Spirited Away - Value Parallel Jim

This is a really appealing deck! I love value archetypes, so that pile of events paired with the allies of the spirit deck look fun.

I'm curious—how might you build the level 1 version of this deck? Grotesque Statue seems difficult to replace. Maybe Ritual Candles, to lessen the impact of Curse tokens during the early phases of the campaign?

This is built more for an upcoming standalone event we're having but I'll see what I can do.

I think I'd start with In the Thick of It which is scary but necessary - You need something to put charges on and 2x Divination is pretty great for that. You could also go with 1x Grotesque Statue and something like double Shrivelling just to fill in until the Divinations come in.

I think even more than Binder's Jar I'd spend the other 1XP on the Priest of Two Faiths. It's a solid Spirit that you can use to control the flow of that deck (by letting it discard instead of popping more curses in).

So here's my changes for a 0XP campaign:

REMOVE

• Eye of the Djinn 4XP
• 2x Binder's Jar 2XP
• Blasphemous Covenant 2XP
• 2x Favor of the Moon 2XP
• 2x Stirring Up Trouble 2XP
• 2X Grotesque Statue 4XP
• One of the basic weaknesses (yay!)

ADD

• In the Thick of It (maybe one of each trauma?)
• Deep Knowledge
• 2x Ritual Candles
• 2x Scroll of Secrets
• Token of Faith
• 2x Voice of Ra
• Eldritch Initiation

Let me think it over and I can see where I'd go with upgrades past the initial 19XP.

Some upgrades that I considered past the initial 19XP:

• Whitton Greene - for the spirit deck
• Backpack - body slot and grabs a ton of things in the deck
• Armageddon - one of these can replace a Spectral Razor potentially (You gotta admit it's cool)
• Shards of the Void - a single copy of this that you can continually refill could be very impactful over time (Same singleton slot that Armageddon takes care of above)
• Prophetic - this pays for and buffs many cards in the deck
• Manipulate Destiny could be a fun addition
• Foresight - Neat combo with Alyssa Graham and has some great situational uses as well with other investigator's cards
• Spirit of Humanity - If you want to completely abandon the Explosive Ward thing for permanent spells
• Fey - I think this could be a fun addition if you could find room

How does Take Heart coax him off the Beyond? I feel like I'm missing something. Really cool idea for the deck.

@HiPFLasK, I think he means intentionally failing the test, but at least gaining something back.

@HiPFLasK - @unremb is correct. In order to get it into play so it can be put into Binder's Jar you have to fail an attack or evade against it. You can, of course, successfully attack the Vengeful Shade but that's just going to put him to the bottom of the spirit deck. I usually like the value of [Take Heart](/card/heart anyway but it's extra sweet if you can use it for this.

Thanks for breaking it down for me `@wedgeex and @unremb I'm new to the game so still trying to wrap my head around everything. The only other question I have is how you're getting value with the Explosive Ward? You would need to discard two arcane slot cards for it to be effective and that seems painful. Why not just a damage spell instead?

@HiPFLasK Explosive Ward is no test and can be 2 damage for 2 resources. The biggest issue with defeating Vengeful Shade is the 5 fight/5 evade - which is going to be tough to overcome. Most of the time you won't even have the Divination out yet or it'll be depleted or you'll have a different monster under Binder's Jar to give you the extra spell slot. This isn't really a deck that needs Arcane slots for much other than sometimes a quickly depleted Divination.

A few other options that you may want to consider:

• Gaze of Ouraxsh 2XP (one of the only other testless options)
• Riastrad 1XP
• Occult Invocation

I still think your two best options for ways to quickly dispatch the shade are Explosive Ward and Spectral Razor.

I love that @wedgeex what a great idea. Thanks for breaking it down for a newbie like myself. I might try storm of spirits as well to see how that would work. I'm pumping up my mind through the spirit deck so I tend to be kind of beefy with that.

Oh! I just remembered another upgrade to the spirit deck if you were playing this in a campaign.

• Field Agent - another solid booster with a repeatable effect to take horror (it transfers to Jim, sadly) to fast peel clues. This would be an interesting swap over Mysterious Raven though the control of dropping the spirit slot at will would be missed.

Field Agent is great for //Jim because you can use his (upgraded) Trumpet to heal yourself.

Stuffing the shade into Binder's Jar is a great idea if you can dedicate the time to kill it. Or use Beat Cop 2 over 2 turns. A survivor in your group could also use Fend Off to pacify the shade instead.

The idea of putting the shade in the jar is interesting but if the shade comes out after jar is in play what are the chances it was going to reappear within the scenario? Seems like for the slot needed the benefit is just not there a good portion of the time.

@Dangerxmouse You're not wrong. In practice the jar only works for it's intended use a third of the time. I have used it as a way to neutralize annoying monsters from the chaos deck more than a few times and that function still beefs up Explosive Ward. I wouldn't say that it's completely useless outside of the original reason for including it.

Do you think parallel jim can work with no insmouth curse?

@CrovaxTheFallen- Yes, you'd just need to do it with some different deck selections and only using the alternate back (Only way you can get The Beyond going. That way you could focus on the synergies instead. Considering the lack of need for charges in this deck it might even be a better option.