Bringing Order to Entropy

Support Mateo (Easy/Normal Difficulty)

This Mateo deck is based around the Seal mechanic making him strictly a support investigator. He has no way to deal with enemies other than some evasion and even then he only has a decent chance of evading once he has a few of his Seal cards out. For the most part his chaos manipulation will have an important but mostly unseen effect on the game, meaning this deck will not be very flashy.

Mateo will be able to do some investigation after grabbing a Flashlight, sealing a couple tokens, or recruiting Alyssa Graham. With Time Warp(2), he can lead the charge to reveal new locations and advance the Act without fear of getting stuck in a bad position. He's a good pick for the jobs that no one wants to do (backtracking, exploring, location-specific actions), but he doesn't like to be left alone for too long due to his inability to fight.

After a few scenarios, you should be able to start off with a seal or two quickly, and get the third out by the halfway point. Since the goal is to get out the Seal of the Seventh Sign(5) very quickly, you can also use Mateo's one time reaction more liberally instead of waiting for a do-or-die moment.

I don't play often enough to know/remember how each scenario plays out, so this base version of the deck uses 2x Time Warp(2) to get out of bad situations. There is alternative setup below that uses Mateo's bonus 5 experience to take Seal of the Seventh Sign(5) right away.

Notable Cards

Seal of the Seventh Sign(5) is the basis of this deck. Being able to remove the auto-fail token provides an immense relief to the investigators. It also works great with The Chthonian Stone, each helping protect the other from being removed.

Protective Incantation(1) can either be used to further protect your Seal of the Seventh Sign(5) by removing a nasty token, or it can be used to get rid of the highest negative chaos token. It's important to keep this spell up, so try to conserve your resources or wait an extra turn before playing this.

Uncage the Soul the used almost exclusively for the Seal of the Seventh Sign to conserve your resources, but it can be discarded for its icons. In a dire situation, you could also use it to play Protective Incantation(1) saving you 1 resource.

Backpack is useful for grabbing your The Chthonian Stone, Flashlight, The Codex of Ages, Holy Rosary, and Trench Coat. In addition to tutoring those cards, it thins your deck so you can find Seal of the Seventh Sign(5) faster.

Holy Rosary isn't too expensive and can be grabbed from a Backpack. I like the Sanity sink and the passive stat, but this could easily be swapped for something else. In Cards to Consider I mention St. Hubert's Key, an even toy with the idea of taking Hemispheric Map(3).

Drawn to the Flame as additional clue support, but try to do this near other investigators, or at the beginning of an easier round. Once you have Alyssa Graham, it becomes much safer to use Drawn to the Flame.

Premonition is excellent for when you eventually need to Recharge(2) your Seal of the Seventh Sign(5). Even if you draw a with Premonition, it's not during a skill test so you'll only end up removing one charge from Seal of the Seventh Sign(5). Otherwise, you'll probably want to use Premonition for other investigator's actions since they'll be doing the heavy lifting.

The Codex of Ages is less used for the bonus and more for the guaranteed success on a skill check. Plus, it allows him to recoup some of the cost of playing the card, or gain another action.

Upgrade Path

1x Fearless → 1x Seal of the Seventh Sign(5)

1x Fearless → 1x Recharge(2)

1x Trench Coat → 1x Seal of the Seventh Sign(5)

1x Perception → Recharge(2)

1x Drawn to the Flame → 1x Protective Incantation(1)

2x Emergency Cache → 2x Emergency Cache(2)

1x Drawn to the Flame → 1x Recall the Future(2)

1x Uncage the Soul or 1x Perception → 1x Recall the Future(2)

Save until you can afford your first Seal of the Seventh Sign(5). If you have 3 or 4 experience after the first scenario and don't want to save the experience, take Protective Incantation(1) or Emergency Cache(2).

Once you have your first Seal of the Seventh Sign(5), focus on grabbing a Recharge(2) as a cheaper way to extend it rather than saving for the next Seal. From then on, if you've had trouble finding your Seal of the Seventh Sign(5), aim for adding a second to the deck, otherwise fill out your sealing potential by grabbing a second Protective Incantation(1) and upgrading your Emergency Cache cards.

You can grab Recall the Future(2) sooner if you're able to quickly seal tokens away, or just save it for the end of the campaign with your extra experience.

I prefer Emergency Cache(2) over Emergency Cache(3) because it's a cheaper upgrade and there is no way to tutor your Seal of the Seventh Sign once you've added them to the deck so the card draw is very useful. It could be beneficial to add Arcane Initiate to the deck for this reason, but the pre-experience version of the deck has no spells that are important to tutor.

Alternative Start

If you're worried about the resource load for setting up The Chthonian Stone and maintaining Protective Incantation, then this alternative start would also work. You'll have Uncage the Soul for setting up Seal of the Seventh Sign(5) and Forbidden Knowledge to prepare you for either the seal, your passive stats (Holy Rosary and Alyssa Graham), and The Chthonian Stone. Once you feel comfortable with the cost of your cards, you can drop Forbidden Knowledge.

1x Protective Incantation(1) → 1x Seal of the Seventh Sign(5)

1x Time Warp(2) → 1x Forbidden Knowledge

1x Time Warp(2) → 1x Manual Dexterity

Alternative Upgrade Path

1x Manual Dexterity → 1x Protective Incantation(1)

1x Trench Coat → 1x Time Warp(2)

1x Fearless → 1x Recharge(2)

1x Fearless → 1x Seal of the Seventh Sign(5)

1x Perception → Recharge(2)

1x Drawn to the Flame → 1x Protective Incantation(1)

1x Forbidden Knowledge → 1x Time Warp(2)

2x Emergency Cache → 2x Emergency Cache(2)

1x Drawn to the Flame → 1x Recall the Future(2)

1x Uncage the Soul or 1x Perception → 1x Recall the Future(2)

Cards to Consider

Arcane Initiate or Arcane Initiate(3) can be used for tutoring your spells once you have a few more in the deck.

Alter Fate(3) is one of the Blessed cards Mateo can take. It could be useful based on the campaign you're playing, but I take Time Warp(2) because I don't play enough to know each scenario's weaknesses.

Custom Ammunition(3) is another Blessed card Mateo can take. It's an excellent support card in multiplayer when you have a Guardian as it provides a damage boost and more ammo. Most Monster enemies have 4+ health and a lot of elites are also monsters. It's perfect for when you know a boss will be ending the scenario.

Book of Shadows(3) I think it's too expensive (both resource and experience wise) too add into a deck with Protective Incantation(1), but it does allow you to Seal a 4th bad token, or take an offensive/investigative spell. You could potentially replace the Recharge(2) cards with this if you have extra experience and haven't added many tokens to the chaos bag.

Forbidden Knowledge is useful for extra resources but I think Emergency Cache and Mateo's ability may be enough to play out everything you need. You do have a good amount of Sanity with this build though, so the downside isn't too bad. It can also be a target for a discard treachery since it doesn't leave play with no secrets on it.

Enraptured can be useful if you don't want to spend experience on Recharge and it gives you an skill bump. Perhaps this would be better with a Book of Shadows(3).

Delve Too Deep is also viable here since Seal of the Seventh Sign(5) is so expensive. You're probably at less of a disadvantage taking this card since you don't really create a win condition with this deck alone. This way other investigators don't need to waste their card slots on Delve Too Deep.

St. Hubert's Key provides a good boost to Mateo's stat and allows him to do some serious investigating with Alyssa Graham. It does cost twice as much as Holy Rosary and doesn't provide a Sanity sink which is why I decided against it for now.

Hemispheric Map(3) could also replace Holy Rosary or St. Hubert's Key. There seems to be relatively few "dead end" locations (though I don't know how this applies for locations that are not in play yet - the connection icons still appear at the bottom of the card, but do they count?) so you will likely have the stat boost in most situations, and occasionally you'll have an even bigger stat boost. Still, the experience investment is a bit steep.

Counterspell(2) is also good as a general support card. It supports keeping Seal of the Seventh Sign(5) around because cancelling a chaos token prevents it from ever being revealed. It can also save a bad Recharge(2)!