Waitress by day, superhero by night ! With her trusty hatchet, costume, mask, gadgets and her young sidekick, Agnes is ready to use her superpowers to take on the Mythos and save Arkham !

Introduction

• I mentioned in Part 1 that Chapter 2 Carolyn may end up eclipsing the original, but this may also be the case for Agnes Baker, with Chapter 2's Marie Lambeau coming around looking to emulate what Chapter 1 Agnes was with very similar cards (Bloodstone vs Holy Rosary, Cosmic Guidance vs Fearless, Offering bowl vs Forbidden Knowledge ...)

  • In a way, this may be the last hurrah for Agnes's play-style as well, before the new and updated version takes her place.

• Besides the odd "I'll see you in hell!" and Ghastly Revelation, does it ever get more heroic than Deliverance ?

• Agnes is here to save the day, take 5 action turns, snatch clues from high shroud locations, damage enemies, Jury-Rig Carolyn's … science book ??? (She just gave her a bookmark) and draw more encounter cards than ever (What's a hero without their villains ?) !

• Check out Part 1 : Agent Carolyn

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She's gotta be Strong () !

• With Eyes of the Dreamer, she can repeatedly gather clues using her .

  • Eyes of the Dreamer is very obviously the target of Eldritch Brand, guaranteeing its presence right from the start of the game.
  • The added benefit of choosing from multiple tokens is really useful when dealing with difficult locations, as without it she would probably have to expend Sparrow Mask uses that are generally better spent elsewhere (Hatchet throws, evades and treacheries).

• Her is bolstered by the Agnes staple Peter Sylvestre and, more occasionally, by Sparrow Mask, which replenishes anytime she uses Forbidden Knowledge or Painkillers. The mask will also have plenty of opportunities to recharge thanks to the extra encounter cards she will draw from Drawn to the Flame and Deliverance.

  • In fact, the deck probably wouldn't be so comfortable with these extra encounter cards if her wasn't so good to begin with !

• As for more enemy-related uses, Spectral Razor is a mystic staple that doesn't demand too much of an explanation, but the star of the show here is actually Stall for Time : Super easy to land, never goes to waste, stalls non-elite for multiple turns, can exhaust enemies engaged with Carolyn for Gray's Anatomy / Alice Luxley purposes. Just stellar.

And she's gotta be fast () !

• Hatchet is an excellent Agnes card, as it pairs well with her ability and with Long Shot when dealing with 3 health enemies.

• To bolster what starts as an already decent base 5 skill value when using Hatchet, we have Peter and Sparrow Mask, as well as Jury-Rig for consistency purposes. It is otherwise there to target Carolyn's Gray's Anatomy, making oversucceeding by 2-3 that much more reliable.

  • The former 2 cards also allow her to evade most enemies in a pinch and face treacheries fairly well.

• The aforementioned Jury-Rig and Hatchet also open up shenanigans with Carolyn's Synergy package, allowing her to get a card to complete the Rainbow set. The best application here is for Carolyn to target herself or Agnes with Gray's Anatomy for bonus healing before using Call for Backup for a full (damage) heal.

  • The +5 / +5 dmg Gang Up don't hurt of course ! Or rather, they hurt that little bit harder.

And she's gotta be larger than life ! (Larger than li-ife)

• Captivating Performance works quite well here as a source of additional actions. On any given turn, Eyes of the Dreamer can give you Investigate/Activate, and Hatchet gives you Fight/Activate. From there, there are the usual Move/Draw, Play actions for your assets or events (Namely Spectral Razor, Stall for Time, Jury-Rig, Drawn to the Flame and even Dark Memory), or Evade attempts using Sparrow Mask.

• As a late Campaign purchase, we have Charisma + Memories of Another Life, looking to fetch Leo De Luca. Of course, there are a lot more options available than Leo (including the simple, tried and true Shrivelling), but he just tends to be the better pick very often. He combines very well with the aforementioned Captivating Performance, making it easier to fulfill its trigger.

• Deliverance is such an awesome card ! Once Agnes is setup, the encounter deck can generally be broken down as follows

  • Testless treacheries : Darn, i guess. Someone was gonna take them eventually anyway.
  • Treacheries with skill tests (90%+ are or tests) : Bring it on !
  • Enemies : Every enemy engaged with Agnes won't be able to stop Carolyn from Sciencing all over them.

• And as a payoff for these 2 extra cards drawn by Agnes, Carolyn gets to spend 2 rounds unbothered by the encounter deck, and Agnes still gets a small reprieve from the onslaught.

  • For the record, i drafted my weakness on arkham.build and wound up with Overzealous. I laughed.

• With so many more encounter cards potentially thrown at her, we have a Leather Coat and Painkillers if the encounter deck gets violent, Peter Sylvestre to handle residual Horror that doesn't need to be placed on Agnes herself, Deny Existence as a catch-all solution, and a Medic on speed dial.

  • Finally, Memories of Another Life can grab some life-saving card to bail Agnes out late in the scenario, but even the 'default' Leo De Luca still comes with an extra 2/2 soak if necessary.

Upgrade Plan

(View at arkham-starter.com)

Conclusion

• Survivor 0-2 is such an awesome card pool, just a grab-bag of everything you can need to supplement you main gameplay. Having more than half of my deck made of cards was not what I expected when the deck started, but it just came together so well.
• I was shocked to find out this is the first Agnes deck including Hatchet on arkham.db. That card is just so, so good with Sparrow Mask and Forbidden Knowledge, but I suppose Shrivelling is a hard card to dethrone...
• There are few cards that fee as awesome to play as Deliverance. That moment where the whole mythos comes crashing down on you is just super tense, and that reprieve when that next mythos phase begins and you realize there are no cards to draw for anyone is immensely satisfying.
• During my last playthrough when I took these 2 decks for a blind run of Dark Matter, Agnes ended up gathering more clues than Carolyn while Carolyn heavily outdamaged Agnes, which felt like a fun inversion of how that duo tends to go (Cluever Carolyn, Fighter Agnes).

To create similar guides, this is Valentin1331's template, which I drew inspiration from for this guide, here. I also used the Upgrade tool and Thumbnail tool from arkham.starter.