Skill Balanced Starter Decks - Agnes Baker

Card draw simulator

Odds: 0% – 0% – 0% more
Derived from
None. Self-made deck here.
Inspiration for
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5argon · 7981

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　 Notable skill icons
Manual Dexterity 　
Survival Instinct 　
"Look what I found!" 　
✮ Lucky!　
Fearless 　
Scrying •••　
Heirloom of Hyperborea 　
　

✮ Not a Skill card and has no icon, but could serve similar purpose.

TLDR : My take of starter decks with plenty of Skill icons, to reduce frustration of failing to setup Asset cards. No longer 100% pick-and-play on any combinations, but I countered this by providing exhaustive team compositions and how to fix overlaps provided at the bottom of this page. Have fun committing cards!

ps. When you decided to purchase one more Investigator Expansion, check out my 2 Packs Deck Guide series!

Lastly, if you like the idea of my decks, it would help many more fellow new investigators like you to find these starter decks if you press the like (♥) button above. Thank you!

I like the premise of Killbray's Better Starter Decks, a Revised Core Set-based series of deck which has absolutely no overlap no matter what amount of players and team compositions ("pick-and-play"), yet better than what the official manual provided.

But going for perfect zero overlap may compromise skill commit icon density. From my experience leading a group of beginners throughout Night of the Zealot, Skill cards are delightful. It feels great to be able to instantly throw in what you just draw to pass tests, and even get some bonus draws to recover from bad starting hand. They also provide the game's most basic team play feature : By pitching a helping commit at the same location. Skill cards are satisfying to play.

I think Asset cards has too much weight on typical starter decks (and therefore highly dependent on mulligan policy). After an unfortunate spiraling down session they can barely do anything, new players often express that everything seems to depend on finding and stacking up static boost Assets and fight Asset fast enough before enemy comes, if they can't then they have no chance of comeback ever since everything takes Attack of Opportunity then.

If you are experienced player trying to get new players to join : It is unfortunate that cannot control luck of draw for anyone. The next time maybe better, but you have limited onboarding session to impress and get new players hooked with the game. Skill card is that solution to smooth out any bad start and allow more happy-go-lucky play style for everyone.

By giving up the perfect zero overlap, here's my alternate take of starter decks : Skill Balanced Starter Decks series, which each deck greedily use Skill cards without concern of sharing with the other decks in the series. (Guts, Perception, Overpower, Manual Dexterity, Unexpected Courage)

It also distributes well double-icon non-Skill cards over starting deck and through the upgrade plan. (Evidence!, Working a Hunch, First Aid (3), "I've had worse…", Scrying (3), "Look what I found!", Cunning Distraction, Elder Sign Amulet, Bulletproof Vest) Upgrade plan also try as much as possible to not replace good icon cards while adding more.

Easy deck overlap resolution

This series does care about card overlaps. Therefore even though there are some combinations that cannot be played together since they want the same cards, the resolution is simple : Just move around the Skill cards and you are ready to play.

The result is satisfactory enough for me. Compared to Killbray's Better Starter Deck mathematically perfect 10-10-5 possible combinations for 2-3-4 player count, I managed to get 9-7-2 possible combinations with zero or easy to resolve overlaps.

I have exhaustively list all those team compositions in a dedicated section at the bottom, categorized by player count, along with an overlap resolution if it has some. You can use that section to pick a team matching your party size, perform overlap resolution as suggested, and immediately start the game.

Let's go on a full campaign!

This series of deck encourages you to take them to full length 8 scenarios campaign. I do this by including an upgrade guide with enough XP spending plan for an entire campaign for each deck, and also some tips to use the upgraded decks. Cards to be swapped in are in the Side Deck section. Side Deck is designed to have zero overlap between all 5 decks in the series.

FFG has moved to new distribution format where you can buy Investigator Expansion and Campaign Expansion separately. This is a good news, it means if you try out Night of the Zealot and is eager for longer campaign to see what the game has to offer, just one more box of any Campaign Expansion is required.

That is in theory. But community is often quick to state that Revised Core Set cards are not enough for full campaign, and then something like "You will run out of options", "Dunwich Investigator Expansion is essential", or "Recommended to get some Investigator Starter Deck first". While additional products are all useful and these suggestions are becoming the norm, more and more spending requirements in addition to the Campaign Expansion box put off some players with less funding from even getting the Campaign Expansion box.

Revised Core Set is viable to have good time in a campaign on Easy or Standard. They just lacked variety and fancy combos. But in my opinion, card variety is secondary to full-length experience any new players should try out ASAP. Players may have to "put up with" using .45 Automatic and Physical Training to the end for all I care, campaign play is still insanely fun. There should be no other minimum purchases for campaign experience than : Revised Core Set + Campaign Expansion.

Main Deck? Side Deck?

The "Side Deck" section is meant to be higher XP cards waiting to be added to your deck. The "Deck" section consists of all 0 XP cards that you start the 1st scenario with. So if you gather both Deck and Side Deck on starting the game, you don't have to go back to your big card collection to pick things between scenarios.

I have prepared some upgrade plans below to swap cards between Main Deck and Side Deck, but you are free to disagree and purchase in different orders or even different cards than suggested.

Upgrade guide

　Cost 　Total
　　 Scrying 　→　 Rite of Seeking •• 2 XP 2 XP
　　 Scrying 　→　 Rite of Seeking •• 2 XP 4 XP
　　 Drawn to the Flame 　→　 Grotesque Statue •••• 4 XP 8 XP
　　 Drawn to the Flame 　→　 Grotesque Statue •••• 4 XP 12 XP
　　 Blinding Light 　→　 Blinding Light •• 2 XP 14 XP
　　 Blinding Light 　→　 Blinding Light •• 2 XP 16 XP
　　 　→　 Relic Hunter ••• 3 XP 19 XP
　
Extra 19 XP
　　 Survival Instinct 　→　 Scrying ••• 3 XP 22 XP
　　 Survival Instinct 　→　 Scrying ••• 3 XP 25 XP

(View at arkham-starter.com)

You can use the 19 XP breakpoint to play in Standalone Scenario. Remember to add 2 Random Basic Weakness according to standalone rule.

How to play

The main theme of this deck is to make it so she is an adequate replacement for Seeker. I often see posts about how beginners often felt like one always need Guardian + Seeker. I give many investigation redundancy here to encourage you to try a party without Seeker. (And also in this series of deck, it is impossible to play Agnes and Daisy together!)

To achieve that, this Agnes retains her "sublayer" of 2x Flashlight plays, even after she added 2x Rite of Seeking (2) into the deck. Together with 2x Lucky! and 2x "Look what I found!", her 2 can do wonders on 2-3 shroud too.

Skill icons

　 Notable skill icons
Manual Dexterity 　
Survival Instinct 　
"Look what I found!" 　
✮ Lucky!　
Fearless 　
Scrying •••　
Heirloom of Hyperborea 　
　

✮ Not a Skill card and has no icon, but could serve similar purpose.

Agnes has the least Skill cards of decks in this series. (And rightfully cards in this deck competes for slots more.) And we gave her mostly . The reason is that :

And therefore, Agnes can be quite swingy since it depends on setting up Asset more. (The premise of this series is to reduce swinginess by introducing more Skill cards.) You will have to pay attention to mulligan, and make sure you have some fight/investigation Spell Asset, or Arcane Initiate to get to the Spell.

Heirloom of Hyperborea may not be a good card on starting hand, Holy Rosary is much better. By putting Holy Rosary down, any time you get Blinding Light it's a pretty accurate Evade. Remember that Shrivelling has no boost as well and it maybe a problem vs. 4 enemy without Holy Rosary. (Especially if they Retaliate.)

Only Rite of Seeking (2) can be used effectively with no other setup due to +2 boost. But you may need to pre-play Emergency Cache to afford the cost.

Investigator synergy

With other decks of my Skill Balanced Starter Deck series :

Team composition

All teams possible within my Skill Balanced Starter Deck series, including and not including this deck as a member.

Trivia! : These reduced combinations are due to how my Daisy and Agnes deck need the same cards, there is no possible team with Daisy and Agnes at the same time. I can't managed make both fun to play without major overlaps.

Also I discovered if I choose to give up just Daisy + Agnes pair, all other pairs are suddenly viable. Daisy + Agnes kind of causing butterfly effect throughout all the decks. e.g. Once you share Agnes's Spell for Daisy's self defense, then Agnes need more Survivor card from Wendy, then Wendy need more Rogue cards from Skids, and so on.

Try out Killbray's Better Starter Decks instead if you would like to play with Daisy and Agnes together.

2 Players

9 teams to choose from, all with 0 card overlaps :

3 Players

7 teams to choose from :

4 Players

2 teams to choose from :

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