Unlimited Events Guide – Survivor Edition

Card draw simulator

Odds: 0% – 0% – 0% more
Derived from
None. Self-made deck here.
Inspiration for
Unlimited Events Pete (Level 0 + Upgrade Path) 5 6 1 1.0

ElseWhere · 3771

For a more in-depth dive into this deck and its more complex companion, as well as a whole bunch of potential variant builds, check out the main article here: https://strengthinnumbersarkham.wordpress.com/2023/01/03/character-concepts-unlimited-event-loops/

Intro

Welcome everyone to the Survivor/Beginner level of my Unlimited Events combo showcase! This deck is designed to show you how to create an unlimited event loop that lets you play any event you so desire as many times as you want, without needing to go infinite, cycle aggressively, or otherwise break the game.

The combo at the heart of this deck is actually pretty simple, but in my conversations on the Mythos Busters discord I was surprised to find not many people are aware of it. So I was inspired to write it up and bring it to all of you! Without further ado, let's get started.

The Combo

This is a two-card combo, based around Crystallizer of Dreams and Grisly Totem.

After you play an event and attach it to Crystallizer of Dreams, all you have to do to get it back is to initiate a test, to which you commit the event from Crystallizer and trigger Grisly Totem targeting it.

Now you fail the test, and when you do so, Grisly Totem returns the committed event NOT to the Crystallizer, but to your hand, ready to be played again!

You can repeat this up to three times per turn, or recover up to three different events across two tests, if you have two Grislies in play and trigger Pete's ability to ready one after it's already been used. It costs you nothing but a failed test, which in Survivor is hardly a cost at all!

Deck Breakdown

Pete is the perfect user of this combo, not only because he's one of the few that can take it but because his ability grants you an extra usage of the combo, AND his statline is so pitiful it's not hard to guarantee his failure on any given test, AND (perhaps most exciting of all) he's allowed to include any level 0 event in the game in his deck thanks to the Dunwich deckbuilding splash.

Since two off-class spots are taken by our beloved Crystallizer, that leaves three events from any class that you can use for looping, which is also where the deck's main customization options come in. I chose three pretty basic value events: Shortcut, Ethereal Form, and Deep Knowledge. This gives me extra movement, protection, and card draw for myself or my friends (plus curses that help keep that failure train rolling).

Our main recursion event is "Look what I found!", which gets pretty insanely strong when we can play it up to three times in a single turn! That easily leaves Pete competing for primary cluever without even needing to worry about passing tests.

The on-class portion of the deck is mostly designed to make sure the loop keeps running as smoothly as possible. Drawing Thin might be notorious as an overpowered economy engine, but in this deck it is genuinely included for the difficulty increase, to keep us from accidentally passing tests. How weird is that? On Your Own helps us afford cooler but more expensive events like Will to Survive (which we will often use to make sure we fail every test in a round by a precise margin), and A Chance Encounter negates the downside of OYO. A Glimmer of Hope is fuel for Pete's ability, Alter Fate is a great toolbox event, and Salvage helps us recover our Keyrings should we waste them on passing 1- or 2-shroud tests (an ability that's even better if you choose to upgrade your Keyrings to Old Keyring).

Last but most definitely not least, I didn't forget our loyal pup Duke. While not a central part of this deck, Duke does help us in emergencies if we are beset by small threats, and more importantly grants us a higher base stat value for attempting to LWIF (or even pass sometimes) higher-shroud locations. With Will to Survive and Glimmer of Hope, he can even help us pivot into backup damage-dealing in the lategame.

In Action

In the sessions I've played this deck, it has acquired a somewhat notorious reputation as a deck that can win a scenario without ever passing a single test. Pete may be bumbling through the mythos, but he's doing so with heart and dedication, and it pays off as his shouts of "Hey guys! Look what I found!" carry us to clue thresholds in scenarios of all types.

Conclusion

I love this combo, I love all the wacky, crazy things it can do, and I love how customizable it is! Any level 0 event you've ever wanted to see played 1-3 times per turn is at your disposal here, and in fact in the article linked at the top of this writeup I go into a number of alternative options and the ways you might shift the deck to focus on them.

I hope you've enjoyed this writeup, and that your mind is buzzing with your own ideas for adapting this deck and this character to your table! If you haven't yet, please consider checking out the Rogue Unlimited Event deck accessible through the article above.

Thank you so much for reading, and feel free to leave a comment with any questions or suggestions you may have!

11 comments

Jan 04, 2023 ghastlybob · 1

I saw the other deck first, which had a 19xp core. This core is only 9xp (Relic Hunter, 2x Grisly Totem, so it's certainly a lot cheaper. It seems less flexible if you really want to conserve actions and not go fail-forward. I'm wondering, have you had issues with economy with this deck?

Jan 04, 2023 ElseWhere · 3771

@ghastlybob This strategy is easier and cheaper, but as a trade-off it is definitely more one-note, in that fail forward is pretty much a necessary part of the build (because of how Grisly Crystallizer works). But depending on what other events you choose, the fail can just be the mechanic of the event recursion, and you can spend the rest of your time on other stuff.

As for economy, I've had absolutely no trouble. Drawing Thin and OYO together offer me 6 resources a turn, and while I'll admit I definitely have pushed that at times, I was able to play Will to Survive almost every turn in one of my runs with this deck, thanks to another powerful Survivor combo–Take Heart plus Grisly Totem. If you spare one or more of your Grisly uses per round, you can use them on Take Heart instead of getting back an event, thus drawing you two cards, gaining two resources, and returning the Take Heart to hand to be used again immediately or saved to be used indefinitely.

This is especially useful in the early part of the game when I still want to assemble all my most important cards, but it's one of the more powerful economic engines in the game so you can certainly keep it running throughout if you're looking to repeatedly replay more expensive events.

Jan 04, 2023 ThatLittleVoice · 1

It feels redundant to say but your survivor main is showing...

You know I love my event-based survivor decks, especially with those metrics and that relatively low-cost curve and satisfyingly diverse icon spread.

Might have to take some inspiration when I finally try a fail-forward build.

Jan 04, 2023 ElseWhere · 3771

@ThatLittleVoice My overuse of Survivors in my early years of playing this game (which you know all about) led me to do a lot of different fail forward builds, and this is definitely my favorite ever. It's pretty easy to set up, it's pretty easy to run, it can easily compete with Seekers for clues or Guardians for damage (if you swap to Chainsaw Oops), and it's also just a lot of fun. Highly recommend.

Jan 07, 2023 HungryColquhoun · 2161

Neat deck! Might it be better suited to Wendy? Failing forward is action intensive, and Wendy has access to Leo and Haste to soften this a bit. I appreciate that Grisly Totem allows you to play the same event twice in a turn with Pete, but likely the ability to recur good events is already a strong enough engine without this additional situational capability.

Jan 08, 2023 damirius · 1033

Great deck, would like to give it a try. I really like OYO, had some tries with old versions of it, but permanent one is a lot better and I think it's pretty much needed for economy here. So that's the main reason, I guess, for not bringing Leo which is unfortunate because of those Will to Survive turns. Haste is a good call tho and I think Wendy Adams would work but I think Wendy's Amulet is a bit of anti-synergy with this whole combo. There are some things that both of them can take like Quick Thinking/Swift Reflexes which can also help with number of actions.

BTW there are other options of cheating out allies like "You owe me one!"/Flare in addition to A Chance Encounter which I think is amazing card here.

Jan 08, 2023 ElseWhere · 3771

@HungryColquhoun @damirius Thank you both for the compliments!

The thing is, Wendy doesn't need this combo at all. She can play any number of events an unlimited number of times with relative ease thanks to her Amulet. There's a player in my playgroup who runs her all the time, so I regularly see her just dump her deck and begin looping Cheat the System every phase, that kind of thing.

So although you could definitely run this combo with Wendy, it's basically a worse version of what she's doing already. That's not to say it wouldn't be great with her, though! And lots of fun. But I wanted to bring event looping to another character, and one with a wider pool of options to play.

As for failing forward being action intensive, I want to challenge that idea. Failing an investigate test here and LWIFing is strictly better than passing an unmodified test. Track Shoes gives us an actionless fail when we move, Live and Learn makes any fail actionless. Take Heart, Unrelenting, and Drawing Thin turn failed tests into the ultimate economy surges. For this deck, passing a test is almost always the worse of two outcomes.

If you want to focus more on the Will to Survive turns, though, be my guest! Swift Reflexes is an amazing callout, and you could probably balance the economy well enough to drop OYO for Leo De Luca if you wanted to. If you do keep OYO, all of the cards Damirius mentioned are also great. I didn't add them because I didn't want to take up too much deck space, XP, or a flex slot just accounting for the OYO weakness. ACE to me seemed the simplest and easiest way to grab someone to fill the ally slot.

Jan 08, 2023 damirius · 1033

Agreed! Better "Look what I found!" totally rounds up the deck and gives those "fail" actions additional value. Giving the flexibility of leveled up "Look what I found!" where you can sometimes choose better shroud values it's even possible to combine it with, like you mentioned, Drawing Thin/Old Keyring/Take Heart/Unrelenting to absolute crazy one action gains, even more manageable with Will to Survive to get to exact value you want without any worries of "on fail" special tokens. Yes it's 4 resources with one use of OYO, but with just some of the cards mentioned you'll get resources back.

As you mentioned it Oops! and Dumb Luck are also good picks if going more flex and/or teching for specific campaign/standalone.

Personally I would keep OYO, but mostly because I really would like to try out this card and see it shine in deck like this. As for options for allies I agree that A Chance Encounter is probably best one, Flare is an option but in most cases other players will hate you, "You owe me one!" is similar. Most of the times investigators don't have strong recur options (non-) and especially for Ally assets so they wouldn't mind in most cases. Just remember to be careful with unique allies :)

Jan 08, 2023 ElseWhere · 3771

@damirius You are right on all counts! OYO is super fun here, so I hope you find it exactly as useful as you expect. I've found its biggest weakness in normal play is just making sure you have a Survivor event to play every turn, which this deck handily provides. I fondly remember an Excelsior run where I used Will to Survive almost every turn, usually for precision failure rather than success–which is enough of a twist on typical gameplay to keep me coming back to this deck over and over again.

But I also almost always run ACE to counteract OYO's downside, just in case! I do recommend anyone doing that trick (or using Flare, YOMO, etc.) to check with your party first, because as you mentioned if nobody is running non-unique allies (as is often the case in my group), there's no point with ACE and you just have to sadly accept the empty ally slot.

Jan 09, 2023 damirius · 1033

@ElseWhere Any ideas for level 0 deck and upgrade path? Since we can't get Drawing Thin at a start so economy hurts a bit, plus to get Grisly Totem we need Relic Hunter at the same time. So let's say we have those two exp bumps in that which is 6xp and On Your Own which is also 6 exp. Afterwards is smooth sailing with lower exp cards.

Jan 11, 2023 ElseWhere · 3771

@damirius Well you got me thinking so I put together a level 0 list and planned upgrade path. You'd already noted the most important parts, which is that first 6xp to get the combo assembled, another 6 for Drawing Thin to get your economy going, and then what I'd actually call 9-12, because I usually connect On Your Own with also getting Will to Survive.

My general thoughts are here: arkhamdb.com

But the gist is that at level 0 you're a fun and basic Duke deck that pretty quickly morphs into an increasingly effective LWIF combo cluever.