Popeye's Peaceful Protection (endgame)

Card draw simulator

Odds: 0% – 0% – 0% more
Derived from
None. Self-made deck here.
Inspiration for
None yet

Deathcombo · 36

This deck was inspired by https://arkhamdb.com/decklist/view/30480/stella-breaking-the-game-1.0

Here is a link to the low experience version of the deck that will allow you to do the Popeye's Peaceful Protection combo almost every turn: https://arkhamdb.com/decklist/view/30689/popeye-s-peaceful-protection-minimum-1.0

The encounter deck is very annoying and my friends and I have been theory crafting a viable deck that can stop it. Enter "A Watchful Peace". If you can play this every round, you will never see the encounter deck for the rest of the scenario.

I've only seen one published deck where Stella runs "A Watchful Peace". Since Silas has built-in Skill recursion, I wanted to publish this Silas deck as another option.

Your role is to set up your resource and draw engine so you can play AWP every round. Silas can kill 1 or 2 high health enemies per turn once set up and guaranteed clueing on 2 shroud locations.

Mulligan

  1. Engine (Choo, Choo!) cards: Drawing Thin, Take Heart, 2nd Drawing Thin, Grisly Totem
  2. Sea Change Harpoon for combat
  3. Rise to the Occasion/Dig Deep for Encounter protection until AWP is set up.

Initial Play style:

  1. Move to high shroud location if possible and play Grisly Totem.
  2. Investigate and tap both Drawing Thins, commit a Take Heart. Hopefully you fail and gain up to 6 resources & 2 cards or 4 cards.
  3. If you don't have a Grisly Totem, you can use Silas' ability to recurse the Take Heart. Otherwise, if you have GT in play, you can use that to recurse Take Heart and save Sila's ability to recurse and reuse Rise to the Occasion.
  4. Keep doing this until you have the right cards to...

A Watchful Peace is online, Play Style:

  1. The following assets should be in play: Grisly Totem, 2xDrawing Thin, 2xTry and Try again, Track Shoes, Dig Deep.
  2. The following cards should be in your hand: A Watchful Peace, Resourceful, Eucatastrophe, 2xSignum Crucis
  3. Move to a high shroud location if needed.
  4. Investigate and tap both Drawing Thins, commit 2xSignum Crucis. If a bless token is revealed, tap Ancient Covenant to prevent further bless token loss.
  5. You should fail with at least 5 bless tokens in the chaos bag. Tap both Try and Try Agains to recurse the 2xSignum Crucis.
  6. If you can test something easy do so, other Move and tap Track Shoes to test against 3 Evade.
  7. Commit Resourceful and pay for Dig Deep so you can only fail due to the auto-fail token. If you get the auto-fail token, play Eucatastrophe and resolve Sila's Elder Sign Ability first to get a free commit of the Resourceful; this allows you to immediately recurse Eucatastrophe and the Resourceful. The Resourceful you committed will recurse A Watchful Peace in your hand.
  8. If you pass, use Silas trigger ability to recurse Resourceful; and Resourceful will recurse A Watchful Peace back in your hand. Now you have the combo cards to stop the Encounter Deck again next round.

End Game Death Combo - Popeye/Silas eats his Spinach

  1. You need the Sea Change Harpoon in play
  2. You need the following Spinach in your hand and a lot of money: 2xBrute Force, 2x Quick Thinking, Stunning Blow, Resourceful, Eucatastrophe, Resourceful
  3. Fight with the Harpoon and commit 2xBrute Force, 2x Quick Thinking, 1xStunning Blow, Resourceful (optional if in discard pile). If you get the auto-fail token, play Eucatastrophe and resolve Sila's Elder Sign Ability first to get a free commit of the Brute Force (for an extra 2 damage); the Resourceful will recurse Eucatastrophe.
  4. Immediately use the Harpoons ability to return it and the committed cards to your hand. The attack does 6 damage (8 if autofail), auto evades the attacked enemy, and gives you 2 extra actions.
  5. If you have at least 3 to 5 resources, you can use 1 extra action to play the Harpoon and the 2nd extra action to attack again, until you run out of resources or the enemy/enemies are dead.
4 comments

Sep 03, 2021 zacharyh211 · 1

I'm not really sure how the "Popeye/Silas eats his Spinach" combo is working.

If I understand correctly, Brute Force doesn't work. First, you can't commit Brute Force to a Harpoon fight because it's not a "basic fight action". And even if you could, Brute Force says "Max 1 committed per skill test", so you can't use 2 (or 3 if you hit the auto-fail).

You can still combo 2x Quick Thinking with the harpoon to repeatedly deal 2 damage for 3 resources though, assuming you're not playing with the taboo list. With the taboo list, you can't use Quick Thinking more than once a round.

Sep 04, 2021 Deathcombo · 36

Thanks, zacharyh211! I tend to misplay cards because instead of reading the text, I assume it does what I want it to do. I will have to rethink the damage part of the deck. What do you think of the "A Watchful Peace" combo, did I misread anything there?

Sep 04, 2021 zacharyh211 · 1

I'm a little unsure about what you meant during steps 6 and 7. Two potential rules issues:

  1. You can't use Silas's elder sign ability to reuse a skill during the same test you played it because skills don't get discarded until the end of the test. So in your step 6, using Eucatastrophe when the auto fail shows up only gets you back Eucatastrophe, Resourceful, and Watchful Peace if you had a second Resourceful in your discard pile.

  2. Returning skills with Silas means you won't use those skills' abilities unless they're "Delayed Effects". So in your step 7, Resourceful doesn't return a card unless you let it stay until the test succeeds (meaning it must be discarded).

But that aside, the combo you're going for does work. The loop to get back Watchful Peace is just:

  1. Resourceful in discard. Fail a test and use Eucatastrophe to get your elder sign, commit Resourceful, recur Eucatastrophe + Resourceful.

  2. Pass a test with Resourceful to get Watchful Peace, putting Resourceful back in your discard.

The tricky part is consistently getting your skill to 0 to use Eucatastrophe and then passing that test.

One option is just to let this happen naturally and weave the combo into your usual gameplay so that anytime you happen to get to 0 on a (non-willpower) skill test, you can use Eucatastrophe to pass a meaningful test and get Resourceful back.

The other way would be to find a 1/2/3 shroud location and investigate there. Then Silas gets to 0 and can play Eucatastrophe with a -2 or worse. And after turning it to an elder sign, Resourceful gives a book symbol which let's you pass up to shroud 3.

Sep 05, 2021 Deathcombo · 36

Thanks for the review. If i have a resourceful in discard and a resource in hand, then the AWP combo should be sustainable.

We should not seek to activate Eucatastrophe. Because its an extra 2 resources. Its a fail safe against the autofail token while you are testing step 5.

responding from phone, please excuse brevity.