mellchia · 106
This deck design is actually a 2.1 version. I ran Sefina through Night of the Zealot and Dunwich Legacy campaigns (0.1 and 1.1 respectively), both were solo play. This deck list represents my latest iteration and I am content with the card pool. Also shout out to Roscoe1891. Some of the discussion below (notably with Elusive and Hypnotic Gaze) came from reviewing the deck Rousseau's Model. Card pool was drawn out independent of each other but the same conclusion to the foundation of a Rousseau deck is notable.
Sefina's greatest strength is her starting game card draw ability. I think other decks on ArkhamDB touch upon the theme of consistency with her. She pulls a third of her starting deck (13 out of 38 cards) opening hand and gets to keep in some form or fashion most of it. This gives her a deeper access into the deck to start with, increasing the likelihood of beginning with ideal starting tools such as Lone Wolf, etc. It also gives her more consistency in pulling cards on the opening hand.
Her starting hand draw ability provides action efficiency as well. Where it would take another investigator an extra five actions to draw those cards, Sefina pulls it immediately. And where most other investigators would have to discard down to 8, she can save up to five events for later. This gives Sefina access to the specific card she needs, when she needs it. These events are mostly protected except from Stars of Hyades, so she continues to have access to them.
On top of this starting game efficiency, a number of and cards can be split into two categories: cards with dual actions or cards with free actions. have access to a majority of "free actions" or action adding cards. Pickpocketing is a free card draw, although as a result of an evade action. Lone Wolf is a free resource pull. Leo De Luca and Quick Thinking add to the action pool. Think on Your Feet can be a life saver and, in my experience, can also win you the game with the evade + move.
Where Sefina shines is not in the access to these cards - I think everyone would argue "Skids" O'Toole does the action count better. When you combine some of the free and dual action cards from the set with those of , this deck really becomes powerful. Forbidden Knowledge being free resource pull is amazing. Combine it with Lone Wolf and the drip economy (or economy over time) is really amazing. Blinding Light is an evade + Sneak Attack all in one and the upgraded Blinding Light is even cheaper. Hypnotic Gaze is both attack cancellation but also the potential to do damage back to the enemy without worrying about a skill test. Uncage the Soul has the Fast keyword and reduces the cost of spells, essentially "free" resources to play with.
Finally, The Painted World allows "re-use" event cards under her card. So instead of having just 2 Blinding Light or Drawn to the Flame, I potentially have access to three or more. This gives Sefina continued access to Events over again and without spending the action to draw the original card.
The low stat is a bit of a problem for investigating. Fortunately there are a few cards that help assuage the issue. Rite of Seeking and Drawn to the Flame become the main investigative tools. Given Sefina's high , Rite of Seeking is actually pretty amazing against locations with higher shroud values or locations where you need to pull multiple clues from. Success is fairly consistent. Drawn to the Flame gives Sefina automatic discovery of clues, but she has to pull from the encounter deck. So far this has yet to be a problem since the majority of encounter cards test on . This could be trickier to deal with in Paths to Carcosa, so a single Perception was added as a mitigation tool. Sometimes Sefina will also just need to investigate bare, so Perception and the added Flashlight helps with low shroud, single clue locations. After experience is earned, Flashlight is replaced by Lockpicks
The low stat is also tricky to deal with. Backstab, Sneak Attack, and Blinding Light give Sefina access to some damage causing cards. However Shrivelling is her only consistent fight card. So she really needs to pick and choose when she fights. Some enemies are just brutal, especially with Hunter key word. Hypnotic Gaze should be reserved for when necessary.
There are certain cards that I tend to avoid and are not in the deck that may be common in other decks. Due to the low , Burglary is not as strong of a play as it is in "Skids" O'Toole or Jenny Barnes decks. I personally dislike Elusive since it does not truly evade but only provides a free disengage. Your own mileage may vary, if you prefer it you can definitely replace Hypnotic Gaze with it. Likewise, I am not a fan of Emergency Cache since it takes the action to pull three resources. Upgraded Emergency Cache is better with the added card draw but your mileage might vary.
Missing from common decks is Arcane Initiate. Sefina's card draw at the beginning of the game gives me access to most of the cards I need to start. Pulling specific spells was never really a problem with the deck and the couple of times it was an issue was due to my own bad shuffling from one scenario to the next. The ally slot is also fairly valuable since you want it for Leo De Luca. You can upgrade to Charisma but I think you need some better allies when considering that card.
As a disclaimer, I did use Alyssa Graham in my earlier decks, really to mitigate Stars of Hyades. However I rarely pulled Stars of Hyades that it was almost a non-issue. When I did, it was never game ending. Because Alyssa Graham only bumps , I dropped her in this deck version. If I need to add her back in, I definitely will.
Also, I have two Forbidden Knowledge due to my experience with the Basic Weakness Indebted. I pulled this as my starting weakness in the Dunwich Legacy campaign and boy was it frustrating to deal with. This was one of the few times that Emergency Cache was badly needed but over time, use of Forbidden Knowledge and/or Lone Wolf definitely mitigated that sore starting resource pool. A second Forbidden Knowledge was added for starting hand consistency.
If there is any limitation to Sefina, it is in the overall quantity of events she has access to currently. This will certainly improve as the game itself expands. Adaptable will be important as new packs are released to modify as needed.
EDIT: I have been playing Uncage the Soul wrong, treating it as carrying the "Fast" trait. While fortunately I have not combined it with Hypnotic Gaze, I have taken "extra" actions that means with the other spells. An updated version removes Uncage the Soul and replaces it with Delve Too Deep since this is going to be a multiplayer game for expedited experience gain, reduce Hypnotic Gaze down to one and added an additional Ward of Protection. Because of the double skill icons, you could keep Uncage the Soul in this deck.
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Oct 02, 2017 |
Oct 03, 2017
The two arguments that I think you made for Emergency Cache I think are valid but there are several counterarguments I would make:
I will say that Emergency Cache is awesome turns 1 and 2 when you are still trying to set up your game board (burst economy). Later on though, I do not think it is as critical. Of course not every scenario is going to follow that mentality but I have found that this has held true for most of them. |
Oct 03, 2017Hey, great post, I appreciate all the work you've put into it. It's made me think more about my evaluations of the cards and i'd love to share my thoughts. I see that there are a ton of potential scenarios where the flexibility of the Forbidden Knowledge makes it better than the Emergency Cache. I have bad memories of Crypt Chill eating something important, I completely agree that some assets make for fantastic ablative armour and Forbidden Knowledge is a great tool for circumventing the mechanics of some of these cruel mythos cards. I still balk at the horror cost, I guess for me the true evaluation of this card (outside of Agnes decks) really comes down to how I feel about paying that price for the utility. (I adored this card in Agnes and I enjoy the 'lifetap' element of cards like this.) I'd like to play it with Fearless, it's just a shame its not an event. I'm not writing off Forbidden Knowledge, I love the card and want to use it more often. I agree with most of the aspects of your counter arguments, I can see myself not wanting to use The Painted World on Emergency Cache as most of the time I might want a more impactful card. There are times though, when I really wish I had the boost economy to get an asset into play without it costing a whole turn or more. The biggest downside for me is that the Emergency Cache is missing any symbols for skill tests. There is really no argument to that, it's just a downside to the card and does hurt it. Much like Forbidden Knowledge, Sefina Rousseau's ability gives us options and thus utility. We don't have to use The Painted World on Emergency Cache, we can simply pay the action cost to effectively draw it. This might feel like a waste of an action but acquiring a card usually costs us one action and that's for a random card. In this case we get the exact card we want, arguably worth more than one action. As a small aside if we don't want an Emergency Cache at that point we have the benefit of drawing from our deck knowing there is one less in there to pull off the top. I don't feel it should be considered a waste to have an Emergency Cache under Sefina Rousseau as it's not 'replacing' what would have been a better event, its 'replacing' a Forbidden Knowledge which wouldn't have been allowed to be placed under her. If we have better events in our opening hand we will put those under her and keep the Emergency Cache in hand. Having a higher ratio of events to non-event cards in the deck increases the likelihood of a beneficial Sefina Rousseau starting set up. As she draws 13 and places 5 under, that leaves an optimum starting hand of the maximum hand size of 8. Using this Sefina Rousseau build as an example 15 cards out of 38 being events means in a typical draw of 13 cards you will have average of 5.13 events in hand. This is perfect, but it only takes a little variance for us to be missing one event which mean we have 4 under Sefina Rousseau and have to discard a card. Being unlucky and seeing even fewer events is not inconceivable. Alternatively Emergency Cache bumps the average events to 5.82, not really a lot better, but a little. More importantly it might mean we don't have to discard a card, as starting with 8 in hand is as if we have been given 3 free actions to draw at the start of the game, each card lost effectively cost us an action. I feel like if there is any opportunity to include an event card which effectively does the same thing as (or something very similar to) another card then we are massively improving Sefina Rousseau's starting potential and probably more importantly mitigating the damage of a potentially poor draw. |
This build is really nice and i'm using it to help me build my own. I have a question about Forbidden Knowledge though.
Is there some interaction with it that I am missing as I feel that Emergency Cache is a better option?
You get one less resource overall but the trade off is you get it instantly, it doesn't cost you 4 horror damage (or 3 for equivalent resources) and it's an event so it combos with Sefina's starting mechanics and painted world.