Silas Marsh investigates The Fog at Innsmouth

This deck is for an Innsmouth Conspiracy campaign. Silas is one member of a trio along with Amanda Sharpe and Trish Scarborough . This is built against a single core deck, so some base card options are constrained or split across the three investigators.

—My gauges must be wrong. I've got a wind blowing due east. Now what kind of a fog blows against the wind?—

Deck Walkthrough

Our Silas will stock up on innate skill cards to leverage his deck building ability to carry any 0-2 level innate. In that sense this makes for a pretty orthodox Silas build. There are quite a few innate cards and plenty are outside the survivor pool. We went with Daring since its evade and fight allows us choices on how to handle Deep Ones, at the risk of them gaining retaliate, but then again Silas has plenty of soak. Then we have Eureka!, which would have been a good chance for either Amanda or Trish, but giving it to Silas allows him to have a draw option to drive more cards in the discard pile. Finally we have Nimble also good for Trish, since Innsmouth is know for its large layouts. From the and neutral pools we're running Take Heart to offset failures, Resourceful to recur from the discard pile, "Not without a fight!" to handle a density of enemies, and Unexpected Courage for those wildcards. To boost skill checks, we'll run Grisly Totem on the accessory slot for a wildcard, and Old Keyring for investigation. As an aside, Quick Thinking would complement this skill check heavy deck, but Nimble seemed a better fit for the campaign and just won out. We might regret it given Quick Thinking is more general.

In the event pool Lucky! and Live and Learn provide failure offsets. Each are slightly different since Lucky maybe avoids the effect and succeeds, whereas Live and Learn resolves the effect at least once and maybe passes. Belly of the Beast looks like a good fit for Innsmouth when we want to evade, plus we can get Silas up to 6 if The Big Man is helping out and wearing Sneakers.

Speaking of Track Shoes, our deck is not the cheapest item-wise. Our sneakers have a cost of 3, as do our Meat Cleavers, Grisly Totem, and the signature Sea Change Harpoon. For economy we're going to try to lean on Schoffner's Catalogue to bank some cash. It's something we'd want to mulligan for: getting it out means we start with 10 resources effective instead of 5. Without the catalog, we might be tempted to bring the Baseball Bat at a cheaper 2 cost.

Our red damage soak is very decent at 9, our blue horror soak at 5, not so much. Peter Sylvestre will help there. We'll being a Cherished Keepsake as well as giving Silas a bunny in a box for some much needed fortitude. The Meat Cleaver synergises with Peter—if we want to mix things up with enemies, we can offload a horror onto Peter for an extra damage. Mechanics aside, this is thematically nice, fighting being altogether terrifying in the Arkham Files Universe.

Upgrades

• Timeworn Brand can replace the Meat Cleaver.

• Brute Force is a more direct and consistent option to "Not without a fight!", which is contingent on having multiple enemies engaged. Except that this works wonderfully with Silas' ability which flattens.

• Jessica Hyde is a fight analog to Peter Sylvestre. Rather than replace him, it could be interesting to deck both allies and drop some event or skill cards to make Silas a more rounded fighter. Probably we want to bring in Charisma to run both.

• Bruiser further emphasises the fighter archetype. Given we have a campaign trio for Innsmouth with Amanda and Trish it might make sense for Silas to specialise in combat.

• True Survivor doubles down on the ability to carry innate cards and is more general than Sea Change Harpoon which is restricted to fishing back from attacks.

• Plucky steps away from the fighter archetype to build up our book and brain. Silas we suspect tends to run resource light, so we'd want to keep Mr. Schoffner's Catalogue to fund this.

• Elder Sign Amulet to replace The Bunny. A 4 sanity soak for 2 cost feels like a deal especially on the less contended accessory slot.

• Key of Ys again to replace The Bunny. A 4 sanity soak that lifts all abilities per damnum is efficient in terms of card space and its 3 cost. 5 XP is a commitment, as is rethinking whether you want Peter Sylvestre or Aquinnah around to help. At the same time, a 5/5/7/7 statline twice per game ain't nothing.

• Grisly Totem ( Blessed) is very Arkham: Silas can take back a card committed to a failed test. Bringing in Relic Hunter allows Silas to wear it with the Amulet or the The Bunny.

• Aquinnah(1) and Aquinnah(3) might be interesting alts to Peter. We might go right up to 3 since that allows you mirror damage back to the enemy attacking you and not just another enemy. Running Aquinnah and Elder Sign Amulet makes Silas mentally formidable.

• Peter Sylvestre(2). Peter 2 is GOAT Peter. The lift here is the extra head point against the encounter deck as much as the extra sanity pip.

• Lucky!. Luckier than Lucky!.

Closing Thoughts

I haven't spent much time if any with Silas, but my first impression is he feels like a very lean investigator that I had to dive deep on to put a reasonable deck together. So exploiting from a smaller card pool and his ability draw cards back rather than strong combinations (there's no real Mr. "Rook" plus Astounding Revelation style loops here). Loading up on innate skills and picking one from seeker, guardian and seemed like a good way to get a sense of his playstyle. It could be better to hone in on one other investigator type. especially for a 2+ player game.

One guess is, Silas is going to be a lot of fun as a supporting character to a known campaign. Another thing is, running just two cards in the accessory slot, means it's possible we won't see either so if they come up in the opening draw we would never mulligan them. I'm not sure I have this right especially for Cherished Keepsake which is more necessary considering Silas has just 5 sanity, but in the end we choose to double down on skill cards to attack the scenarios.

An alternative approach I'd like to try in the future is a mystically driven Silas. There aren't a huge amount of mystic innate cards , but they do have interesting upgrade options (eg, Fearless(2), Guts(2), or Defiance(2)). And it's fun to imagine a highly superstitious fisherman who can handle the encounter deck a bit better.