"Mahou Shoujo" means "magical girl", a Japanese story genre where a girl with seemingly normal life can transform to another self, often with changed appearance and a signature weapon. This deck is named so because there is a certain pink-haired magical girl that uses a bow as her signature weapon. Now you can make a contract (pay health) and pretend to be one with just an EotE expansion! (And print her parallel front.)

The highlight of this deck is spamming Blinding Light and while you are disengaged, reposition yourself to shoot the Enchanted Bow at range. Blinding Light should be recycled with her "blood magic" ability so it starts coming again more and more often as your deck thins out.

This deck uses only the front side of Parallel Agnes, therefore retaining her access to various health sponges. Side quest includes using Divination to trigger Scavenging while the enemy is blinded to recover Advanced Heirloom of Hyperborea, which is now a soak asset for use with "blood magic", among other tanking stuff such as Leather Coat and Holy Rosary.

► About "2 Packs Deck Guide"
　A series of decks made with the new distribution model in mind, requiring a Revised Core Set box + just 1 more Investigator Expansion box. ❄ character on the deck's name means the additional box it uses is Edge of the Earth Investigator Expansion.
　It maximizes the chance of newcomers being able to build and learn to play the game, enjoying the story on Standard difficulty ASAP. They can then get into deck-building later if they wished to do so. See other decks in the "2 Packs Deck Guide" series here.

2 Packs Team Compositions

2 Packs Deck Guide : Edge of the Earth series is now complete with the following decks :

• Daniela Reyes: ❄ 2 Packs Deck Guide : Burning Bruiser
• Daniela Reyes: ❄ 2 Packs Deck Guide : Tanking Cats and Dogs
• Norman Withers: ❄ 2 Packs Deck Guide : Double Icons in the Stars
• Norman Withers: ❄ 2 Packs Deck Guide : Norman the Miskatonic Tutor
• Monterey Jack: ❄ 2 Packs Deck Guide : The Underworld Bullwhip
• Lily Chen: ❄ 2 Packs Deck Guide : Lily the WILL AGI Battle-Mage
• Bob Jenkins: ❄ 2 Packs Deck Guide : Short Supply Scavenging
• Roland Banks: ❄ 2 Packs Deck Guide : Roland the Real, Authentic Spy
• Daisy Walker: ❄ 2 Packs Deck Guide : Guns and Books
• "Skids" O'Toole: ❄ 2 Packs Deck Guide : Destiny Draw
• Agnes Baker: ❄ 2 Packs Deck Guide : Agnes the "Mahou Shoujo"
• Wendy Adams: ❄ 2 Packs Deck Guide : Wendy Lovecrafting

To help assembling a party made entirely from just 2 packs, I have a tool that let you browse team compositions for 2 players, 3 players, and 4 players, that has manageable amount of card overlaps or even none at all. The result is sorted from low to high overlaps. Click here to see all team comps.

How to play

..with your 2 main offensive cards :

Enchanted Bow ••

• Always remember that you have to exhaust, you cannot repeatedly fight with it. (A magical arrow comes back on the next turn, it does not come with an arrow quiver...)
• Close range fighting is unlimited, the bow's charge is only required for ranged attacks.
• Always 2 damages, and starts at absurd accuracy of 6 for Agnes.
• Refill the ranged charges with Winds of Power, which is possible to get via Parallel Fates.

Blinding Light ••

• The filler when you need to repeatedly attack an enemy. If succeed, grants you an another turn that the bow is ready once again. You may or may not walk away after doing this.
• Dealing damage as the same time as evading is very powerful. It ensures you can drag out the fight without damage and make progress to end the fight in the same test, where regular evasion you would also need to attack it somehow.
• Evade also grants AoO free moment, which you may use to investigate with Divination while waiting for the next turn or just move away, or use Ethereal Slip for an extra cool impression that you disappeared after the light faded out.
• Keep using "blood magic" if possible, until your deck really thins down, which at that moment you are likely fighting the big guy with annoying minions you really want to blind them.
• Even the upgraded version is stinky and not giving you any bonus. In mid-campaign, we will get Prophetic to improve the chance.

In the Thick of It XP

Choose to take 2 physical trauma (makes it riskier to use blood magic often) to get these nice cards right from the start with your 3 XP from In the Thick of It :

2x Divination •

Waiting to receive Down the Rabbit Hole discount without taking purchase penalty. Also make you more functional from scenario 1, as you can trigger Scavenging with it.

Mind Wipe •

This is a card you sometimes glad you have it at a certain "moment". By keep using "blood magic", you have more chance of having it on that "moment" rather than having to hog it on hand.

Blood magic

Agnes's parallel front ability is to play Spell Event (Does not work on Spell Asset like Divination) at -2 cost and taking it back to deck, at the cost of 1 damage. Here are all the options :

Blinding Light ••

The "flash bang", your never ending offensive + defensive tool. Highly recommended to recurse, it usually translates to surviving longer when the deck really thins down.

Ethereal Slip ••

Position yourself for shooting the bow, save your team by breaking engagement from far away. Upgraded version is also good as commit, which when you do so, you cannot recycle.

Ward of Protection

This card is already very valuable, and now you have an unlimited amount of it! However, it costs 1 horror which parallel front Agnes not having much of. (Try using the matching 2x Fearless to heal out the cost.) If you get one again while having no spare sanity, icon can still be useful.

Mind Wipe •

Utility card that feels just right having it at 1 copy. Normally you may think whether to use it or wait for more dangerous non-Elite enemy to show up. Now you can just use it with "blood magic" then expect it to come back again later.

Blood magic techs

• 0 XP Blinding Light and 0 XP Ethereal Slip are at 2-cost, (discounted to 1 on their upgrades). The ability can help playing them at 0 cost.
• When your deck is low, the "concentration" of cards gets higher and it is more likely that you will see the Spell you just recycled. This can feel like you can control the fate somewhat with cards like Blinding Light (avoid taking hits turns after turns until you win that big final fight) or Ward of Protection (avoid unexpected mess while fighting the big guy).
  • Therefore, the value of Spell recursion gradually increases if you managed to recur it from when your deck is fuller, until the deck gets very thin, which may cost you multiple health. Choose wisely which one you want to see at later moment.
• In a REAL pinch when you get Advanced Dark Memory with not enough resources (4) to play and you cannot also take any more horror, you play with recursion (it is a Spell Event) to discount it to 2, add doom, take 1 damage, and shuffle it back to the deck having to see it again. Does not sounds great, but can be better than helplessly defeated.
• You will love having Arcane Initiate around when recycling spells so you can fetch that spell back on hand fast especially when the deck is thin. But be careful of getting only Dark Memory as a valid target among 3 cards, which you must draw it.

Upgrade guide

Here are the Down the Rabbit Hole compatible upgrades in recommended order, max 2 discounted upgrades per scenario. In actual play you would have to decide these based on XP you got each scenario.

Remember that you have to slot in Enchanted Bow purchase (as opposed to upgrade) among these ASAP so you have something better than Shrivelling to fight with, and that costs 3 XP each. (2 + 1)

Don't feel bad if after paying for the bow you cannot get to 2 upgrades quota, the bow is more important.

(View at arkham-starter.com)

And here's the purchases which you must pay 1 more for each. The bow is the most important to sneak in while you are doing Down the Rabbit Hole each scenarios.

(View at arkham-starter.com)

❂ One copy left in the deck. Removed because of slot competition with Heirloom of Hyperborea. If you want 2 copies of Holy Rosary, try choose some of the cards, detailed below.

Therefore, everything together costs 10 + 19 = 29 XP.

These are some tips of cards to remove in the "?" above :

• Leather Coat : Maybe you can remove 1, then rely on Scavenging to get the remaining copy back.
• "Look what I found!" : Not recommended to remove if you are true-soloing with this character. Otherwise, look in your team if you have a Seeker then 1 copy or even 2 are safe to remove. Note that it is included due to synergy with Prophetic's discount.
• Guts : Note that both Winds of Power and Parallel Fates has icons similar to it. You can replace one or both.

1x Ethereal Slip upgrade is unexpectedly good to get commit for scenario defense, especially when Manual Dexterity disappeared in the purchase. You can also recycle this spell event to use it for effect, then meet it later for commit.

Alternate path without Down the Rabbit Hole and In the Thick of It

If you would rather have 8 health, what happens is that you arrive at 28 XP with Lv. 4 Divination coming late, and you don't even have the upgraded Lucky! and Emergency Cache QoL toys just yet at that point.

(View at arkham-starter.com)

Some tactical tips

Delay getting hit by a Hunter enemy by using Enchanted Bow on nearby location, then move once away. The next turn when it closes in, you can do this again as long as you still have charges left on your bow. While doing this, perhaps investigate because you are not engaged yet.

Upgraded Ethereal Slip (2) is flexible on a map with enemy scattered. Possibly some of them are Hunter, some of them are not, that cause this situation. You can now "juke" the Hunter monster by targeting this spell on a non-Hunter enemy repeatedly to get the required breather room to gear up or perform ranged attack using Enchanted Bow.

Intentionally stay further from helpless investigator such as a Seeker. When the Seeker draws an enemy, use Ethereal Slip to swap with an enemy currently engaged with the Seeker to both let the Seeker continue doing the job, and also teleports you to the same location, getting ready to engage and fight when it walks back. Use ranged attack when it is one location away as it walks back, and tell your Guardian to close into it is also a pretty cool combo.

Advanced signature yes or no? (yes)

Using Advanced Heirloom of Hyperborea will add soaks, which the 3 sanity is especially reassuring for her parallel front's low sanity. Limitation is that damages and horrors must come from player card.

The downside is you have to use Advanced Dark Memory, which is worse than regular one because the cost is increased from 2 to 4, and also you still take 2 horrors if you cannot play it. Remember that she has 6 sanity on her parallel front, this could be critical!

A silver lining is that Prophetic's resources can be used to discount playing Advanced Dark Memory.

I highly recommended using the Advanced version. Because Heirloom of Hyperborea being soak asset rather than pure utility asset naturally set it up with Scavenging triggered with Divination to revive it and continue soaking / using spell recycling ability.

The key to remember is that it cannot just tank everything like normal asset, but only from player cards. But not to worry, we have quite plenty of these :

Player card damages

• Agnes's "blood magic" ability.

Player card horrors

• Shrivelling : Replaced with 2x Enchanted Bow
• Ward of Protection
• Blinding Light •• : The 0 XP version does not have horror taking.
• Dark Memory

Taking damages

The cost to recycle Blinding Light and Ethereal Slip is taking damage, along with regular damage you take from enemies and treacheries.

These are cards that helps you use this ability as often as possible :

• Heirloom of Hyperborea
• Leather Coat
• Scavenging : Get back everything above.

None of these helps with horror.

Taking horror

This parallel front Agnes has only 6 sanity. And Survivor does not have many horror soaks in our card pool.

Horror from your cards can be assigned to Advanced Heirloom of Hyperborea and recur using Scavenging.

We won't get Relic Hunter, therefore Holy Rosary is in slot contest with Heirloom of Hyperborea. You should use use the sanity on Holy Rosary liberally as well if you know Heirloom of Hyperborea is coming soon. Or inversely, the draw effect from Heirloom of Hyperborea would help you get Holy Rosary.

Arcane Initiate has a very good 2 sanity at play cost of only 1. Use these sanity liberally to both kill her quick enough before doom is used to advance the agenda. Remember that Ward of Protection's horror cost can also be assigned to Arcane Initiate.

Lastly, trusty 2x Fearless gives you virtually +2 sanity most of the time.

Card tips

Parallel Fates ••

• An obvious combo is to find Winds of Power among your 6 cards and put it on top, then you draw it, and use to play it, and possibly discount playing with Prophetic (because of Spirit trait).
• If you have Arcane Initiate, you can arrange Spell to be at 2nd, 3rd, and 4th card (the 1st card you will draw immediately after), then use to grab it. Maybe critical to get Enchanted Bow down fast before the bad guys came. (Downside is that the remaining cards will be shuffled away after, making you unsure about the future again.)
• After you have just recycled some spells, especially when the deck is getting thinner, playing Parallel Fates afterwards may immediately see that spell and allow you to arrange it if you need it back quick. (e.g. Ward of Protection over and over.)
• It can be used as a search card for your teammates looking for game-changing signature card with not many search tools because it says "an investigator's deck". You don't have to be at the same location with that investigator.
• By looking at encounter deck playing 2 players, 6 cards means you can arrange your fate for as far as 3 turns. That is a lot, and can save your teammates (especially ) from tests.
• Commit icons are similar to Guts.
• In EotE campaign, without spoiling anything, you may came across many useful stuff that you can make use of knowing what is on the top, or several top cards of your deck.

Winds of Power •

• The draw "during your turn" occurs due to the following :
  • Parallel Fates ••
  • Heirloom of Hyperborea
  • Guts
  • Manual Dexterity
  • You use Draw action.
• Arcane Initiate cannot get this card since it is a Spirit, not a Spell.
• Commit icons are similar to Guts.
• Can be discounted by Prophetic due to Spirit trait.
• Can refill Enchanted Bow and Divination.
• Also look for your campaign story assets with "charges". Usually these are powerful.

Prophetic •••

Discount playing

Discount Spell Event when not using "blood magic", since that also gives -2 discount.

Helps boosting tests

• Enchanted Bow ••
• Divination •
• Divination ••••
• Blinding Light
• Blinding Light ••

You can both discount and boost accuracy of Blinding Light, but generally you want +2 accuracy since even the 2 XP version is stinky and not giving you any bonus. When taking high damage/horror is on the line, you will not want to miss Blinding Light on 3-4 enemy! (Your 6 due to Holy Rosary probably need 1 or 2 more push.)

Lucky! ••, Emergency Cache ••

These 2 XP upgrades aren't popular, but with "blood magic" card draw is spicy as it either get you the spell you just put back in the deck or thin down the deck so it is more concentrated for more recycling.

Also, these are great with Down the Rabbit Hole since the lv. 0 version can all wait in the starting deck.

Not having resources to play Dark Memory is an "emergency", sometimes this Emergency Cache can really help.

Scavenging

Remember these lifeline cards you must bring back with Divination, especially that you took trauma from In the Thick of It :

(Holy Rosary reduced to 1 copy along the upgrades.)