Blesston Prayermont - Paying and Praying through the Mythos

Card draw simulator

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Slimpy · 107

NOTE: I plan to add more polish to this guide as time/interest permits, but I wanted to get it out there in a rough form before the conclusion of Innsmouth.

This is a Preston Fairmont deck designed around big money, and, as the name implies, bless tokens and effects. Everything was tested on hard difficulty in solo campaigns, though any difficulty and player count should be easily accommodated. I will cover variant options for multiplayer and standalone. Inspiration came from always wanting to build a Preston deck, but not knowing which way I wanted to head: poor, Smaug, big spender? The release of Ancient Covenant suddenly gave Preston a boost in consistency with a card that starts in play, and the addition of Favor of the Sun made this combination auto success a no-brainer for me. The goal of the deck is to do as many testless and over-tested actions as possible to minimize Preston’s poor stats while taking advantage of his great income potential.

As presented, this is the level 0 version I used in a solo run of the Innsmouth Conspiracy through the Lair of Dagon with multiple tests on most scenarios, though I’ve tested standalone versions in War of the Outer Gods and part of the Circle Undone. Advance knowledge of a campaign is certainly a plus for your baseline deck, as Preston is much more limited in tricks to succeed early on. The initial deck can/should be modified for different campaigns/player counts as seems fitting. With xp cards, the build becomes more and more resilient and consistent, which had been one of my snags with past Preston builds. Difficulty isn’t as much of a factor for testless actions and you can often over-test fairly well, so really it just factors into how much money you bank on the side for those effects.

The Basics:

Let’s go over the basics you get with Preston’s kit. The first things you are likely to see are all the 1’s for those key stats you normally put to great use in other characters, meaning you aren’t passing tests without a lot of help. 7/7 health/sanity is great, a nice balance. We don’t need a low stat here to worry about as well. Deck building is pretty standard: up to 5 rogue/neutral and 2 survivor. The one difference, however, is that he cannot take illicit cards. This means that the multitude of weapon options that rogue offers are off limits, as well as a couple other items, like Liquid Courage. This means you have to lean into survivor for hand-slot offense, or in the case of this deck, events.

His ability says that any time you gain 1 or more resources from a card effect, place them on Family Inheritance. There are some important things to cover, so I will do that below when going over his signatures.

His Elder Sign effect is: +0, spend 2 resources for an auto success. It’s a solid, but not flashy effect. It is essentially one of the only ways you will pass while cold drawing from the bag. The 2 resources you need to pump into it is necessary if you want it to pass, but a negligible cost when you consider his income.

Signature Cards:

Family Inheritance: Here is what makes, and sometimes breaks, Preston. This is the card that really differentiates him from any of his peers. As an action, you can move all resources from Family Inheritance to your resource pool. As noted above, whenever you gain a resource from a card effect you place it on Family Inheritance. It also has a forced ability that adds 4 more resources to Family Inheritance at the start of the turn and then you lose any resources on Family Inheritance at the end of your turn. You can spend these resources as if they were part of your resource pool. Notably, effects outside of cards, say your regular upkeep resource, still go on your character card.

This means on any given turn you begin, you will have at least 5 resources to play with. Barring a couple cards, you can pay for almost any card you draw on any turn. This allows cost prohibitive events to be trivial for Preston (Cunning Distraction, anyone?) It also means that in order to get the full potential of these resources, you need to either spend them or use the printed action to bank them on Preston, otherwise you lose them until your next turn begins. You have the resources during your turn only; which means fast events (i.e. Swift Reflexes) that you might want to play outside of your turn have to be paid for out of Preston’s own pocket.

Any cards you play to gain resources (Emergency Cache, Faustian Bargain, Take Heart…) all place the resources on Family Inheritance. If you are playing these types of effects, or possibly even scenario related effects come up, you will need to be conscious of the fact that you will need to either spend the extra money on your turn or take the action to secure it on Preston.

This is where a lot of the variants of Preston decks are derived. For decks that want to be “Big Money” or “Smaug/Resource Hoarding” decks, this is a burden to some degree. For the “Poorston” decks that run Fire Axe and Dark Horse, this is an advantage. In our case, we are going to try to use the burden of adding those resources to your character every now and then to fuel future big event turns and aid our regular testing through Well Connected and Money Talks. Consider it an investment.

One further note about Family Inheritance is that it is a Permanent, meaning it starts in play. That has a sneaky little advantage that makes Preston’s deck a little smaller than the average investigator. 32 vs 33 cards isn’t something you are likely to notice while playing, but it does put the math of mulligans and drawing into the cards you need ever so slightly more little more in your favor.

Lodge Debts: Preston’s weakness is an event that has a cost of 10 whopping resources! If it is in your hand at the end of the game, you take a mental trauma. When you play it, you remove it from the game. Regardless of how you play Preston, his weakness isn’t too difficult for him to handle, short of it coming up at the very wrong time. For “Poorston” builds, it takes you two turns of banking resources and not spending them. For the other bigger money builds, you probably already have it when you draw it.

Strangely enough, this weakness has an extra advantage. If you happen to be cycling your deck, this card is either sitting in your hand already, or you’ve paid for it and removed it from the game, thinning your deck. I generally try to hold it as long as possible, but this can lead to situations where you get caught holding it in a tight scenario. Fortunately the disadvantage is just a mental trauma on your 7 starting Sanity, and you have soak (Leo/Lola/Delilah) or the future ability to heal if you accumulate too much (Spirit of Humanity). I’ve not found it to be an issue at all.

Deck Discussion:

Leo: Your bread and butter ally. He will net you a fourth action every turn. His cost is mostly negligible, and his extra action will be useful to draw more, move more, bank your resources off of Family Inheritance, etc.

Flashlight, “Look what I found”, Intel Report: Clues, and mostly testless. I prefer flashlight to old keyring in this deck as you will have so many valuable assets, many one-ofs, and this will help protect you from asset hate even after the charges are gone.

Rabbit’s Foot, Take Heart, Tempt Fate: Card draw! This deck will utilize a couple of exceptional cards, a few singletons, and generally needing a fuller hand to make sure you have adequate options at any given moment. Tempt Fate has a bonus effect in being basically a “deck thinner,” since it is free and fast. Combine this with the fact that Preston’s deck starts slightly smaller with Family Inheritance beginning in play, and your deck is effectively 30 cards to start, roughly 10% smaller than the average deck. All this combined will be extra consistency.

Well Connected, Money Talks: These cards will help you pass a single test (once a turn for Well Connected), assuming you are able to accumulate lots of money. This turns out to not be too difficult as Preston if you are banking resources with some applied discipline/timing. Even without extra resource generation, you can get to numbers where Money Talks significantly over-tests whatever you throw it at, while Well Connected can give you a solid boost. We only include one Well Connected, because we never want more than one.

Cunning Distraction, Improvised Weapon, Small Favor, Think on Your Feet: Enemy management, plain and simple. Mostly testless when possible. These are easy to adjust depending on scenario/campaign requirements, but I found this combination to be the most effective in my many iterations of the first two Innsmouth Scenarios. Improvised Weapon may be one of the weaker ones to swap out here for other options, but I put them in for the mostly free kill on rats in Innsmouth’s first scenario along with the upped consistency of playing them in conjunction with Trial by Fire/Well Connected/Money Talks. They also keep returning to your deck, which could be good or bad depending on your board state and drawing conditions. Cunning Distraction bears some note. Though usually you aren’t really committing cards to tests, the Wild+Will icon will be useful for the willpower treacheries that depend on how much you fail by. It can also be helpful in multiplayer as a reliable commit to teammate treacheries or mystics. These are all easily swappable for different quantities of each and for cards like Sneak Attack or Decoy, depending on campaign/player quantity.

Faustian Bargain, Take Heart: Extra Money generation. Only use this on a turn when you plan to bank your resources or plan to spend them all (Leo and a pumped Intel Report/Small Favor for example). The resources from Take Heart get a little trickier to get use from, since they land on your Inheritance, but with a little proper planning when playing this in the Mythos Phase, you can start your turn with 6 resources that you can hopefully use or bank.

Keep Faith and Tempt Fate: The deck has bless generation in it, but it isn’t much use without the couple tricks that come with experience cards later. On their own, they aren’t really going to do anything except for the very rare occasion of stacking so many bless tokens on a test that you actually pass. Play these when you can really fill the bag with multiple cards at once to maximize the chance of a chain bless draw. Notably these are both fast cards. This means they aren’t wasting your actions short of drawing them, and for Keep Faith, it isn’t wasting your money if you weren’t banking it that turn anyways. These could easily be removed if you like upping your odds a bit on the first scenario and plan to take an Adaptable or two. The Keep Faiths don’t matter in the first scenario, but I like the Tempt Fates, because they offer a little “deck thinning” mentioned above, while the curse tokens aren’t going to make you fail anymore than normal.

Trial by Fire: This is your wild stat for a turn. Particularly enhanced by Leo de Luca’s fourth action. Useful for a variety of reasons, and the potentially prohibitive cost is nullified in Preston.

Scrounge for Supplies: Get back whatever card you happen to need at the time. Extra clues? Extra Damage? Extra Evasion? Replay a lost asset?

Upgrades Path:

The goal of your first scenario? 4 experience. Once you have that you are able to finish the core aspect of the deck: 2x Favor of the Sun and an Ancient Covenant. In my Innsmouth experience, the Favors replaced the Think on Your Feets, but could easily replace any other card as needed. If you happen to get more experience, potential good choices are Adaptable or Charon’s Obal. Obviously the Obal comes with a little risk, but we’re blessed, aren’t we?

Next upgrades:

4xp: Eye of the Djinn replaces a Flashlight or Trial by Fire. This card becomes a significant bump to your measly stats. Couple this with the Bless/Curse generation, Favor of the Sun, and Ancient Covenant, you can pass virtually any test once a turn or more. Even if used with a random draw from the bag, if there are enough bless tokens, you might get an extra use or two out of it, and the occasional curse offsets the action cost. Perfect item for this build.

8xp: Double Double replaces your least reliable event. This is fantastic for doubling damage events, clue events, money events, and notably scrounge for supplies. You can start grabbing clues in large quantities with Intel Reports or Look what I founds, damage multiple enemies across the map with a doubled Small Favor, get a ridiculous amount of money in a turn with a doubled Hot Streak/Faustian. Importantly, this can give you infinite scrounge for supplies if you have your first in the discard pile when you play the second. Scrounge for 2 cards or a level 0 card of choice along with another scrounge to repeat ad nauseum. The 8xp can be difficult to get in single scenarios in some campaigns, so be prepared to save a little xp while you get some of the below upgrades.

6xp: Charisma with your choice of a Lola or Delilah. You have lots of free money every turn, why not put it to effect? Lots of extra experience? Do it again with the one you didn’t take. Replace a damage or clue card of choice with one of them.

After those few, you are mostly set with the core of the build. Everything that follows will be dependent on where you need to lean. Your key build areas are Damage, Clues, Money, and Draw.

Damage: For damage there are plenty of great cards. Swap Improvised Weapons or any of your evasion type options with any of these of your choice depending on your build/play style.

Flare Riastrad Sneak Attack 2 Brute Force

I used flare, mainly because I had extra experience, and it can be a dual purpose card to find allies. Double it up with Double Double, and you have a real winner of a card that could even trigger both abilities for you in a turn. Riastrad wasn’t tested, but if you have subbed your Faustians for Hot Streaks, the extra curse generation isn’t a big deal, and possibly semi-desired (Eye of the Djinn). Beware that you need to be able to put curse tokens in the bag, so getting a huge Double Doubled attack from this will need you to have the available curse tokens. Maybe more likely useful in multiplayer. Sneak Attack 2 would be great in a multiplayer team. Brute Force would be an option if you are leaning more heavily on damage. With Eye or Favor+Covenant, it’s reliably easy to generate the 2up for Brute Force to trigger. Clues: This one will depend on your party size mainly. You have a few extra options to grab single and double clues, a couple options to push triple clues. Many of your best clue gathering will come from the base deck, so these upgrades are possibly a little less important. Double Doubling a Look what I found 2 is a great way to clean up the remnants of a bunch of locations. Plus the additional failure threshold helps reach a bit more for your clue gathering capabilities. Pilfer is something I would consider including in 3+ players. Sharp Vision is reliably easy to hit as above with Brute Force.

Sharp Vision Look what I found 2 Lola Pilfer

Money: Having a large pool of money is important for this deck in order to be able to pump out Doubled events and horde enough to make Well Connected a real factor. There are a few potential upgrades that are notable.

Easy Mark Hot Streak Emergency Cache 3 Another Day, Another Dollar Drawing Thin

Easy Mark is a good early event, but due to the extra action/planning around the resources on your Inheritance, it is really only good if you can play at least 2 at once or Double Double it. Later in the campaign, I think it is worth subbing out, since the 3 deck slots will become more and more precious. Hot Streak 4 nets you the most money in a single action minimizing the amount of actions needed to build up a large bankroll, so it will be helpful to add this to your arsenal. Emergency Cache gets mention, as it combines draw with money, similar to Easy Mark, but it takes less deck slots. Great for Doubling. Another Day, Another Dollar really starts you off on the right foot, and if you have 2 of them, all the better. Beginning the game with 9 resources plus your Inheritance already puts you a great deal of the way towards Well Connected/Money Talks being meaningful right out the gate. Drawing Thin is amazing, and it’s downside can be completely navigated. Obviously if you take the money, you have to take a little extra care to bank/spend it.

Draw: You are going to want to be drawing a lot to keep your hand mostly full. This can come in the form of draw actions, but if we have to spend an action, we would prefer a bigger effect or to keep it mostly reactive with things like Take Heart. Unfortunately you don’t have too many great options to upgrade into after your initial offerings.

Lucky Cigarette Case 3 Unrelenting Emergency Cache/Easy Mark Drawing Thin

Lucky Cigarette Case 3 is a notable item to replace Rabbit’s Foot when you start passing more tests than you are failing. The deck has many one-of’s, so if you can use this to find other key components, then great. It should be drawing you a card a turn once your Overtesting kicks into action with Eye/Bless/Covenant/Well Connected/Money Talks. Unrelenting is a versatile card that I didn’t do much testing with, but clearly fits right in the deck. Emergency Cache/Easy Mark both replace themselves, so as long as you are getting use from the money that turn, Doubling them, or playing multiple Marks, these can help keep you cycling your deck. Drawing Thin will get you a card a turn. Use it on a test you are going to fail. Use it on a test you can easily pass automatically. Just use it every turn.

Other interesting upgrades:

Haste: great in combination with Leo for extra actions Spirit of Humanity: Need extra bless/curse generation? Need healing? Ace in the Hole: Lots of extra actions Test of Will 1: You will likely have extra experience later, especially with Obal Test of Will 2: Late game it’s usually not too big of an issue to pass the test to avoid the exile if you really want. If you bought Obal, you might have extra xp to throw around. Ms. Doyle: Didn’t try it, but it certainly fits the theme of the deck Streetwise 3: Nice card, but unless you’ve really geared the deck to rolling in dough, this card will cannibalize your money that you need for your other effects Elusive 0: Great movement, evasion tool Justify the Means: an auto success is an auto success! Requires a little curse management Sure Gamble: This could also be a simple success for you, but keep in mind that when testing your base stats, the -1’s/-2’s might not cut it if they get turned into positive modifiers

Do not upgrade: Here is a list of cards I recommend you keep to the bitter end.

Small Favor Intel Report Leo 0 Scrounge for Supplies Well Connected Money Talks (at least one) Keep Faith Tempt Fate

The cards can all be scrounged, and they are roughly crucial to the success later. This does mean you have limited slots to upgrade, so it makes the deck tight to navigate putting experience in; hence a lot of singletons. Obviously this is campaign/player count dependent as well. Leo should remain at level 0 even if you have one xp floating to go to Leo 1, because you might need to lose him at some point to damage/horror/asset hate and scrounge him back. You want to be able to keep Leo on the board at all times. Piloting Blesston:

The First Scenario: This will be a little different than the later ones, so it needs some mentioning. Your first scenario is going to be your roughest. The wrong starting hand or a bad string of draws from either your deck or the encounter deck will send you packing pretty quickly, and given your stats, you aren’t going to luck your way out of anything except for multiple miracle elder signs. For this reason, getting off on the right foot is imperative. You don’t have the tools available yet to consistently pass anything, so you need to be carefully planning your events to gain clues and manage enemies. You will need to draw heavily to maintain as many options in your hand as possible, so don’t be scared to spend time drawing if you don’t have answers to enemies or clues. I’ve included a mulligan guide below.

Generally speaking, you want to make sure you have options in hand to handle enemies/clues while facilitating as much draw/banking of resources you can in order to propel your later game with a well connected or scrounging expensive events back to play again. If you draw an early well-connected, it’s worth keeping some money generation and to devote time to banking resources onto your character. If you plan on spending resources, try to do it in such a way that you are avoiding taking from Preston’s pool as much as possible. You want it to build for Money Talks/Well Connected/Lodge Debts/expensive events. I always try to plan my turns out so that the only time I’m taking the resources off of Inheritance is when I have 3+ on it or there is literally nothing else worthwhile to spend an action on. On turns when you aren’t taking resources, you should try to spend the ones on Family Inheritance only. This obviously doesn’t work quite right with the expensive cards, but if you can avoid or stagger your resource spending, you can learn to understand the rhythm of when to spend the Inheritance vs when to bank it for future gain. This is probably the biggest challenge of playing this deck, so it behooves you to think about your current situation, and how your following turn might look as well.

Your goal for the first scenario needs to be 4xp plus any extra for adaptable/charons obal if you are going those routes.. A little trauma isn’t a big deal as you have even health/sanity stats and a healing option that fits the theme if you are building up too much (spirit of humanity).

After the First Scenario: After you have the Favors and the Covenant, your play can change a bit. Needless to say, not drawing another token after seeing a Bless token is a huge boon. For most characters the Covenant is a little less spectacular, as you are likely to pass anyway when you draw a bless, no matter the following token, but for Presston this will certainly make the difference. The average test difficulty is 3, and with your stats of 1, adding 2 from bless to hit the target is great. Since all your bless generation and the Favors are fast, you don’t waste actions to set up short of drawing them. If you are playing solo, you can probably play your bless generation cards whenever you want, as you are seeing so few tokens with the amount of non-testing you do, and you will have the Covenant out if you do end up drawing them. Keep Faith is particularly notable to play when you aren’t using/banking your resources off the Inheritance, since it costs 2 and is fast. Once you have a Favor in play, you will be able to pass one test a turn on command for 3 tests. Usually this means a bad encounter card, but if one of those doesn’t show up, then use it for a must-succeed test like fighting/evading/cluing/scenario card effects. I try to save the Favor/Covenant uses for necessary situations only. If you have an Eye of the Djinn out, it lets you pass one test on your turn at a 7 (Lucky Cigarette Case 3/Drawing Thin opportunity!), and then ready the Eye to use again on another test. If you have another Favor+Bless in your hand or lots of other testless/over-test options online (Well Connected/Money Talks/Eye/Delilah/Lola/etc…), then I begin to use them more frivolously. I also try to cycle my deck at least once a game, so if I am nearing the end of my deck, I will try to burn through them to get them into the discard pile ASAP.

Mulligan Guide:

Here follows a rough solo guide for the mulligan hierarchy. Feel free to change your goals based on your campaign or even multiplayer composition… except Leo. Always Leo. With experience, both literal and in game, your priorities will shift. For your first scenario here is what I would recommend.

1)Leo/Rabbit’s Foot (Later seeing any of these can work as well: Double Double, Eye of the Djinn, Favor of the Sun/Bless, Lucky Cigarette Case 3/Drawing Thin)- Leo will get you an extra action every turn. You will want this ASAP. Games you draw him late will be noticeably harder. Leo will be your out to draw anything else you are missing with his extra actions. Rabbit’s Foot will likely be an extra card every turn for you in the early scenarios. Eye of the Djinn will be a great test at least once a turn. Double Double will really kickstart your capabilities. Favor of the Sun and some Bless generation also turns into auto successes. The Cig Case/Drawing Thin are good to get early to draw into answers.

2)Clue acquisition - In solo, you aren’t getting far without it! Intel Report ranks as my favorite, followed by Flashlight for early 2 shroud or less clue sniping, but any clue tools become useful. Trial by Fire fits the bill here.

3)Enemy Management - You will need a way to kill or shake off an early drawn enemy. Your options are also all events, so multiples aren’t necessarily a bad thing. Trial by Fire also fits the bill here.

4)Well Connected/Money Talks: These let you use money you accumulate to start passing tests that become criticall. These usually end up being mythos phase protection, but often are nice to pass more crucial tests. An early Well Connected should shift your playstyle a bit to accumulate as much wealth as needed to make it useful all game. You may consider keeping a Faustian/Hot Streak when starting with Well Connected.

5)Card draw with Tempt Fate or Take Heart. You need lots of options as Preston, since you aren’t good at anything innately.

6)Scrounge for supplies: Get back any of the above. It was good once before; why not again?

Stand-alone: Preston has a great setup for standalone, as he always starts with his Inheritance out, and his weakness doesn’t matter. This also allows you to push your xp count higher, since you are basically down a weakness already. There are simple 9/19/29 xp options out there that I will try to make available if there is interest.

Multiplayer: Your suite leans a little better towards clue gathering, so in a duo, you should be able focus more heavily in that direction. Consistently gathering enough clues for four player would be a stretch, maybe possible late in a campaign. Cards like pilfer, fortuitous discovery (especially with repeated scrounges on the second or third copy via Double Double), and Sharp Vision give a solid amount of clue potential in higher counts, but you aren’t landing them consistently without experience. If you head this route, sub in as many auto successes as you can in the first mission and Adaptable these in as you go. Streetwise could also be helpful here, though you will be dumping lots of money into events and holding enough to make Well Connected/Money Talks worthwhile, while spending on Streetwise will require a strong economy. This deck was built mostly to avoid taking it at all.

If you want to be a damage dealer, it will be a bit unconventional, and will be difficult early on, but you actually have a lot of damage dealing options with xp: Riastrad, Flare, Brute Force, Sneak Attack, Backstab Delilah, Timeworn Brand. Most everything can be Double, Doubled for significant extra mileage, and the tests will ideally be overtested (Money Talks/Well Connected/Eye of the Djinn) or auto successes (Favor of the Sun + Ancient Covenant/Justify the Means/Sure Gamble). You also have Rogue and Survivor’s plentiful evade options if you like.

In three or four player, I would try to be a flex, maybe building towards your team’s weaknesses. You will be able to do a fair amount at range with pay to win cards like look what I found 2, and the various favors, and Faustian bargains could be kept to give teammates extra cash. Bless tokens will fly through the bag in higher player counts, so if your teammates aren’t generating them regularly, you may need to sub in more bless generation (Spirit of Humanity) or hold onto Keep Faiths/Tempt Fates until you play them in conjunction with Favor of the Sun. You might also slot in You Handle This One’s for the first scenario or two until you have your initial upgrade engine online.

Conclusion:

I had a great time theorycrafting and testing things as they were released in Innsmouth, and I found Preston to be immensely enjoyable once I got a little more consistency into his deck. I hope you enjoy tinkering with the deck, and if you have any ideas to add, let me know (also, if you find glaring errors). Thanks for reading this massive write-up, and I will try to clean it up a bit more if I ever get a little less busy.

2 comments

Sep 16, 2021 SlimeJesus · 1

I just wanted to comment my support for this deck. Preston Fairmont is an investigator I've always found interesting but had no idea how to approach deckbuilding for. Your write up was very illuminating and I'm definitely going to try out this deck in my next campaign.

Sep 16, 2021 Slimpy · 107

Thanks. I wrote this before Return to Circle Undone and Edge of the Earth, so I'm not sure what I would add/swap from there, but Well Connected 2 from RtCU seems like a no brainer.

Let me know how it works out!