Agent Carolyn is sent by the Bureau to partner up with Arkham law enforcement and solve recent crimes using her forensic knowledge and psychological expertise !

Intoduction

• With a new version of Carolyn looming on the horizon, I wanted to take a look back at her Chapter 1 counterpart, with the full Chapter 1 card pool, and have one last hurrah for one of my favorite investigators.

• Solo Carolyn isn't really a thing, and when looking for potential pairings, my mind obviously went to her partner of choice Agnes Baker.

• Carolyn + Agnes is a classic combo, but their expansive deckbuilding options leave room for many different takes. This one is a bit off the beaten path, but it is definitely the most fun I've had with the pair.

• Check out Part 2 : Superhero Agnes

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Girl Power ?!

• In terms of healing options to trigger her ability, we have her signature Hypnotic Therapy as well as Liquid Courage and Hallowed Mirror, all of which provide additional card draw for either Carolyn or the healed target alongside the resource from Carolyn's .

  • Liquid Courage is the deck's card of choice for the Synergy cards and has icons for Well Prepared, while Hallowed Mirror acts as its only source of damage healing (Or is it ?).

• Alice Luxley is one of the deck's key cards, providing that crucial boost, paired with a source of damage that works wonders with Gray's Anatomy and awesome icons for Well Prepared.

  • There are a lot of tools across both decks to whittle down enemies (Blood-Rite, Gray's Anatomy, Hatchet, Agnes's ) on top of that 1 damage that make it a real difference-maker in a lot of instances.
  • The deck doesn't have that many ways to boost its tempo (only the free Move actions from Safeguard and Task Force/Call for Backup), but killing enemies as you discover clues is a really efficient way to spend one's time.

• Occult Lexicon and its Blood-Rites provide a different source of testless, AoO-free damage to either replace or supplement Alice Luxley.

  • In terms of discard targets, Eureka! is always fairly expendable, as are duplicates of your assets (Gray's Anatomy, Liquid Courage, Alice Luxley) or other events (Gang Up, Explosive Ward and Task Force) that you won't have the resources to pay for alongside Blood-Rite.
  • Explosive Ward act as 4th and 5th copy of Blood-Rite and offer testless damage that the deck pays for easily. Those icons are also surprisingly helpful to commit for Gang Up or Agnes's Hatchet throws.

By the Book

• Stick to the Plan is yet another Carolyn staple, helping her with her extensive setup with both speed and consistency.

  • Ever Vigilant allows her to play 3 of assets, at once, at a discount. With 16 total assets, playing it on turn 1 is the goal, and a very achievable one at that.

  • Emergency Cache is there for additional resource generation. The deck relies on expensive assets (Alice Luxley, Gray's Anatomy) and events (Gang Up, Task Force) for its most impactful actions, so having Emergency Cache on standby is really helpful if you fail to draw the superior-in-every-way Stand Together (3).

    • Note that Stick to the Plan exhausts, meaning you cannot play both Emergency Cache and Ever Vigilant on turn 1.

  • The final card is Toe to Toe. Both Carolyn's and Agnes's decks are not quite reliable monster fighters, especially at the start of a scenario when they aren't quite set-up. Having a testless 2 damage tucked under Stick to the Plan just helps a lot with their growing pains.

• Gray's Anatomy is one of the cards both decks are built around. It's icons are perfect for Well Prepared, and its damage increase work wonders with the of both Alice Luxley and Agnes, allowing either to do up to 4 damage in a single action.

  • You might wonder how this is going to work when Carolyn is the one engaged with enemies. Thankfully, we still have a handful of damage events (Explosive Ward, Gang Up) for that, and Agnes has a few tricks up her sleeve as well.
  • Over-succeeding using the book can be a bit shaky without Alice Luxley or Well Prepared. This is where Perception and Eureka! can be put to good use, and Agnes has Jury-Rig to help you as well.
  • You can also use Gray's Anatomy to increase your or Agnes's healing, which also helps you deal with Rational Thought very easily.

• As an additional source of skill boosts, this deck foregoes additional boosts like St. Hubert's Key or Celaeno Fragments that I tend to find boring for the underrated Well Prepared.

  • Alice Luxley and Liquid Courage lets it boosts and respectively, while Gray's Anatomy and Hypnotic Therapy enable both (or give +1 to or ), meaning it has no shortage of great targets.

Teamwork makes the dream work !

• Task Force is a card I really enjoy, a weird mish-mash of Guidance, Working a Hunch and Shortcut that became somehow.

  • When paired with Agnes, the Activate has a wide variety of applications from clues (Eyes of the Dreamer) to damage (Hatchet, Gray's Anatomy) to healing Liquid Courage, Hypnotic Therapy).
  • Sometimes you really want to get that +2/3 damage from Gray's Anatomy and use Well Prepared to make it happen, leaving you without it to boost the Investigate you would need to trigger Alice Luxley. The testless clues from Task Force or Call for Backup help to get around this problem.

• The Synergy package has always been great in Carolyn, and this deck is no exception. With Shrewd Analysis and Arcane Research as permanents, she has at least 3 classes in play at all times.

  • Gang Up is a high damage event allowing you to plow through even the toughest of foes and even bosses. It starts at +3 / +3 damage, to reach +4 once Liquid Courage enters play, and +5 with a bit of help from Jury-Rig or possibly even Agnes's Hatchet. Some of the targets this cards aims at often have a high , so keeping a Take the Initiative or Explosive Ward to commit can be a good idea.
  • Call for Backup provides a clue, a point of damage, a horror heal and hopefully a move action as well and a damage heal. This can make for some crazy chain reaction with Carolyn's , Alice Luxley's for extra damage, and Gray's Anatomy for additional damage or healing (or both).

• Stand Together is a strong card with an even stronger upgrade. The resources are obviously valuable in this deck given its many expensive cards, but are also important for Agnes : Once she grabs Eldritch Brand, she starts the game with only 2 resources to play important assets like Peter Sylvestre, Captivating Performance and Hatchet and may need to use an early Spectral Razor (or worse, Dark Memory depending on the first rounds of encounter draws.

Upgrade Plan

(View at arkham-starter.com)

Conclusion

• I would say this deck is Some kind of 'Greatest Hits' list for Chapter 1 Carolyn Fern, and yet it doesn't feel quite right. Where are Ancient Stone ? St. Hubert's Key ? Field Agent ? Girish Kadakia ? Logical Reasoning ? Jeremiah Kirby ? Dr. Milan Christopher ?
• Which just goes to show just how awesome Carolyn's deck-building is. Chapter 2 Carolyn may have a stronger ability and much better base stats, but the original will always be something special on the back of that incredible card pool !
• It's such a shame that Gray's Anatomy costs so much xp, since it means the deck only begins to take shape with 25+ experience. On the other hand, it made designing the level 0 deck that would grow into this one quite the interesting challenge as well.
• I find the key to making a fun Carolyn deck often lies in finding ways to make her more of a 'flex' than trying to outdo her counterparts in clue-gathering. With Agnes's deck lacking any combat spell in favor of the curious Hatchet, it often made for a lot of tense encounters where taking down enemies was very much a combined effort.

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To create similar guides, this is Valentin1331's template, which I drew inspiration from for this guide, here. I also used the Upgrade tool and Thumbnail tool from arkham.starter.