Agnes navigates her Cursed Nightmares by the Candlelight.

Credit: Falk Haensel

Introduction:

I never really played Cursed decks for 2 main reasons: your team needs to work around, not to be crushed by it, and the reward for adding curse never really felt good enough.

For the first time with this deck, not only did I really have fun, but thanks to the newly tabooed Ritual Candles, I had fantastic results.

This series is a celebration of the 20k points on ArkhamDB to thank you all for all the support received.
Click here to see all the previous decks. I will keep releasing a new standalone-ready deck concept every week on Friday, so stay tuned and keep pressing the ♥ button if you want to see more!

Let me know which investigators you would like to see next in the comment!

Table of Contents:

• Overview

• Changelog

• Main Strategy

• Give in to the Curse

• Use your nightmares to influence reality

• Other Cards

• Upgrade Options

Overview:

Changelog:

September 10, 2024 - Considering the new Hemlock Vale
The Feast of Hemlock Vale came with a refresher on the Blurse card pool. Here are the changes that I would make to the deck, based on the new cards available.

• First of all, instead of Charisma and Familiar Spirit, we can use Occult Reliquary to gain an Arcane slot and replace 1 Familiar Spirit with another copy of Olive McBride, and potentially slot in a Rod of Carnamagos, because that is too good of an opportunity not to use it!

  • Since Occult Reliquary gives you an Arcane Slot and is permanent, Eldritch Initiation becomes a valuable addition to the deck to search for your spells.

• Because of the current state of the ruling on Rod of Carnamagos, I would not even bother with Favor of the Moon and upgrade Rod of Carnamagos to the level 2.

• Dawn Star is also a cool addition to turn some tokens into some testless damage.

• Finally, once you have more xp, you can upgrade Olive McBride for even more token fishing and, more importantly, add Seal of the Elders for even more testless damage.

• An updated deck would probably look like this. and would highly benefit from being played in a campaign with Arcane Research to upgrade Eye of Chaos, Spectral Razor and Seal of the Elders.

Main Strategy:

Play with tokens:

• Use Spirit of Humanity to heal Agnes Baker and add tokens.

  • The excess heal is turned into Unexpected Courage with Soul Sanctification. This helps you with your spells as well as any test the scenario can throw at you.

• The tokens are stored on Favor of the Moon or pulled with Olive McBride to be turned into charges or clues/damage with the dedicated Spell Suite.

• The newly tabooed Ritual Candles nullify the tokens.

Give in to the Curse:

It took a while for Agnes to see her nightmares not for what they were but for what they manifested. From there on, it became obvious that she should not avoid her curse anymore but rather encourage it.

This deck is mainly centred around the interaction between Spirit of Humanity, Ritual Candles and Soul Sanctification:

• Thanks to the new Taboo, the Ritual Candles now interact with tokens. If you have 2 of them on the table, curse tokens are turned into 0s.

• Spirit of Humanity is then used to bring to the bag, in exchange for some healing.

• Soul Sanctification turns the heal into +2s.

  • In practice, you will have 2 choices: either collect a lot of skill pump on Soul Sanctification, or use the heal from Spirit of Humanity to abuse Agnes Baker's ability and deal a plethora of testless damage with Forbidden Knowledge, Attacks of Opportunities, or even use Spirit of Humanity for 2 and 1 damage/horror.

• Olive McBride will increase your chances of pulling a token when you want it, while the risks of failing with her are also mitigated by the Ritual Candles's effect on all symbol tokens.

• Much later in the campaign, if the xp allows it, you can add Nkosi Mabati to turn any non- symbol into a , increasing the yield of your spell suite.

Use your Nightmares to influence reality:

Use your witcher's sense to find clues through the chaos:

• The Eye of Chaos will collect clues. It has the same number of charges and costs 1 more.

  • At the beginning of a scenario, it will act like a risk-free Rite of Seeking.

  • Once you add with Spirit of Humanity, you will have the possibility to either use it free of charge or to collect a clue from a connected location.

  • When upgraded, this effect becomes ridiculous, having infinite charges and collecting clues from every connected location.

Unleash the Armageddon:

• Armageddon is a more expensive, more limited Shrivelling. Besides having wicked art, it comes in handy in this deck.

  • Using Olive McBride and/or Favor of the Moon, you will be able to save charges or deal additional damage if need be.

  • Additional damage can be done in multiple ways, too, making the additional charge the better choice most often. The most reliable way to deal testless damage with Agnes Baker is Forbidden Knowledge. In complicated situations, we can also use Spirit of Humanity and add 2 .

  • When upgraded, the damage output can become swingy but has the theoretical capacity of being nothing less than the biggest weapon in the game by far: if you pull 10 , you deal 12 damage in one action. While it is very unlikely, I have already dealt 5 damage and added 2 charges in one action.

Other Cards:

• Parallel Fates (2) and Foresight (1) is maybe one of my favourite combos, especially for investigators with a severe weakness. Agnes belongs to this category. Filtering out her weakness feels amazing.

  • Not only does this combo allow you to filter out your weakness, but it also brings many other advantages: you can tutor key cards, rearrange your deck to prioritise important cards, plan when you want to draw (place a Voice of Ra before Eye of Chaos) and also deals with basic weaknesses. Finally Foresight brings a discount and a free play action when used with an Asset.

• Scroll of Secrets is another excellent way to add draw while mitigating your personal weakness even more.

  • Overall, you can filter over half of your deck with these 2 methods while only getting side benefits.

• Crystal Pendulum can look weird when we already have the Heirloom of Hyperborea. But the pendulum is cheaper, provides a static boost and will probably give you the same number of card draws since this deck is light on spells.

  • I always forget about the Crystal Pendulum in the heat of the game, so my technique is to choose a number and always pick the same. For instance, "For every first test, if I succeed by 2, then I draw."

• Familiar Spirit is cheap and adds an arcane slot, allowing us to have the 3 main elements: Spirit of Humanity, Eye of Chaos and Armageddon.

• Olive McBride is also rather cheap, and helps fishing for tokens. In general, she really helps either when you are close to the test difficulty (meaning testing with the same skill value, or +1) or when testing with much more, +5 and above.

  • I would recommend not using her when testing with +3 if you are not specifically digging for tokens. Click here for more details on why. Credits for this goes to @foobar.

• Favor of the Moon will help with 3 things:

  • Of course, tutor tokens when you need them to save charges, for instance.

  • It brings resources when used, for a net total of 2 fast resources.

  • It seals some tokens so that your teammates will not have to deal with them.

• Live and Learn is great fun in this deck: it will help a lot when you start to add tokens when not having both Ritual Candles on the table yet.

  • When pulling tokens while using your spells, Live and Learn will allow you to use the side effect, for instance, adding a charge back or a testless damage, and perform the test again with higher chances of success and potentially another chance to draw tokens.

  • It helps dealing with the , unless it is during a treachery test.

• Voice of Ra is great to turn the tokens into resources and be committed when you have enough.

• Prescient is an absolute mvp in this deck. Choosing "symbol", even without Favor of the Moon, gives you extremely high chances of succeeding with it, and it brings back your Armageddon and Eye of Chaos.

  • Why is it so important? At the beginning of a scenario, before you have the chance to add tokens to the bag, you will run through your spells surprisingly fast, and you cannot do anything without them. Prescient will also be a great backup option, also in case your second copy is far at the bottom of your deck.

  • Later in the campaign, we upgrade it into Uncage the Soul, which is far more versatile, never whiffs, discards the spell if it is still in play, and provides a discount.

• Promise of Power is always good, but especially here. Secure some early tests, and the "downside" is actually an upside in your case.

Upgrade path:

Link to the 0xp deck.

(View at arkham-starter.com)

Link to the fully upgraded deck.

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