AGNES ASKS:

Credit: That Mitchell and Webb Look

I felt like doing an occasional series of decks where you ask yourself "are we the baddies"? Whether it's calling down the darkest powers, looting ancient treasures or casually sacrificing your friends, these investigators have gone rotten. Is the cost worth it?

Agnes stared around the canteen. The creatures were dead. Everyone was dead. Blood splattered the walls and floor. Some of it was hers. Irene - was that her name? - lay next to her, a crimson pool around her throat. Agnes absently wiped the blood from her kitchen knife. She would need another new assistant. "You need no-one," the pendant around her neck whispered into her mind, "you need no-one to be Queen."

This is alt. Agnes as I think she is meant to be played. None of this turning up with Bandages and Jessica Hyde to take the edge off. This Agnes is a chaotic, blood magic wielding force of occult destruction for your foes and, if you aren't careful, friends alike.

It is one of the most fun and thematic decks I've built. It's also one of the hardest to play. There is an enormous amount you need to keep track of to avoid dying or, worse, dooming out the entire investigator team and humanity with it.

• Overview

• Main Strategy

• Playing The Blood Mage

• Finding your cards

• The Doom is come upon me!

• Ah Ha Ha Ha Staying Alive!

• Upgrade Path

• Use Blood-Rite to burn through your deck and enemies alike.

• Use your life's blood to recycle your spells to kill off enemies and find clues over and over again.

• Secure unlimited uses of Pendant of the Queen for action acceleration and testless clues.

• Doom your colleagues by recycling the worst weakness in the game to hand the world to the Great Old Ones at lightening speed (is this right, Ed.?).

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• This deck runs around Occult Lexicon and its bonded card Blood-Rite. With Lexicon down, Blood-Rite will provide an endless source of card draw, economy and testless damange. Early in the game you should be playing and reshuffling Blood-Rite whenever viable - whether with the Lexicon's ability or Agnes' own.

• Once you have started to thin your deck, you can think about what you need to be re-using most of. Primarily this deck is about enemy management, so you will likely want Spectral Razor if you are dealing with non-elite enemies or Blood Eclipse for elites. Don't reshuffle spells out of habit - focus on the key cards that make your character work in your team at that point in the scenario.

• Hallowed Mirror is there to keep you alive. You don't need it early on, but you will need it in the mid-game in any remotely challenging scenario. Don't throw it away.

• Once you have a minimal deck you can recycle Soothing Melody and your key spells over and over. In particular you can re-cycle Recharge to ensure you never run out of charges for Pendant of the Queen. Later on in a campaign you will do the same with Brand of Cthugha.

• Blood-Rite, Soothing Melody and Heirloom of Hyperborea plus your 25 card deck size mean you are going to go through your deck very fast. Don't be tempted to burn cards for fun though. Always have in mind what you are looking for and what you want to be recycling when the deck gets low.

• Backpack finds your Lexicon. It also finds you Segment of Onyx, Hallowed Mirror and Emergency Cache. You should be aiming to get Backpack in your opening hand if at all possible and it's usually my first upgrade.

• Heirloom of Hyperborea is a nice early game card to run through your deck more quickly and absorb some damage, but once you've loaded it up with damage and horror it's time to replace it with Hallowed Mirror.

• Arcane Initiate is an expendable star in this deck. Because her action is fast you can be strategic about whether you use it before or after casting (and potentially shuffling in) spells. If the doom is going to be problematic, she is easily removed to fuel one of your spells.

• As your deck gets thinner, always be aware of what you have left in your deck and what's in your discard pile. You need this information when deciding which cards to discard to Blood-Rite, when to draw deeper and faster and when to hold back, and crucially, when to aim for a reshuffle. You won't be able to avoid reshuffling the deck for ever, so be strategic about when you do it. In particular...

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• Dark Memory is one of the worst investigator weaknesses in the game. And because you are going through your deck so quickly you are likely to see it at least once, possibly more and it's going to lose you the scenario unless you are careful.

• Ideally you get Dark Memory early, so you have the whole deck plus a period of recycling to get through before you might see it again. Arcane Intiate can help you here, because she can fetch it.

• If you can't avoid getting Dark Memory when your deck is low, then try to hold onto it as you finish burning through your deck - so it's one of the first cards into the discard pile after the reshuffle.

• Don't forget Dark Memory is a spell and Agnes can use her ability to reduce its cost by 2. Don't reshuffle it though, obviously. Unless you are really are set on being a villian.

• Achieving things with this deck is very simple. You have enormous card draw, resource generation and damage and that's just Blood-Rite. It's the not dying that is hard.

• Be intentional about what you reshuffle. If you have a strong cluer in your game you are unlikely to need Read the Signs enough to warrent spending life on it. If you are in a damage heavy scenario then Blood Eclipse is going to be too expense to keep reusing and you might prefer Recharge for Brand of Cthugha instead. Re-using Ward of Protection feels brilliant, but is 1 damage and 1 horror proportionate for the encounter deck you are playing?

• Hallowed Mirror is your staying alive tool. Even so, you need to use Soothing Melody with care. It draws you a card and that might bring you closer to Dark Memory or mean you find yourself running out of cards in your deck when you don't want to. Be concious of whether you want to reshuffle it. If so, you can use your health if your sanity is weak but health strong, or you can just heal for two if not. Remember that losing the Lv. 3 Mirror doesn't remove the melodies like the level 0 version does.

• In particularly agrresive campaigns you might also want to include a copy of Earthly Serenity for a burst of healing and to combo with Recharge.

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• You will spend a lot of time wondering why oh why don't we have Read the Signs (2) and Spectral Razor (2) yet?!

• Watch out for the traps! You might be tempted by In the Thick of It or Arcane Research. Don't do it. You need every point of health and you don't have the sanity to manage trauma from the start. If you want to accelerate your experience gaining, then Delve Too Deep is your best option.

• If you're in a damage heavy campaign then Earthly Serenity is a great back-up to Hallowed Mirror. If you find yourself with multiple charge cards then Winds of Power will make sure you never go short.

• Simliarly, in an enemy heavy campaign, you might want to consider upgrading Blinding Light and / or Storm of Spirits rather than replacing them.

• Dayana Esperence gives you extra soak and saves you health and cards by reusing a spell for you. At the same time, Arcane Initiate is too important to lose - so you probably want to take Charisma with her.

• Close the Circle is a fantastic card once you've upgraded into a few of the duel-class cards. It will usually come into play with three charges and Recharge and / or Winds of Power will keep it powered up. Note that you can use a basic "play" action to play Recharge but not event cards that modify basic actions like Spectral Razor or Read the Signs.

• Ward of Protection is an obvious upgrade - but you knew that.

• If you would rather find clues than fight monsters, well no worries. Agnes has that covered for you as well. Switch in Divination, Drawn to the Flame and Dowsing Rod for Brand, Blood Eclipse and Razor.

• Late in a campaign Deny Existence(5) accelerates your deck to an absurd level - especially on Dayana.

Link to the 0xp deck

I never like being too perscriptive with these. In general I would say you want to get Backpack and Segment of Onyx at the end of your first scenario and then upgrade your Lexicon and Mirror as soon as you are able.

If you are low on XP then Winds of Power is a decent interim alternative to Recharge. I would not recommend tempting the Mythos with Recharge(1).

As you might have gathered - one of the things that makes this deck work is the 25 card deck size. You don't want to be using Agnes' ability to run multiple versions of the same spell - at least not until we get Spectral Razor and Read the Signs upgrades.

Enjoy and try not to kill too many people...

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