William Yorick - Cat Loving Gravedigger

Cats Are Better Than Dogs

I had always pegged Yorick as a Dog person (and have enjoyed playing the Aquinnah(3) and Guard Dog combo with Yorick) but it turns out that he is more of a crazy Cat man. I expect this deck will re-ignite the war between Cats and Dogs but hopefully it also explores a new space for Yorick's talents with an underappreciated card. Typically deckbuilds focus mostly on Yorick killing things to activate his special ability. And I am sure that many will critique this deckbuild as wasting Yorick's ability.

My goal with this deckbuild was to explore a new way to use his recursion abilities and also tailor it to The Forgotten Age (evasion is good). Yorick will still be killing things with this deck but he will also be taking advantage of the Survivor cluegetting toolset. I also believe that this is one of the more thematic decks for Yorick. He is a hardworking guy that is just getting by. He doesn't use any fancy weapons and doesn't have popular friends. He is just an ordinary guy that saw too much one night.

Best Player Count

This deck should do very well in solo as well as at every player count. I don't think that this deck would function well in the classic Guardian/Seeker combo in 2p or 3/4p counts that many like to use. He would be great with an investigator that could do both fighting and investigating in 2p or as a flex investigator (slanted towards damage) in 3/4p.

This particular deckbuild focuses on The Forgotten Age which really doesn't want you to kill everything. Evasion is quite important and Yorick will still kill plenty of enemies and bring back items from his graveyard pile. There is also another interesting synergy since he will be paired up with Ursula Downs and a few Seeker cards that will create some interesting Yorick combos (for example - a possible stack of 6 shroud reduction).

Expansions required

Almost all of the cards are from the Core Set and Carcosa. Winging It is a useful but not key card from TFA and Meat Cleaver is the strongest weapon but Fire Axe could work as a replacement.

Different Angles That This Deck Could Go

This deck is on the verge of including some very interesting Survivor cards. You could add a few more events and On Your Own since the rest of the deck is cheap. You could even combo Dark Horse with that. I am sticking with the versatility of Madame Labranche though. Another possibility that I considered was Yaotl and a few more double icon skill cards. He fits thematically in the The Forgotten Age but didn't really seem like a good fit for Yorick. He might get added in with Charisma but unlikely. [Edit - Yaotl was awesome with Yorick since he had 6 cards with 2 icons on them.]

Angles This Deck Won't Go

Neither the The Red-Gloved Man nor Eucatastrophe will be added to this deck. I recurred the The Red-Gloved Man again and again in a previous Yorick campaign and it just made the game not fun to play. IMO - RGM should be removed from play after use due to Yorick's ability to recur any asset (kill) or card (). The recursion possibilities of Eucatastrophe similarly aren't fun to me and won't be part of the upgrades.

Basic Campaign Strategy

The goal will be to complete the scenarios quickly since Ursula will collect clues pretty fast and Yorick is setup to chip in quite a few clues himself. Ursula's first upgrade is the Ornate Bow so she will be self sufficient once that is in play and she will still have "I've got a plan!" for some big damage potential. Yorick won't have the peak damage capability that he could have but the goal is to go past the enemies that they don't need to kill and save actions.

Combat

Meat Cleaver is the obvious weapon of choice but there are two backup weapons that can cycled through Yorick's second hand. The main concern with this deck is that there aren't any static boosts. Adding Reliable with some early XP should help as well as the skill cards.

Investigating

Yorick's plan for investigation is shroud reduction combined with the Survivor's cardset of turning failure into success. Flashlight and Winging It reduce the shroud and Lucky! and "Look what I found!" will combo to make 3 and 4 shrouds (nearly) auto passes.

One big combo that will be possible with Ursula will be stacking shroud reduction since she will have Vantage Point (-1 shroud reduction for the turn) and upgrade to Arcane Insight (-2 shroud reduction for the turn).

The testless Gravedigger's Shovel will also be used and be one of the first upgrades for Yorick.

Evasion?

Why is Yorick evading anything? Action efficiency. As simple as that. Hiding Spot can be played as a Fast action allowing the group to clear a location of clues instead of spending most of the round killing things. Stray Cat is an actionless evasion allowing for the same thing.

Hiding Spot could be replaced in other campaigns that don't require as much evasion but in the worst case it can be used to boost Ursula's Ornate Bow in this campaign.

Damage/Horror Soak

Yorick will hide behind the Cherished Keepsake and Leather Coat in addition tossing a Stray Cat for evasion. Very likely Yorick will recur those 3 assets regularly and be near invincible.

Yorick's Recursion and Damage/Horror Soak

Yorick has many prime items to recur with his signature abilities. Everything in the deck is kept cheap so he should always have something in his graveyard/discard to play after each kill.

1. Stray Cat - I have always wanted to play the Stray Cat in a campaign but the combo of recursion and TFA seemed like a perfect chance. Yorick can play/recur this without spending an action (after a kill) and can then evade an enemy without spending an action. Killing things is fun but he can spend his time picking up clues and advancing the act instead.
2. Cherished Keepsake and Leather Coat cost nothing so they can be played for free after a kill. This combo should make Yorick near invincible.
3. Gravedigger's Shovel - The L2 version will be an early upgrade for testless clues at a cost of only one resource.
4. Knife is a solid backup weapon. You can throw it to kill something and get into cycle of rotating the shovel and knife through Yorick's second hand (Meat Cleaver is the primary hand/weapon).
5. "Look what I found!" is a really strong card (2 clues at once) that can be recurred with Yorick's for reuse.
6. Lucky! - same as LWIF

Upgrade Path

The Forgotten Age continues to ramp up the XP from previous campaigns so I expect Yorick to be swimming in unused XP by the end of the campaign especially since I won't be adding The Red-Gloved Man, Eucatastrophe or other taboo cards.

1. Gravedigger's Shovel - paying 1R for a testless clue is a pretty good value
2. Charisma - it allows the Stray Cat to be used often throughout the scenario while keeping Madame Labranche in play
3. Reliable - an underrated card for those that use melee weapons without ammo.
4. Vicious Blow - extra damage and extra

After that there are some possibilities that I haven't really chosen

1. Cornered - boosting skill tests is nice and Madame Labranche can supply the cards if needed
2. Alter Fate - really useful in the right campaigns
3. A Test of Will - I usually start filling up Survivor decks with Exile cards. This is the best one.
4. Stroke of Luck - another strong Exile card
5. Flare - another strong Exile card. It is an event so it keeps his hands free for the Flashlight or Gravedigger's Shovel.
6. Lucky!

Cards I Want to Include But There Isn't Room

1. Lantern - thematic and useful but 8 hand slot items are a bit much
2. Improvised Weapon - useful backup weapon and thematic
3. Beat Cop and .45 Automatic - strong cards but not very thematic
4. Aquinnah(3) - one of my favorites and the Guard Dog/Aquinnah combo is really strong. This deck went in a different direction though.
5. Timeworn Brand - this deck has no economy and I like the mishmash of mediocre cards that this deck is made up of.
6. Blackjack(2) - this is really strong but Ursula can take care of herself

Forgotten Age (Standard) Results

Yorick and Ursula cruised through The Forgotten Age with a little but not too much difficulty. Some scenarios were really fast due to Yorick's clue collecting spurts.

1. Flashlight + "Look what I found!" were a killer combo but Flashlight alone was really useful since 2 shrouds seemed quite common.
2. Stray Cat was amazing. So amazing that I will probably use it in other campaigns. Yes, Yorick can kill most things but it is an actionless evade and they can clear the location and move on. Yorick can bring it back from the discard pile (actionless) and can evade ANY enemy at his location. Very underrated card.
3. Yaotl does work very well with Yorick. Overpower and the upgraded Vicious Blow and Shovel all have double icons.
4. Reliable is great on melee weapons. Meat Cleaver was of course the weapon of choice and this bumped it to a static 6/7 and you can stack them. Between this and Yaotl, Yorick had very little trouble passing tests.
5. Winging It - Hiding Spot - "Not without a fight!" and Knife ended up getting bumped out of the deck by upgrades.
6. This deck could have really used Backpack to find weapons faster and his Teddy Bear.
7. So Much XP - A Test of Will - Stroke of Luck - Flare were added quite often due to nothing else to spend XP on. I didn't add most of the obvious Yorick upgrades because the game becomes boring imo. They are strong cards and Yorick's recursion makes them silly powerful.

I want to really like TFA. Some scenarios were fantastic but some were a little boring (City of Archives...) or constantly blindsiding my investigators. There were several times where we could have gotten wrecked if things had been just a little different so I can understand the split opinions on the campaign. Ursula and Yorick's deck helped a lot since they could both evade pretty well. Several of the investigators that I have played before would have struggled a lot in TFA.