to pick up clues using regular means anyway), only generating issues. Flashlight wasn’t included as with Daisy’s high Intellect it would have been an unnecessary overkill.

Tricks: Use Old Book of Lore at all times. Use it to secure Dr. Milan as early as possible, with his boost and the resources he provides you’ll be set-up for a whole scenario. Whenever possible, help Roland dig for weapons, Vicious Blows etc. 

Also ensure to have some means for dealing with enemies, also using OBoL.

Later on you can use Encyclopedia, even taking a hit for it, to boost your Combat and kill an enemy. If enemy-free, you might boost Roland’s Combat (if he’s face against a boss, or found himself without a weapon and surrounded by enemies or even Intellect (so you both will vacuum-clean all the clues lying around.

Quick look into the book and Daisy gets super strong for few minutes.

 

Research Librarian serves multiple purposes, increases chances of drawing OBoL, works as a Wild Card book to be summoned from the deck according to your needs and provides extra Stamina. Once he’s out, sacrifice him at the first opportunity, to make room for Dr. Milan.

You can play Shortcut to move into Roland’s location with impunity, even if engaged with an enemy.

Upgrades: First picks are 2 Encyclopedias. Upgraded Blinding Light is also a strong choice due to increased damage output. I wouldn’t consider taking 1 XP version of Magnifying Glass, it basically only reduces the cost, you’re going to run with it in your hand anyway.

Later on you have to choose between Cryptic Research and Bulletproof Vest. I’d pick at least one copy of each.

It’s not easy to give up on anything to make space for new cards. I ditched one copy of Medical Texts and Guts for Encyclopedias. To decide, what to get rid of next, you must check yourself, which cards didn’t prove useful enough (In my case it was Shortcut and later on the librarian, as Cryptic Research provides enough deck searching capabilities and he’s quite useless, if drawn after playing Dr. Milan, anyway).

Extra Notes:  On one hand Roland can benefit dearly of Daisy’s toms and Cryptic research. On the other, they are both versatile enough to manage even if split. Therefore you have 2 options of playing them and should adapt your approach based on what the current game status is. 

Teamwork and planning are the key!

 It is, surprisingly, the most efficient team we’ve used so far. Stay tuned for next ones, though! Should you decide to try them out, let me know the outcome! 

 All images are courtesy of cardgamedb.com and fantasyflightgames.com