Silas Marsh Can Only Fail Upward (Hard Mode)

Prepare your mind to receive the wondrous Silas Marsh, who spends 6 exp on 2 x Eucatastrophe and proceeds to dominate the game.

After Silas buys that upgrade, this is how the main combo of his deck works (headache warning):

1. Draw Eucatastrophe and have used Resourceful already, so that Resourceful is in the discard pile.

2. Fail a skill test by getting a total skill value of 0.

3. Play Eucatastrophe and turn whatever token was drawn into the Elder Sign.

4. Use Silas' Elder Sign ability to add the Resourceful from his discard pile to the skill test.

5. If the skill test is successful, Resourceful will return itself to Silas' hand and can bring back another survivor card (I recommend the Eucatastrophe that was just played.)

6. Do something else, using Resourceful to recycle some other card like Live and Learn or Take Heart.

7. Return to step 1.

Silas makes the Chaos Bag his special friend. There is a critical mass of cards he can reach where he essentially cannot fail when he wants to succeed. This combo is not a completely costless process, so throwing the kitchen sink at some random encounter card probably isn't necessary.

There are three ways a token pull can go down:

1st: Success. Moving on.

2nd: Fail so hard the total skill value is zero, including autofail. Refer to combo.

3rd: Fail a little. This can be remedied with Lucky! or Live and Learn, but is generally the worst outcome.

From exhausting all cases of token pulls, we see that, yes, this Silas deck excels the more punishing the chaos bag becomes. Have fun with that.

Tips: Mulligan: Pre Eucatastrophe purchase, keep a weapon. Otherwise, keep Eucatastrophe, Resourceful, a weapon.

Don't just get resources with Drawing Thin. The deck's just not that expensive and the more combo pieces the better. Also, for the "purists?" out there, Drawing Thin is just an enabler and actually isn't required. Some Emergency Cache could be just fine.

Resourceful is best if it is in the discard pile, which means we need to be recycling Take Heart and Live and Learn and Lucky! over and over again to keep our combo running.

If we get both Eucatastrophe then the combos get unreal. This is because Resourceful can be used twice per combo cycle and therefore can bring back both Eucatastrophe. At which point, other skills, such as Quick Thinking can be use multiple times per turn.

Upgrades! Yes, 2 x Peter Sylvestre

Feel free to upgrade into a single copy of cards such as Fearless, Rise to the Occasion, Stroke of Luck, and Survival Instinct. Single copies will be just fine.

When upgrading, I'd personally leave the double copies of "important" skills like Resourceful and Quick Thinking, but most everything else can go to single copies since the deck draws so much.

After that, I'd start using a Fortune or Fate and just keep buying the exile cards back.

I hope that makes sense. Please leave comments or questions. Have fun!