Silas Marsh takes the fight

Before going to the deck description , I'd like to point out a few things.

First, this is a multiplayer-only deck (and preferably in a team of 3-4 players), because we don't have anything that helps us gather clues. Secondly, this deck is untested. It's just a deck idea about Silas Marsh i had a few days ago and I'd like to share it.

So, on to the description:

This deck focuses on dealing with enemies and getting defensive tools against treacheries.

How do we deal with enemies? First, the high and we already have helps us in the first place. Secondly, we have weapons. Fire Axe is our main weapon of course, but we also have some subtitutes. Knife and Gravedigger's Shovel are there to ensure we don't hit anything with our bare hands until Fire Axe comes up. Dark Horse helps with that of course, and we have support to activate it. Speaking of, Fire Axe is our main activator, but we also have Dig Deep which gives us flexibility over that (we'll talk about that later).

How do we deal with treacheries? Cherished Keepsake will be our primary horror soak (at least for the first scenarios). Then, we also have Peter Sylvestre, which will be more playable, after we get a Charisma. Upgrading him to Peter Sylvestre (2) is also crucial.

We also run some utility cards. Rabbit's Foot is going to be very helpful to keep our hand in healthy size and Madame Labranche is going to helps us manage our resources and give us an extra boost to (multiple) attacks or evade attempts (when combined with Dark Horse and Dig Deep).

Skill choices:

Guts is an obvious choice to cover Silas's low . Overpower and Manual Dexterity are good inclusions in general, not only because they boost your main stats, but because they also provide card draw, which, i believe is important to Silas (same reason why we also have Rabbit's Foot). Unexpected Courage is almost an auto-pick not only for Silas but also for any other investigator and that leaves us with Inquiring Mind and Inspiring Presence. Inquiring Mind is a card i generally like (3 icons is amazing), though it could be problematic, as it can remain in our hand for the majority of the scenario duration (maybe even until the end), but i wanted to have as many cards with as many (same) icons as possible, so that i can deal with Dreams of the Deep. Inspiring Presence is a card that gives us extra utility. Did you just shed your resources to buff that Fire Axe and Madame Labranche is already exhausted? Well here you are: Use Inspiring Presence to ready Madame Labranche and get an extra resource to buff your Fire Axe again. Not sure how many times this will happen, but it could be crucial at some points.

Other things to note:

Dig Deep is one of the most important cards in this deck and it's even more important to upgrade it to Dig Deep (2) to make it Dark Horse-friendly. It gives a lot of flexibility on our resource generation when we have Dark Horse on the board. Do you take the 1 resource on the upkeep phase so that you can buff your Fire Axe next turn, or do you stay resource-empty to have Dark Horse activated?? Dig Deep gives the solution: You can always take the resource and use it if needed to buff your or if a treachery comes up, effectively netting a +2 (combined with Dark Horse).

Rabbit's Foot and Cherished Keepsake occupy the same slot. That could be problematic, but we can deal with it in some ways. We can start off with Rabbit's Foot, then, after it has drawn us a fair number of cards, replace it with Cherished Keepsake. Or we can start with Cherished Keepsake and once it's done its job, we play Rabbit's Foot or another Keepsake to replace it. But we generally want to have Rabbit's Foot out to receive its important benefit. In later scenarios, this won't be a problem, as Peter Sylvestre (2) pretty much covers the Sanity loss problem by himself and we can replace the Keepsake with other cards. This card, along with Knife, will be our replacing fodder for other cards, once we get enough XP to get there.

Madame Labranche is useful for our cash flow and good for rebuffing our stats without deactivating Dark Horse. Inspiring Presence can be used to reuse her if needed, giving us the ability to make multiple high-skill value tests on the same turn. That said, she will probably be the main ally we have out, until we get Charisma. That means Peter Sylvestre is not going to see a lot of play until then. This is why Cherished Keepsake is an important early-campaign card and it can easily be replaced with other cards after we've got Charisma and Peter Sylvestre (2) (as I already mentioned).

A signature card is missing from this deck, and that is no other than Lucky!. My initial deck idea had this card included, but i decided to drop it, as i figured that I will probably be spending resources to buff my stats (via Fire Axe and Dig Deep) and that would leave me with no resources available to play Lucky!. Same reason why cards like "Look what I found!", Close Call and Infighting are being left out of this deck.

I also spotted a big weakness this deck has. And that is how we deal with Dreams of the Deep. Since our main job is to deal with enemies, Dreams of the Deep can be very problematic if there are no enemies around. You can't rely on investigation attempts to get rid of this card, especially since we don't have Lucky! which would help in shroud 1-2 locations. So, if Dreams of the Deep is drawn in a bad time, it's going to be very punishing and that is something that worries me a lot. I haven't spotted any good way to deal with that, so we just play and pray!!

Upgrades

To begin with, we need a Charisma. We have 2 different allies and we want to play them both. Enough said.

Then, as I already mentioned, Peter Sylvestre(2) and Dig Deep (2) are the most important upgrades. These cards, combined with Dark Horse, can net you a of at least 5 when a treachery comes up. That's a very decent number.

Another important upgrade is Rabbit's Foot (3). Digging for cards is very useful in this deck and this card lets you filter out the cards you need to draw early on. This card is probably going to be one of your mulligan targets. Playing this thing early can get you all the important cards you need.

True Survivor is, needless to say, another important upgrade. It's a shame that Overpower is not an Innate skill, but all other skills in this deck are. Maybe you can get it back with his effect if you 're lucky enough. Recycling a Guts, an Inspiring Presence, or Nautical Prowess with True Survivor, though, can be important, especially for Nautical Prowess.

Try and Try Again is probably another good upgrade. I'm not sure about this one though, as we can already pull back a skill on a failed test with Silas's ability, but it could be useful. I also didn't find a better way to spend XP on this deck.

Stroke of Luck is a very welcome upgrade of an Unexpected Courage if you also have the XP to spare. You can buy that near the end of the campaign, if you have some XP leftover.