Do your friends play too slow? Do you have work the next day? Are you missing a 5 letter word in the crossword with the hint “low ranking member of British nobility”?

Baron is your answer. As an ally that comes into play for free and with no action cost, Baron Samedi is king of ally efficiency. Additionally, once he is down you can began the amazing trick of skipping entire rounds (mythos included)! Here’s a hypothetical:

Imagine you are in a 4 player campaign. The scenario features three agendas with a doom threshold of 4 each. Normally, this would mean you have a 12 round game, but this isn’t a normal game, in this game you get the clutch turn 1 Baron. You play him for free and immediately tap him to add one doom.

Mythos phase hits and you go up to 2/4 doom. During the next investigation phase you tap him again. 3/4 doom is on the board and you are now slated to advance the agenda in just two rounds of play.

In total, we have saved 2 rounds and prevented 8 mythos cards from being drawn. Honestly I’m not even sure why they printed Ward of Protection when Baron exists.

But it gets better. When the agenda advances we can remove the doom from Baron and repeat this process. If you consider there are three agendas total we have ended up saving 6 rounds and prevented 24 mythos cards from being drawn. Go ahead and play on hard or expert if you want, the game will be long over before the consequences of your choices catch up with you.

And that’s not all. I said Baron was king for a reason, because his text box includes a cannot be discarded condition, he cannot be discarded by any mythos card. Crypt chill can get a taste of its own medicine while Baron just leaves them on read as the card resolves and fades into the lonely encounter discard pile.

Play Baron. Play speed.