Untapped Potential

“Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go back" John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

The focus of this build is to produce a test blasting, enemy management Akatchi.

Tapping into empower self for combat and agility, Akatchi can sport a statline of 5255. Then leaning into the 'combine-a-stat' spell events, tests can easily be running at 10+ for combat and evade with ease.

Add to this lots of draw with cantrip skills, a supercharging Decorated Skull, plenty of resources from a whole host of sources and some charge play from Spirit-Speaker.

Suggestion and Enchanted Blade provide her with pretty much endless superpowers once Spirit-Speaker is online, with even more synergy with Decorated Skull creating resources to pay to replay those assets as the enemies die.

Of course to facilitate all this mystic goodness Akatchi needs to call on her Familiar Spirits which also needs some Charisma to keep these flighty sidekicks in check.

The choice of Blinding Light over Ethereal Form is a tough one. For the sake of pure damage blinding light wins out but feel free to swap one with another for personal taste.

There was some consideration for the version of Empower Self but as this is build is all about enemy management; clue acquisition is limited to Drawn to the Flame and Read the Signs, with some boosts from Torrent of Power in pinch if needed. (See below for solo considerations)

Versatile is there to pack in all the toys needed to make the most out of messing with charges and supporting the extra deck size with some strong draw. No less than 10 cards offer draw options, with multiple draws from Guts and repeatable multiple draws from Decorated Skull (that can be charged up with kills or Recharge at a push)

Spirit guide

Mulligan priority is to ensure some resource management and draw. A Robes of Endless Night will take a lot of resource pressure off but alchemical transmutation and Guts or Sacrifice will help a smoother start. Having some form of fight or evade option should be second priority.

Like any mystic it takes time to set up, Lucid Dreaming helps find the second empower self or a Familiar Spirit, or can help combo with set up before Sacrificing an asset.

Early skill tests will be relying more on willpower and base skills, combined with skill cards but even this should still be reasonable.

Just one Familiar Spirit is enough for to ease the pressure on the arcane slots and but the second Spirit allows a full suite of sword and transmutation slot assets or to dual wield Enchanted Blades. In most situations only one blade and one Suggestion is needed. Should your Familiars find themselves under attack, Spirit-Speaker can also act to protect any spell in it's slot from being discarded, or give up the charges as resources if you prefer!

Alchemical Transmutation can provide some reasonable resources and a useful charge bank for Torrent of Power. Don't forget at zero cost, it can also be a one 5 resources using the on Spirit-Speaker to turn those charges directly to emergency cash. Try to save Uncage the Soul for empower self if you can, the Robes of Endless Night should help with the other spell resource costs.

Grotesque Statue and Eldritch Inspiration are icing cards to avoid bad pulls, the latter also protects assets from Recharge failure

Be judicious on playing assets to ensure getting other things done, playing max one or exceptionally two a turn. For a key rig it's going to be one Suggestion, one Enchanted Blade, Empower Self , Empower Self , (/card/53005), one Familiar Spirit and Spirit-Speaker, but Robes of Endless Night or other economy is needed too.That will take at best 3 turns and realistically much longer, but skills and events should be enough to pick up the slack while Akachi bides her time building up to her true potential. Depending on what is drawn you could also just focus on combat or evade assets first, depending on what sort of enemy management is needed for the team. Either way, ensure your team know you need time to power up!

Once fully powered up, evading reliably should be no problem before slashing here and there with an empowered blade or two! The only limit is actions, the woe of many a mystic!

Old Rituals Destroy the Otherworldly

There are lots of ways to tinker this deck. At the time of publishing only @subzerojo has published a deck with Akatchi using empowered self. His build focused on a more solo cluver-build, utilising Crystalline Elder Sign to boost stats further and tapping into the oft underused Arcane Insight.

This enemy orientated build is multiplayer 3-4 player focused, but a solo or flex build could look something like this. Leaning more into the event spell suite, switching to Blinding Light to Ethereal Form. As less things are dying in solo, Decorated Skull quickly loses some of it's value leaving space for other options such as Shining Trapezohedron for resources or Crystalline Elder Sign to boost stats further.

Empower self is certainly a headscratcher to build with, the other stat boosting cards are much less work to get into play, and the occupation of the arcane slot quickly alters the value in mystics. The +2 stat boost per turn is not too strong in isolation, but in the right investigator does become a nice way to bolster key stats, either lower ones or maximising higher ones. In the latter case, the secondary ability of using the core stat instead of opens up a lot of interesting play on using cards in those with off-class mystic access with low , or indeed allowing a less need to bolster , taking the pressure off purchasing higher level spells when the alternate stat can be boosted instead. The main issue is the opportunity cost and resource cost to play each copy of empower self. Choosing exactly how many of the 3 cards to add to your build is not just a simple 'throw in all three', Careful consideration of what needs boosting should guide how many empower self's take up valuable deck space in a specific deck. Recall the Future is an obvious alternative with no pressure on arcane slots, but doesn't allow as much icon matching/cantrip play.

There is a strong argument to to swap Torrent of Power for Promise of Power, but if anyone can get away with Torrent it's Akachi!

Another thought is to replace Recharge with Quantum Flux to get more duty out of the events.

For interest here are some example variants:

Starter version - Where you might start if working toward this build in a campaign.

Low exp version An easier target for campaign play - Charisma is perhaps a luxury choice and not using does take some exp pressure off, it also begs the question how often will you be set-up to have two Familiar Spirits or even be able to keep them in play?!