Calvin Wright - Mr. Immortal

Hello folks,

have you ever tried playing Calvin but were disappointed because you felt his performance underwhelming? Afraid that he would simply die under your control if you go max damage/horror? Well then, I present to you my take on Mr. Immortal himself!

The goal here is to have a setup out in a short amount of time and that allows you to pile up maximum damage and horror on Calvin to simply pass every test thrown at you.

At the start of the game do a hard mulligan for Five of Pentacles if needed. If you get it in your opening hand, it’s free to play and allows you to go to six damage and horror without dying. It’s like Dark Horse but without the pain of not having resources and not playing more stuff. :) Other cards that you could keep are Stand Together, Solemn Vow (which I will talk about later), Jessica, Peter and Flare but Five of Pentacles should be priority Nr. 1!

Next up search for both allies Jessica and Peter. Both should be out as soon as possible which is why I also included Flare. That card is just bonkers and even if you draw it late while both of your allies are already in play you can still use it against those pesky three health enemies to one shot them. Really great card overall and even when you’re playing this deck in a campaign I would definitely recommend buying this card early because it’s just that good.

If you have these three cards in play as a base setup you could and should already go up to six damage and horror. Don’t be afraid to die! You will not! When you’re stats go up so do your chances of passing every test you have to take. One of the biggest mistakes is to stay on 5 damage and 5 sanity just because you fear to take another damage or horror. You have cards to navigate around that damage but you hurt yourself if you play scared.

To really push Calvin into pure immortality you’re just missing two more cards. The tricky thing to pass tests aren’t your base stats, it’s the bad tentacle token that ruins your day. That’s why I included Nightmare Bauble. With your high base stats you can afford to test with Dream Parasite committed to nearly anything and even if you fail, one damage and horror can simply be put on your allies or be denied with I’ve had worse. That’s a pretty cheap trade off for not worrying about the auto fail anymore. So the only thing that’s missing is protection against direct damage and/or horror that could wreck you like when drawing Voice of the Messenger late in the game. But Calvin even has a solution for that with Until the End of Time. In my playing experience this card is not a must have but when you draw it you should definitely play it down because it eases up the pressure on your allies but should only be used if you really have to.

As to the rest of the deck you may already have guessed that this deck was designed to be a fighter in your playgroup. Timeworn Brand is amazing because it’s two damage with every swing and unlimited in its uses. If you don’t find it early Meat Cleaver can help you out because in conjunction with Peter this weapon is nearly as good as the big sword and in can help you build up horror if no treacheries or enemies show up to “help” you doing that.

Flare and Brute Force are additional cards to help you ramp up your damage output if a big monsters shows up and wants to cause some problems.

Economy should be settled with Glory and Stand Together. If you’re playing in a group, Stand Together is just an amazing card especially first turn to help you and another playing getting a jump start for the game. If you’re playing solo or don’t like to share you could got Nothing Left to Lose instead.

Lucky, Rise to the Occasion and A Test of WIll should be used to get you out of sticky situation especially in the early game when your’re mission damage and/or horror to get enough stats. And as an additional reminder: If you play a scenario where you have "special" treacheries like Curse of Yig, watch out for them!

Last but not least the addition of Solemn Vow. You can and should use it to gather damage and horror from your fellow players – early game to get your stats up and late game to soke that damage/horror on your allies and make it disappear. You can even “heal” Beat Cops (or other allies) and cards like Key of Ys with it to keep your companies rolling with these cards. All in all just a great card for this build and even if you don’t need all copies with two willpower icons it’s never a dead card in your hand.

And that's it, hope you enjoy playing Calvin as much as I do! It's fun and relaly gives you another prospective on horror and damage you have to take when playing other investigators in future games. :)