Pacific Jim - A Kaiju Mystic

With thunderous steps, wings like a hurricane, and a roar to shatter mountains, a new form of Mystic rides into Arkham Horror The Card Game!

Introducing:

The Kaiju Mystic!

The Kaiju Mystic is what I have dubbed a style of Mystic deck that relies heavily on the Summoned Servitor introduced in The Scarlet Keys Player Card Expansion. The Servitor is a versatile, if experience hungry card that can apply tooth, claw, tentacle, maw or extra-dimensional senses beyond earthly ken to almost any situation. However, while the Summoned Servitor tests at a respectable base of 4, it does seem a bit meek in the face of most challenges the Mythos throws at us. On the higher difficulties, it's not enough to summon a paltry Nightgaunt, a mewling Ghast, or even a lumbering Gug; We need a KAIJU!!!

Table of Contents:

• King of the Monsters - Kaiju Theming

• What makes a Kaiju? - Kaiju Definition

• Summoning And (Kaij)You - Cards For Kaiju Conjuring

• Pacific Jim - Deck-Specific Guide

• On the Shoulders of Giants - Other Kaiju Synergies

• Make Your Own Deck!

DISCLAIMER: This particular version of the Kaiju Mystic is not best deck I've created. It was created with a limited card pool to try out some new things. The main impetus for my wanting to do this write-up is a fell in love with this thematic way of building a Mystic deck, and wanted to share the core idea with the Arkham Community. That said, the deck pulled more than its weight and surprised me with how well it worked in practice. More discussion on this particular deck in the deck-specific section below.

King of the Monsters - Kaiju Theming

One of my favourite things about the Summoned Servitor is how anonymous it is in its presentation. Although notably it is Unique, the name and the theme of the card invites us to imagine any sort of creature being summoned. Depending on the story you have in mind for you particular deck it could be anything from a specter to a shoggoth! Of course, in the case of the Kaiju Mystic, the theme is: BIG. Beyond that a Kaiju can be interpreted as any number of things. Below are a few suggestion to get the creative juices flowing:

Diana Stanley, having gained unseemly knowledge through the Silver Twilight Lodge, controls with geomantic vibrations the huge and terrifying Dholes...

Agnes Baker, by re-awakened memories, has learnt the secret of creating shoggoths, and foolishly feeds a fledgling protoplasm treats from Velma's Diner. As it grows it forces Agnes to call upon more of her former incarnation's power to control it...

Luke Robinson conjures up dream and nightmare in equal measure. A nameless reptilian demigod, a gargantuan moth to lull the world to sleep, or three headed dragons from slavic legend...

Father Mateo, with a desperate prayer, calls forth an honest-to-God angel: a great mind-bending vortex of flames, wings and eyes, whose voice of holy praise sears the mind of both fiend and faithful...

Norman Withers, by meticulous calculation and astronomical ritual, calls up from the deepest ocean a titanic beast with brine-soaked scales and teeth of starlight that he rides into battle against the minions of Azathoth...

You get the idea. A Kaiju can be anything, and come from anywhere, as long as it is HUGE!

What Makes a Kaiju - Kaiju Definition

As mentioned in the introduction, the Summoned Servitor in its basic form does not seem very imposing. Far from a Godzilla or Ghidorah, the level 0 version just kinda... vibes. So, to make our little harmless affront to sanity into a true and proper Kaiju abomination I have decided on two qualifiers that need to be fullfilled:

• Experience: Our Servitor needs some experience to grow into its Kaiju form. To make a Servitor properly feel like a titanic beast I recommend at least Daemonic Influence and two of the single-box upgrades on its Customizable Upgrade Sheet. Dominance and Dreaming Call, while attractive options, should be disregarded. A Kaiju is a huge, lumbering force of nature. It should not fit into one puny slot and does not return what has been sacrificed in the summoning ritual.

• Stats: A base of 4 is respectable but it's hardly going to destroy Tokyo. In my estimation, a Kaiju Mystic should be able to consistently test their Servitor at a skill value of 6, and preferably be able to exceed that greatly in times of need. Luckily, with a full card pool there are plenty of ways for cards to boost stats other than , and of course, off-class access should be leveraged where possible.

Summoning And (Kaij)You - Kaiju Conjuring:

So you want to conjure up a Kaiju? Two main ingredients are needed to make this happen. First, we need cards to use as sacrifices in the summoning ritual. You won't be bringing a mighty monster to the field without paying the price. Secondly, we need to make sure our Kaiju gets HUGE, through some means of boosting its stats. Below are some ideas for card choices for each of these categories.

• The Sacrifice:

  • Mystic characters are no strangers to discarding assets. Whether you want to dump the doom on David Renfield, replace a Shrivelling gone dry, or lost someone in a bit of teleportation gone wrong a knows the value of having a worthy sacrifice close to hand. Empty spell assets are of course a favourite Kaiju treat, but so is low-cost, limited use assets such as Scroll of Secrets, Forbidden Knowledge and the ever faithful Arcane Initiate. Living Ink from the Scarlet Keys is of particular note since it can pull double duty as both a sacrifice and growth formula for our formidable friends (although importantly not at the same time). A Kaiju can also serve as an emergency doom clearer for the doom charm cycle or other dangerous items. Keep in mind that while it's natural to look for assets for our Great Devourer to munch on, plenty of off-class options are palatable!

  • Guardian admittedly are not known for having many low-cost assets lying around ready to be thrown into the maw of a hungering abomination, but there's no shortage of weapons that eventually lose their sting, and you can always do the classic Seeker move of throwing a Medical Student under the bus. But hey, maybe the Kaiju is her experiment gone wrong (or maybe even is HER) and now you are left with no choice but to attempt to control the beast?

  • Seeker always has a trusty supply of sacrifices eager academics . Magnifying Glass and Ice Pick are similar to Living Ink in that they can serve as both enabler and monster-magnifier. Encyclopedia is another card that can run out of uses, and can be used to get our companion to Kaiju-worthy power levels if our trusty beast doesn't eat our homework first. Other limited use limited use assets that can be emptied rapidly are also good targets.

  • Rogue, like Guardian, have plenty of weapons and tools that eventually run out juice juice. They additionally have a few zero-cost and fast assets, excellent cards to have on hand for a quick summoning ritual. Dexter Drake can notably make a Kaiju appear out of thin air at the drop of a hat by cutting a hole in reality with a Switchblade, without spending a single action! If you instead want to go down the darker path of human sacrifices, Rogue has a cycle of oft overlooked allies who are specifically meant to not stick around very long.

  • Survivor would maybe seem like the faction least troubled by needing to discard an asset to bring forth a Kaiju. But frustratingly, many Survivor tools and weapons are durable and tend to stick around, and many others self-discard. Of course, Scavenging can always be used to bring them back, and a worthy Kaiju with Eyes of Flame should be able to reliably hit the threshold for over-success, as well as leave plenty of rubble to rummage around in! The trusty zero-cost pair of Leather Coat and Cherished Keepsake must be mentioned, and their level 1 Exile versions are particularly suited for being discarded from play, to dodge their self-Exiling effect. Another Exile card that is excellent monster food is the Guiding Spirit, which also prompts the hilarious disturbing question of: what manner of loathsome creature eats ghosts?

  • Neutral actually has surprisingly many assets that could entice a Kaiju. Flashlight, Painkillers and Smoking Pipe are often overlooked, but are cheap and are quickly emptied, perfect for Kaiju snacks! If you don't mind higher costs and potentially waiting for longer until you've emptied out your tools both the Thermos and Hyperphysical Shotcaster might be options.

• Nurturing the Beast:

  • Mystic stat boosts traditionally focus on , the one stat that a Kaiju never uses. So to actually boost our beast to monstrous formidability, many Mystics will rely on off-class cards, but there are still options in the purple slice of the pie! Empower Self, although expensive and slow, are very healthy vitamins for a Servitor. Broad static boosts like Crystalline Elder Sign and St. Hubert's Key are also options. Claws that Catch allow us to squeeze another use of Blood Pact during a witching hour. My favourite though, is to use the Astronomical Atlas to use and reuse high value skills to empower the Kaiju not only with high stats, but also with action compression with the likes of Vicious Blow and Deduction. A particularly ethereal or psychic themed Kaiju might try to make use of Mind's Eye to charge up the monstrosity, but this strategy does seem to work against one of the main advantages of the Summoned Servitor.

  • Guardian of course have the aforementioned Vicious Blow, as well as other high power skills like Take the Initiative and Daring. But they also have plenty of stat boosting assets, a particulary allies like Grete Wagner and Alice Luxley, both of which are well suited as Kaiju co-pilots, relying on the monster to trigger their effects. Bestow Resolve could turn any high-icon skill into a Kaiju fuel for whatever your loveable leviathan puts its mind to, and Well Prepared only needs a good target asset or two reliably empower your befriended brute.

  • Seeker can apply a similar skill based strategy to Guardian's Bestow Resolve, with the excellent Grisly Totem or Dream Diary. Combined with [Practice Makes Perfect](/card/06197] and Written in the Stars you can make the most of your skills, continually reigniting the monstrous rampage. A beetle the size of a building would certainly catch the interest of Dr. Milan Christopher (and the rest of the Miskatonic faculty), while Magnifying Glasses make a neat pair of spectacles for Eyes of Flame. Beefing up the Jaws and Claws is trickier, but upgraded Mind Over Matter lets you guide your beast to victory over lesser fiends.

  • Rogue love doing huge skill tests, and has no problem leaning into a Kaiju playstyle. Their skills are dense with Wild icons, and they have great draw power to keep the commits coming. Should they run out of snacks for a while they can always Evade the hordes while the Kaiju rests for a turn or two. The Big Money style could represent an alchemical project to build a fearsome golem, or funding the research of a hitherto unkown exotic carnivorous plant that just keeps growing in size. They also have a number of allies that might take an interest in such endeavors, and have no qualms about calling on curses and relics to imbue their monsters with terrible power.

  • Survivor don't have too many traditional ways of beefing up their test values, but they do have the potential of summoning the sneakiest serpentine horror this side of Yoth! Spur your flying snake on Wings of Night with your Track Shoes and get catapulted across most maps, with a Moonstone-wielding Peter Sylvestre as your courageous Kaiju captain to keep the fiendish hordes at bay! Jessica's endurance makes her an excellent handler of combat oriented Kaiju and since Kaiju always make the news, Newspaper synergy is very appropriate. For the theme of an unassuming, destitute character protected by a shadowy monster, Dark Horse fits the bill. Grizzled and Last Chance are probably the most foremost Survivor skills to ensure appropriately monstrous test values, but Survival Instinct is particularly noteworthy as it can make your Kaiju so huge that it can snatch you up from the other side of the map and place you out of harm's way!

  • Neutral as a whole is very lacking in stat boosts, but deserves some special mentions. The Neutral Skill cycle of course works excellent with a Kaiju build, especially when paired with cards like Astronomical Atlas and Practice Makes Perfect. To really evoke a sense of a titanic being rising steadily from the depths to wreak havoc on coastline cities, I recommend Key of Ys, although that will be a very experience hungry build indeed, particularly if the Key is Tabood. I will also mention the one-experience class specific Tarots here, since it seemed unnecessary to include them in each faction section. Similarly, if you can generate enough of them, plain old resources can be converted into Kaiju-snacks through the classic resource pumping talents or the composure suite, the latter serving as decent sacrifices too, being Fast. Finally, Soul Sanctification's role as a flexible and powerful stat boost fits perfectly alongside the Servitor.

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Pacific Jim:

As mentioned in the introduction to this article, this is not a very optimized deck. Alongside my friend's Charlie Kane I took it through Curse of the Rougarou, as a way for us to try out some of the new cards in Scarlet Keys. Ever since Summoned Hound I've longed for more monsters to summon as my favourite class , and the Servitor was worth the wait. The specific theming I had in mind for this was of Jim calling up a monstrous mass of vegetable matter and decaying bones from the swamp to engage the Rougarou in single combat. "Let them fight!"

I opted for a low-arcane slot, high combat/intellect build, suitable to Jim's flat statline. Fishing out enemies with Kicking the Hornet's Nest to use Explosive Ward on and put them in the Binder's Jar was hilarious, and I particularly liked the feeling of growing power that this deck delivered. The Claws that Catch helped hit specific health breakpoints to make clearing the Doom off of the Ceremonial Sickle easier, one of my favourite interactions in the deck. The Dousing Rod wound up not doing much in this deck, with Jim and the Servitor scooping up clues without needing the boost, and Jim riding the Servitor to wherever he needed to go without requiring the movement effect on the Rod. Jim and Charlie quite handily beat The Curse of The Rougarou (on Hard I believe), and I'm happy to say that this deck more than pulled its weight. So I believe the Kaiju Mystic is able to offer both power and flexibility, and this gimmick is not only bark, but also monstrous, fearsome bite.

I wish to publish more Kaiju decks, exploring some of the specific concepts outlined in this article, but for now I hope I have piqued your interest in this Mystic archetype, and left you with thunder in your step and a roar in your heart.

This deck was created using this very handy template, by prolific deckbuilder Valentin1331