4th Player Decks - Jim Culver Lockdown

4th Player Decks:

4th Player Decks are a series of decks designed for a 4th player in a 4-player campaign -- especially one with three other strong decks. As such, they eschew any need to be self-sufficient in favor of a somewhat outlandish singular focus. They often rely on other player to survive and win scenarios -- and often to provide extra XP for the final build. But, as they approach their final build (both through xp n a campaign and through combo(s) in an individual mission), they can become dominant.

Note: Most of these are theory-crafted and draw-tested, as play-testing a 4 player campaign is, well, time-consuming.

Jim Culver Lockdown is based around sealing 4 (all 4?) of the special tokens from the chaos bag, thereby empowering team-mates and buildings towards a useful (although not very quick) Henry Wan/Arcane Studies investigation combo.

In order to pull this off, the following is necessary: 1) Seal of the Seventh Sign 2) 2 X Protective Incantation 3) Enough resources to support said Protective Incantations 4) The Chthonian Stone 5) At least one Book of Shadows to hold the 3 spells and refill Seal, if you get it out before other tokens are sealed. 6) Potentially Dr. Elli Horowitz to free up a hand to hold Book of Shadows or Sign Magick to facilitate a late-game Alchemical Transmutation for #3.

Consequently, the rest of the deck is based around fulfilling these requirements with card draw, deck search, and resource generation. The most notable is the resource generation engine through the following:

Early Game:

• David Renfield, eventually killed off/recurred with Calling Favors, Forbidden Knowledge (for further generation), or Sacrifice (for card draw or resources, which ever is more necessary at the time).
  • Emergency Cache (w/bonus card draw, if xp is available)
  • Alchemical Transmutation (the upgraded version isn't really necessary here if you don't want it.)

Late Game (once 3-4 tokens have been sealed):

• Henry Wan for either unlimited or pretty reliable
• Alchemical Transmutations if you have enough Arcane spots (2 Books of Shadows)

The goal for the first half of the game would be to gather your four seals and attempt to play them in as rapid succession as possible, hopefully getting Elli w/ the Stone the same turn you get Seal of the Seventh Sign in Play. The secondary task would be to build up a resource surplus to play them and be able to have a reserve to support Protective Incantations if late game economy doesn't play out quite right.

You can choose to seal the four most damaging tokens (the -5s and -8s at harder levels) for your group, but the deck, itself, prefers to seal 4 face tokens. With around 5-7 face tokens on average in an end-game chaos bag, this should leave pretty good odds of having a 3+ resource turn with Henry Wan, hopefully more. Those resources can then support Protective Incantations and pay to bump books with Arcane Study to actually investigate with your actions. It's not a huge help (2 clues a turn, probably), but what can your party expect -- you already sealed 4 negative tokens!

Note: The only reason to play this with Jim is that he can get both Dr. Elli Horowitz and Henry Wan. There are probably better investigators if you don't want both allies. For instance, if you don't want to rely on Henry Wan, Luke Robinson has some better built in survivability and clue-getting.