Living her Bast Life | Ch2 Starters Revisited

Living her Bast Life

In this mini-series I'm focusing on powerful decks built from the Chapter 2 starters. Here Carolyn uses Scroll of the Pharaohs (Words of Bast) to manipulate the encounter deck, with Occult Records healing off the horror for a clue. I guess the best way to manage enemies is not to draw them!

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Series Decks

At a Glance

Stats
Clue-finding:	★★★★★
Consistency:	★★★★★
Enemy Management:	★☆☆☆☆
Encounter Defense:	★★★★★+
Survivability:	★★★☆☆
Simplicity:	★★★★★

Overview

• Countering the encounter deck: Scroll of the Pharaohs (Words of Bast) is extremely powerful, allowing you to discard an encounter card and stack the other two revealed cards as you please. In two player, this means that the encounter deck won't hold any surprises for you. You can use this to engineer Gather Intel card draw, e.g. with Aloof enemies, or enemies drawn by other investigators at your location. Occult Records heals off associated horror as a ability and with Carolyn's gives a testless clue. Experimental Psychology is a backup for Occult Records, and Private Practice provides resources for horror healing.

• Going crazy for clues: Commune with the Cosmos is a big clue event that can net up to 5 clues in a single action. Deduction and Working a Hunch provide more clue compression, and this deck maximises card draw to help you find these and potentially cycle. If you are going to cycle, get rid of Unbroken Web afterwards! Clues power up Caustic Reaction, allowing it to deal 2 damage for bosses.

• The tutor becomes the tutee: University Archivist was an important addition to this deck as a tutor, allowing you to more readily find your precious tomes. While Establish Motive isn't so critical as a tutor card, getting Gather Intel or Working a Hunch is still handy for card advantage, as is its icon. Archivist is completely disposable, you don't usually need the extra tome slot, and the icon can be handy for enemy management as well.

_{Thank you: 5argon and their thumbnail tool; Valentin1331 for his support over the years; the community creators of Arkham.Build (Felix), Arkham Cards (zzorba) and ArkhamDB (kamalisk) - linking their Patreons!}

Starting deck and planned progression

0 XP starting deck is as follows (and link here):

A recommended order of purchases/upgrades is:*

• Scroll of the Pharaohs (Untranslated) → Scroll of the Pharaohs (Words of Bast) ••••

• Dreamer's Chronicle → Commune with the Cosmos

_{* You might not be able to research Scroll of Pharaohs in your first scenario, in which case purchase a Commune with the Cosmos first. Likewise with Unbroken Web you might find yourself with less XP, Deduction •• can sub in for a Commune with the Cosmos in these cases.}

Post-18 XP suggestions are:

• Deduction → Deduction ••

• Caustic Reaction → Caustic Reaction ••

• 1 x Studious

Playtesting Notes

From playtesting on Children of Blood two player and standard difficulty, I made a small tweak: swapping the Lab Assistant I had in originally to University Archivist. With only 3 horror healing cards here, then even with the strong card draw the wait for these felt a little too long at times - plus it makes finding Scroll of the Pharaohs (Words of Bast) easier too. You do need to push to research your level 0 Scroll of the Pharaohs in the first scenario - but this isn't too tricky and you can still get clues from healing the associated horror.

Otherwise, everything else went according to plan! With two Scrolls of the Pharaohs and Literary Analysis, you can dictate the encounter deck for up to 10 turns (10 turns!!) in two player. With Occult Records you even get a clue from doing this, which ignores the shroud of your location. While you're not hoovering up clues as fast as usual, the amount of time saved by not having random nonsense trip you up is another form of action economy. I will say it adds to the length of the game as the 3 encounter cards are revealed (i.e. everyone sees them), and so what should go back on top of the deck often requires discussion!

If you want to get Carolyn to higher test values, then you can ditch Commune with the Cosmos and instead add Dorothy Simmons, Charisma, upgraded Deduction and likely Typewriter over Establish Motive. However personally I think Commune with the Cosmos is a lot of fun, very good for standard difficulty (and still works well enough for higher difficulties). You do always have testless clues from horror healing, so this eases harder difficulties for Carolyn already without sky-high Intellect.

Final thoughts

This deck is great! You get incredibly strong encounter deck manipluation with Scroll of the Pharaohs (Words of Bast), which you forfeit minimal tempo for courtesy of Occult Records healing (and so a clue), and to cap it all you have further clue-compression with Commune with the Cosmos, Deduction and Working a Hunch. The trick is you need high card draw to see these cards often, and to accomplish that card draw you have to make compromises, but Carolyn has strong enough to get away with it. Hope you enjoy!