[The ChiLo Horror] Deckbuilding 101: Agnes

This is a sample deck to describe the deckbuilding process alongside my article on Deckbuilding 101.

Excerpts from the article:

My friends and I make plans for a 3 player game on Friday night. They are going to play Minh, primarily a cluever, and Ashcan, leaning more towards clues but still able to defend himself. I want to be a well-rounded fighter, and magic is intriguing, so I will play Agnes. Forbidden Knowledge is a good way to get horror when I want to trigger her ability, but I want to heal that horror too. That's about as far as I got.

Neither Ashcan or Minh can kill a lot of enemies, so Agnes needs to be the primary fighter. I want to make sure I can help out with a few clues, so I slot Rite of Seeking and Drawn to the Flame. Everything else in the deck is pretty much going to be enemy focused.

I throw in a Storm of Spirits in my Agnes deck; when it's good, it's great, but if I'm doing my job we don't need it every game. I put in a single Painkillers to convert damage into on-demand horror (or to offload damage onto my horror soaks), but only one because I don't want to see it before I've taken damage.

Agnes wants to maximize the use of her high Willpower. She starts with 2x Shrivelling and 2x Rite of Seeking. However, those spells will probably run out of charges and we will overplay them, so 6 spells is an easy justification. I add in 2x Mists of R'lyeh to give her more options for enemies. Finally, I want to try out Clarity of Mind as a horror healing option (there's a level 3 version out now!), but I won't need it until late in the scenario once I've taken some horror, so I'm just adding 1 copy. 7 cards for two slots.

Agnes is using Forbidden Knowledge for on-demand horror, but it also gives her lots of money. I'm also adding Uncage the Soul because there's lots of spells it can give me discounts on, and I like the double Willpower icon. With those in place, there's not much more need for money, so I don't include Caches in favor of some skills.

Agnes is very spell-heavy, but that's putting her high Willpower to good use. The skill of playing this deck is going to revolve around playing the right spells at the right time. I'll need to conserve my Shriveling charges for the enemies I can't evade, trying to use the Manual Dexterity and Peter Sylvestre when I don't have Mists out to evade more consistently. Ashcan can kill a few enemies too. I'll probably want to upgrade Mists into Song of the Dead or Shards of the Void as a way to do more damage. Also, if I'm feeling confident, this would be a good deck for 2x Arcane Research.