Bless you fast damage! (29XP) | HC 1K Series

Bless you fast damage!

I'm continuing my series with a deck every Sunday and using the new Hemlock Vale cards. This deck is a Mystic (you heard me right) which uses an exciting new combo to great effect...

Overview

• This deck generates 1 per turn and 2 damage as (one per phase) while refilling Sparrow Mask. The engine behind this is Spirit of Humanity, Forbidden Knowledge, The Key of Solomon and Jessica Hyde, with the latter two healing off all damage and horror incurred by the former. Note you don't have to fully assemble the engine for it to start working, Forbidden Knowledge with The Key and Keep Faith works great - as does just The Key and Spirit of Humanity.

• When you aren't dealing damage you can readily cleric for your group. As Spirit of Humanity puts two tokens in the bag, when paired with The Key you can think of it as healing off its cost and then healing 2 damage/horror on top of that. With Jessica Hyde it's even better, taking the damage from Spirit and leaving The Key to heal the incurred horror plus one extra damage/horror. Even without Spirit, Keep Faith provides chunky healing with The Key.

• Take Heart, Unrelenting and At a Crossroads draw 14 cards to assemble your combos, while Heirloom of Hyperborea draws a card for every spell. Both Read the Signs •• and Spectral Razor •• are recurable (especially with Favor of the Sun), and the Heirloom can trigger more than once in a turn. Take Heart is still worth keeping even in a bless deck as it hits vastly more than it misses - just make sure to use it on tests!

• Combo decks need money, so Take Heart, Forbidden Knowledge and Voice of Ra all provide upfront cash. If you play Spirit of Humanity and The Key of Solomon early, you can always reverse the polarity and add tokens for healing plus cash from the Key before waking up the engine.

• Brand of Cthugha and Clairvoyance do their usual Mystic things, with their charges going a bit further with the inclusion of spell events. Brand was selected in particular as it doesn't waste charges, and so pairs well with the damage this deck is built around.

Campaign starter and planned progression

Two Arcane Research makes this a 29 XP deck. 0 XP deck is as follows (and link here):

Candidate spells for Arcane Research upgrades are below, and should be upgraded whenever is convenient (Brand of Cthugha and Clairvoyance cost a further 1XP to upgrade):

• Read the Signs → Read the Signs ••

• Spectral Razor → Spectral Razor ••

• Brand of Cthugha • → Brand of Cthugha ••••

• Clairvoyance → Clairvoyance ••• (→ Clairvoyance ••••• if possible)

A recommended order of purchases/upgrades for remaining cards is:

• Shrivelling → Brand of Cthugha •

• Meditative Trance → Jessica Hyde

• Arcane Initiate → At a Crossroads

• 1 x Fearless → 1 x The Key of Solomon

• 1 x Sixth Sense → 1 x Spirit of Humanity

• Occult Reliquary

• 1 x Fearless → 1 x The Key of Solomon

• 1 x Wither → 1 x Spirit of Humanity

• Guts → Unrelenting

• Signum Crucis → Favor of the Sun

Final thoughts

This deck feels borderline broken with how powerful it is! It deals fast damage, is an extremely potent cleric and can clue flex all in one. The recharging of Sparrow Mask is icing on the cake, and makes you robust against treacheries. People have touched on Spirit of Humanity and The Key of Solomon already, and they've touched on Sparrow Mask being great on Agnes, but I feel that Mystics are inherently a non-obvious concept because they tend towards tech. The bonus engine here is Heirloom of Hyperborea with bless and Spectral Razor plus Read the Signs, getting some real work out of your signature asset!

As an additional deck concept, Carolyn can also use this engine (with Well Prepared with the Key, Research Librarian so you only need one copy of The Key, and Field Agent/Beat Cop to make use of the healing) but that is more combo-ey whereas this works even with half the engine built. Overall for me this deck worked excellently while utilising new combos that have only arrived with Hemlock Vale. Let me know your thoughts, and if there are any combos you're itching to play with The Key of Solomon?