Arcane archer Agnes

Welcome to the Arcane Archer Agnes deck! AAA for short. The Agnes variant that runs circles around enemies and blasts them away with very precise arrows and magic.

The key benefit to this build is reliability, most of this deck's attacks and investigates are made at a bonus of +6 or higher, that is then supplemented with the security and test recovery of Lucky! and Live and Learn. Even if one attack misses, you still have other tools to attack with, Ornate Bow in hand and Shrivelling in mind. Typically mystics live or die by their ability to draw Rite of Seeking and Shrivelling, instead of playing Arcane Initiate as a middle man this deck has Ornate Bow to draw into and a pool of 6 possible clue cards.

In combat you soften the enemy up with the bow, then finish it with a Shrivelling charge.

Inbetween the times where you actually draw your tools for combat Fight or Flight helps bridge the gap or escape danger, you might play it to evade and put damage on a big threat or finish off something wounded via arrow or spell, Shrivelling helps net you the horror for a large bonus and if you choose so you can grab Arcane Research, which makes you go into every scenario with some horror to work with.

When the combat tools fail or arent needed you can evade danger, Peter Sylvestre helps you hit shots with the bow and evade, not to mention soaking some of the horror from spellcasting, once upgraded he helps you hit spells too! Dig Deep compounds the accuracy.

The deck isn't without problems, all of the assets are high-priority and wind up costing a formula, Take Heart helps with that a bit. The cost of playing "Look what I found!" and Lucky! will hurt a bit. Be careful with your expenses, Holy Rosary is not as high a priority here as usual so don't waste resources on it till you've actually got the spells it boosts into play.

Before I start talking about XP, there is an elephant in the room. Two actually.

This deck does not make much use of Agnes Bakers's ability, and focuses mostly on her cardpool. Arcane Research makes the Forbidden Knowledge combo unfeasible, but due to the mechanics in this deck leveling spells is a little less important, thus, there are some options for personalizing this deck to suit your tastes. If you drop Arcane Research and swap Fight or Flight for Forbidden Knowledge you trade XP and a combat solution for extra cash and raw power. If you feel brave you can still run one copy of Arcane Research or two and hope Peter Sylvestre shows up on time every scenario.

Then there's the fact that you don't get to start a campaign with 6 xp, so what to do with the card slots until then? If you do the swap above, dropping Fight or Flight, this is an opportunity to use it a bit and see why I like it so much alongside Arcane Research, alternatively you might slot Blinding Light, Meat Cleaver or the classic Baseball Bat.

You can swap "Look what I found!" for Sixth Sense when that gets released to make the deck a LOT more solo capable and consistent with clues.

Finally, Dig Deep is a little too expensive to run consistently from the start, you can play Resourceful or Guts in its slot until you obtain XP for the upgraded variant.

Intellect tests are an issue for Agnes but you can try to brute force them with Lucky! and Live and Learn.

Now for XP. The first upgrade is obvious, Ornate Bow! This thing is your bread and butter. From then on:

Lucky! Lucky!.

Emergency Cache Emergency Cache.

You need to find your assets ASAP, an infusion of card draw is necessary. Meanwhile:

Shrivelling Shrivelling.

The first expenditure with Arcane Research. The rest of the Arcane Research triggers should be directed at Rite of Seeking and Ward of Protection, don't bother with Rite of Seeking, it's just too expensive. If you dont have Arcane Research then just grab Shrivelling and Rite of Seeking and stop upgrading spells after that.

Once you've upgraded card draw:

Dig Deep Dig Deep.

Peter Sylvestre Peter Sylvestre.

Fearless Fearless.

Safety, cost reduction and consistency, feel free to swap the order of these if you like.

Once Peter Sylvestre is in your deck you can consider Shrivelling, still a huge risk in case you find Shrivelling but no Peter.

Leftovers, in case you need to grab a tech swap or got leftover XP. You can swap out Fight or flight if you need to:

Bulletproof Vest. You fight a lot, the vest might become useful in outlasting trauma.

Blood Pact. If you got XP to burn why not this? It's useful like twice per scenario.

Relic Hunter. More XP burn. You might get lucky and get both Holy Rosaries into play.

Seal of the Elder Sign. If XP is pooling and burning a hole in your pocket this is a very natural swap for Fight or Flight.

Thats it! Take it from me, this is a fun deck and its good. Plays on hard just fine. With 4 main weapons in the deck and 6 clue cards its decent solo, but its truly effective in multiplayer, where it can mass obtain clues with the multiple double-clue cards and chunk out big enemies whenever they spawn.