Sophie Harrigan’s Guide to Playing the Soldier

.32 Colt seems like it was made for Harrigan. What would you cut to include it in the deck? Thanks for the excellent write up!

@FractalMindIf you want to include .32 Colt I'd replace it with the Machete! Thanks for the question!

(You could also take out Prepared for the Worst and/or "If it bleeds...")

+1 for the name!

This deck looks really expensive (48 total cost). How do you play all of your cards? Don't you get bogged down after turn 3 without being able to play things when you need to? Thoughts from an inquiring mind.

@meathook I had the same thought before running it! The reality is that you only need a Machete and Flashlight, one ally, and Painkillers to feel really confident.

Also, most of the cards are situational, so unlike some decks you're not needing to deploy tons of cards.

Then also remember that many turns are going to be move, and do two fight or investigate actions. Most scenarios in Arkham have a countdown, and play styles that spend too much time gearing up are playing against the clock. Mark takes one turn to gear up and starts gunning for objectives.

All this also culminates into Ever Vigilant which he really uses well!

Overall, I like it. The one thing I would question is whether or not, given his need to shift damage into horror using Painkillers, if it might not be in Mark's best interests to eventually take and Elder Sign Amulet, possibly instead of Keen Eye, if the experience is available, since, as you say, Sophie already does the job?

@anFeasogMorThanks for the suggestion! I actually think that Elder Sign Amulet is a really good thought.

Elder Sign Amulet is in the funny place of being easy to forget about when deck building, especially since it seems "boring" with no text. But it (and it's cousin, Bulletproof Vest are almost never dead draws, and offer great skill test icons to boot!

Brother Xavier isn't quite as good a horror sink of the Amulet, and he's more expensive to play, so I think that the Amulet is something I want to look at and deck builders should play around with for sure!

@SamVC It's definitely tricky. I do think that Brother Xavier's utility is definitely worth it for his increased cost. He doesn't have the horror soak that Elder Sign Amulet has, but only by one, he has damage soak that the Amulet doesn't, and his other abilities are quite potent (though, with liberal use of Painkillers, Mark probably can't afford to be taking other people's horror for them). At the same time, I do think this deck might suffer a bit from resource poorness, so a 2 resource differential is nothing to scoff at. Still, I think if I were going to choose one or the other, I'd probably still stick with your initial suggestion of Xavier.

That being said, if the investigator could swing both, having the amulet (giving Mark a private horror sink) would open up more flexibility for using Xavier as a sink for other investigators horror, strengthening that strong tank role you've established in this deck, and I personally might even prioritize it over the upgraded Taunt, especially keeping in mind balancing Mark's low sanity with card draw, and the forced horror every time you shuffle your deck.

Shuffle your discard pile because you've depleted your deck, that is

@anFeasogMorIt's also worth that, while Elder Sign Amulet and Keen Eye share the same EXP cost, permanent cards don't take up any deck slots and start the game in play. Keen Eye is essentially a "win more" card that you buy if you've already managed to upgrade the bulk of your deck and you're flush with extra experience from some really excellent runs. It sits there and fills in the gaps when you don't manage to acquire Flashlight or Machete in your first few turns. The card itself is by no means a requirement and doesn't have to replace anything in a deck that already is very tight on space.

That being said, if you were looking for something to replace for an Elder Sign Amulet, I would agree with@SamVC that True Grit/Brother Xavier can be replaced to lessen the burden of so many allies. Overall it would serve as a more selfish build so I would only consider it for solo runs.

I like how this is looking. I am going to try it on solo with a few modifications. I am going to replace the multiplayer cards with personal preference cards. -2x Let me handle this for +2x .32 Colt (I like to have the static +1 damage just in case multiple enemies are engaged) -2x Taunt for +2x Evidence to shore up the investigation deficiency. That's all that I can think of from the top of my head at the moment.

Why not Smoking Pipe? It heals horror by damaging your allies/true grit, while also drawing you cards... say, during the upkeep phase, or even the mythos phase if you didn't take damage.

@CecilAlucardX I played this deck through the Night of the Zealot campaign and focused on getting the maximum amount of XP and not meeting death. It was a success, but I found "If it bleeds..." to be the most dead card in the deck.

So now, per your suggestion, I've actually started playing Smoking Pipe over "If it bleeds..."! You have a great eye and it works really well in this deck!

Along with Painkillers it's a great way to transfer early game direct damage onto your assets and allies, generate card draw in multiple phases, mitigate horror, and trigger Brother Xavier.

I'll make a note of it in the guide and give you a shout out later today! Thank you!

@SamVCAwesome guide mate, and I definitely appreciate the shoutout. I'll have a whole formatting guide up and running soon, so I'll be sharing even more of my tricks :)

Cheers!

@SamVC After a couple of plays, I can say the deck is awesome. Very clever to not include any Skill cards, since Sophie acts the part. I have a few questions about a couple of cards choices:

• "If it bleeds..." why include it over Dodge? "If it bleeds..." is extremely situational, I used to have it in my Roland deck, and most of the time would just be committed to skill tests. Dodge is much better because it prevents the Horror before you even take it, and will also prevent you from losing Health since enemies usually hit for both at the same time. At most, you will regain 2 Sanity from "If it bleeds...", while it's much more likely that you will prevent 2 Damage and 2 Horror from Dodge. I removed 2x "If it bleeds..." and added 2x Dodge.

• Taunt I'm not sure why it is in the deck. Since you are only using the Machete as a weapon, you will not want to engage more than 1 enemy at the same time. So you just use Taunt to save you the 1 action it costs to engage the enemy from your co-op partner? It's not even 1 full action you save, since it actually costs you 1 resource to play. In the same spirit, I also think 2 weapons and Prepared for the Worst are not enough, since as a Guardian, you absolutely need a weapon on you at all times. As others have mentioned, the new .32 Colt is so perfect for Mark, so I removed 2x Taunt and added 2x .32 Colt.

• Painkillers The deck has enough ways to handle Health loss, but almost no ways to handle the very critical Sanity loss, so I definitely recommend switching out the Painkillers for the Smoking Pipe, which you can then upgrade to an Elder Sign Amulet. So I removed 1x Painkillers and added 1x Smoking Pipe.

After I did those small changes, the deck handled better, as I no longer had any dead cards to deal with in my hand. What are your thoughts mate? I'd love to hear them!

Great write up, i'll try my own version of this deck in a few days.

For multiplayer i'd recommend Teamwork, because of it's flesibilty. It has saved our asses a ton of times, by redistributing ressources and ofher stuff (give ressources to rogue, get their Switchblade 2 instead).

"I've had worse…" is somewhat situational, but in most szenarios gives you 4 ressources (enemy with 2 damage/horror attack). Combine with Teamwork if you don't need them. Am i right, this can only counter 1 damage/horror source? For example if an enemy attacks me for 2 damage/horror and i have Hypochondria, could i counter all 5 or must i choose which one i counter (1 horror or 2 damage and horror)?

What about the The Red-Gloved Man? He's expensive XP wise, but beside his stats, he's also a great damage/horror soak. Combo with Painkillers and Smoking Pipe, you can use each twice on him. After upkeep phase, there's a player windows before the end of mythos phase, right before vanishes into thin air. Thanks to him, i survived spoiler.

Did you ever use Monster Slayer and my share some opinion on it?

Same for Dynamite Blast?

@DadouXIII - I totally agree with your assesment of "If it bleeds..." and have switched to running Smoking Pipe over it. Dodge is a great thought as well.

I really value fast actions. To me, actions are the most critical and scarce resource in all of Arkham. In a coop game, I've paired it with Shortcut or Elusive, zipped across the map, and engaged an enemy so my allies have unrestricted turns. I will agree though, if you're playing with Rogue's, Survivors, or a class that likes to evade, or playing solo, Taunt is not going to find much use.

Elder Sign Amulet is great in this deck for obvious reasons. Brother Xavier is another card that fulfills a similar role to consider when upgrading.

@Django I love Teamwork! It's a little gimmicky so I didn't want to include it in the deck list, but I have a soft spot in my heart for that card.

"I've had worse…" upgrades from Dodge or "If it bleeds...". Great card (but a little pricey!). You're correct that it can only block damage from a single source. Otherwise I'd even be tempted to pair t with Painkillers and negate three horror at once! It would be cool if there was a card that made an investigator immune to damage for an entire phase. Maybe one day!

The Red-Gloved Man is a beast and you're bang on wanting to pair him with the actions from Painkillers and Smoking Pipe.

Monster Slayer is interesting with the drawback of being situational and expensive! I haven't used it in a deck, so if anyone has, I'd love to hear your opinions on the card! At first blush, it seems better suited as a get out of jail free card for investigators that dislike fighting, which isn't a problem Mark Harrigan has. But I may be undervaluing it and the amount of high health non-elite enemies that Fantasy Flight is willing to print. Dynamite Blast is decent, but you'll find 5 resources is difficult to come by in this deck. Generally you're killing monsters the same turn that they appear, so you're rarely able to get them to group up.

Running only 2 weapons means that you'll be weaponless about 50% of the time even if you mulligan for Machete. It also means Prepared for the Worst will whiff entirely quite often. Yeah, Vicious Blow or Guard Dog might tide you over, but you are still a vastly less efficient combatant without +1 damage. And what if you need to face a high-health monster early on? There's no substitute for a weapon then.

I think you really need to get at least four weapons in here. The .32 Colt seems like a natural fit.

@CaiusDrewartI'll start by referring back to the guide in case you missed this paragraph where @SamVC actually did the math for you:

"Two weapons!? No guns!?! Are you mad!?

"Look, guns in Arkham suck... we have access to the best weapon in the game in Machete. Combined with Prepared for the Worst and a hard mulligan, we are 68% likely to see one of them in our opening hand."

That is an incredibly substantial difference of 18% between 50% and 68%. It's also worth noting that his calculations don't account for the two weakness cards that don't count towards your opening hand size. That actually brings your percentage up to a whopping 70%.

The next part worth noting is:

"Even if we miss it early, Mark’s excellent card draw means it will turn up eventually."

If you're not drawing Machete that means that you're drawing Guard Dog, Beat Cop, or True Grit/Brother Xavier. Mark's passive ability combined with these soak cards, literally allows him to cycle through his deck with almost no draw back. It's worth mentioning that his weakness is one of the most negligible in the game when drawn early (in all of our playthroughs Shell Shock has done between a whopping 0-1 horror on average) so it actually plays to your advantage to draw your weakness early. Finally these cards in combination with Vicious Blow allows Mark to easily dispatch of 3+ health minions without any problems.

The truth of the matter is that the four weapon rule is an antiquated aspect of deck building that will become even more archaic as power creep makes deck slots a more valuable commodity with each passing set adding better search options and superior offensive options. If you are that desperate for another weapon, then you can remove Prepared for the Worst for the .32 Colt and you can enjoy the same 70% chance of drawing a key card in the first turn of the game.

Unupgraded beat cop has no native interaction with Mark's ability.

@Gilmore Girls: I did read that part, but I don't agree with it.

First, drawing Prepared for the Worst in the opening hand does NOT count as drawing a weapon. Prepared for the Worst played on Turn 1 has around a 55% chance of finding one of your two Machetes. It has about a 45%, then, of totally missing (and leaving you down a card, resource, and action in the bargain.) Prepared for the Worst is not very good if you only have two weapons in your deck. You need to have more than that so the card doesn't have a huge chance of just missing.

As to getting by without a weapon--it's just not advisable. None of the cards you listed will remotely suffice if someone draws a 4-health enemy on turn 1. As a Guardian in multiplayer, your job is to be ready for that situation.

The four weapon role is there for a good reason. Mark is much, much worse without a weapon in play, and there's no reason he should have to start out over a third of games that way when there's absolutely no need for him to do that. Plus, the advent of the .32 Colt has made going four weapons much more appealing, since the Colt is a) better than the .45 Automatic and b) has a useful icon when you already have your Machete in play.

Hi @TheUnthinkable! Thanks for the question.

Beat Cop (2) Reads:

Exhaust Beat Cop and deal 1 damage to it: Deal 1 damage to an enemy at your location.

Mark Harrigan has the abilty:

After damage is placed on a card you control: Draw 1 card. (Limit once per phase.)

Cards in your play area counts as cards you control!

The synergy that these two cards have is that you can choose which Player Window you want to exhaust Beat Cop. You can get multiple card draws per round, if you use this right!

It's important to note that Mark's ability can be used any time the condition is met (once per PHASE). So whenever Beat Cop does damage to himself, you place a damage marker on him, use Mark's reaction ability, and draw a card!

Spacing out this damage is key to play not only this deck, but Mark Harrigan in general! A great round in the midge might look like this:

• Mythos Phase: Use Sophie to help conquer the Encounter Card, usually (Sophie does one damage to Mark, draw one card)

• Investigator Phase: Attack a four health enemy with Machete. Ping Beat Cop for +1 damage. (Beat Cop takes one damage to himself, draw one card)

• Enemy Phase: Enemy Attacks, assign damage to Guard Dog. Guard dogs for +1 Damage, killing the enemy. (Guard Dog tanks one damage, draw one card)

• Upkeep phase: Use Smoking Pipe to heal 1 horror from Mark and assign a damage to True Grit. (Smoking Pipe does one damage to True Grit, draw one card)

You can draw up to four cards per round with Mark's Ability! Yes that's a best case scenario, but those are the windows you should look at and understand when you play The Soldier!

For more information, I'd recommend looking at the Rules, it has a wonderful illustration of when exactly you can use Player Windows! Also, everyone should play a scenario or two with Agnes Baker, because she uses the mechanic the most out of any investigator and really helps a player look for those windows!

I'm aware. I meant that unupgraded, beat cop has no such interaction. In the guide, it'd be helpful if you called out that the beat cop in question has to be upgraded.

@TheUnthinkable I'm sorry! My brain just read "upgraded," for some reason.

Level one Beat Cop could be replaced, sure! He's not too strong on his own. It's really just a placeholder to the natural upgrade.

Do note though that Beat Cop is an excellent target for Painkillers and Smoking Pipe or simply to tank incoming damage! And then afterwards you get to proc Mark's card draw, a double win! It allows you to heal or prevent damage from landing on Mark, clearing room for more uses of Sophie.

@CaiusDrewart

Spoilers below

It's also worth noting that plenty of investigators can complete solo missions without a reliable way to ping for 2 damage every turn.

Agnes Baker is a perfect example of an investigator who can still solo a scenario without ever drawing Shrivelling, can spread damage via pings similar to this iteration of Mark, and only has access to one significantly worse spell search card in the form of Arcane Initiate.

Even the top Daisy Walker guide on ArkhamDB only uses Shrivelling as a weapon and resorts to Mind over Matter and Blinding Light, one time events that only deal a single damage, as a ways to deal with enemies from the encounter deck. While Old Book of Lore does play a factor in her consistency, it doesn't look as deep as Prepared for the Worst and Scrying is to be reserved for avoiding encounters in the first place.

To top that all off, no other investigator sports the same innate card draw that Mark Harrigan has built in through his passive.

My group tends to build well rounded decks so there's no problem with other investigators picking up the slack if someone doesn't draw their optimal hand. There is no worse feeling than to build a purely combat focused deck then play a scenario with no tests. 5 is perfectly adequate for dealing with most creatures so drawing Machete late is not a death sentence.

To quote some of best advice that I have ever received, "What got you here won't get you there". Arkham Horror is called a living card game for a reason. Being Adaptable to new deck building strategies as more cards are released is at the heart of the game.

I'd much rather drop a taunt for a Colt, honestly. In particular, taunt has profound antipathy with the Machete. That brings you to 3 weapons and a prep-worst which is a very good break even in terms of probability.

@Gilmore Girls

I don't see how the fact that other investigators may or may not be able to get by without weapons has much relevance. Daisy Walker decks sport few damage-dealing options because Daisy has access to few damage-dealing options, not because she doesn't need them. Agnes can sometimes get by without Shrivelling, yes, but she'd much rather draw it, and lots of Agnes players mulligan for Shrivelling most of the time. I certainly do.

Anyway, my point is simply that Mark is much better when he can deal 2 damage per fight action instead of 1. Having the efficiency of fight actions--one of the most common actions Mark will take--be literally doubled is really, really good. Not only can you dispose of creatures faster--and thus have more time for advancing the act--you don't have to spread your boosts out over so many tests, which lets you manage your resources much more effectively.

Rather than building a deck where a great deal of the time Mark will only be able to deal 1 damage per fight action, I would give over a handful of deck slots to weapons. With 2 Machetes and 2 .32 Colt Mark's chances of getting 2 damage per fight action are vastly increased, and there's still tons of deck space for whatever else you want to do with him.

I'm not claiming that it's an auto-loss or anything if Mark doesn't find his weapon right away. Sure, maybe his teammates can pick up the slack. But things are a lot smoother and easier for everyone if he gets a weapon out quickly. I'm happy to give up a couple deck slots to get a much better chance of that happening.

@TheUnthinkable

Taunt can work fine with Machete. If an enemy is engaged to a teammate, you can play Taunt to engage it yourself. Not only do you turn off the risk of hitting the teammate, but now you get Machete's bonus damage, which can make a huge difference. If you're engaging multiple monsters, then Taunt and Machete clash, but it's more common to play Taunt to engage just one critter anyway.

With that said, I think Taunt is only so-so for Mark. I don't think it would have a place in my Mark deck (certainly not in lieu of a third and fourth weapon...)

@CaiusDrewart while fair, that's probably not enough to make me run the card in most circumstances.

@TheUnthinkable

Yeah. I also think this deck is a little too expensive (only 2 skill cards hurts here), so, setting the weapon issue, replacing Taunt with something like Overpower would probably be a good idea. On high difficulties Mark 100% wants Overpower. Even his 5 Combat + a weapon bonus + Sophie (if he can safely use her) is not going to be enough on Expert.

@CaiusDrewart: I think I'd want a meaningfully different deck on Expert, but honestly I don't think we have enough good tactics to make Mark's deckbuilding limitations anything other than brutal on Expert.

@CaiusDrewart Thanks for the comment!

Mark Harrigan has a very limited card pool and most standard decks will end up looking really similar to one other.

Part of my motivation to write this guide was to show some new deck building options and break with convention, as well as empower folks to learn a bit about Mark and Sophie's Interaction so that they can tailor a Mark Harrigan deck to their own play style. The first convention I wanted to address is the idea of including lots of skill cards, generally between 6 and 12 skill cards. This deck runs 2! And then of course is the conventional idea of 4 weapons per deck.

Obviously i recognize that having more or less than four weapons is a minority position, I just wanted to open the door and start the conversation. At the end of the day, play what you enjoy and what you feel is strong!

@TheUnthinkableI love that you're thinking about the harder difficulties, that's always the first thought I have when I see a new investigator.

The first time I looked at Mark Harrigan and Sophie I remember thinking, "This investigator would struggle on harder difficulties."

Expert and Hard mode reward investigators that can avoid the Chaos Bag. Agnes Baker shines with her Ability to ping for damage without consulting with the Chaos Tokens first, which makes her very strong at higher difficulties. Zoey's Cross is another great example of this type of interaction.

Sophie's +2 bonus will not be enough to overcome the Chaos bag at higher difficulties without another investigator buffing them up. While I wouldn't rule an Expert run out for any investigator, I do agree that a deck list for a Mark Harrigan Expert run would look drastically different than this one.

If anyone is looking for a variation of this deck that plays better in solo play and utilizes four weapons, check out Sophie and Mark's Big Adventure by Doppelboc. Thanks for taking the suggestions from this comment thread and making a modified decklist!

Thank you for the deck, I think its a well oiled machine. I run it as -1 Painkillers -2 "If it bleeds..." ; +1 Evidence! +2 Smoking Pipe. Smoking pipe is an amazing way to manage marks awful sanity and gives us the ability to use more phases to draw cards. The action compression of fast cards are insane in this deck. Ive been able to evade 2 creatures, move to a space with an a fellow investigator engaged (like 4 spaces away), engage the enemy on the ally then swing 3 times. I end up replacing Evidence! with Brother Xavier. This deck is nuts and fairly hard to play, you did an amazing job with the build and an amazing guide to go with it.

Awesome deck. During The Clover Club hoohaa, stationed Mark Harrigan at the Clover Club Cardroom with Beat Cop while Minh Thi Phan raided the three rooms off Darkened Hall. Took out three criminels, Clover Club Pit Boss and a Servant of the Lurker. Helps if the hand is full though. Sophie's worth is inestimable in stand-off situations.

Love this build. But I’m wondering if anyone likes to use “Calling in Favors”? Seems to me like it could help with with both the healing of damage on your allies while also helping you manage the cost of higher cost some allies. I’m going to try replacing first aid with it.

Hi, really great deck. What about Armor of Ardennes as a main source of damage soak? First of all basic build does not include item for body, so why not fill that slot with card that can take A LOTS of damage?

Heya, thanks for this guide. Mark is a beast now!!

I realize it's a couple years too late, but I'm returning to the game and wanted to try out Mark and found your deck. Got 7xp on Curtain call quite comfortably with Sefina and Joe Diamond.

4 things I didn’t understand with this deck and your comments to it: 1) I have a situation in one Dunwich scenario where all my remaining 3 weapon cards were at the bottom of my deck (I checked this after finishing the scenario) and others were discarded by contact cards. So, in the world where I’m not getting Prepare for the worst or Machete in the first 10 cards, how should I ever draw a weapon having only 2 of them (+Prepare for the worst)? 2) Beat cop is not an endless active, it only has 3 damage, so just 3 card draw per the game. 3) How can you say that “Mark draws up to 4 cards per phase), mentioning Beat cop and Guard dog together? Aren’t we supposed to have only 1 slot for allies? 4) I completely don’t understand how can you draw a card when Mark gains damage. Doesn’t his ability say “After damage is placed on a card you control”? When on Earth an investigator’s card became the card he controls? Can it go out of control then? Overall, I saw comments here that “4hp enemies are few. Tell that to my today’s Dunwich scenario where I got those 2 things with 6hp in 2 rounds. No Machete or Beat cops could help there… Love my .45 automatic, I’d lose without it. But anyways I’m curious of testing this deck. Just to see if I’m missing something in your strategy.