Baba Yaga Mark

This is the Mark Harrigan deck that I frequently play in 3-4 player campaigns and mention far too often on the podcast. It's been pretty stable since Carcosa, with the only major recent changes being Hallowed Mirror and the tabooing of Machete.

Mark is one of the strongest investigators in the game thanks to his great stat line, his mostly harmless weakness, his ability to trigger Sophie for a +2 boost on any test, and most importantly his truly ridiculous draw engine. If you play carefully and use your downtime to heal up, you can trigger Sophie pretty much whenever you need it and still avoid ever flipping her to the bad side. You'll never need to spend actions drawing cards, and in any normal scenario you're guaranteed to quickly get through your entire deck and then some. If your group needs a dedicated, ultra-reliable fighter to keep the map entirely clear of enemies (and maybe do a little healing on the side), Mark is your guy.

Most of the upgraded cards in the deck are fun but inessential; the deck is very strong even with only a few XP to spend. Beat Cop is the most important thing to get first. Also, Monster Slayer is one of the most underrated cards in the game. Don't sleep on it!

There is plenty of room to replace some marginal cards (Dodge, "Let me handle this!", Shortcut, Steadfast, Manual Dexterity, Brother Xavier) with others depending on the needs of your group. You can swap in Enchanted Blade if you need to kill ghosts, Handcuffs if you need to lock up some cultists, Elder Sign Amulet if you expect to take an unusually high amount of horror, or Delay the Inevitable if you're worried about something like Beyond the Veil. You can even put in Scene of the Crime if you think you'll need to pick up some clues, but in my experience it's safe to rely on your teammates to take care of the investigation in exchange for you instantly murdering any and all enemies that threaten to bother them. You could also add Dynamite Blast or Agency Backup, but I usually don't. Mark's only real downside is that he's quite poor and can't really afford cards like these.

Flamethrower-centric Mark decks have become popular since that card was released. Those decks are quite good, and probably even better than this one in many situations. But I like the flexibility and simplicity of playing four one-handed weapons and not having to deal with Flamethrower's weird restrictions. With five vicious blows in your deck plus beat cops, you can kill everything very quickly anyway, and I think this deck gets set up more consistently at the beginning of the scenario. All you need is a weapon.

-Dan

Check out our podcast Miskatonic University Radio!