
Not a review but trivia about art. If you type in Google "Walter Smith 1924" you will find a picture of man who looks exactly like the guy in art. Not a coincidence, no chance. Found about it accidentally going through insta stories.
Not a review but trivia about art. If you type in Google "Walter Smith 1924" you will find a picture of man who looks exactly like the guy in art. Not a coincidence, no chance. Found about it accidentally going through insta stories.
Parallel Front Jim Culver is what is known as a Jim Culver that has ascended past a Jim Culver.
And Parallel BACK Jim Culver... is to go even FURTHER BEYOND!!
To imperfectly sum up: Parallel Back Jim gets a separate 10 card "spirit deck", full of allies. Every turn he draws one and it enters play, free of charge, requiring no slots. They can't soak (no HP/sanity), but can do just about everything else they could as a regular ally.
You get to put Allies of ANY COLOR into this deck, of L2 or less. This can mean things like a free Leo DeLuca on turn 1.
The downside is reliability- most of the text on The Beyond amounts to "When you put a 4th ghost in play, (probably) discard each ghost." It's based on a token pull for each one, but without chaos bag manipulation, odds are they're gone.
So if you just chuck a bunch of powerful allies into the deck, Jim will ride an erratic wave of powering-up-and-down. With a bit of planning, though, he can instead get a couple high-powered allies in play and keep them there.
Keeping Your Ghosts ... uh... Alive?
This control falls into 2 main categories:
1. Token manipulation
Self-explanatory; when you hit 4 ghosts, you can still use most of the standard tricks to influence what tokens you pull on them, thus protecting the ones you'd like to stick around and allowing the others to move on.
Firstly: Curses in general. Curse tokens keep a ghost alive, and Parallel Front Jim further benefits from Curses, so really you're heavily incentivized to run a curse deck. Consequently...
2. Manual Ghost Removal
You'd think you could manually remove ghosts with tech that requires you to sacrifice your own assets, however it was ruled that they cannot be removed from play except by The Beyond, or abilities on the ghost itself. (See ruling at bottom of this review.) This takes Sacrifice and Summoned Servitor off the table.
Promise Of Power indirectly helps, as one of the ghosts in the ghost deck is a nasty creature weakness that DOES count towards the 4 ghost limit. Connecting a single fight or evade removes it; Promise Of Power gives Jim strong odds of landing that punch.
So the best manual removal comes from what's in the Ghost Deck to begin with, thanks to self-discarding allies. Stacking it with allies who's abilities cause them to discard themselves lets Jim aim for a few high-powered ghosts he wants to keep around, and a variety of little guys who give small boosts and then get out of the way.
Ghosts Of Interest To Jim
Self-Discarding Ghosts:
Add these, and use their ability when drawn to stay under the 4-ghost threshold, keeping your Superghosts in play longer.
Superghosts!
Allies with great powers that you can build your deck around, and want to remain in play as long as possible.
Delivery Ghosts
Another angle for building the ghost deck; these are Allies who give you something on arrival and/or over a few turns, and whom you don't mind losing upon hitting the 4 ghost limit.
I'm sure there's others who have potential value to Jim- this ability and his statline are amazingly versatile; it's not hard at all to picture a STR or INT based Jim given all the static boosts available, and base stat replacers from Hound & Servitor.
No matter what you do though, you'll have fun with your personally customized audience that gives even Charlie a run for the money.
UPDATE: As of Mar 13 2024, @HatfulBob posted on Discord an official response to several questions asked about this card. The full list of questions, and their answers, follows:
For spirits attached to Jim Culver's "The Beyond":
RESPONSE:
Yes, the spirits are still considered assets, but they are not Ally assets, and cannot be removed from play except by the abilities on The Beyond or abilities on the spirits themselves (e.g. Stray Cat). Jim could not discard a spirit from Crypt Chill or Summoned Servitor. And because the Spirit deck “owns” Vengeful Shade, if it entered play and was later defeated, it gets discarded to the bottom of the Spirit deck (per the rules for discarded spirits).
It's just a hot take, but based on how the spoiler season for "Hemlock Vale" went so far, Alessandra might actually be the investigator, Dario was waiting for. Blackmail File, (taboo'd) Power Word, Stall for Time and "Drain Essence" (spoiled by "Optimal Play" on their youTube-channel, but not yet listed on ArkhamDB) all ask for , Existential Riddle gives a choice between and . There are player cards with Parley-tests for all skills, but currently seems like the most common. And it used to be the most common Parley-skill tied with , too, when these were only found on encounter cards and encounter specific assets. While investigators in the past were not really craving for static , he provides her with the two currently most important stats for Parley-tests. Time will tell, if players can make Power Word work in Alessandra with taboo. I'm sceptical, but maybe with Fine Clothes and Moxie (3). Her (3) is not amazing for proactively using this skill, all the more important is the boost, Dario could provide.
Sure, you have to set up for him, but between the extended card pool of economy cards and Uncage the Body, this can happen much quicker than when the card was originally released in "Unspeakable Oath". It's a bit of a pain, that his ability requires you to be on locations without an enemy, while Parley often assumes enemies at the location. Let's hope for an upgrade, maybe cost 3, level 2, replacing his ability with:
This card seems like an auto-include in every Tommy Muldoon deck from here on out. Two actions for a 5 heal, up to 5 resources and a card or two seems absurdly strong and I can't wait to try it!
In fact, this card has the possibility of doing so much at once in Tommy Muldoon that I can see it freeing up deck slots for other cards, like more upgrades for his dear Becky
I can imagine this being a solid card for Calvin, or in conjunction with Spirit of Humanity. Throw in all the Survivor self-healing soaks (Peter, Jessica, Precious Memento) and you've got some sustainable combinations.