"Then It Multiplied!" - Agnes

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duke_loves_biscuits · 1226

The Challenge

I'm assuming everyone is at least mostly familiar with Undimensioned and Unseen - crazy, randomly moving monsters with huge (6) fight that can only be attacked using Willpower. A fairly open map, random abominations and Whippoorwills that spawn, and lots of pressure on both your health bars. Also of note at the fact that Skulls are -10, and Tablet is an auto-fail if you don't have a clue. This means there are potentially 5 auto-fail tokens in the bag at the start. Woot!

"Then It Multiplied" adds additional challenges, all 5 abominations, the hard chaos bag, a ban on any free movement card, and massive invulnerability to everything except the Esoteric Formula for the Broods. The last one is by far the biggest change - anything you can think of that helps, from Stray Cat to Dodge to Fire Extinguisher won't help. Your only avenue of attack is things that prevent damage, or things that boost your stats. Or the in-built method of attack in the scenario, which is clue gathering and location interaction.

There are three main parts to this encounter then.

1 = Getting two clues, and making it to the Whateley Ruins
2 = Blasting the broods to smitherinees! This involves at least 12 x Willpower (6) tests, that get harder as Broods power up, or in the last stage of the agenda. Gathering clues can also help here.
3 = Surviving, in particular in the first part before you can fight back. Evading and damage reduction are your only real options.

Time pressure is fairly easy. You have 18 turns, with the Broods getting stronger in the last 7 turns, but no additional pressure from the agenda apart from that. The encounter deck is fairly mild, with horror damage, willpower tests, and few enemies. Your biggest chance of an autoloss comes through Attracting Attention at the wrong time or Dissonant Voices when you are hemmed in and relying on events to survive.

Building a Deck

Your first challenge is which adventurer. Lets look at the card-pools.

Guardian: Brother Xavier, Keen Eye, Police Badge, Well Prepared, Stand Together, "I've had worse…", Scene of the Crime all look good. None of that is amazing and going to turn the scenario though. Blue investigators are all slanted towards Fight, which is least useful stat.
Seeker: Higher Education is amazing here, and the whole scenario could swing around it. There is also Fieldwork, Quick Study, Hyperawareness, and too much stuff to mention around clue-gathering and card-draw.
Rogue: High Roller, Leo De Luca, Streetwise, Sure Gamble and various other pay-to-win options, although surprisingly little we can do (except Sure Gamble) around the Willpower tests.
Mystic: Spirit Athame, Holy Rosary, St. Hubert's Key, David Renfield, Blood Pact and Arcane Studies all boost our will. Defiance, Counterspell, Time Warp, Seal of the Elder Sign, Recall the Future all help for tests. Drawn to the Flame is a good skill getter, given we aren't too afraid of the encounter deck.
Survivor: Lots of options around, well, surviving including Perseverance, Devil's Luck, Leather Coat. Peter Sylvestre is amazing as always, but even better here as all three of his abilities are what we want. Stroke of Luck, Lucky! and Will to Survive all play into the auto-success ballpark. Cornered, Dark Horse, Plucky all boost our stats well.
Neutral: The Absurdly Broken Key of Ys (to give its its full title) could make our game plan here, given that stat boosts are what we are after. Flashlight, Charisma, The Red-Gloved Man all all good, as are various defensive health choices like Elder Sign Amulet and Moment of Respite.

Of the above, it seems that Mystic and Suvivor are the top two pools, along with Higher Education. Low-level seeker cards and the Guardian cards, less helpful, though still with some play.

Given all that, here are my picks for top investigators:

Agnes Baker . Brings her high willpower, auto-damage for clearing whipporwills and other monsters, and access to both Mystic and Survivor.
"Ashcan" Pete. Brings Survivor, free duke-actions, high willpower and intellect, and some splash.
Minh Thi Phan. Brings Higher Education, and Survivor, along with some self-stat buffing.
Daisy Walker. Brings Higher Education, and Mystic, along with free Encyclopedia buffs. Needs to be careful with health and evading.

Other interesting options are Jim Culver, who can ignore the 3 auto-fail skulls, but sadly has a lack-luster card pool and statline. Sefina Rousseau has some pay to win options, and repeated usage of things like Counterspell, along with 4/4 in the two main stats. (Will/Evade). Norman Withers, Marie Lambeau and Wendy Adams all might have a bit of play too.

My Deck

I went with Agnes, as you can see. I really didn't want to draw any Enemy Basic Weaknesses, so tried to stick to 19XP rather than going higher (turned out OK, phew!).

I've focused on completely ignoring the search game, and just doing whatever I can to cheat out the two clues and get hold of the Esoteric Formula. After that, it becomes all guns blazing, with double-Cornered, Peter Sylvestre, Holy Rosary and Spirit Athame all providing lots of will power boosts to take down the Broods.

Some auto-successes with Stroke of Luck, Lucky! and Defiance (calling "skulls!"), helps. Once two broods fall, the map opens up, the skulls shrink in danger, and it becomes a lot easier. Blood Pact has a little play during the "witching hour", but you can probably afford 1-2 uses of it outside of that as well.

Slow and steady is better, hanging around just drawing cards and powering up is perfectly fine. Ideally you want a brood to move ontop of you (just one), so you have 3 actions to kill it, allowing some slack for auto-fail. You want to avoid the Whateley Ruins or the Blasted Heath for the penalties they can give.

I'd have really like to also fit in Leather Coat, Counterspell, and Time Warp as well as upgrading Lucky! but XP and cards are tight. Possibly you could drop Manual Dexterity for Leather Coat and just run with the damage.

Games

Played 4, won 4. Pretty happy with that! :)

The hardest part is definitely the first part, getting hold of the formula. Generally I went slow and steady, and preferred moving to locations that were empty rather than attempting to move in and evade a brood.

Blood Pact was the weakest XP spend, and could possibly be rotated. Cornered is amazing, as is Peter Sylvestre.

2 comments
Aug 03, 2018 Django · 4920 Did you consider removing some autofails? Or ignore some?
Aug 03, 2018 duke_loves_biscuits · 1226 I think bag-manipulation is very important in this challenge. Assuming you have no clues, you have Skulls, Tablet and Tentacle all as basically auto-fail. Wanting to move and hit a Brood is common, and you need to succeed 2 out of 2 if you don't want to get hit. (Hence why I prefer them to move to me, then you need 2 out of 3). Frozen in Fear is also a factor, and even with high willpower, it still hurts you the turn it lands. So I can completely see an "auto-success" deck as being one of the main ways to play, and more bag-manipulation than I have included would certainly help. You need to trade that off with damage protection. The penalty for failure is usually 2health/2sanity, so with less bag-manipulation (like this deck), you need plenty of damage soak. I considered both the Stone and P.I. Neither can remove "all skulls", so the best they could do is get the Tablet and one or two skulls. The stone clashed with the Spirit Athemes and P.I. has quite a heavy resource cost and I'm already running a fair amount of events and assets without any resource acceleration. I think I'd have needed to rework a few things to support P.I. I read a report of someone clearing it with Jim using both the stone and P.I., which I like, though you still have the problem of actually passing boosting your willpower up to the 10-12 range. I didn't really consider Dark Prophecy. It's pretty much entirely bad for you, unless you want to drop a clue with Tablet or can fizzle Skulls like Jim. It's a Jim-only card really. Grotesque Statue is a good call. I thought it perhaps too expensive XP-wise, and it clashed with the Daggers, but actually I probably could have pushed to 29XP and just run with it, as for two games I only drew my second dagger very late and had a free hand-slot. The main risk is that you draw Stubborn Detective or someone like him, which I was afraid of...

2 comments

Aug 03, 2018 Django · 4920

Did you consider removing some autofails? Or ignore some?

Aug 03, 2018 duke_loves_biscuits · 1226

I think bag-manipulation is very important in this challenge. Assuming you have no clues, you have Skulls, Tablet and Tentacle all as basically auto-fail. Wanting to move and hit a Brood is common, and you need to succeed 2 out of 2 if you don't want to get hit. (Hence why I prefer them to move to me, then you need 2 out of 3). Frozen in Fear is also a factor, and even with high willpower, it still hurts you the turn it lands. So I can completely see an "auto-success" deck as being one of the main ways to play, and more bag-manipulation than I have included would certainly help. You need to trade that off with damage protection. The penalty for failure is usually 2health/2sanity, so with less bag-manipulation (like this deck), you need plenty of damage soak.

I considered both the Stone and P.I. Neither can remove "all skulls", so the best they could do is get the Tablet and one or two skulls. The stone clashed with the Spirit Athemes and P.I. has quite a heavy resource cost and I'm already running a fair amount of events and assets without any resource acceleration. I think I'd have needed to rework a few things to support P.I. I read a report of someone clearing it with Jim using both the stone and P.I., which I like, though you still have the problem of actually passing boosting your willpower up to the 10-12 range.

I didn't really consider Dark Prophecy. It's pretty much entirely bad for you, unless you want to drop a clue with Tablet or can fizzle Skulls like Jim. It's a Jim-only card really.

Grotesque Statue is a good call. I thought it perhaps too expensive XP-wise, and it clashed with the Daggers, but actually I probably could have pushed to 29XP and just run with it, as for two games I only drew my second dagger very late and had a free hand-slot. The main risk is that you draw Stubborn Detective or someone like him, which I was afraid of...