Learning True Solo (#4) With Jim Culver

This is the fourth in the series, You can follow the "Derived from" links back to the previous decks if you'd like to see what we talked about before.

Today we're going to talk about "Weird" builds and how valuable token manipulation can be in True Solo.

Note that this deck requires playing according to Taboo, more on that in a bit.

And No One does token manipulation better than Jacqueline Fine Jim Culver! (shut up Jackie, no one asked you)

Mulligan

• dig for: Hand Assets, Olive McBride
• keep: Backpack, Bandolier, Sixth Sense

General Playstyle

So except the odd choice of combat asset, this Jim list is a pretty standard "solo" Mystic - you have your ally, your investigate asset, your fight asset, and a spread of events that help you, and then skills and support cards to round it out.

Jim also works well to demonstrate one of the two big strengths that Mystic brings to the table in True Solo: Chaos Bag Manipulation. (The other is "doing everything with ".) Just by being the investigator Jim makes the bag more forgiving, adding 1-3 more "0"-modifier tokens to the bag, and especially in later scenarios the token modifiers can be extremely punishing, so blanking them is even more valuable than usual.

Mystic also has several strong manipulation effects (although our ability to fit them all into Jim is somewhat limited, Jacqueline Fine is technically better at it if you want to go all-in.) such as Dark Prophecy and Olive McBride

This means that, unlike Roland who wants to get testless clues, or Wendy who needs testless damage to shore up weaknesses, Jim can kind of just... take tests, and usually succeed.

True Solo is about having Fun and doing Weird Things

Nothing is stopping you from doing weird things in multiplayer, but at least to me there's a tiny bit more satisfaction out of pulling it off in the least forgiving gameplay mode. Hopefully as you play True Solo more you'll find inspiration to build your own decks and do your own weird things.

Exercising those 2nd Amendment Rights

In 2024 .35 Winchester was mutated by taboo to now trigger its additional damage effect on any token that resolves with a "non-negative" modifier. This includes, obviously , the 0 token, most effects, and in Jim's case, . Depending on the campaign and difficulty, this can mean that Jim is looking at almost half the bag being able to trigger the effect. (Carcosa on Standard difficult, for example, has 7 non-negative modifiers for Jim in a bag of 14 tokens at the start of the campaign.) and Nkosi Mabati can push that even higher in most campaigns.

Jim is one of the most consistent users of the weapon, although Guardians with access to Mystic, like Sister Mary are also very effective with the weapon because cards are more common in guardian so they can push the bag well over 50% while still retaining access to effects like Olive McBride and Dark Prophecy.

Most non-elite enemies are 3 health or less and Jim is also not particularly good at evasion, so although evasion is quite good in true solo, having a fairly reliable 3-damage 1-action attack is basically just as effective as evading.

Jazz Solo

Sixth Sense could easily be any other investigation spell. But in true solo 1 clue per action is usually enough in the first scenario; and upgraded Sixth Sense (4) is notable because you can action compress investigates even on 1 locations, so long as both are revealed. Also, importantly, Sixth Sense (4) works as a quasi-flashlight if a low-shroud location is available, even if it is empty of clues (since you investigate at both locations and choose which shroud to test against). If you are concerned about total setup time, Read the Signs should work for the first few scenarios instead when shroud averages are lower, but you'll want to upgrade to Sixth Sense (4) by the middle of the campaign, possibly sooner if the campaign features large maps or high shroud.

Bandolier helps you hold the trumpet at the same time as the gun, the Backpack will hit 8 different cards in this deck, so it's pretty consistent in helping you find critical pieces. Emergency Cache is there to help with the high set-up cost of the assets and is another target for backpack.

Cleaning Kit is probably the least important card in the deck and can be replaced with anything else (like two Keep Faith perhaps) if you are certain you won't encounter many enemies in the first few scenarios - generally 10 bullets (both guns) should be enough, but there's a few scenarios that will put a lot of pressure on your ammo, like Ice and Death III in Edge of the Earth. Similarly, if you're expecting a lot of asset discarding treacheries, it might be prudent to keep these or replace them with Shrivelling if you're worried about being forced to discard the gun(s).

Olive McBride is a central part of the deck's gameplan, but unfortunately ally search in mystic is very limited and Calling in Favors doesn't really function without a disposable ally to target. Mulliganing all 5 cards hoping to draw into Olive is a reasonable strategy.

Side Deck

2 copies of Nkosi Mabati and a Charisma is the first and most important upgrade you can make for this deck. Nkosi naming lets you treat basically every non- symbol as a skull with 0 modifier, which will super-charge the gameplan with the .35 Winchester and make Sixth Sense much more reliable (since that many 0s means even 4-shroud locations are reliably beatable.) - The deck should be considered incomplete until you fit these in. (I'd probably cut Ward of Protection at first, with a plan to cut Drawn to the Flame for Ward of Protection (2) after upgrading the Sixth Senses).

Olive McBride (2), Defiance (2), Hypnotic Gaze (2) and Sixth Sense (4) are generically good upgrades for this deck that you will probably take in every campaign eventually, victory points permitting.

Ghastly Possession is a more action efficient way to reload the winchester, although it does add 1 less bullet, it costs 0 resources and 0 actions and both of those are immensely valuable considerations in true solo. Also makes Backpack slightly worse, so consider cutting the Backpack for something else if you do make this swap.

Backpack (2) is a good upgrade too but it's from "Return to the Forgotten Age" which may make it difficult to own a copy, sorry. You can just pay 2 xp and pretend your backpack searches 12 now instead if you like.

the various and cards are mentioned because Dark Prophecy, Hypnotic Gaze and .35 Winchester all interact with them; although bear in mind that they will force additional tokens to be revealed and tokens are -2 unless Accursed is committed to the actual test. Also please note that Sixth Sense and it's upgrade have not been taboo'd to function with all symbols, and or will not trigger Sixth Sense's additional effect.

Emergency Cache (3) and Venturer are an alternative to Cleaning Kit although they probably also require a second copy of Charisma : the upside is this would give you an extreme amount of soak and loads of ammunition, at the cost of time. I don't think there's a campaign where I'd definitely want this much shooting, although Edge of the Earth comes close, but it's certainly a 'fun' idea...

Yes, sure, Ok, but what About that Rod of Carnamagos Ruling?

So the short version is I think it's cheesy. (for anyone not sure what I'm talking about, look at the ruling on Rod of Carnamagos's page.) For what Jim is doing with the Winchester and eventually sixth sense (4) it is more effective at triggering than Olive McBride would be, at the cost of giving up actually having Jim's Trumpet in play. Jim's Trumpet only heals horror though, so this isn't a huge loss, and cutting Olive makes it possible to run Nkosi Mabati without Charisma, or to fit the Venturers in more easily.

If you're ok with the Rod ruling yourself, +2 Rod, -2 Olive, and just commit the trumpet like a skill card is probably a better version of this deck.

Grotesque Statue

The other elephant in the room here is that a version of this deck which used Shrivelling instead of the winchester, dropped the bandolier and cleaning kit, and ran Grotesque Statue and Scavenging instead would probably also be technically stronger. (see the classic Invincible Jim, which I believe was the first deck to show this particular combo off, for more details). But That's not nearly as much fun as using a shotgun! right?

Remarks

Well, another entry in the series, and another failure to stick to the "1 Expansion + Revised Core" goal. I don't think this is a coincidence, like "Ashcan" Pete, Jim is a Dunwich investigator, and Core+Dunwich Solo Jim is pretty well solved... DecksFactory has a great modern example (although their upgrades include Edge of the Earth cards, the 0xp deck is pure dunwich+core).

Also in this case I was really inspired by the taboo ruling, and there was no way to combine .35 Winchester and Jim Culver and keep that guideline anyway, so it was doomed from the start!

The next investigator will be from Path to Carcosa, I'll try harder to stick to core+1 next time too, since I'd like the series to be friendly to players with smaller collections and so far only Roland has really been new player friendly.