Agnes fights with her blood

I love mystics, and I absolutely fell in love with the concept of blood magic, which we finally received with Bad Blood Agnes! :)

The whole idea behind the deck is simple: with Blood Magic, we can pay for powerful mystic events by taking 1 damage instead of spending resources. The deck is built around maximizing that mechanic.

We draw cards through our Heirloom of Hyperborea alongside Guts and Arcane Initiate, gain extra actions with Leo De Luca (which we can access through Memories of Another Life), and keep ourselves alive with Drain Essence, Hallowed Mirror, Deny Existence, ally soak, and of course our precious Heirloom of Hyperborea

The main boss-killer card is Blood of K'n-yan, so the very first XP should go toward one copy of it along with one copy of Astral Mirror. Otherwise, Blood of K'n-yan is basically just another Spectral Razor with +1 damage.

After that, the next priorities are one copy of Memories of Another Life and Occult Reliquary. If you’re lucky, your full setup can already be online after Scenario 2!

From there, you can add the second copy of Blood of K'n-yan and Binder's Jar. For consistency, pick up the second Astral Mirror and the second Memories of Another Life. Any XP after that is mostly luxury upgrades, such as:

Arcane Initiate (lvl 3) Charisma Relic Hunter The Hierophant • V Deny Existence

The first two scenarios can be pretty rough though, since the deck is still missing its real damage output at that point. Having a secondary fighter in the team helps a lot during the early campaign. If you play it the way we did in a 2-player setup with one main fighter and one main cluever, just be aware that you probably won’t achieve the absolute best scenario results early on — but once the deck comes together, it becomes incredibly rewarding to play :)

The deck becomes incredibly satisfying once fully assembled. You can kill bosses in just one or two actions by attacking at something absurd like +19 skill value (5 base + 2 × 7 empty hand slots) and dealing 8 damage with a single Blood of K'n-yan :D

You can also support your main cluever with Read the Signs, letting you discover 4 or even more clues per scenario :)

Your main draw engine is your Heirloom, so mulligan aggressively for it every game!

May your blood — inherited from a long-forgotten relative — guide and empower you on your path to defeat the Ancient Ones!