Solo Father Mateo - The Hunt for the Elder Sign

A solo Father Mateo deck meant for playing through The Forgotten Age campaign on Standard difficulty.

I've been having difficulty trying to find a viable Father Mateo build with the following goals:

• Successfully complete the first Forgotten Age scenario solo on Standard difficulty.
• Use only cards up through the Forgotten Age (I'm admittedly still missing some Carcosa packs).

Problems My trouble is that I either get bogged down by 3-health enemies, or run out of time. There's also the usual difficulty of investigating with solo mystics: the good mystic investigation spells focus on discovering multiple clues at once, which is less useful in solo play (where 1-clue locations abound).

Solutions So my approach has been this:

• Flashlights for single-clue locations.
• Wards of Protection, in lieu of meaningful Mystic compression (wards protect against Ancient Evils and certain doom-placing treacheries).
• Sprit Athames to land one-damage hits on annoying 3-health enemies.

Upgrade Directions Since the Good Father has arguably the best Elder Sign ability in the game (which also provides much-needed compression), I'm eager to build toward the goal of hitting as many Elder Sign reveals as possible. Protective Incantations, Shards of the Void, and maybe a Cthonian Stone will all help trim down the bag, letting my Grotesque Statues and Olive McBrides hit more regularly. That said, I'm having such trouble even with basic survival that a second Crystalline Elder Sign (just for consistency) is my usual first upgrade.

Any advice would be helpful!