Carolyn Fern destroys Carcosa

Card draw simulator

Odds: 0% – 0% – 0% more
Derived from
None. Self-made deck here.
Inspiration for
Carolyn Fern en Carcosa (Poli raso->Alice Luxley) 0 0 1 1.0

alpopone · 250

Carolyn Fern

You are a star finding clues and making your team invincible!

Carolyn

This deck was used in a very successful and enjoyable blind playthrough of "The Path to Carcosa" on standard difficulty together with Lily Chen who was the fighter.

You find clues, heal horror and damage, provide resources and card draw to you and your fellow investigators. Try to stick together with a fighter investigator as they will protect you from enemies and you will provide them with healing (especially important in Carcosa).

Difficulty
Clue Finding
Team Support
Healing
Survivability
Encounter Protection 
Economy
Card Draw
Enemy Handling

Healing


This deck offers heavy healing (especially horror) and support for both you and your teammates.

Place a layline from Archive of Conduits - Gateway to Paradise on each investigator. Use an action to activate it when needed to heal 1 damage or horror and draw a card for an investigator at any location! Don't forget to provide a resource from Carolyn Fern's ability to the investigator when healed a horror.
If needed, you can even spend the layline to double the effects of healing and card draw.

Use Ancient Stone - Minds In Harmony to passively heal horror and gain resource(s) each turn on card draw.

If you have Hypnotic Therapy, you can exhaust it to heal 1 additional horror when healing horror from an investigator. You can also use the card itself to heal 1 horror from an investigator, but it needs to be at your location.

Use First Aid and its upgraded version First Aid to heal damage as well.

Once you put Hallowed Mirror into play, use the Soothing Melody to heal damage and/or horror and draw a card. Note you can distribute the healing as you like between the investigators and allies at your location. If you heal horror from more than one investigator, provide them a resource as well because of your investigator's ability. After upgrading to Hallowed Mirror, you receive even more healing or the choice to shuffle the used Soothing Melody back into the deck. This has proven to be very good approach.

Logical Reasoning and its very powerful upgraded version Logical Reasoning can be used for heavy horror healing on investigators at your location.

Later into the campaign, you can also use Kerosene to distribute horror healing at your location once an enemy is defeated this round there.


Clue finding


You have several ways to find clues.

First, you start with a 4 but you can easily boost it to 6 with Alice Luxley and Magnifying Glass.

When you upgrade to Field Agent you can use one (or even two) of them to discover clue(s) testless each turn. Heal the horror from the ally with the many tools at your disposal, gaining a resource in the process. Field Agent also boosts your by 1 so you can investigate at 7 !

You have two more options for testless clue finding - Scene of the Crime and Working a Hunch, both not provoking attack of opportunity.

When needed, boost your skill value with Analysis, Eureka!, Occult Theory, Perception and Unexpected Courage.


Encounter deck protection


You have several tools to protect from the encounter deck.

The classic Ward of Protection saves you from a treachery card at the cost of a horror which you want anyway for the benefits of healing it.

Logical Reasoning can discard a Terror card not only from you but also from a teammate. The upgraded Logical Reasoning can do it multiple times, combined with healing a lot of horror. Just make sure you have several clues when using these.

Use Orphic Theory to blank a treachery card in play until the end of the round.

Well Prepared will help you additionally boost a skill tested for an encounter card.

Orphic Theory gives you huge amount of equal to your icons.


Handling enemies


Best stick to your fighter utilizing Safeguard.

You can kill 1 health enemies directly with the Alice Luxley's ability after discovering a clue. You can trigger it with Field Agent which makes a good combo.

If you happen to take horror or damage is not that big of a deal as you can heal it. You have several ways to be efficient even when engaged with an enemy, through Scene of the Crime and Working a Hunch


Skill boosting


There are two powerful cards for constantly boosting skills in this deck.

Soul Sanctification - you collect offerings of excess horror or damage healing which can be spent to provide up to +4 boost to any skill test! The Hypnotic Therapy's reaction ability can be used to trigger this extra horror healing.

Note that there is an important rule exception for Soul Sanctification that you can trigger healing even when the target is at full health/horror, providing precious offerings for this card!

Well Prepared is also very powerful utilizing your assets for skill boosting. This is especially useful for encounter deck protection in combination with Archive of Conduits - Gateway to Paradise or Ancient Stone - Minds In Harmony.


Action compression


Ever Vigilant saves you actions and resources to setup.

Use Safeguard to efficiently move after your fighter. Typically, guardians upgrade it to Safeguard but this is not recommended for Carolyn since she is a cluever not a fighter.

Eureka! lets you draw an important card out of 3 options.

Naturally you gain resources when you are healed horror which can be done automatically each turn by Ancient Stone - Minds In Harmony when drawing a card during the upkeep phase.

Alice Luxley damages an enemy when you discover a clue.


Card drawing


Use Eureka! during investigation for a chance to find one of your critical cards without a risk of drawing a weakness. It also shuffles your deck.

Use Archive of Conduits - Gateway to Paradise to simultaneously heal and draw cards.


Economy


Use Stand Together as soon as possible and when you have another investigator at your location to get 2 resources each.

Use Ever Vigilant to efficiently play assets during your setup rounds. If drawn later, it can be used for its two book icons to support an investigation test.

Heal horror from investigators (including you) or allies on every occasion possible so you can use your investigator's ability to provide them a resource. Your team should not afraid to take horror if you have at least some of the healing cards set up.


First scenario


The target is to upgrade both the Ancient Stone and the Archive of Conduits. Find them with mulligan or with Mr. "Rook".

Drop the resources from Archive of Conduits on low shroud easy to access locations and go to collect them through the scenario.

After having at least one clue, find a high shroud location (4 or more) and commit all the boosts available to research the Ancient Stone : Working a Hunch, Eureka!, Occult Theory, Perception, Unexpected Courage and especially Analysis. If you happen to draw the fail token, drop a clue and try again with Analysis.

Note that you need to research only one of the Ancient Stones and upgrade both for the cost of one with Shrewd Analysis. Since the only allowed upgrade for Carolyn is Ancient Stone - Minds In Harmony, you directly upgrade to it without the randomness usually involved using in Shrewd Analysis.


Mulligan


In the first scenario you should mulligan for an Ancient Stone and Archive of Conduits, Analysis, Occult Theory, Eureka! and Mr. "Rook" to potentially find them.

In the other scenarios it is important to have:


Upgrade path - After each scenario in Carcosa


1) 8xp

2) 4xp

3) 5xp

4) 8xp

5) 7xp

6) 8xp

7) 4xp

5 comments

Oct 15, 2023 Krysmopompas · 352

The classic Ancient Stone (Minds) + Carolyn setup. Still good after all these years. Field Agent is a nice add to that base.

Oct 31, 2023 Dalym · 1

This looks really cool, but why did you opt for removing 1 perception for four of cups and not Death XIII? Wouldn't raising your book be a higher priority then your brain?

Oct 31, 2023 alpopone · 250

I have anticipated treachery cards with tests to be scary in this campaign so I opted for Four of Cups.
With 6-7 it was quite comfortable to pass the investigation tests on low and mid shroud locations. The several testless clue gathering methods have been quite helpful especially on the more tricky locations (high shroud or with some extra condition to investigate).

Nov 19, 2023 Wolf · 73

How do I make Shrewd Analysis work when upgrading my deck on ArkhamDB? I swear I have been here for like 1,5 hours trying to figure this stuff out...

Nov 30, 2023 ChrisIsMyMiddleName · 317

I'd say in case of Carolyn you could just do both upgrades and if ArkhamDB does not do it automatically, you could adjust your XP to have 3XP extra. If I recall correctly, the Arkham Cards app has ways of randomizing the upgrade as well; for the XP it does, or at least used to do, what I suggest above automatically: adding the XP you paid for the second upgrade as extra XP.

By the way really nice deck! The thing I like so much about Carolyn is the broad deck building options she has. I'm playing her through Carcosa (now at scenario 6) also with Ancient Stone and stacking, but my Carolyn deck looks quite different in some aspects, for example with -based and testless fighting/damage options to make her less dependent on the fighter, as well as more card draw support for teammates.