Rise from the Deep

You can't commit another card with Last Chance. I would also run Rabbits Foot, if you fail a test, get your skill card back and draw a card.

I have no idea how I missed that one, but thanks. Fixed quick in the write up. What would you remove in favor of a Rabbit's Foot?

an entirely speculative thought, based on nothing but guess work, but you might be low on sanity protection with his 2 will and 5 base san. Peter Sylvestre is great but wont show early every game. You have a few skill cards that can mitigate test encounter horror, but i have a feeling some will get through, and there are auto horror effects to consider and campaign trauma. Not sure what the solution is mind. Cherished Keepsake is a spare soak taking you to 4 in the deck? but it might be overkill. Smoking Pipe is another option perhaps. He is unlikely to take too many HP hits with high and , a certain TFA mechanic permitting.

Anyhow - looking good to me overall. Better than what ive come up with so far!

@StartWithTheName

EVERYTHING BELOW IS SPECULATIVE. THIS DECK ISN'T PLAYTESTED.

That has been my big issue with this deck so far, actually. Sanity protection. Silas is super squishy and the only ways that I can feasibly see protecting him outside of Pete cost XP. It's Silas' biggest weakness and it's pretty much the main reason Eureka is in this deck: to get Pete out ASAP. That, and he has NOTHING for Int checks. You lean hard on your wilds for it.

Keepsake was an idea since it's free, but the only thing you'd logically cut for it is Manual Dexterity. Same with Rabbit's Foot. Manual Dexterity or Last Chance - and in a deck that is passing skill tests by burning cards rather than by accumulating passive stats, Last Chance is WAY too good not to slot IMO. It's why I didn't bother with the Rabbit's Foot. I want draw, but not TOO much draw. Generally the one-per-turn draw should be enough with Silas' ability along with potential draw from his signature skill card if he sees it. It might not be. I may well have to cut the Dexterities for some form of non-skill protection. I definitely can't afford to cut Guts with that statline, though.

Between the pipe and keepsake, I'd take the keepsake though. Pipe costs a buck, needs to exhaust (i.e. only once per round,) needs to be proactively used and hurts you (still an issue even with a high physical avoidance statline.) It's not very good for a character with low sanity since it doesn't help against bursts of horror. For drip-horror, you already have Pete, really.

Thank you for publishing your decklists, BTW. I totally stole your Ursula deck for my Carcosa run opposite my girlfriend's Mateo. Performed REALLY well! It really does feel tuned for hard; normal was pretty much a stomp with it.

Thanks for the write up Trilkin! I've been excited to play Silas Marsh since he was my go to character in the board game.

In response to Silas's low sanity I've been running Fearless since I can recycle it if I'm running low, and usually don't have the resources to play something like Peter Sylvestre.

Another card I've found to be a good send for this deck is Resourceful. I can play it, grab a Survivor card from my discard (usually Rise to the Occasion or Fire Axe) and bounce Resourceful back to my hand for more recycling. Running Resourceful has been keeping my hand full so I've cut Last Chance from the deck since it wasn't proving to be very useful.

@HensharoI was REALLY eyeing Resourceful seriously when I put this deck together and It's ALMOST a slot for me, but I didn't for a few reasons: I did want to attempt to use this deck in Hard, and the multi-?s from Last Chance were more valuable over all. I will absolutely agree that Resourceful is SUPER good, though, and if I were to slot it, I would 100% cut Last Chance for it. As of right now, though, I wanted the potential burst success more. Even on normal.

Fearless is an extremely good card... when upgraded. Fearless 0 is kinda bad for the slot, but Fearless 2 can be a good replacement for something like the keepsake if you take it. The problem, however, is that it will only work on Will tests. They come up often enough, sure, and are the leading causes of sanity loss, but you a) are at the mercy of the chaos bag, and an oversuccess and b) might take horror from a non-Will test source. Increased consistency is the key.

If I had ways to manipulate the chaos bag like a Mystic, I would be more inclined to use skills that require oversuccesses to proc other than Quick Thinking. Quick Thinking has the bonus of giving a wildcard, and an extra action.

I'm trying a different deck on solo Dunwich Standard that I threw together. I've only done 4 scenarios so far but the encounter deck has just torn me apart; I've been defeated in all but the Clover Club. Effects that discard cards from the deck or that discard assets from play really hurt when you've only got 2 of something (2 weapons, 2 sanity soak, 2 cards to reliably get clues, etc). I'd forgotten just how key fallback cards are in Dunwich.

So far my thoughts have been that you really need more than 2 weapons in the deck. I avoided the baseball bat since I was using flashlights but I'm having second thoughts. Or maybe Improvised Weapon? Or Gravedigger's Shovel if you want that auto-clue. You just can't find the Fire Axes reliably enough even with Eureka.

Not sold on dumb luck. You could've just used the card for the symbols and evaded successfully. Dumb luck uses 2 resources and an action to evade and fail by the right margin just to redraw something you could've killed with those same two actions. Silas is already good at killing and evading and with Dark Horse you'd intentionally have to carry money to use it. All of this to avoid pulling an unknown encounter card?

Sylvestre is definitely the way to go here; Labranche has been pretty useless to me. I thought she'd be nice for the extra card draw so I could get to the Fire Axes/Flashlights faster but I've basically never not had cards in my hand, so I can't use her. Or that she would be nice for the Fire Axe pump. But I end up using her as a sanity sponge more than anything else. So Peter would just be better.

Speaking of sanity, the Keepsake has been super valuable, even with Labranche. If you can get him out maybe Sylvestre's healing (esp. the upgraded one) is enough to keep up? But an enounter card discards him you're SOL.

I'd possibly lose Rise to the Occasion for Resourceful? Rise to the Occasion is essentially 3 will or 3 intellect for Silas; he'll never be able to use it for fight or evasion (excepting a boss monster or two). There's only ~1 shroud 4 location per scenario and half of them have multiple clues per investigator so you'd want to use Look What I Found for that anyway. I feel like will(4) tests are fairly uncommon as well. I use Resourceful frequently to get back Keepsakes/Fire Axes/True Survivor/Last Chance.

Quick Thinking, Eureka, and Resourceful are all fantastic with his Elder Sign ability. Being able to any of those extra times is really strong.

I mostly hate Rise to the Occasion. With Calvin I think it's good, but here it can't save you from Rotting Remains. If he had 1 in a stat it would be better, but in this case I think it's pretty weak.

Obviously Peter is an incredible ally for Silas, but I wonder how he would do with Yaotl. We're putting a lot of cards with matching icons in the bin, but we're also putting a lot of cards with or one of each icons in there, so it's a bit iffy. That being said, we can always try to pull back skills that don't synergize with Yaotl.

Also, in your description, you mention pulling back whichever skill card you don't need from a test; this implies to me that you're interpreting his reaction ability to negate the effects of whichever card you return to your hand. Is that actually how his ability works? I had been interpreting it that you get all the effects of a card you commit, and it comes back to your hand, but I could be wrong; it's been known to happen.

How did you even create a Silas Marsh deck, when I pick him to create a deck it just loads forever.

About the deck I don't think Rise ot the OCasion would work too well on him, Last Chance don't seen a good idea either, he does return cards to his hand rather often, its unlikely that hed ever have a low enought number of cards to make it worth. Quick Thinking and Double or Nothign seen like good cards for him, he could profit a lot from easy skill tests with these two cards.

Having looked at Skill Test Timing in the Rules Reference, I agree with you now re: how his ability works; cards you pull back are no longer committed to the test and have no effect whatsoever. This makes me a bit sad, since the idea of abusing repeated skill effects was what made me excited about Silas in the first place. Unless there's some ruling stating that committed cards set up a persistent effect, no matter what happens to them, I think it works the way you interpret it.

Last Chance is a better include than people generally assume; if it's one of 3 cards in your hand, it's a condition-less Inquiring Mind or Rise to the Occasion, which puts it on top for greatest versatility. Since you can't use Silas' ability and have your skill card's effect, you're going to be losing cards, meaning at some point it will be +5 to a test. I think it's good.

If he could repeat abuse skill cards like that he'd be crazy strong. His own unique skill card does with like that though since it triggers when a chaos token is revealed rather than depending on the test success. But being able to pull back Quick thinking when it wouldn't trigger or saving skills after you've gone all in on a skill test is really useful, saving skills after pulling an auto-fail, etc. I used it pretty much every turn.

And since Defiance triggers BEFORE you reveal the chaos token, you can always return it and still retain its effect. This gives you the ability to permanently turn off chaos token symbols (at the cost of the flexibility to over commit). For somewhat trivial skilltests (IE starting at 2 above without skill cards) Defiance will add another +0 token to the bag.

@SGPrometheus I still don't think Last Chance works well for him, you will only ever spend a skill card with this guy if you would fail the test after drawing the chaos token, if youd fail anyway or suceed anyway you will just return the skill card to your hand. being so you will be returning the commited skill card quite often and you draw cards when you don't return the neutral skills and succeed (wich will be always, you won't keep that card comited if you were going to fail), odds are your hand will be full of cards more often than not.

Also your math is wrong if you have 3 cards in your hand and comite Last Chance itll loose 2 ? as youd have a hand of 2 cards (meaning -2 ?s), itd be a conditionless Inquiring Mind if it was one of two cards in your hand, even so you can only comite this card on a test no other card is comitted (that includes ally cards) so its never realy conditionless.

Maybe? I'm not sure about Defiance still ignoring token effects if it's returned to your hand. Matt should probably clarify that.

Re: Last Chance, Inquiring Mind only has three Wild. So 3 cards in hand including Last Chance is equal to Inquiring Mind. Hand size will be dependent on play style but I don't think that's an unlikely scenario.

NVM tought Last Chance had 4 ?s and not 5, ye the math is right.

I just want to say, I appreciate every comment here so far! I've definitely been given a lot to think about with the deck, especially in regards to protecting the sailor's precious sanity and handling certain encounters. There will be a second revision of this deck posted later today after taking in the feedback. Once I do, I'll edit this deck and make a comment on it to forward you guys there. Okay, comment reply time!

@SGPrometheus (and @DakonBlackblade re: Rise)

Rise to the Occasion is in this deck mostly for 4 Will and 4 Int skill checks - especially 4 Int ones since you have absolutely no passive int bonus in this deck. While they're not as frequent as 3 Will checks, they are definitely there; especially in later parts of most campaigns. That said, you are probably right the more I think about 'what do I actually -pull- regularly?' Too bad cutting it screws with my deck name, but alas. Rise to the Occasion is going to get replaced with something else; likely Keepsakes.

Also, to reinforce your second comment: yes, the way the effect is written, the actual effect happens on token reveal and, thus, before the skill check. This can be clarified later, but I am further convinced of this due to the way Nautical Prowess is written. Nautical Prowess is written to have its effect fire when a token is revealed as well, giving you the opportunity to get its card draw and then pull it back into your hand in the same window. As already mentioned, Silas would be 100% busted if it let you get the full skill contribution of the card AND reuse it. I see this, and...

@CecilAlucardX

...I completely missed this interaction with Defiance. That makes Defiance a serious contender for this deck, especially when it comes to symbol tokens that have extremely nasty effects on reveal. If I were to swap out a card for it, it would be Dumb Luck since Dumb Luck performs a similar function in this deck. Speaking of which...

@Evilamarant7x

The idea with Dumb Luck is to avoid things Silas is -not- very good at handling in scenarios that are lighter on monsters and heavier on skill tests. That said, you have a point that $2 is pretty steep for a Dark Horse deck so with the above thought in mind, I would actually end up cutting Dumb Luck in favor of Defiance. Defiance is basically a free Cthonian Stone, though with caveats. Asset destruction definitely also is a problem so I definitely do need to fit Resourceful in here somewhere - especially if I'm only going to run two weapons.

I'm going to rethink the value of Quick Thinking. An extra action is valuable, but being able to consistently find a weapon might be more so.

It's also worth noting that you can only use Silas' ability once per round. On average, you will make 2-3 skill checks per round. (0-1 during Mythos, 1-3 during investigator phase.) Silas is good, but he can't go ape on EVERY test. That reduces the effectiveness of Defiance slightly.

New deck revision over here.

2xFlashlights are a must add for solo. He is weak on clue gathering and flashlight can be used to guarantee(non-tenacle) to get rid of weakness.