Sefine-Art Black Magic Painter|Beginner Deck Guide Series

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Valentin1331 · 55120

Sefina practices Bl-ack Ma-gic at night, Paints her vision at day.

Please don't forget to press the ♥ if you like the Deck and the work that has been put into making it :)

This deck only uses the Revised Core Set/2 Core Sets, Dunwich Investigator Expansion, Carcosa Investigator Expansion and the Edge of the Earth Investigator Expansion.

Sefina1.png

Credit: Fantasy Flight Games


Introduction:

"If I said I could paint you when you were going to die, would you want to see?"

Sefina is a truly unique investigator as she is one of the rare Event-Based investigators as well as a rogue without issues. Actually, quite the opposite, her is one of her biggest strengths, allowing her to be a terrific cluever. She can also be more Flex, but as there is little dedicated cluever in this series of Investigators besides Minh Thi Phan, I decided to build her more towards clue-getting.


After the warm welcome of the Beginner Decks made for Zoey, Rex, Jenny, Jim and Pete, I decided to go for a last Series of Beginner Deck Guides for The Path to Carcosa.

Find the other Carcosa Beginner Decks:

Mythos Busting Mark
Scavenge-Minhg
Akachi Ony-Elemental Mage
Yorick Gold Digger
• I decided not to propose a Deck for Lola Hayes on purpose as even with the help of the community, we couldn't find any Deck that made us feel like you wouldn't regret playing any other investigator instead. If she piqued your curiosity, keep her in a corner of your mind until you have a bit more cards.


Table of Contents:

• Overview

• Main Strategy

• Getting Clues

• Tutoring

• Making and Spending Resources

• Other Cards

• What cards should I put under Sefina?

• Upgrade Path

• Make your own Deck!


Overview:

 
Difficulty: ★★★☆☆
Enemy Management: ★☆☆☆☆
Clue-getting: ★★★★☆
Encounter protection: ★★★★☆
Survivability: ★★★★☆
Economy: ★★★★★
Card Drawing: ★★★☆☆

Main Strategy:

• Find clues with Flashlight on 2-shroud locations, Lockpicks, Divination and finish your turns with Rite of Seeking.


• Tutor your cards while navigating around the Stars of Hyades with Parallel Fates (2) and Black Market.


• Generate Resources to pay for your Expensive Cards, activate Dario El-Amin's static bonus and then spend the extra to boost tests with Moxie (3).


Discover Clues:

As the main clue-getter, the capacity of your team to win the game will depend on your ability to grab a high number of clues in a limited amount of time. To increase your tempo, you should aim at 2 things: not failing any investigation and grabbing more than 1 clue per investigation.

• The classic way of finding clues for a is the Lockpicks (1). They are not the best in Sefina Rousseau but investigating with 6-7 is nothing to be shy about.

•• Since you have 2 hand slots available, you can investigate with the lockpicks twice per turn. It is also unlikely that you discard them as you would need to not succeed by 2 five times to discard your first Lockpicks, which never happened in my testing phase.

•• Your boosts for your Lockpicks will come from Dario El-Amin, St. Hubert's Key and Moxie (3) pushing you to a max of 9 .


Rite of Seeking supported by Divination are great to leverage your high to investigate for more clues each turn. When the campaign advances and shrouds are higher, you upgrade to Rite of Seeking for the +2 bonus for the test.


• Drawn to the Flame is great, especially at the beginning when the Enemies are not that fierce yet. Your high defensive stats ( and ) and Ward of Protection make the threat level of other Treacheries relatively low.


Winds of Power is excellent here as when it is placed under Sefina Rousseau, it plays as soon as you draw it to add 2 Charges to one of your Spells. If used on Rite of Seeking, it turns into 4 potential clues.


Tutoring:

Stars of Hyades is a card of the particularly annoying kind as it shuffles back into the Deck. First, it breaks down what makes you particularly good and fun to play. It also dramatically slows down your draw power, which is already limited. If you draw it 3 times, that is as if your Deck is roughly 10% bigger. So you want to mitigate this, and the best way to decrease its impact on you is to Tutor cards from your Deck.


• Your main mitigation tool will be Parallel Fates (2). This card is the true MVP of this Deck. Based on the cards you reveal, you have multiple ways to mitigate your weaknesses:

  1. Place them at the bottom of the 6 cards, which gives you a bit of time to prepare
  2. Place Foresight just before your weakness so you can discard it when you should draw it.
  3. Place Black Market or another Parallel Fates (2) just before your weakness to remind yourself to play it as soon as you draw it to have another chance to dodge it. Black Market will shuffle the Deck after it is over.
  4. Other strategies based on the specifics of that weakness, like some resources just after Paranoia or Moxie (3) to absorb damage.

•• If you are already in a comfortable situation, you can also use Parallel Fates on Mark Harrigan or William Yorick to help them find their Weapons or Allies.


Black Market lets you reveal 5 cards, does not trigger revelation on Weaknesses, and lets you play Assets/Events from this pool of cards. You can play it after Parallel Fates (2) to make sure that you get the best value out of it.

•• Note that cards revealed this way cannot be committed to skill tests as the wording says "Play" and not "Commit".

•• Play it on William Yorick and give access to his Lucky!, "Look what I found!", Emergency Cache, Bandages, Schoffner's Catalogue, Jury-Rig and the like to every other player (including you).


Dario.png

Making and Spending Resources:

Generating a lot of resources:

• David Renfield also brings you a welcome along with a loooot of resource. Remember that you do not have to add a Doom each time you use him. Use him as soon as you play him to get a resource back. He may sound dangerous at first, but there are some reliable tools to get rid of him in this Deck:

•• Ward of Protection is an excellent way to do it, though there is no window between the Upkeep Phase when he readies until the moment when you can use Ward of Protection so you cannot use him before discarding him this way.

•• With Forbidden Knowledge, get rid of him while generating a resource. The ability can be used during the Upkeep Phase to prevent him from advancing the Agenda, but not between the moment when Forbidden Knowledge and David Renfield are readied during the Upkeep Phase and the moment when the Doom is added to the Agenda.

•• Trigger Attacks of Opportunity or engage an enemy that will attack you during the Enemy Phase.


Uncage the Soul is, of course, here to reduce the cost of your expensive Investigation Spells. It is a way of having 3 resources.


• "Watch this!" is great here because it commits to your on your Spells and brings you again 3 resources.


Cheat the System can bring up to 4 resources but will often only bring 3, which is the last way to get resources .


Forbidden Knowledge that gives you 4 resources for 1 action, and the Horror can be leveraged to get rid of David Renfield, soaked by Dario El-Amin or simply by your 9 Sanity.


• Unscrupulous Loan is a great way to make sure that Dario El-Amin is online without impacting your game much. It is also super helpful at the beginning of a scenario to set up some of your expensive cards since you know that a lot of cash will come afterwards, mainly thanks to the colour that boosts your Cheat the System.

Use these resources to your advantage:

• Pay for your high number of expensive Assets, of course.

Dario El-Amin of course that is here only for his static boosts: for our Investigation Spells and for the Lockpicks and the many Parley actions. His ability is irrelevant here.


• Unscrupulous Loan's requirement to not be exiled is aligned with Dario, forcing you to finish the scenario with 10 resources at least.


• Use the extra resources to boost critical tests using Moxie (3)


Other Cards:

Level 0 Cards:

• We choose St. Hubert's Key over Holy Rosary for multiple reasons:

•• You have 9 Sanity, so the -2 is not so impactful. In case you would go insane, the heal is helpful.

•• You have the resource generation power to afford it

•• The is useful for your Lockpicks and Scenario Tests such as Parley.


Cheap Shot is ok at first to deal with Acolytes and Swarm of Rats but are quickly upgraded out.


Delve Too Deep is dangerous, but hell, it's fun. Going insane IG and IRL for 1 victory point will bring you some of your best memories of this game (after a short grieving period). Plus, everyone will be grateful when you make it work once everyone has already resigned and you stay behind!


Scout Ahead is good when you are in a cul-de-sac and want to move to another place with clues or dash through a location with an enemy. It also commits for 2 which is great for emergency Evade actions.


• Guts to boost your Spells, Perception for your Lockpicks and Quick Thinking for when you need a little bit more time.


Level 1-5 Cards:

Moxie (3) boosts your for the tests and for Evading and Lockpicks investigations. Plus, it is free and fast, so you're always happy when you draw it.

•• When it brings you good protection from damage, which is one of Sefina's main weaknesses, it only has 1 Sanity, and therefore, you will be limited in your use of Ward of Protection if you don't want to lose it. Dario El-Amin and David Renfield help compensating.

Warning: You cannot commit cards to the Lockpicks, but nothing prevents you from boosting your with Moxie to boost your tests with the Lockpicks.


Black Market can be used in multiple ways:

•• Just before you draw a weakness that you spotted with Parallel Fates (2), access the cards under it and reshuffle your Deck afterwards, hopefully burying your weakness.

•• When Parallel Fates (2) revealed an interesting combo, like Unscrupulous Loan + Cheat the System + Dario El-Amin.

•• To find Uncage the Soul to play a Spell from your hand at a lower cost.

•• To find Drawn to the Flame and Ward of Protection to kill David Renfield.

•• To dig for The Painted World.

You may ask why there is only 1 copy, though. While playtesting, knowing the cards to come was often enough, and I rarely found that it was the moment to play Black Market since when doing so, it often means that I will spend my whole turn playing the cards in it which can impact my tempo significantly. You can always opt for a second copy if you like it a lot.


Ace in the Hole is the cherry on the cake. Draw it with Black Market to get the most uses of the Market Cards. It is particularly exciting in Sefina as it feels frustrating to Draw a card under her and play it immediately, costing 2 actions. It feels really slow when it happens, so having 3 more actions can compensate for that feeling.


What cards should I put under Sefina?

If possible, the amazing cards to place under Sefina Rousseau are in order:

  1. Parallel Fates (2)
  2. Winds of Power
  3. Black Market
  4. Ward of Protection (0)
  5. Cheat the System
  6. Uncage the Soul
  7. Scout Ahead
  8. Foresight
  9. Drawn to the Flame
  10. Emergency Cache

Carcosa-Sefina.png

Upgrade Path:

Drawn to the Flame x2 Divination x2 - 2xp - Total 2xp

•• A second Investigation Spell that gives you +1 to your tests. It is better to use the charges 1 by 1 and use Rite of Seeking as your last action for 2-clues.


Perception x2 Lockpicks x2 - 2xp - Total 4xp

•• The Lockpicks allow you to investigate with a base 6 , which is way early in the campaign to allow you not to use Perception.


• Flashlight x2 Parallel Fates (2) x2 - 4xp - Total 8xp

•• With Rite of Seeking, Divination and Lockpicks and your big starting hand, you do not need the Flashlight anymore, especially as Parallel Fates helps you digging in your Deck for the cards you need.


Cheap Shot x1 + Scout Ahead x1 Foresight x2 - 2xp - Total 10xp

•• Now that you can look inside your Deck with Parallel Fates, you will want to place Foresight right before your weakness to discard it easily.


• Guts x1 Unscrupulous Loan x1 - 3xp - Total 13xp

•• Helps tremendously with your set-up and makes Dario's boost easily accessible.


Forbidden Knowledge x2 Moxie (3) x2 - 6xp - Total 19xp

•• Static boosts, Health Soak and a fantastic way to spend your resources. Also, the Lockpicks are happy to have a little boost. We replace Forbidden Knowledge because these 2 cards are incompatible since the low sanity of Moxie (3) would make Forbidden Knowledge unusable.


Delve Too Deep Winds of Power - 2xp - Total 21xp

•• At this point of the campaign, drawing enemies starts to be scary, and you cannot cancel them with Ward of Protection. Also, your party now has enough XP to have purchased all the necessary upgrades.


Rite of Seeking x2 Rite of Seeking (2) x2 - 4xp - Total 25xp

•• Now that location shrouds become challenging, this boost significantly decreases the losses of charges over failed tests.


Guts x1 Black Market x1 - 2xp - Total 27xp

•• Now that you are using Rite of Seeking (2), you do not need the Guts boost anymore.


Emergency Cache x2 Cheat the System x2 - 8xp - Total 29xp

•• In average the same amount of resources, but . This effectively saves you 2 actions in each scenario; therefore, it is not a priority upgrade.


Ward of Protection x2 Ward of Protection x2 - 4xp - Total 33xp

•• Do not only defend yourself but your whole team.


Scout Ahead x1 Ace in the Hole x1 - 6xp - Total 39xp


Link to the full xp Deck


Make your own Deck!:

• You can decide to take Holy Rosary instead of St. Hubert's Key.

•• It is cheaper, so it allows Dario El-Amin to be active faster

•• It can absorb the overuse of Ward of Protection

•• It helps keep your Moxie (3) online longer


If you are playing this Deck with the others of the series and only 1 collection, here is a proposed way to distribute the overlapping cards for each investigator:

Mythos Busting Mark|One Collection Variant: 0xp Deck / Full XP Deck

Scavenge-Minhg|One Collection Variant: 0xp Deck / Full XP Deck

Sefine-Art Black Magic Painter|One Collection Variant: 0xp Deck / Full XP Deck

Akachi Ony-Elemental Mage|One Collection Variant: 0xp Deck / Full XP Deck

Yorick Gold Digger|One Collection Variant: 0xp Deck / Full XP Deck


• If you are happy to Proxy a few cards, Double, Double is the one card that is tailor-made for Sefina Rousseau and not available here.

9 comments

Jul 16, 2022 Wolf · 73

Hey mate. I love this idea, but isn't Parallel Fates (2) just for searching through the ENCOUNTER deck, not your own deck?

Jul 16, 2022 Wolf · 73

Oh man... Yeah, the link is for the Parallel Fates (0), not (2), so I was confused. It works as intended and is awesome :D

Jul 16, 2022 Valentin1331 · 55120

Thanks @Wolf, glad you liked the Deck, and I will update the Parallel Fates link, thanks for pointing it out :)

From you to me, I am surprised that this Deck didn’t get more attention as it did an outstanding job during my playstesting, though of course it doesn’t use Double, Double because of the card pool. Anyways, hope you have fun with it and please come back to give a feedback if you decide to play it!

Oct 06, 2022 lriuui0x0 · 1

@Valentin1331 I feel the base deck relies too much on Flashlight and Rite of Seeking. Without them, Sefina is a bit useless in terms clue gathering. I had a run with Sefina and Yorick in the same series in the first scenario of Carcossa, and man, Sefina ended up relying on her poor 2 intellect to investigate for a long time, which is not super consistent.

Oct 06, 2022 Valentin1331 · 55120

@lriuui0x0 I am super sorry that it didn't go well for you...

That is really unfortunate, as 4 copies of your key cards are usually what we consider enough, especially with Sefina, which has the biggest opening hand in the game! I hope that from the second scenario onward, things will look brighter!

And as soon as you can purchase Parallel Fates (2), you will never have this issue ever again.

I am happy that you chose this deck, it is the least liked from the series, but during my playtesting, it was one of the strongest for sure!

Oct 06, 2022 lriuui0x0 · 1

@Valentin1331 Thanks for your reply! Yeah definitely going to continue trying with Sefina. There also seem to be more clue gathering upgrade cards down the line. Also just wonder will Sefina and Yorick from your same series form a good team? I'm a bit tired with Guardian/Seeker combination.

Oct 06, 2022 Valentin1331 · 55120

That is true, the deck will increase in strength in a very satisfying way, you won’t be disappointed! (And no matter what, I’d love to have your feedback at the end of the campaign!)

And they are a great duo, that is the team that I used for play testing so I can confirm your choice :) Same for Yorick actually, he can be a bit wonky at first with the bat but it only gets better once you get the Fire Extinguisher!

Oct 06, 2022 lriuui0x0 · 1

@Valentin1331 Oh I remembered some specific difficulties with my play in Carcossa. It's this card Poltergeist, and man, that's annoying as hell. I'm not sure if there's anything to deal with it in the Sefina/Yorick combination. Since a) I cannot attack it. b) It's very hard to evade. 3) Both Sefina and Yorick are bad at intellect... So once this card is out, it just drastically increased the difficulty. I think I ended up evading it successfully once, but it was in the critical path so we have to meet it again... It was a mess.

Oct 09, 2022 Valentin1331 · 55120

@lriuui0x0 Alright, I see! Well, there are a few options available to you:

  • Mind Wipe (1) is also a cool way to deal with them and will also see uses in other situations if there is no Poltergeist in the scenario. It is the cheaper option both in terms of xp and resources, but it means that William Yorick will have to defeat the Poltergeist during the same phase (in this case the Investigator phase, so it means the same round basically).
  • Purchasing Blinding Light (2) that is useful against the Poltergeist as well as many other situations when evading is helpful. It is maybe less interesting because of the drawback of pulling a symbol token, and it is more costly than Mind Wipe.
  • Spectral Razor is amazing for Sefina and does help here, but it's not in the card pool, unfortunately.
  • Storm of Spirits is also a possibility, but it is quite expensive to play, and you'd need 1xp to add it to your deck too.
  • Finally, you could add Fine Clothes to your deck to help with the Parley test and get a bit of soak once this is over. This is significantly slower (you'd need 3 actions and still to pass some tests...).

This is probably not all the options, but the first that came to mind.