Isabelle Barnes Dark Horse Firefighter

Opening Hand & Mulligan Priorities

The God Mulligan Priority

Hard mulligan for Dark Horse, Schoffner's Catalogue, and Aleksey Saburov. Getting Aleksey down on turn one is an absolute mandatory condition alongside your economy pieces to anchor your early game setup and protect your fragile health pool right out of the gate.

Piloting Strategy & Weapon Interaction

•The Aleksey Safety Valve

Once Aleksey Saburov is on the board, you can aggressively swing your Meat Cleavers without fear. When the cleaver inflicts horror, immediately use Aleksey's reaction window to pass that horror directly onto his card instead of your investigator card. This completely isolates your investigator card from weapon-inflicted mental strain, allowing his unique healing timing to scrub away the horror safely.

The Skill Test Loop

Remember that Isabelle's investigator ability triggers explicitly during a skill test window. You cannot drop your sanity as a free action outside of tests. Initiate a combat swing or a Mythos defense test, take your 1 direct horror inside that test window, and instantly pull a heavy hitter like Brute Force or Overpower straight out of your Short Supply trash to commit it on the spot.

The Unstoppable Cleaver Loop

When a monster engages you or a teammate, attack with the Meat Cleaver and choose to take 1 horror.

• This pushes your attack value up to 5 Combat dealing 2 damage flat.

• Place that 1 horror onto Aleksey Saburov or Cherished Keepsake.

• If you land the killing blow on the monster, the Meat Cleaver lets you heal an additional horror!

4. Continuous Resource-Free Domination

Weakness Mitigation

Breaking Point deals direct damage equal to your investigator's total horror minus her remaining sanity (max 4 damage). Because Isabelle has only 5 Health, direct horror from encounter cards makes this weakness lethal if left unmanaged.

Since you cannot assign direct horror to your assets, here is how you safely clear it:

• Active Emergency Siphoning: The moment direct horror lands on Isabelle's investigator card, treat it as a priority. Use an action and a charge from Clarity of Mind to heal that horror off your investigator card immediately, forcing Breaking Point to deal 0 damage if drawn.

• The Killer's Reward: Use your Meat Cleaver to defeat standard enemies. Its ability allows you to heal 1 horror straight off your investigator card every time you land a killing blow.

Upgrade path

• 2x Brute Force • (Cost: 2 XP) — Removes 2x Fight or Flight The Strategy: This is your highest-priority upgrade. It swaps out your one-time events for an item-free Skill card that costs 0 resources. Because it is a skill, Isabelle can loop it directly out of the trash during a combat test every single round. It gives you a permanent, infinite 3-damage attack at +3 Combat without costing a single resource.

• 2x Earthly Serenity • (Cost: 2 XP) — Removes 2x Clarity of Mind (0) The Strategy: This cleans up your Arcane slots completely. They share the same slot and play cost, but Earthly Serenity capitalizes on your Dark Horse Willpower bonus (testing at 5 vs 3). Instead of spending multiple actions grinding out single points of healing, a single successful test clears massive chunks of mixed health and horror instantly.

• 1x Dark Horse ••••• (Cost: 5 XP) — Upgrades 1x Dark Horse (0) The Strategy: This is your ultimate engine stabilization upgrade. Because it is a Permanent, it automatically starts face-up in play every single scenario, making it completely immune to being milled by Short Supply. It locks in your permanent +1 stat buffs from turn one, saves you an action and card draw, and adds the incredible ability to exhaust it to harvest icons straight from your discard pile during a test. (Note: Because this is a Permanent, it replaces your Level 0 copies and moves outside your main deck. To legally bring your deck back up to the 30-card limit, you get to add 2x Rise to the Occasion completely for free. This drops two massive +3 Wild icon panic buttons into your pool that Isabelle can immediately pull out of the trash to pass brutal early-game tests).

• 2x Grizzled • (Cost: 2 XP) — Removes 1x Overpower & 1x Guts The Strategy: This 0-cost customizable skill provides tailored defense for your campaign. Spend your checkmarks to name the two most dangerous encounter traits based on your current campaign pool (using the configuration guide below). It scales your defensive loops massively, letting you pass brutal Mythos tests completely for free.

• 2x Timely Intervention ••• (Cost: 6 XP) — Removes 2x Timely Intervention (0) The Strategy: Because Lucky! is too resource-heavy for your economy, this upgraded Chapter Two skill card serves as your ultimate reactive safety net. It lets you add +3 Wild icons to pass a test after you have already revealed a bad chaos token, and it sits neatly in your discard pile ready to be recurred on demand.

• 1x Alter Fate ••• (Cost: 3 XP) — Removes 1x Unexpected Courage The Strategy: A stellar multiplayer tech utility. This is a Fast, 0-cost Survivor event that lets you instantly wipe a terrible, attachment-style encounter treachery card off the board for either you or a teammate without touching your personal bank. By dropping your single flexible copy of Unexpected Courage here, you keep your core asset engine and Soul Link completely untouched.

• 2x Chainsaw •••• (Cost: 8 XP) — Removes 2x Meat Cleaver The Strategy: Your late-campaign boss-melting weapon. While it costs a heavy 4 resources to play, it carries the Item trait—meaning you can fund its deployment entirely using the leftover secrets sitting on Schoffner's Catalogue. It deals a flat 3 damage per swing, and you can use Resourceful to fish it back out of the trash when it runs out of supplies.

• 1x Key of Ys ••••• (Cost: 10 XP) — Removes 1x Overpower The Strategy: The ultimate endgame capstone asset. Because it carries the Item trait, it can be paid for using the secrets on Schoffner's Catalogue to completely respect your Dark Horse zero-resource engine. It lets you filter horror onto the asset to gain up to a permanent +3 bonus to every single skill stat, turning Isabelle into an unstoppable god for the campaign finale.

• 2x Brute Force • (Cost: 2 XP) — Removes 2x Fight or Flight The Strategy: This is your highest-priority upgrade. It swaps out your one-time events for an item-free Skill card that costs 0 resources. Because it is a skill, Isabelle can loop it directly out of the trash during a combat test every single round. It gives you a permanent, infinite 3-damage attack at +3 Combat without costing a single resource.

• 2x Earthly Serenity • (Cost: 2 XP) — Removes 2x Clarity of Mind (0) The Strategy: This cleans up your Arcane slots completely. They share the same slot and play cost, but Earthly Serenity capitalizes on your Dark Horse Willpower bonus (testing at 5 vs 3). Instead of spending multiple actions grinding out single points of healing, a single successful test clears massive chunks of mixed health and horror instantly.

• 2x Grizzled • (Cost: 2 XP) — Removes 1x Overpower & 1x Guts The Strategy: This 0-cost customizable skill provides tailored defense for your campaign. Spend your checkmarks to name the two most dangerous encounter traits based on your current campaign pool (using the configuration guide below). It scales your defensive loops massively, letting you pass brutal Mythos tests completely for free.

• 2x Timely Intervention ••• (Cost: 6 XP) — Removes 2x Timely Intervention (0) The Strategy: Because Lucky! is too resource-heavy for your economy, this upgraded Chapter Two skill card serves as your ultimate reactive safety net. It lets you add +3 Wild icons to pass a test after you have already revealed a bad chaos token, and it sits neatly in your discard pile ready to be recurred on demand.

• 1x Alter Fate ••• (Cost: 3 XP) — Removes 1x Unexpected Courage The Strategy: A stellar multiplayer tech utility. This is a Fast, 0-cost Survivor event that lets you instantly wipe a terrible, attachment-style encounter treachery card off the board for either you or a teammate without touching your personal bank. By dropping your single flexible copy of Unexpected Courage here, you keep your core asset engine and Soul Link completely untouched.

• 2x Chainsaw •••• (Cost: 8 XP) — Removes 2x Meat Cleaver The Strategy: Your late-campaign boss-melting weapon. While it costs a heavy 4 resources to play, it carries the Item trait—meaning you can fund its deployment entirely using the leftover secrets sitting on Schoffner's Catalogue. It deals a flat 3 damage per swing, and you can use Resourceful to fish it back out of the trash when it runs out of supplies.

• 1x Key of Ys ••••• (Cost: 10 XP) — Removes 1x Overpower The Strategy: The ultimate endgame capstone asset. Because it carries the Item trait, it can be paid for using the secrets on Schoffner's Catalogue to completely respect your Dark Horse zero-resource engine. It lets you filter horror onto the asset to gain up to a permanent +3 bonus to every single skill stat, turning Isabelle into an unstoppable god for the campaign

Because Grizzled is a customizable card, you must choose two specific encounter card traits to gain your +2 Wild icons against. For general campaigns, Terror is almost always your first choice to safeguard your sanity. Your second trait should be swapped based on your campaign to maximize your monster-slaying efficiency:

• The Night of the Zealot: Choose Terror and Cultist.

• The Dunwich Legacy: Choose Terror and Abomination (essential for melting the massive beasts in the back half of the campaign).

• The Path to Carcosa: Choose Terror and Humanoid (perfect for locking down the campaign's massive roster of cultists, lunatics, and bystanders).

• The Forgotten Age: Choose Yithian and Snake (bypasses Terror completely to focus heavily on survival against the jungle's brutal agility tests and vengeance trackers).

• The Circle Undone: Choose Terror and Witch (crucial for passing the severe willpower tests thrown by the lodge and the coven).

• The Dream-Eaters: Choose Terror and Spider (indispensable for cutting through the massive web-weaving swarms).

• The Innsmouth Conspiracy: Choose Terror and Deep One (guarantees you can land weapon strikes on the tidal waves of fish-men tracking your team).

• Edge of the Earth: Choose Terror and Hazard (vital for surviving the brutal frost tokens and environmental treacheries of the ice fields).

• The Feast of Hemlock Vale: Choose Terror and Ooze or Insect (tailors your defenses perfectly to squash the localized blights and mutating wildlife).