Quoteth the Raven "Kill Them All, Yorick"

Guardians run the risk of standing around doing nothing if no enemies are generated by the scenario. And many of the best ones have weak , so they're not able to help gather clues.

Enter Yorick, stage left!

This deck features a few ways to get clues without resorting to skill tests, often by defeating an enemy first. To make that happen reliably there are a myriad of ways to seek out enemies from the encounter deck. Remember that Yorick never goes far without his loyal fanbase in tow, affording another opportunity for bloodshed. And of course, what would a Shakespeare play be without lots of pointy stabbing things?

Without further ado, on with the show!

These are Times When a Gravedigger Has to Make His Own Corpses

• Trigger combats by messing with the Encounter Deck: "Let Me Handle This!", First Watch, and On the Hunt

• Win those fights with Meat Cleaver (+ damage), Survival Knife (- actions), Lucky!, Daring, Vicious Blow, Resourceful, and Stunning Blow

Why Interrogate When You Can Find the Clues On Their Cold, Dead Bodies?

• Grete Wagner finds testless clues after combat

• Evidence! does the same, is fast, and can stack with Grete

• Mysterious Raven grants a fast, testless clue and doesn't require an enemy

"Oh, the Horror!"

• Mysterious Raven incurs horror for fast testless clues

• Meat Cleaver incurs horror to deal extra damage, but can also remove it!

• Cherished Keepsake is a no-brainer that Yorick's innate power re-installs for no cost after defeating an enemy

• Flesh Ward adds a versatile second layer of protection that can also be recycled. It can make the difference between keeping or losing the key!

• Fine Clothes is a last resort and can be cheaply recurred with Yorick's innate power

Because You've Seen This Scene Before

• Beyond soak assets, Yorick's power can also recur the clue-finding Mysterious Raven and Grete Wagner

• As long as you can find targets to kill, you'd prefer to use Yorick's innate power to Play assets. It's more efficient than wasting the actions to play them from your hand. I can imagine maxing out my hand size in some situations!

• Short Supply starts you off with 10 cards in your discard pile. All are targets for Resourceful and Yorick's innnate ability. It effectively "tutors" 36% of your deck for the rest of scenario. Not to mention possibly discarding weaknesses...

XP-anding Your Repertoire

• Replace one Meat Cleaver with a Fire Extinguisher (3). It's cheaper and there's no fiddling with horror to obtain bonus damage.

• Key of Ys (10) is the signature card here, making lots of tests trivial. The Raven or Cleaver can self-inflict the necessary horror to get your stat line up to 6 | 5 | 7 | 6 in short order. Swap out Grete, an expensive ally whose stat bonus is now obsolete.

• What if the Key is sitting on the bottom of your draw pile? Backpack (2) to the rescue! It scours a big part of your draw pile for assets and set them into a side-hand. Needed cards there can then be drawn or duplicates there avoided. The second-most-important card in the deck. Swap for Fine Clothes.

• Relic Hunter (3) lets you use the Keepsake to keep the Key in play

• The experienced Survival Knife (2) is a huge improvement on the 0 XP version. Enemies with 1 or 2 health remaining still die with no effort on your part, but now you don't suffer any damage before they commit hara-kiri!

• The experienced version of Emergency Cache (2) keeps the cards flowing and can be surfaced with the Backpack (2). A worthy substitute for Stand Together.

• Safeguard (2) and Vicious Blow (2) improve the basics of the deck

• Police Badge (2) is an intriguing possibility once you have Relic Hunter (3), giving you the potential of extra actions and recursion. But it competes for the same slot as the Keepsake, creating periods where you risk losing the Key.

The Final Curtain

Heading into the last couple scenarios? This calls for drastic measures for the high drama of a boss fight:

• Aquinnah (3) replaces a Raven to cancel health damage, deal it back to the big bad, and provide good horror soak

• Devil's Luck (1) buys you another turn against the big bad, and at this point the exile cost is moot!

Cut From the Final Script

• various ammunition-using weapons got cut. But Act of Desperation remains. It's grants free resources for discarding a weapon from your HAND that you immediately return to play

• Scene of the Crime is pricey and costs an action, though this deck sets it up pretty well

• Peter Sylvestre's awesome horror soak would require Charisma, and his stat bonuses pale in comparison to the Key

• I've never found the Desperate skills (Run For Your Life, Reckless Assault, etc) worth it

I'd love to get input on other ideas for this, please comment!