#CPA-TFA Yorick "Buried in the Vault"

Spoilers for The Forgotten Age below.

My final deck for the Mythos Busters discord Community Playalong. For those not familiar, the concept is to play through a campaign simultaneously with multiple other community members, using a card pool limited to player cards from Night of the Zealot, the campaign being played, return to boxes for both, and the Investigator starter decks. Investigators themselves, however, are not limited to this cardpool, and any may be used.

This deck was partnered with this Harvey deck, both played two-handed by me, team name: "Buried in the Vault". It was played through regular Forgotten Age, on standard difficulty and with the second most recent taboo list (the latest was posted two or three levels into the playalong, and didn’t hit many cards in the playalong pool that my characters could take).

There’s a slight experience disparity between them, which should hopefully be explained by Shrewd Analysis and different choices with the experience from Threads of Fate. If the maths on that doesn’t work out, well oops.

Why William Yorick?

Yorick is, in my opinion, one of the strongest investigators in the game. He’s a great fighter, an excellent tank, and his access to Survivor tricks makes him even better at both. While his damage output might cap out a little lower than a Nathaniel Cho or Tony Morgan, he’s very sustainable, and the ability to play assets out of your discard pile is incredible for a myriad of purposes. His elder sign and signature are also some of the strongest in the game - potentially an extra experience point on every single level, capping out at 9 in the Forgotten Age, of which I got at least 6 - and the ability to occasionally recur Lucky!, Live and Learn, Take Heart, or even Vicious Blow is incredible, especially in a pool without Resourceful.

The limited card pool is not particularly limiting for a high level fighter - The Forgotten Age contains the Flamethrower, the BAR, the Timeworn Brand, the Old Hunting Rifle and even the Bow, and Stella’s deck adds Chainsaw, though Nathaniel’s doesn’t have much in the way of weapons. Rogues have fewer high level upgrades, but the Bow, Berettaand levelled Mauser are nice enough. However, lower level options are much more limited. Survivors lack Fire Axe and Meat Cleaver. Guardians are missing out on the Enchanted Blade, the Thompson and the Colt. Since I’m playing taboo, any Guardian would have to spend experience for the Machete, too.

However, the core set contains two weapons that are generally overlooked - often for good reason - the Baseball Bat and the humble Knife. While these weapons are generally unreliable or underpowered, they don’t really have this problem in Yorick. A bad is still very bad for Yorick on the Bat, but a much less so, and the knife can just be repeatedly replayed after using it to kill something. Though I didn’t intend to keep them in my deck for long, the knives ended up sticking around and being surprisingly useful for much longer than I thought they would.

Yorick also does deal with the evasion focus of the first level fairly well, by including Stray Cat he can evade not only snakes stuck on him, but also ones on Harvey, and simply upgrade out of it when it’s no longer necessary. His balanced defensive stats along with Survivor cards like Live and Learn and Lucky also mean he can do the occasional evasion if he finds he needs to, not to mention Stunning Blow.

Initial Build

I’ve already discussed most of my initial weapon choices - the knives were excellent, but I ended up rarely having the time to play the baseball bat - but the third, the ..45 Automatic, there isn't much to say about. A generically decent weapon that was the first thing to upgrade out into bigger, three damage weapons.

Stray Cat was included purely as a method of dealing with Pit Vipers and Snake Bite, and did its job perfectly well. I did need to kill one Pit Viper in the end, though. My intent was never to avoid as much Vengeance as possible, but I did only end up with about 11 by the final level.

The deck was initially quite skill heavy, and these got whittled over time - mostly after City of Archives. Guts and Overpower were early cantrips to help with Harvey’s draw, and while Guts was cut early, there was a point where I was considering upgrading Overpower rather than cutting it. In the end, I decided that Stunning and Vicious Blows were enough. Take the Initiative was excellent treachery protection, and needed to stay in the deck until City of Archives at least. I ended up cutting it soon after because the levelled Unexpected Courage and Test of Will did most of its jobs.

Safeguard, while generically useful, was less good in the explore-focussed levels than most. However, it did earn the most valuable card award in Heart of the Elders-B, when the timing worked out that Harvey could move to the final location, force both characters to draw encounters rather than placing doom, then once that resolved, Yorick could move into the final location and immediately win the level. It was a tense one, too - he had a Harbinger on him and not enough health to survive a retaliate.

Handcuffs were a tech card that didn’t work out too well for me. Though they could have been excellent, I think I didn’t play into them enough to make that the case. I only ever managed to throw them on one cultist, and while good, enough were spawning that it didn’t really make an impact on mysterious chanting. I ended up cutting it before City of Archives.

The level 0 cards I never removed were Emergency Cache (though the second was added after an exiled card rather than there from the start), Stand Together, Live and Learn, Vicious Blow and Stunning Blow. Both characters needed as much money as possible - Chainsaws are expensive - and I can’t bring myself to part with Live and Learn for autofail security. Not that much security when all the important enemies have retaliate, but it’s the thought that counts. Vicious Blow and Stunning Blow are both amazing

Upgrade Path

Unlike Harvey, there was a big question with Yorick over which upgrade path to take. For a while, I debated focusing on one-handed weapons - the Brand, Survival Knife and the .18 Derringer, leaving the former two in play most of the time and using Yorick’s recursion almost exclusively for soak and Beat Cops. In the end, I’m happy that I went with the two-handed Chainsaw and Hunting Rifle build - the ability to take out Brotherhood Cultists and Broods or Fangs of Yig in a single shot was extremely useful throughout the entire campaign.

Backpack (2) was one of the early priorities, though surprisingly I never felt I really needed a second. Either I drew all my weapons early, or I got a backpack early and managed to recycle it once or twice for the rest of them.

Old Hunting Rifle and Chainsaw were my big weapons, and an equally big priority. The ability to recycle them meant that the second copies weren’t the largest priority, but cycling between two Chainsaws is almost always better than between each of the two. That said, the Old Hunting Rifle’s extra combat boost came in surprisingly handy, and it hardly ever jammed on me.

Beat Cop (2) was the next biggest priority, allowing a lot of extra damage sprinkled in compared to the base version. Taking it before the single health Acolytes began to show up was important, and proved very useful for Threads of Fate. With no Charisma available, I considered this the best ally for the single slot I had.

Leather Coat and Cherished Keepsake (1) were also very good choices. For 2 less experience and cost than their neutral equivalents, they proved invaluable across the campaign. Intending to have both copies and overwrite them with each other so they didn’t get exiled, I nonetheless ended up exiling them a fair amount, just due to how much damage and horror gets piled on across the Forgotten Age.

The levelled Derringer was a minor upgrade, and possibly should have been replaced with a second backpack, but was still useful if I didn’t draw the big weapons.

Next was Lucky (3), which was incredible. Lucky (2) also would have been worth buying, since the draw is useful while standing next to Harvey, but I ended up skipping it and going straight for its best version. It’s an excellent card that lets both investigators not bother going more than 2 up on most tests while it’s in hand, since it overcomes the -5 token with minimal investment, and the 2 up will get you past the majority of the bag anyway. The draw (doubled by Harvey) is just a cherry on top.

Unexpected Courage (2) is something I wanted to make sure to have for the City of Archives, though I only had one copy for it. It proved useful enough, though with a full pool I might have gone for something different.

It was at about this point that I began to run out of cards to buy. Harvey’s draw-heavy deck and my choice of giving both characters a pendant let me destroy City of Archives and almost max out on its exp. From here, most of the picks were difficult, and ended up taking out very good level 0 cards.

Test of Will (2) replaced Take the Initiative as Yorick’s way of dealing with treacheries. He had little hope of passing the test of will, but with the luxury pick of Déjà Vu, that didn’t really matter except for potentially recurring it with his elder sign.

Cornered replaced a copy of Safeguard, which I knew wouldn’t be amazing in Shattered Aeons due to the movement restrictions. Though I didn’t know how good the card would be on Turn Back Time, I didn’t really regret removing it or the second copy that I also took out for the final level. I didn’t ever end up playing Cornered, though.

The final upgrade was a pair of Alter Fates, which would have been a good pick earlier, too. There are a lot of targets throughout the campaign, and many of which were in the deluxe box (which I could deduce Turn Back Time would be largely constructed of). Snakescourge in particular would be invaluable to be able to quickly get rid of on bad turns - but cards like Words of Power, Conspiracy of Blood, Poisonous Spores, and Creeping Darkness would also have been incredible targets. My anticipation of Snakescourge proved correct, and using Alter Fate on it so that I could attack with Chainsaw on a turn where that was essential probably won us the game (at least in part). I never saw the second copy.

Cards I Missed

The biggest card I missed was probably Charisma, which would have offered the possibility of doubling up on Beat Cops, or working with Ichtaca.

Emergency Cache (3) would have been incredible with its ability to refill empty Chainsaws, and to stick to a Backpack until it was needed.

Vicious Blow (2) as a very generically good skill that didn’t need to take out any good level 0 cards would have been great, especially for dealing with big bosses near the end of the campaign.

Finally, Scrapper (3), though not especially useful since Yorick was constantly spending money on Chainsaws, would have both allowed the occasional evasion and extra little boost to combat, but also wouldn’t have required taking out any of the level 0 cards, which became a huge problem as the deck neared its final form.

Performance

Yorick struggled a little more than Harvey. While he was able to destroy the abundance of three health enemies in The Forgotten Age with his repeated chainsaw use, he often still found himself stacked up against a pile of enemies, simply holding them off while Harvey completed the scenario. This happened on Boundary Beyond, Heart of the Elders-B, and Shattered Aeons. The fact that he seemed to be an -magnet didn’t help - getting retaliated upon by the Harbinger once or twice, having to rely on the seeker to bail him out each time. It didn’t help that his random weakness was another enemy - making drawing at all something of a risk, depending on the timing point, especially the mass draws Harvey could enable. However, once or twice I was able to use the detective or ghouls to recycle extra uses on a weapon, allowing me to kill something with more than three health afterwards.

Without Charisma, and relying on soak that got exiled, I found him a lot less sturdy than usual, or perhaps part of that was the abundance of retaliate enemies and trauma. There were a lot of times where I took an attack of opportunity or a retaliate attack, thinking I could brush it off, only to look at my remaining health with a cartoonish double-take.

I also may have overly relied upon Lucky and Live and Learn. While they are great cards, for instance I ended up throwing both Luckys at a test that I never should have made in Turn Back Time - it drew the Elder Thing, and I had no choice. Without Resourceful, these cards became a lot less reliable, and Yorick saw far, far fewer Elder Signs than Harvey did.

That said, his chainsaw, vicious blow and beat cop were able to deal two thirds of Yig's health in damage over only three actions - the three charges of the chainsaw. And we needed to do it quick, before the Harbinger showed up. It was a hell of a last stand.

Over the course of the campaign, I did make a number of misplays, playing two-handed and fast. Most were fairly minor, but most were in my favour too. Little things like forgetting one or two extra fight value on enemies I might have succeeded against anyway, perhaps some damage here or there. The biggest misplay was forgetting to take into account the effects of ‘Ichtaca’s Prey’ in Threads of Fate, which, played correctly, could have lost me the game (though most likely would not have). The biggest misplay against me was forgetting that the big enemy of Heart of the Elders-A couldn’t make attacks of opportunity. Oops. I also slightly lost track of who was poisoned and when since I forgot to actually add the card to the decks, but I don’t think I accidentally cured anyone. So while I can’t call this an absolute win, I’m happy to call it a win nonetheless.