Silas Marsh on the Road

Hi guys,

I started playing Arkham Horror not long ago, and have only tried a few different builds on some investigator. I stumbled upon the card Dark Horse the other day and thought this is quite an interesting thing to pull off. I tried to build a deck around this card with William Yorick, but the out come is not very satisfying since he needs resource to go with his ability - which will disable Dark Horse since it requires you to have no resource at all. So today I try to build a deck around this card with Silas, because I think his ability should fit with this strategy better.

The main idea here is to combo the effect of Dark Horse with Fire Axe, since both of them require you to have no resource at all. With Dark Horse, you have +1 to each of your skills, while Fire Axe lets you deal +1 damage. Also, you can spend 1 resource to have +2 for this attack - that's where Madame Labranche comes in to play. With Dark Horse, Madame Labranche and Fire Axe in play, you can have an attack with 7 that deals 2 damage with out having to commit anything yet. That's fairly strong at level 0 in my opinion.

For the other asset card, I think Rabbit's Foot is an ok choice for a drawing engine for the deck. I also considered having Cherished Keepsake as a horror stats boots. I think it's optional base on what you are dealing with.

Every other cards in this deck, as you can see, are skill cards and event cards that have the resource cost of 0-1. This because most of the time you will be a broke ass dude sitting around with no resource at all.

The events I chose are Lucky!, Live and Learn since these can guarantee that you will not fail at a skill test, and Scrounge for Supplies lets you find and reuse your stuffs again from the discard pile. I also considered adding 2 copies of Emergency Cache since I might need resources at some point in the game; but I think it's more an optional than a must-have card in this deck.

I focus mostly on skill cards since they make good use of Silas' ability. My first choices are Overpower, Daring and Resourceful, since they give you good stats for combat actions. Also, Overpower and Daring give some drawing engine to the deck, while Resourceful along with Scrounge for Supplies - as mentioned above, provide some good recycling choices.

Able Bodied is also a good choice, since most of the time you will stay with just 1-2 Item asset. Inspiring Presence can be a good combo with Madame Labranche, and Fearless provides some horror healing. And because you will be committing alot, there is a good chance you are left with nothing but a Last Chance card in your hand.

I have not think it through on how I should upgrade this deck with VP, but my first ideas are 2 Brute Force, a Relic Hunter and a Nightmare Bauble. Nightmare Bauble is a good choice for Silas since Dream Parasite is just another version of your weakness, which can be make-up with other skill cards. You can also exchange Madame Labranche for On Your Own, which lets you play event cards with resource cost reduced by 2 (and we mostly have event cards with resource cost of 0-1).

These are some idea I have about this deck. Please let me know what you think about this, and I would love if you have some suggestions to improve this build. The first downside of this build that I found is that - it doesn't have any mean of damage and/or horror healing except for Fearless; and it's also kinda weak against and test treacheries. So if you have any suggestions about this, please let me know.