0% Fat (Parallel Agnes) - a HC deck

0% Fat

Overview

The idea here is turn 1 consistency through a hyper-focused deck, aiming to have both damage and clue finding assets in your opening hand. Parallel Agnes (with signature plus weaknesses) has a 28 card deck, and here 8 of those are either for combat (Brand of Cthugha, Azure Flame) or clue-finding (Divination, Sixth Sense). You then add in Word of Command which proxies as an extra copy for both, and can be played for 0 resources with Parallel Agnes's ability.

Please go play with the draw simulator right now. It's consistent, right?!

A misconception with Parallel Agnes is you should use her additional option to pay for full spell upgrades and keep lower levels in the deck - don't do this! A 28 card deck is a huge advantage by itself and helps massively with consistency. Two copies of Arcane Research keep this as a ~28 XP deck but mean an effective 4 starting sanity with Parallel Agnes. However: (A) none of her spells deal horror as a side effect; (B) your high means you ward off horror-dealing treacheries well; and (C) you have soak (2 x Holy Rosary with Relic Hunter) plus healing (Fearless and Meditative Trance) which readily counteracts this. Meanwhile, 8 health on a Mystic is huge - giving you natural soak on your weaker defense stat and making Azure Flame your combat spell du jour.

I would say more but there's purposefully little else to cover - it's 0% fat!

Advanced Strategies

• Must be the Season of the Witch. Sometimes one good advanced strategy is all you need. Want to tutor your entire deck for crucial cards at a cost of zero resources and just one damage? Well, with Parallel Agnes and Word of Command, you can! With this you can tutor any of your spell assets, Alter Fate or even Dark Memory readily (side note - playing Dark Memory when it's convenient to can be very useful!). With the exception of Joe with No Stone Unturned •••••, there's no other investigator who can innately play full deck tutoring cards for 0 resources. The consistency this adds is mind-blowing, and you can choose to shuffle Word of Command back in if you so choose (though it may be better to thin your deck).

• Rewrite Fate. Oh okay, I'll give you another strategy. You can also use Parallel Agnes' ability to reshuffle your only copy of Alter Fate back into your deck and play it for 1 resource, making it similar to a Ward of Protection that deals you damage instead of horror. It doesn't get played fast, but Ward of Protection doesn't get reshuffled, so that's good enough for me!

What didn't make the cut

• Normal Agnes front or back. What can I say, I like the added health plus the Alter Fate recursion of front and the small deck size of back. I think there's interesting things that can be done with Parallel Agnes front and normal back with Jessica Hyde to soak damage from playing a load of events, but that wasn't the goal here.

• Advanced Heirloom of Hyperborea. This can soak damage from either Azure Flame or occasionally when you use your ability for Word of Command/Alter Fate reshuffle, however it's partnered with a nastier Dark Memory and on the whole the triggers of Azure Flame don't come out of the bag often on standard and above (and heals one of the two damage from Flame due to your ability). Overall I didn't think the cost of a worse Dark Memory was worth it (besides, ideally this deck stacks Rosaries with Relic Hunter).

• Hallowed Mirror. Of all the Occult cards you can run, I think Hallowed Mirror is probably the best contender to give you more healing options. However and as mentioned, I prefer running two Rosaries with Relic Hunter - plus Soothing Melody pads your deck.

• Alter Fate •••. A small detail, but I think with Parallel Agnes there are diminishing returns with Alter Fate ••• as her ability can make Alter Fate • cost the same resources and be reshuffled back in your deck. I would save the XP to upgrade for elsewhere (however with Arcane Research you may find an opportunity to upgrade for free).

Campaign starter and planned progression

Two Arcane Research gives a 2 XP saving per one spell upgrade after a scenario, and as this deck has plenty of targets for this (making sure to go through Azure Flame ••• before Azure Flame •••••) you can save a total of 14 XP in a standard 8 scenario campaign, making this around a 28 XP deck. Starter deck is directly below (and link here):

Between campaign scenarios use Arcane Research to upgrade:

• Azure Flame → Azure Flame ••• → Azure Flame •••••

• Brand of Cthugha • → Brand of Cthugha ••••

• Divination • → Divination ••••

Otherwise, a recommended order of XP purchases/upgrades is as follows:

• 2 x Clairvoyance → 2 x Divination •

• 2 x Wither → 2 x Brand of Cthugha •

• 2 x Guts → 2 x Word of Command

• Ward of Protection → Alter Fate

• 2 x Voice of Ra → 2 x Four of Cups

• 2 x Sign Magick → 2 x Sign Magick •••

• Relic Hunter

Further upgrades and side deck

This is such a tiny focused deck that it's hard to recommend a meaningful side deck. Painkillers was used on the earliest version of this in case Azure Flame became too much (because you will often bounce back to full sanity with the horror healing here) but it just wasn't seeing play, however if you feel the contingency is worth it you could swap out a Four of Cups - I know a lot of people don't like two tarot (I do). For additional upgrades, Fearless is nice to give even more horror healing, and upgraded Sixth Sense packs a little more oomph when it comes to clue finding.

EDIT: Already an interesting suggestion has come in from Reddit via u/zacharylky, so I thought I'd edit it in! Scroll of Secrets is a good means to potentially discard Dark Memory outright or increase consistency in accessing spell assets (particularly with the most recent taboo allowing for activation). I'm a sucker for action economy so I do like Sign Magick ••• in your hand slots a little more, however it's definitely a good idea and a worthy side deck consideration!

Final thoughts

I'd been trying to solve the consistency puzzle for Mystics and honestly I think this is the best way to do it while also staying relatively cheap XP-wise. I would expand more, but if you can handle 4 starting sanity then the draw simulator really does speak for itself. With everything in place to offset it, the low sanity is really not bad as with the small deck size your countermeasures do pop up frequently. Hope you've enjoyed what is perhaps the thinnest deck size vs. number of spell assets out there, have fun!