Trish Scarborough investigates The Fog at Innsmouth

This deck is for an Innsmouth Conspiracy campaign. Trish is one member of a trio along with Amanda Sharpe and Silas Marsh . This is built against a single first edition core deck, so some base card options are constrained or split across the three investigators.

—To the ships at sea who can hear my voice, look across the water, into the darkness. Look for the fog.—

Deck Walkthrough

Cryptographic Cipher seems tailored for Trish. Both options work for her, and the first means 3 fast investigates can also be 3 evades—outstanding action compression for a level 0 card. The second option, to exhaust for an action and a reduced shroud still nets 3 free evades. Lockpicks are a rogue staple, but for Trish they boost to 8, so she has enough ability to not break those picks on even high shroud locations. The Pocket Telescope overlaps with her elder sign ability, and is a nod to the Innsmouth campaign's larger maps.

Obfuscation lets Trish investigate with an engaged enemy, ignore its attack, then evade it, for a 3 for 1 action compression. Dexter adorns the card art, understandable, as it lets Trish perform magic. Mr. "Rook" is there for balanced soak, and to pull in our Astounding Revelations which will either help pay forward for items or upkeep the Cipher.

This Trish deck is event heavy. There are 18 in total split across rogue and seeker. "You handle this one!" lets Trish offset encounters. Breaking and Entering synthesises well with Trish's ability: the auto evade lets her take the extra clue option. Astounding Revelation interacts with Mr. "Rook" to up our cashflow or add secrets. Crack the Case is a staple for seekers, but for Trish in Innsmouth can have some interesting interactions with the Pocket Telescope as it pays into the cleared location, which is not necessarily the location Trish is at. This allows Trish to have influence at a distance and see where clues are early. Eavesdrop again is a nod to Innsmouth, where evade vs fight is a real choice, and it gives Trish a good on the bounce option for turns 2 and 3 off of her evade ability. Followed melds well with Trish's investigator ability. She can investigate with an engaged enemy, avoid its attack of opportunity, pick up two clues, evade it via her ability, all in one turn. If she runs the Eon Chart later on, she can also move. When it works, the action compression is astonishing, with Trish running rings around enemies, and it's worth noting that Crack the Case can be used in this sequence. Intel Report is worth running just for theme against Shadow Agents, but its clue boost is yet another kind of action compression, even more so in Innsmouth as it can span two locations: helpful for those big maps. Slip Away is arguably misnamed; it's a non-elite tranquilliser dart that lets you clean out a location while the enemy is knocked out. It's not as risky as it seems at a +2 win condition given it combines here 4 and 4 agility. When it does succeeds it quiesces enemies for the next round which can really takes pressure off the investigators, plus lots of Innsmouth enemies are hunters.

Onto our mere two skills. Inquiring Mind is an interesting staple for Trish. Her ability to move clues around makes it much less situational and 3 wild pips is going to push some tests into near certainties. Manual Dexterity is a double down on what Trish does best, plus with Winifred Habbamock, we have an upgrade option to Manual Dexterity (2).

Upgrades

• Versatile lets us bring other cards that work for Trish, like Quick Thinking, rogue staples like Backstab, Lone Wolf, seeker staples like Perception, Working a Hunch, or ones that work for the campaign, like Scout Ahead. It's tempting to set this up real early via In the Thick of It but an uneven 8/6 health line makes us pause.

• Forewarned could replace "You handle this one!". Moxie is useful if we find Trish struggling with head checks, but maybe not strictly necessary given she already has plenty of options to enhance agility, and bumping agility is the other half on Moxie's benefit.

• Another Day, Another Dollar might release us from the Rook/Revelation flywheel. Because as powerful as that combo is, it occupies 5 cards. It's helpful to think about lesser resources upfront for their net present value against a predictable but deferred income spread over each turn.

• Manual Dexterity might seem like a dull upgrade, but it gets agility skill checks up to 7, and drives more event cards into our hand.

• Lola Santiago. If we want to get off the Rook/Revelation flywheel, Lola provides a pay for clues option based on the location's shroud value and bringing a The Skeleton Key will reduce that cost.

• Gené Beauregard. Works well with Trish's evade and could be useful in Innsmouth in conjunction with the Pocket Telescope. Might an alternative to Lola's ongoing cash hungry approach to cluevering, although 5 is expensive upfront. Another Day, Another Dollar can help with that. And Inquiring Mind 3 pips, but only if there's a clue present, seems to integrate with Gené's reaction of moving clues to Trish's location.

• The Segments of Onyx gets us the Pendant of the Queen which is uncontested on the accessory slot and can trigger her investigator ability. We can use Mr. "Rook" to draw them into play. if we upgraded to this, then it might makes sense to also bring along The Red Clock at the cost eating a lot our XP (4 or 10). The Eon Chart (4) might be a less intensive alternative at 4 XP and gives Trish a lot action flexibility.

Closing Thoughts

Trish wants to manipulate where enemies and clues are. This deck will be doing a lot of investigating and ideally finishing off locations (investigate, evade, move) on turn 2, or turn 3 with the Eon Chart. It's heavily reliant on action compression tricks. She is not going to be doing much anything with enemies other than evading and sometimes moving them around, so our other two investigators for this campaign, Silas Marsh and Amanda Sharpe are going have pack some punch and handle more than their fair share of encounter draws. Her weakness, Shadow Agents , isn't severe, and we might even want to play it early, not mulligan it back into the deck, to get it discarded and out of the way. While The Red Clock is a fun upgrade, the Eon Chart is a tad more practical; that said Innsmouth holds back XP so we might well have 10 or more to drop for the clock. While Lola Santiago is a rogue staple, we might go with Gené Beauregard to understand how useful the interaction is with Trish's evade ability: it feels like significant action compression.