Agatha Studies Future Events and Dreams Past Events to Cleanse the World

Credit: Brian Valenzuela and Magali Villeneuve

As always, don't forget to press the ♥ if you like the Deck and want to give visibility to my work :)

Continuing this series of 6 investigator decks (all but Gloria), released one week apart, to help people who have little time to deckbuild, or are still getting familiar with the new cards. May these serve as a base for you to build your own decks and adapt to any other campaign or group size.

Disclaimer These decks have been play-tested in 2 teams, yet not through The Drowned City Campaign since they are published before its official release. Enjoy the reading, and I hope you'll have fun with these!

It is time for Agatha Crane. We are starting with her side for a simple reason, her side is still currently bugged on ArkhamDB. I also had the secret Dream of having a rainbow on the Popular page, but it won't happen for the best reason: the community has been crazy prolific since the release of this expansion. I hope ArkhamDB visitors and players overall realise how lucky they are to have so much content available! But I digress.

Agatha has been interesting to build right. Her ability is easier to trigger than her counterpart, but her suite of events to use it on is overall weaker. So I had to find a way a way to balance it out.

Also, it was a challenge to choose a direction for the deck. I tried Katarina Sojka and Sixth Sense (4), but it didn't work well enough to publish. Olive McBride (2) was another option, but I couldn't do something that another Mystic wouldn't do better. So instead, I went all in on Eyes of the Dreamer and used a Luke Robinson Astronomical Atlas deck as an inspiration to bring a strong, fun, and reliable deck! It's been a blast to play, so I hope you like it!

• Overview

• Main Strategy

• Read About Future Events

• Dream of Past Events

• Other Cards

• Upgrade Path

• Final Thoughts

• Use the Eldritch Brand to start the game with Eyes of the Dreamer and activate your on turn 1.

• Maintain charges on Eyes of the Dreamer and use it during the whole scenario.

• Use the Astronomical Atlas to draw cards and boost both and .

To add the best events available to her deck, Agatha Crane needs to test both and . There are 2 approaches to this challenge:

1. Piling up static boosts on 2 stats, which can be really heavy on assets and, therefore, play actions and resources.
2. Committing lots of icons to skill tests.

I chose the second option because it's a more dynamic play style, and I like asset-light decks. One of the best ways for Mystics to get lots of icons is with the Astronomical Atlas because we get to draw more cards and use future events for their icons before we play them.

This all leads to what I consider a really elegant deck that ideally only requires 3 play actions, for the 2 Astronomical Atlas and the Ocula Obscura.

• With 2 copies of Astronomical Atlas and 2 copies of Research Librarian, you start the scenario with 70% chance of having either in your starting hand. Consider it a mulligan priority since it will help you find all your other cards tremendously.

  • 70% chances may not seem to be a lot, but remember, this is only gravy since you already start the game with your key asset in play.

  • Before you find at least one copy of Astronomical Atlas, passing tests, either or , can be a little awkward. You can either use the skill cards that you naturally draw since these won't attach to the Atlas anyways or commit events that you have in hand, counting on your to play them afterwards.

• Once in play, every card except String of Curses and Research Librarian commit to either or , allowing you to boost your stats on all your skill tests. For the exceptions, passing tests should be achievable with your base 3, and adding other events with icons or Promise of Power. The Research Librarian is also less useful once you have that Atlas in play already.

• Of course, increasing your skill value is one thing, but getting double value out of the cards you commit is where the Astronomical Atlas really takes off. Deduction, Eureka! and Ghastly Possession are all fantastic cards to play more than once.

• With one single Astronomical Atlas on the table, your draw speed should increase significantly enough for you to find your other Astronomical Atlas and start to snowball.

  • High card draw is especially valuable in Agatha since she wants to play enough events to have targets in her discard pile to use her every turn.

Now that we know how to draw your events and pass tests, it's time to get in the thick of it.

Activate Your Dream Ability

This deck offers the possibility to activate your from Turn 1 of a game. This is done by using the new Eldritch Brand on Eyes of the Dreamer.

• An ideal turn 1 trigger is on a resource event like Voice of Ra or Burning the Midnight Oil.

• Eldritch Brand is a lot of experience, but it will really change the way you approach Agatha. Otherwise, you would have to dig through a larger 35 deck to find your key assets. This also helps freeing the Ally space that would otherwise have to be dedicated to Olive McBride (2), and gives more deck space to cards that add tempo.

  • In order to save charges, we most often use charges 1 by 1 on Eyes of the Dreamer. However, you can use 2, or 3 charges on tests where you are only 1 or 2 above to increase your chances. We never really try to get the extra clue, but if it happens every once in a while, it's always a nice surprise.

  • Using Ghastly Possession multiple times (on the Astronomical Atlas, from your hand, and why not recurred by Prescient) keeps the Eyes of the Dreamer loaded with charges the whole game through.

• Once you find Ocula Obscura, you can activate your ability without having to rely on Eyes of the Dreamer so much. This will be helpful to play higher tempo actions than 1 action for 1 clue.

  • Both Eyes of the Dreamer and Ocula Obscura also synergise extremely well as the first allows you to pick the best token possible, and the second gives it to you a second time.

Replay Past Events

Activating your ability is important, but the targets of your is what will make the difference between Agatha and any other mystic.

Here's a breakdown of each event and why it is here:

• Alter Fate to get rid of an annoying encounter card
  • Note that the upgraded Alter Fate (3) doesn't work because your is not during a window.
• Burning the Midnight Oil for a clue and resources combined
• Drain Essence for 2 damage heal and 2 damage combined
• Read the Signs for 2 clues on a high shroud location
• Shortcut for some fast movement for you and your teammates
• Spectral Shield to use your abundance of charges not to become a Lost Homunculus
  • Even though this card is fast, there will inevitably be turns when you won't have a good target to use your for, and so it is best to commit it for its to pass a test, and then use it from your discard.
• Stargazing that you can play twice with a single copy (which is the maximum per game)
• String of Curses, once from your hand, once from your to get a clue and defeat a non-elite enemy, for 1 resource, and testless
• Voice of Ra to finance all your shenanigans

With clues, enemy management, heal, movement, resources, and more, you are set to get some tempo almost every turn with your .

And most importantly, having this variety of events at hand, and being able to pick the right one for the board state at the end of each of your turn is extremely engaging and opens the door to a lot of "save the day" moments.

• The only event that is a non-valid target for Agatha's is Foresight.

  • A side benefit of Astronomical Atlas is that if it reveals a weakness, it doesn't draw it, allowing you to snipe it with Foresight.

  • This card is essential in this deck because Glimpse the Void re-shuffles back into your deck for an every time, which can add up to a lot of tempo loss.

• Prescient is good since you pick among multiple tokens when using Eyes of the Dreamer greatly increasing your chances of triggering it. Or simply wait for Ocula Obscura to know the token in advance.

  • The main targets are Ghastly Possession since it is not removed from the game by your , or any other Spell that you want to use a few more times before removing it from the game. Read the Signs is a good example.

Early Campaign

• We start the campaign with only one Astronomical Atlas, which is alright since we still have the 2 Research Librarian to find it.

• Since we don't have Eldritch Brand yet, we have another copy of Eyes of the Dreamer, that we backup with a few events to trigger Agatha's .

  • Unfortunately, none of these events are Spell or Insight so we get rid of them as soon as possible.

• Since both copies of Research Librarian are single-use, we complement them with Arcane Initiate to draw through the deck faster, tutor Eyes of the Dreamer, and find events for your ability.

• Finally, for the greedy ones, we can add The Great Work to the deck, allowing for 1 extra experience point at the end of each scenario, for a very low cost because Spectral Shield and throwaway allies offer a decent survivability. Also, because it's new, and pretty fun.

  • However, always be careful when doing this on a blind run as you don't know what you're facing. Worst-case scenario, you retire your Homunculus and use my Ascetic George Deck for the rest of the campaign.

Late Campaign

There are not so many upgraded Spell events that are worth getting to improve your ability, so we have to look elsewhere for some additional tempo.

• Adding one copy of Rite of Seeking (4) can dramatically increase your clue-getting capacity.

  • You can either play it on your last action or when you have your Ocula Obscura, since the Ocula Obscura doesn't store symbol tokens, also securing that you don't waste a charge on a failed test.

  • Note that pulling a symbol token during Rite of Seeking (4) ends your turn, but this does not impact your capacity to use your when your turn ends!

  • And since we are adding a high compression tool, we supplement it with 2 copies of the new Enraptured (2), turned into nonsense by the Atlas. Privilege this route in a higher player counts as you risk to run out of clues on locations in 2 . Otherwise, you can stick to Rite of Seeking (2) to save a few experience points.

• The main drain to the deck's tempo at this stage is move actions. Sure, Shortcut helps, but it's only a few times each scenario. So we can invest in the only real move tech to poor Mystics: the Summoned Servitor.

  • Since Wings of Night only works on revealed locations, you can sometimes Shortcut a friend to an unrevealed location to then join them with your Summoned Servitor.

  • Now we're here, why not commit fully to the servitor, adding the and the option, removing the Arcane slot not to compete with the Rite of Seeking (4), and going with 2 actions, because... it's better than 1.

Notable Exclusions

• Ward of Protection and Deny Existence, because it's a non-competitive game and I'm a bit tired of having them in every single deck!

• Olive McBride (2) and Katarina Sojka for the reasons explained above.

• St. Hubert's Key because it comes with a hidden 3xp cost, costs a lot of resources and I am personally not a big fan of slot overlap if I can avoid it.

• Word of Command was high on the list since it can be recurred with Agatha's ability, but it has no icons and so it would get stuck on the Astronomical Atlas...

• Cosmic Revelation because I mainly play 2 , but it is a great card for anyone playing with 3 or more investigators and is definitely worth including. Since you have more chances to have someone who can take care of all sorts of scenario tests at higher player counts, I would recommend swapping Alter Fate (1) and Stargazing for 2 copies of Cosmic Revelation.

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