Agnes's shenanigans

You can't spell shenanigans without... a carefully crafted anagram of Agnes?

(don't be afraid to let me know if I messed up somewhere)

The gimmick:

I wanted to try and attach Explosive Ward (or Ward of Protection, if I felt like playing it safe) to Dayana Esperence.

I used A Chance Encounter to bring back Dayana Esperence from the discard pile, to essentially refresh her secrets. It was possible to kill her with things like Forbidden Knowledge (causing horror), to put her into the discard pile.

I also experimented with adding some arcane slots to power up Eldritch Initiation and Explosive Ward. The extra slots came from things like Binder's Jar, Occult Reliquary and Sign Magick.

There was also the potential for a nice combo with Sign Magick, Occult Reliquary, Enchanted Bow and Shrivelling - you can potentially do 6 damage with Agnes for the use of one action:

1) activate bow, which thanks to the Occult Reliquary only takes up 1 hand (for 2dmg); 2) take a free action on another asset with Sign Magick - e.g. use Shrivelling (for 3dmg); 3) potentially take some horror with Agnes from Shrivelling (1dmg). This should be without using any charges on Shrivelling - or the bow (because you'll be attacking something engaged with you, at your location).

Pay for Explosive Ward under Dayana Esperence with Prophetic (or with Uncage the Soul), to add some nice testless damage.

As Enchanted Bow gives only +1, Sparrow Mask is a nice card to add, especially with Agnes Baker - she can even have a good chance to dodge with Peter Sylvestre cheering her on, on the side-lines.

Things to remember:

• Uncage the Soul can be used to pay for certain cards under Dayana Esperence, like Explosive Ward.

• Uncage the Soul (if you want to also include it) discards an asset but can be used to play any type of spell or ritual card from your hand, under Dayana) or your discard pile - something like Explosive Ward, for example.

• With Occult Reliquary we can have 3 free arcane slots from the start, which makes Eldritch Initiation decent from the get-go. Later on, the extra slots from Binder's Jar and Sign Magick make it a pretty good card for drawing. We also have Heirloom of Hyperborea for more draw (each activation of a spell under Dayana Esperence should activate it).

• Things can get quite expensive, so David Renfield, Uncage the Soul, Prophetic and Take Heart are here to help with the meme-y nature of trying to make Explosive Ward work.

• When you take horror to deal damage you get a charge on Sparrow Mask.

Upgrades (approximately):

• 2x Sign Magick for 2x Enchanted Bow.
• 2x Guts for 2x Dayana Esperence.
• 2x Holy Rosary is replaced by 2x Binder's Jar.
• 2x Drawn to the Flame for 2x Sign Magick.
• 2x Take Heart for 2x Prophetic.
• 1x Painkillers for 1x A Chance Encounter.

Other cards are just upgraded versions of existing cards in the deck or permanents.

Other thoughts:

Dayana Esperence is really fun; some other cards that are nice/thematic with her are Blinding Light, Time Warp and Recharge, if you want to experiment.