Katana Stanley in FHV (Hard) Deck Guide / Report

The thing that immediately stands out about Diana Stanley is that she's a Mystic with a of 1. It may ramp up, but pretty much all the cards that help in that regard are reactive so in most games it's going to take a while for it to be of any use. Consequently, I decided to make a deck for her that doesn't care about her .

This deck was designed for a two-handed solo run of The Feast of Hemlock Vale on Hard, alongside Vincent Lee.

The partner deck can be found here.

If you want to skip ahead to see the final version of this deck, it can be found here.

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Thoughts on Deckbuilding

If I could sum up my deckbuilding philosophy in a few sentences I would say that Arkham Horror decks don't exist in a vacuum. You play them in scenarios, and while you follow the same rules of play in every game, each scenario has unique challenges which make certain cards better or worse.

Thus, building for a particular scenario is an important consideration when choosing which cards to take. It's not more important than building a statistically sound deck (or, in other words, using good cards) but if statistical performance was all you cared about you'd probably play Mark Harrigan in every game.

Another consideration is which other investigators are in the game (if you're playing multiplayer) and what potential roles and synergies exist within the team. In my two-handed solo games I generally like having one deck specialized for combat and the other one for clue grabbing, which meant that for this game Diana would have to be the fighter since Vincent Lee has a powerful cluevering card pool but not much in the way of raw firepower.

So how does Diana fare as a combat specialist? Her 3 in is a pretty glaring issue, especially against the Hard token bag, but she has Guardian 0-2 access and the card pool up to The Feast of Hemlock Vale is very broad. Was there a way to make her viable, or even good, as a fighter?

Well, in a vacuum, good would be a stretch. But we aren't playing in a vacuum, we're playing The Feast of Hemlock Vale, a campaign that lets you choose your starting scenario. And in this case the ideal starting scenario would be one with a generous doom clock, a toothless encounter deck, and, let's say, predictable enemy spawns with a boss fight you get plenty of time to prepare for.

Does such a scenario exist in this campaign? In fact it does, and it's called The Lost Sister.

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Anatomy of a Scenario

When you play The Lost Sister on Day One you get to take two Resident allies with you, Helen Peters and Theo Peters. Helen's +1 is relevant for Diana, and you can usually game it so that when you need to fight you can do so in daylight. So, Diana takes Helen and Vincent takes Theo.

The goal of the scenario is to find the missing Peters sister, which you accomplish by finding two locations within the Caverns deck (the Hidden Cove and the Underground Pools) and spending a total of eight clues, at which point the act advances and you put the Fungal Cave into play.

You then need a further four clues to enter that location, and then the boss spawns (the Limulus Hybrid) and, upon killing it, you resolve the story and end the scenario.

Each location in the Caverns deck has two clues on it and you put a new location into play adjacent to an existing one when you clear that location of its clues. In this way, you create the game map by systematically working your way through each location, gathering and spending clues. This task is mostly Vincent's responsibility.

Diana's job is to run interference for him, which means she'll use her actions to make his life easier, primarily by handling any enemies that appear, but also by doing other things such as using the parley ability on Akwan to filter the Caverns deck.

This is an important job because you really want to avoid pulling the Rocky Shoreline if at all possible. Triggering that location is just about the only thing that can go terribly wrong in this scenario. It always results in a big tempo loss because you have to spend extra resources to deal with a second Crustacean Hybrid.

The first Crustacean Hybrid you have to deal with appears when the first agenda (Into the Caves) advances. When that happens, both investigators will ideally be at the same Coastal location, or, at the very least, in positions such that you can spawn the enemy directly on top of Diana.

Regarding the enemies in the encounter deck, there are three copies of Cavern Moss, two copies of Black Amanita, and one copy of Corpse Lichen.

• Cavern Moss is the easiest one to deal with. Let it attach itself to an unimportant asset, then wait for more copies of it to appear and/or for cards like Sudden Mutation and Unnatural Growth to target it, then play something that uses the same slot and simply discard all of them.

• Black Amanita can either be ignored if it's Aloof or dispatched with relative ease with your Enchanted Blade if it's Massive (or if its horror hits would be too dangerous).

• Corpse Lichen is more annoying than anything and it usually isn't worth killing. Instead, take an attack of opportunity (or maybe two) to leave it in the daylight. It cannot move out of a Day location, and since cannot is absolute that means it will disengage from you if you move out of the light.

That covers the enemies in the encounter deck, and the only treachery worth mentioning is Chroma Blight. You will generally want at least one of these to trigger so you can claim at least one 1XP bonus, and you have a fair amount of control over when the Crystal Parasite appears so handling it shouldn't be a problem. Killing both Parasites will stretch Diana's resources a lot but it is usually manageable.

And that just leaves the boss, the Limulus Hybrid. The first agenda has a doom clock of 4 and the second one has a clock of 12, though you put one doom onto it when it enters play so it's actually 11. In practice that's a lot of time to prepare for the boss, and by the time it arrives you should have enough resources to deal with it.

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The Deck

This deck went through many changes as I iterated on its design before eventually settling on this list. It's primarily designed to deal reliable damage using a number of testless effects to get around Diana's low stat.

The lack of economy cards is less of an issue than you might think since you can begin with an asset in play (from the prelude) and Diana's cantrip ability generates a trickle of resources over the course of the game. Also, she doesn't have a lot to do when she isn't fighting something or visiting Akwan so you can afford to take a few resource actions if you need to.

And the lack of any clue-grabbing cards is also less of an issue than you might think. I started out with Scene of the Crime and Drawn to the Flame but I cut Scene pretty early on. I kept Drawn for a long time because it did add some flexibility when Diana had a couple of clues going into the boss fight, but I ended up cutting it for Delay the Inevitable to add just a bit more card cycling to the deck.

What Diana gains from being partnered with Vincent (apart from his ability to grab clues) is the occasional On the Mend added to her hand and a lessened concern for taking on damage. His deck is also skill-focused in general so he can help her out with the odd test or two when they're at the same location, but most of the time it's better for him to stick to his own lane.

Only two cards in this deck were specifically chosen for The Lost Sister (Scrying Mirror and Premonition) but more on that in the card commentary section.

The rest of the deck was tuned with this scenario in mind because the first scenario in any game is the most important one to perform well at (so that you can get the advantage snowball rolling) but my main consideration was still to build a solid foundation that could produce a consistent outcome for the campaign as a whole.

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The Cards

Scrying Mirror: Right, so the big thing I didn't mention in the scenario overview is that Theo has a codex entry where you can gain a bonus 3XP by passing a 4 test.

To initiate the test our investigators have to discard two cards in total to use Theo's parley ability twice, and neither of them have much hope of passing it naturally without committing a lot of cards. The high cost and the risk associated with passing this test, combined with the size of the reward, makes this a perfect candidate for packing a silver bullet, so I knew right from the start that this deck would include the mirror.

Outside of this specific use case the mirror also helps Diana land her attacks, providing an almost-testless effect to complement her actually-testless ones. It also benefits Vincent since his deck packs a lot of skill cards, so it can help him save on commits.

The mirror is a fun card to use but it won't hang around past the first scenario here because there's simply too much competition for Diana's hand slots and it doesn't offer her enough general value. I have an earlier FHV deck (Jenny Barnes) that did keep it for the whole campaign and it provided a lot of value all the way through.

Premonition: The more important the test, the greater the value this card provides. Even a simple attack or investigation test can have life or death consequences under the right circumstances, and Arkham Horror being the game that it is, chances are those circumstances will arise more often than you would think.

Still, it's not a card you want to hold onto turn after turn just to maximize its impact, but I find it particularly useful for risky scenario tests like Theo's, which is the main reason it's included here. I do also think it's a very good card in general and that it's probably worth taking more often than not (I suspect it improves game outcomes more than you would think) and, unlike the mirror, it will remain in this deck for the rest of the campaign as it provides good value for both investigators.

Katana: Alright, I named the deck after this card but in truth it isn't built around it. You can probably understand why it's here given the other two cards I just talked about; Scrying Mirror and Premonition each provide a reliable way to get the 3-damage hit from the Katana.

And that 3-damage hit is very consequential. The game hasn't had a lot of vertical power creep since 2016 so three damage is still an important break point, and it's rare to find such an effect on a level zero card. You do have to combo it with other cards to get that payoff consistently, but those other cards are good on their own anyway, which is my number one rule for including them; a combo card needs to be exceedingly powerful if it does nothing but sit in your hand until you find the other combo piece.

You might ask why anyone would want to build around a card like Katana in the first place given the hoops you have to jump through to get it to work. Apart from simply the fun factor I would say its main draw is that if you can leverage it to good effect then you save XP by not having to replace it with something later in the campaign, and you can then make use of that XP elsewhere.

The Katana turned out to be a pretty good fit for the campaign path I chose, and one of its main selling points was in fact that I could spend XP on other upgrades that were more critical to the overall performance of the deck in the later scenarios.

In the first scenario it serves as her primary weapon (which you put into play by spending one resource at Tad's General Store during the prelude) because the Scrying Mirror lets you lean on its 3-damage attack, but afterwards it becomes more of a complementary tool in her belt.

Its +2 is again quite rare for a level zero weapon (and unlike the Enchanted Blade it doesn't cost any charges) and its free trigger attack proved useful enough in the right situations to convince me to keep it in the deck for most of the campaign (yes, sorry for the spoiler, but the sword doesn't make it to the end).

And those "right situations" are really key to its overall effectiveness. There are a lot of places in this campaign where dealing only one point of damage from its primary attack is enough, whether it's swatting an Elusive enemy into a connecting location or dealing with the Swarm of Rats in Hemlock House.

There's even a whole scenario that features a bunch of dangerous enemies that can only take one point of damage at a time, and its free trigger attack is a useful option to have there.

Taken at face value, the Katana is not a good weapon. But, in the right deck, it can still be worth the slot.

Twilight Blade: Diana's signature weapon is very strong but it comes with a significant caveat, and it's one that actually works in this deck's favour. The caveat is that it's pretty useless in the early game because you typically won't have many facedown cards to enable it. And that's a good thing here because you will always want to get your Enchanted Blade and/or your Katana into play first.

The other good thing about it in this deck is that we don't care about Diana's so it's never a problem to lower it by using one of her facedown cards.

Enchanted Blade: This is an all-round great weapon and a good workhorse for dealing with 2HP enemies. Once it runs out of charges the Katana is better, but between both weapons they usually last a while.

Bandolier: One extra hand slot is pretty much all this deck needs to function well throughout the campaign. It's important to find this card for The Lost Sister (where you start with the Katana in play) so you should keep it on the mulligan, but later on it's less critical.

One thing to keep in mind here is that when an Enchanted Blade runs out of charges it's basically useless, and the Twilight Blade isn't generally effective in the early game, so juggling your hand assets around isn't as much of an issue as it might seem at first glance.

Crystal Pendulum: Diana may not care about the +1 from this card but she cares a great deal about its card draw effect, because having a deck size of 35 is a significant handicap.

The main way to use it is to glance at the token bag and identify the most common negative token value (including symbols, some of which have variable modifiers) and to pick your succeed-or-fail numbers based on that.

The other way to use it is to make your choice the same number as the difficulty of the test; this is the best option if the majority of the tokens in the bag would reduce your test value to zero (test scores can't go below zero).

This card gains value from a pair of treacheries that we'll be seeing a lot of throughout the campaign, Psychotropic Spores and Calcification (both of which are present in The Lost Sister). These two are never worth discarding except via their automatic success clauses, and when a test automatically succeeds its difficulty is considered to be zero.

In effect, this means that whenever either investigator discards one of them it's a guaranteed draw for the Pendulum (and the same is true for Toe to Toe).

Toe to Toe: Speaking of which, this is one of my favourite cards in the game. It's a brilliant design, but suffice it to say that for Diana it's a very valuable source of testless damage.

Well, technically, it's not actually testless. The test does happen and you can still commit cards to it, which is a fact that pays dividends in the campaign's finale.

Guard Dog: This card is definitely testless damage, and a good source at that. Combining it with Toe to Toe is one of the easiest ways to deal with a 3HP enemy (or a 6HP enemy alongside a Katana strike).

Wolf Mask: I usually only run one copy of this card, but with Diana's larger deck size (40 cards in total) I had two copies for a while. After adding more card draw I removed the second copy because I really wanted to free up another slot, but it is an important card for her so it could still go either way.

Dark Insight, Deny Existence, Ward of Protection, Dodge, Delay the Inevitable: We begin with nine cards that Diana can turn into cantrips (which is just a name for a card that replaces itself with a draw effect) and before the second scenario we'll add another two.

It was a bit tricky getting this number right as you don't really want to end up with a bunch of reactive cards clogging up your hand, but you also do want to be able to cycle through your deck quickly to find the cards you need. I cut Dodge a few times while developing this list because it wasn't that great in The Lost Sister, but it turned out to be very good later on.

Delay the Inevitable took me a while to warm up to but it helps with enemy management and it has a good interaction with the Twilight Blade because it enters play so you can still use Diana's ability on it after putting it on the table.

Dynamite Blast: I love this card and I always try to include one copy in my Guardian decks. It's a key card in this deck and in The Lost Sister it offers the most efficient way to deal with the 4HP Crustacean Hybrid [day] that spawns when the first agenda advances. All you need to do is whack it with your Katana to force it to move to a connecting location, then throw a bomb at it.

Also, with Deny Existence and Delay the Inevitable (and Vincent Lee as her partner) Diana is not averse to simply dropping a stick at her feet from time to time. Try it, it's fun!

Daring: This is a strong skill with a downside which is very manageable, especially for Diana with all her cancels. Most of the boss enemies in this campaign already have Retaliate as well so it's a flat 3 boost on them.

Sweeping Kick: Speaking of dealing with Retaliate, this is an effective way to turn it off, and it also lets you "tank" high-HP enemies you can't kill in a single turn. In The Lost Sister it also provides a base 7 attack thanks to Helen Peters, except for the boss fight because she disappears right before it.

Vicious Blow: This card doesn't really need any explanation but I do like mentioning every time that you can commit it to Toe to Toe for a guaranteed 3-damage hit.

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The Campaign

For FHV I pretty much always spend the most time testing my decks on the first scenario and then The Longest Night, because it's the hardest one. I often run through The Twisted Hollow a few times as well because it can be really challenging for certain pairs of investigators, then I'll maybe do the remaining scenarios a couple of times to try out different upgrades.

This is the campaign path I chose:

1. The Lost Sister.
2. The Twisted Hollow.
3. Hemlock House.
4. The Longest Night.
5. The Silent Heath.
6. Fate of the Vale.

The XP totals mentioned in this section are from the final full run through the campaign and they will include prelude XP once it becomes relevant.

I'm not going to make as many notes about each scenario as I have done on my earlier reports because I'd just be repeating myself, but if you want to check out some of my older runs then here they are, starting with the most recent:

Wilson Richards/Tony Morgan

Lily Chen/Kate Winthrop

Jenny Barnes/Carson Sinclair

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Scenario One: The Lost Sister

I've already said a lot about this scenario so I'll just add a few things here:

• During the prelude, mulligan for the Scrying Mirror, then Bandolier. Put the Katana into play via Tad's General Store (or Judith Park if it's already in your hand). Keep Crystal Pendulum and the Wolf Mask if you draw them, along with any copies of Premonition if you didn't get the mirror.

• Try to perform Theo's codex test early so you can avoid the token getting out of hand.

• Save Sweeping Kick for the Crystal Parasite or the boss.

• Apart from running into the Rocky Shoreline on your first move action the only other thing that can really make this scenario hard is if the two objective locations are at the bottom of the Caverns deck.

  I usually try not to reveal more than one of the starting locations until I know the Rocky Shoreline is in the Caverns deck, but time may force your hand and you just have to hope the one you choose is either the Hidden Cove or the Underground Pools.

The Lost Sister: 8XP gained (including 1XP from looking at the back of the prelude Act card).

Upgrades

Removed:

2 x Scrying Mirror: It did the job it was intended for and it provided some ancillary benefits with regards to Diana's aim, but it's too unwieldy to take it any further than this.

Added:

2 x "I've had worse…": This is an excellent resource card for Diana, especially if it can be recurred with the Twilight Blade. It's the only cancel we'll be adding over the course of the campaign.

2 x Dynamite Blast: This is a good upgrade, lowering its cost and preventing it from triggering an attack of opportunity. At the end of the next scenario there can be a lot of enemies in play at the same time, and you generally spawn them in locations other than your own.

1 x Ward of Protection: Arcane Research takes care of this upgrade.

1 x Helen Peters: I was really hesitant to add more cards to Diana's already bulging deck, but Helen proved her worth during testing. Her stat boosts are both useful in the remaining scenarios and she's really very good in The Longest Night.

8XP spent, 1XP left (from In the Thick of It).

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Scenario Two: The Twisted Hollow

In my experience, you live or die in this scenario based on how well you can maintain your clue-grabbing tempo. Vincent was significantly better at this than the cluever in my previous run (Wilson Richards) and while Diana was less capable than Tony Morgan at dealing with most of the combat, she was still able to consistently beat the boss and the runs were overall smoother, especially during the final act.

• Vincent takes the lantern.

• There isn't much combat during the first half of this scenario but you should still mulligan for a weapon and play it as soon as possible, as the Forest Watcher needs to be dealt with quickly.

• Once again, save Sweeping Kick for the boss.

• If you draw Deep Shadows during the final act it's usually better to drop the lantern because there's no horror ping for ending your turn in the dark, and it means the Stalking Hybrid won't engage anyone.

• Dynamite Blast is very good in the final act too, as you have to spawn enemies in the pursuit area in dark locations, often two at a time.

The Twisted Hollow: 7XP gained (+1XP leftover = 8XP in total).

Upgrades

Added:

2 x Enchanted Blade: The boss in the next scenario is quite manageable with the tools we have but it doesn't hurt to make things easier, and we'll want this upgrade for The Longest Night anyway.

1 x Guard Dog: And we'll spend our remaining XP here. Again, it's not too important for the next scenario but it's critical for the following one.

1 x Ward of Protection: The second copy, from Arcane Research.

8XP spent, 0XP left.

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Scenario Three: Hemlock House

This one is generally pretty smooth unless you get really unlucky on the predation tests and have to flip a few locations.

• You can start with a weapon in play again by visiting Tad's General Store during the prelude. The Enchanted Blade is a better pick this time around.

• There's no reason to leave the first floor until you have all the clues. Staying there makes the token easier to deal with, and the Grappling Spawn only has 3HP.

• You can grab Judith Park while Vincent starts clearing the locations.

• You can use your actions to seal locations if Vincent ends his turn on an unsealed one. You should always try to end your turn on a sealed location too, because there are four copies of Out of the Walls and having your location flip is a big tempo hit.

• Once you've sealed seven locations, the Shapeless Cellar will spawn, at which point all you need to do is kill it to end the scenario.

Hemlock House: 10XP gained.

Upgrades

Added:

1 x Guard Dog: The second copy. This card is an absolute star player in the next scenario, The Longest Night.

1 x Deny Existence: We need to use 3XP alongside the Arcane Research reduction to upgrade one of these. It's a massive improvement over the base version and it will help Diana absorb a lot of damage and horror in the next scenario.

2 x Overpower: We could have grabbed two copies of Vicious Blow here instead, but that card is really only relevant against the Ursine Hybrid at the start of the scenario.

It's really important to kill that thing quickly, but Overpower also helps with that goal and its additional card draw keeps the resources flowing for the whole game.

9XP spent, 1XP left.

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The Longest Night

I always try to tune my decks to have the best chance of getting through this scenario with zero damage on The Captives. It's a really difficult objective and a great deckbuilding challenge, and the Diana/Vincent team was actually one of the better duos I've done it with.

I was pretty surprised at how much damage and horror Diana can handle with her cancel suite and with Vincent backing her up. I'm also prepared to go on record saying that the Katana is a very good weapon here. Its free trigger action really is that valuable and it reminded me a bit of Lily Chen's Butterfly Swords.

• If you choose to dance with Helen Peters during the prelude she starts this scenario in play and she doesn't take up an ally slot. This is a huge advantage.

• Vincent takes Dr. Rosa Marquez and Diana takes Theo Peters. The setup instructions tell you to split your Resident allies as evenly as possible between all the investigators, but Helen isn't a Resident so taking both Peters siblings is fine.

• Mulligan for the Guard Dog or an Enchanted Blade, in that order.

• If your opening hand contains either an Enchanted Blade or a Katana plus a Premonition then you should start at the western Outer Fields with the Ursine Hybrid and lay into it right away (and then probably use your last action to move away, unless you also happen to have a Sweeping Kick).

  If you don't have those cards then place a trap at the location adjacent to the boss and start there instead. This is how most of my test runs went and it's still fine to play the trap game if you have to.

• While the boss is alive, the token and Incursion can be deadly, so try to account for both of them whenever possible either by having cancels or another enemy as a legal target for the treachery.

• Doing well at this scenario depends heavily on your action economy because there are so many enemies, and in particular so many that only take one damage at a time.

  The beefier enemies can usually be burned to a crisp using a Fire! trap, or they can be taken out with your multi-damage effects, but the damage-reduction enemies can only be dealt with by spending more actions (and some of them are Aloof as well).

• Try to save Dark Insight or Ward of Protection for Endless Night, and/or try to keep yourself healthy enough to be able to take the damage and horror hit. During my final run Diana actually tanked both of them, with Vincent providing a heal in between.

The Longest Night: 7XP gained (+1XP left over = 8XP in total).

Upgrades

Removed:

1 x Bandolier: It's time to start dismantling the Katana support package to make room for a pair of cards we'll want for the finale.

1 x Deny Existence: The second copy (again spending 3XP alongside the Arcane Research discount).

Added:

1 x Seal of the Elder Sign: I love using this card, and it's an easy pick for Diana because she has possibly the strongest effect in the game (and Vincent's is at least top five).

This card will be great in the next scenario because The Silent Heath is no pushover on Day 3, but it's really here for the finale because it interacts with that scenario's unique mechanics in an extremely satisfying way.

8XP spent, 0XP left.

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Scenario Five: The Silent Heath

This scenario can dish out a crazy amount of chip damage and horror, but at this point in the game each investigator should have enough tools to handle it.

• During the prelude you can once again put any item into play from your deck by visiting Tad's General Store. The Enchanted Blade is the best option here, which frees you up to hard mulligan for Dynamite Blast.

• There isn't a lot of fighting while the first agenda is active as all the insect enemies have Aloof. It is worth killing them if it isn't too costly though because it means that when the agenda advances they will all end up in the same place instead of roaming the map and potentially getting in Vincent's way.

• Having said that, don't kill too many of them if you aren't prepared to face the boss.

• The Brood Queen spawns at the location nearest to all investigators, at a Cave if possible. Use this knowledge to try to ensure it doesn't spawn at the same location as one of the investigators, or at least not at Vincent's location.

• When it spawns, throw your Dynamite Blast to send all the non-elite insects back to the victory display, then move in and start working on the boss. Hopefully you have a Sweeping Kick handy.

• After the boss is dead you won't have much to do unless a Crystal Parasite shows up, so try to use your actions on the Act ability to help Vincent.

The Silent Heath: 16XP gained (7XP plus 9XP from the two preludes).

Upgrades

Removed:

1 x Bandolier: The other copy.

2 x Katana: All good things must come to an end.

2 x Delay the Inevitable: We'll replace this with a more useful cancel for the finale.

2 x Vicious Blow: There isn't a lot of combat in the finale where your damage actually matters. It's more important to be able to generate high skill values, so we'll replace this with something better suited to that task.

Added:

1 x Seal of the Elder Sign: The second copy.

2 x Counterspell: All of the symbol tokens in the finale have very high negative modifiers, so if we pull one then this card gives you a free pass.

2 x Backpack: The items that are left in the deck (Enchanted Blade, Crystal Pendulum, Wolf Mask, and Twilight Blade) are all valuable draws, so this will help to find them. It might also protect them from all the discard effects in the encounter deck until you can afford to play them.

2 x Defensive Stance: At worst, this is a 3 boost to your fight and evade actions. At best, during the first act it can be up to 10 since you can double it using the ability on Shattered Self. Helen Peters can potentially make it a bit better as well.

15XP spent, 1XP left.

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Scenario Six: Fate of the Vale

This scenario is always fun to build for, and both investigators should now have a bunch of tools to be able to generate high skill values. Vincent's deck is much better suited to this than Diana's, but she has a lot of support cards to really help him hit the stratosphere.

• Your best combo for guaranteeing a high test result is Toe to Toe plus Overpower, Daring, or Defensive Stance.

  Recall that when a test automatically succeeds, its difficulty is considered to be zero, so either of these combos should let you search through at least six cards in the Abyss.

• Judith Park is probably the only Resident apart from Theo Peters who will be eligible to pick when you advance to the second act. Her Act 2 codex ability will let you automatically evade an enemy (useful for dealing with the Elusive Crystal Mimic) and in Act 3 you can play a weapon from anywhere for free, though you do have to pay her three resources.

• The objective here is Fate of the Vale (v.I), where you empty the Abyss of all its cards. Once you do so you will have to tank all four of the elite enemies for a turn, but between your cancels and Vincent's ally soak (including Girish Kadakia) it shouldn't be a problem.

The investigators win the campaign!

Diana Stanley in FHV (58XP)

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Final Thoughts

One of the best new design features of the last couple of campaign expansions has been the introduction of non-linear scenario paths. Being able to choose the scenarios you want to play really opens up deckbuilding in a lot of interesting ways.

As just one example, certain investigators may perform well at some scenarios and poorly at others. I tried taking this duo to The Thing in the Depths on Day Two and it was an abysmal failure.

The boss in that scenario appears early and has a huge amount of HP, and it really requires a specialized fighter that can output large amounts of damage in a short amount of time (like Tony Morgan or Nathaniel Cho) otherwise you end up taking too much attrition from all the Open Water locations that force you to draw an encounter card when you enter.

The deck I built here was well-suited to the combat challenges in the scenarios I chose, but burst damage was not one of its strengths. Again, though, for a campaign where most of the non-elite enemies have low HP and fight values, that was fine.

As for the Katana, its biggest issue was that it required two extra support slots in the form of the Bandolier for it to fit properly here. I do still think it was the best out of the available level zero weapons, and there wasn't really any XP weapon worth investing in apart from the Enchanted Blade.

Brand of Cthugha would have been the next best thing, but its main selling point is its use of the arcane slot, as its base version isn't really better than the Enchanted Blade.

I actually spent a lot of time trying to build this deck around Old Shotgun. You can do some neat things with it in FHV, like stacking it with ammo from a Venturer during the preludes, but in the end it proved impossible to get any kind of consistency with it. The Hard token bag was a real killer.

That deck also tried to do something with Well Prepared, which is a card I always consider for any investigator that has Guardian 0-2 access. I think it would work a lot better in a Diana deck that was focused on clue-grabbing though, as there are a lot more assets than ones available to her.

Diana really exemplifies the early Mystic design where they take a while to get set up, but when they do they can handle anything. I can't imagine trying to rely on her in anything less than a 3-player game where you have more time to come online, but maybe there's a duo build where it could work.

For this campaign, though, I needed her to hit the ground running and be able to fight. She also needed to carry the tech required to get the bonus XP in The Lost Sister, and there was some overlap in those two requirements which ended up defining her level zero deck in a way that stuck for most of the campaign.

The Feast of Hemlock Vale is a fantastic expansion, but I'm ready to set it aside for a while now. Bring on The Drowned City.