Duke plays fetch with a Moon rock

A Dog, his simple human, and their favorite glowing rock (and cats)

This is my 0xp version of the deck I'm playing solo through The Circle Undone as the first campaign of my soon to be published audio only actual play podcast: Whispers In Your Head.

The Basic Strategy

The basic idea is to mull hard for a Hawk-Eye Folding Camera (or two), a Moonstone, and probably a Wither or a Shrivelling. The stone/camera will buff Pete's pretty respectable to the point where those Spell assets are a real threat, and the Cameras will assist Duke's investigating in short order.

The Moonstone is particularly well suited for Pete as he wants to be using his action to discard cards in order to stand Duke up anyway, and this way it becomes a compressed play Moonstone while standing Duke action. Feels good.

Another card that in my single test-run of this deck I found very helpful and quite fun to play was A Glimmer of Hope. Pete wants to throw cards often to stand duke and being able to draw two cards is pretty sweet.

The Stray Cats are there mostly to save space for future upgrades - I could be convinced to take Peter Sylvestre (whose upgraded version would really really help in this deck) but... I've played a lot of Peter lately and my copies of him are also in another deck that I'm running right now so... time for some variety. I also want to upgrade into a different Ally than him because, well, fun. Spending XP on Charisma doesn't jive with the rest of the deck's priorities up front.

The Calling in Favors is for finding the future Miss Doyle, and hey - it's got and pips.

Perseverance is for not dying and also should help on those hard to kill monsters if my engine is set up early game and I'm caught holding one.

If I'm at a location that I won't need to return to and get pinned down by a non-hunter enemy it seemed like Stunning Blow would come in handy to ditch the enemy and leave them there. I'll have to see how often the scenario comes up and if Duke's 4 plus some help from Lucky! and Glimmer will be enough to pass that test - I suspect they should be. I'm not sure if it may just be easier with the buffs from Moonstone to just outright Evade them. We'll see!

By the way - I drew Amnesia as my random Basic Weakness for this campaign. Glimmer is nice for this because you can just recall all 3 of them back to your hand if you have them. Scrounge for Supplies helps to get a key piece back too if you draw it late.

Upgrade Time

• 1st: Relic Hunter to get double Moonstone on the table for those & buffs
• 2nd: 1xStray Cat Miss Doyle and her cats
• 3rd(?): Lucid Dreaming
• 4th(?): Alter Fate seems good.
• ...and after that...well I haven't thought that far down the line. I'm open to suggestions!

Some things about me as an Arkham Player

At the time of starting this podcast I have played ~53 games of Arkham Horror. I'm by no means an expert player, but I really enjoy the game and I am already geared up for Podcast recording as I have two other podcasts - one about another FFG game - The Legend of the Five Rings LCG (The Meek Informant), and one about niche economy-driven train games called 18xx games (Train Shuffling). If you like either of those things, go give them a listen!

Oh, I'm also a relative newcomer to playing True Solo (or solo in any form). Most of my plays up until this point have been playing 2-player with my wife, and an occasional 3-player game.

I've wanted to contribute content to the Arkham community for some time now, and after listening to some of Drawn to the Flame's Think On Your Feet episodes I decided this would be a way for me to contribute content to the community for anyone who enjoys listening along this way. Also, I figure that having to narrate my turns will make it less likely that I totally flub a rule. We'll see about that.

This is my first campaign using Duke - erhm, Pete - and the second half of the campaign may end up being a blind run for me - my wife and I are currently on our blind play of TCU, having just completed The Greater Good. We'll see if I finish solo first or the two of us finish together first.

I've had a hard time staying completely honest when playing solo

Things I'll be figuring out as I go along:

• How much story text to be reading
• How much to go through my deck and upgrade decisions
• How often I will record and release - I plan to keep this podcast very low overhead as it's my third one. It's mostly meant to be a fun thing for me to do and to give me a reason to be completely honest when I'm playing.