Agnes always wanted to be an Skillful Aviator

Agnes always wanted to be an Skillful Aviator || Sealing all symbols to pull-off the in every test!

Credit: Karcz-Villeneuve

Acknowledgements

Before continuing, I have to thank @Julio_R for the idea of Transfiguring Agnes Baker into Winifred Habbamock. I originally planned to become Silas Marsh to exploit his , which is also viable but has some downsides: no draw engine like Wini’s and more pieces required to get going. @Julio_R's idea is what made this deck go from meme to solid.

He also created a similar deck using Diana Stanley instead of Agnes, and wrote a very thorough and well-structured guide, which I highly recommend reading.

You can find it here: Cultist Wini's Perfect Sealing | 100% Elder sign | Deck guid

Introduction

This is a combo deck designed to draw the on every skill test. Once the necessary setup is complete, the game becomes completely trivial — which makes it not fun to play and thus not recommended for campaigns or multiplayer events.

Not only will you consistently draw the , but the effect of each test will be incredibly powerful:

• Discover up to 4 clues per investigation.
• Deal 5 damage per combat action.
• Pass Mythos phase tests effortlessly.
• Heal damage and horror every turn.

Another interesting aspect of this deck is that it makes use of many cards from the latest cycle, The Drowned City, making it a great excuse to try out new cards and mechanics:

• Katarina Sojka
• Sign of Xelotaph
• Transfiguration
• Eldritch Brand
• Contemplative
• Memories of Another Life
• Confidence

Table of Contents

• Overview

• Main Strategy

  • Setup
  • Recovering Skills

• Skill Tests

  • Base Stats + 3
  • Oversucceeding

• Other Cards

  • Card draw, Protection, Resources and Action compresion
  • Memories of Another Life

• Upgrade Path

• Final Thoughts

Overview

Difficulty:	★★☆☆☆
Enemy Management:	★★★★★
Clue-getting:	★★★★★
Encounter protection:	★★★★☆
Survivability:	★★★★☆
Economy:	★★☆☆☆
Card Drawing:	★★★★☆

Main Strategy

Setup

First, we need to seal all chaos tokens in the bag except for 3 and the . To do this, we need to play:

• Seal of the Seventh Sign to seal the .
• Sign of Xelotaph to seal any of //.
• The Chthonian Stone to seal any of //.

The remaining 3 symbols will be sealed with Unrelenting.

Warning #1 - If your chaos bag contains more than 5 non-/non- symbols, you’ll need to play the other copies of Sign of Xelotaph. Please check the Final Thoughts section for further reading.

Once this is set up, all we need is:

• Katarina Sojka
• Unrelenting

With Unrelenting, we’ll seal all remaining chaos symbols except the . Then Katarina will let us reveal tokens until we hit a symbol — since the is the only one left, we’ll always draw it.

We can do this once per turn with Unrelenting, but the skill gets discarded, and we can’t repeat it until we draw another. This is where Transfiguration comes in — it lets us become Winifred Habbamock.

Recovering Skills with the

As Wini, every time we draw the , we can return skills we committed to our hand:

• For every 2 oversuccess points, you recover 1 skill.

This allows us to:

• Use Unrelenting every turn
• Reuse another skill to prepare Katarina, which is Inspiring Presence

Warning #2 - Unfortunately, Agnes doesn’t have natural access to Inspiring Presence, so we’ll need to run Versatile.

Skill Tests

Wini base stats + 3

Each test will be boosted with:

• +1 from Unrelenting
• +1 from Inspiring Presence
• +1 from the

So for intellect/combat, we’ll usually reach 6 vs difficulty.

Warning #3 - On tests with difficulty 3+, we’ll need to commit extra cards to reliably recover both combo skills (Unrelenting + Inspiring Presence).

Oversucceeding

To push this combo further, we use Survivor developed skills:

• Sharp Vision
• Brute Force

They provide:

• 3 icons per test
• Action compression (2 clues / 3 damage)

We can also include:

• Resourceful
• Confidence

These help either:

• Recover Survivor skills from the discard pile
• Boost our oversuccess to recover more skills

Warning #4 - With Confidence, there’s a small chance of drawing the on the first token — consider this in your calculations.

Other Cards

These are not combo-critical but help:

• Draw cards quickly to assemble the combo
• Defend during early turns
• Add value to skill tests in the mid/late game

Card draw engines:

• Scroll of Secrets – 3 cards for 1 action & 1 resource
• Heirloom of Hyperborea – Agnes’s personal card; draw when casting spells
• Eldritch Brand – A very expensive xp card that'll let you start with Sign of the Seventh Seal in play
• At a Crossroads – 3 cards for 1 action
• Take Heart – Draw and resources
• Wini's ability – Draw 1 card when committing 2+ cards to a skill test
  

Protection:

• Ward of Protection / A Test of Will - for Mythos resilience
• Deny Existence - Can let you handle Agne's weakness
  

Resources:

• Take Heart
• Uncage the Soul
  

Action compression:

• Long Shot
• Contemplative
• Sharp Vision / Brute Force

Memories of Another Life

A simply exceptional specialist card which can cover all the categories above.

You’ll mostly use it to play:

• Thorough Inquiry
• Bank Job

Upgrade Path

Link to the 0xp deck

				Cost	Total
		+	Versatile ••	2 XP	2 XP
		+	The Chthonian Stone	0 XP	2 XP
		+	Sign of Xelotaph	0 XP	2 XP
		+	Sign of Xelotaph	0 XP	2 XP
		+	Sign of Xelotaph	0 XP	2 XP
		+	Inspiring Presence	0 XP	2 XP
1	Azure Flame	→	Seal of the Seventh Sign •••••	5 XP	7 XP
1	Azure Flame	→	Unrelenting •	1 XP	8 XP
1	Eyes of the Dreamer	→	Transfiguration ••	2 XP	10 XP
1	Eyes of the Dreamer	→	Unrelenting •	1 XP	11 XP
1	Uncage the Soul	→	Memories of Another Life •••••	5 XP	16 XP
1	Guts	→	At a Crossroads •	1 XP	17 XP
1	Guts	→	At a Crossroads •	1 XP	18 XP
1	Read the Signs	→	Sharp Vision •	1 XP	19 XP
1	Spectral Razor	→	Brute Force •	1 XP	20 XP
		+	Eldritch Brand •••••	10 XP	30 XP

(View at arkham-starter.com)

Final Thoughts

Although this decks seems very heavy regarding setup and finding the combo pieces, it is no so heavy. For the sealing of symbols Unrelenting is an option that will save you a lot of setup, cards an resources. In a standard scenario you may have around 5 symbol tokens so, starting with Seal of the Seventh Sign in play you just need to draw 1/3 Sign of Xelotaph or The Chthonian Stone, and find one Unrelenting. There you have all the sealing.

It is true that you still need more combo pieces to run the full combo, and that may be not so easy. For helping you with finding the pieces and establishing your rig I recommend to pair this deck with The Butler. With this little friend on your side everything will get faster and easier. When testing both decks I was able to pull-off the combo by 2nd round. You just need to have Carson exclusively dedicated to your cause.
Here's the Carson's deck I used during my tests: https://arkhamdb.com/deck/view/4708276

For further reading, please let me recommend you again @Julio_R's deck-guide. There you have better explanation of the drawbacks of these mechanics. These decks are not suitable for scenarios with special symbols like Innsmouth/EotE/Hemlock, or scenarios with a heavy-symbol chaos bag. Mine's, at least, has not been well tested in many scenarios, and I'm sure it can be messed-up in many different ways. For heavy loaded symbol's bags you sould get more arcane slots to play all copies of Sign of Xelotaph: most obvious options are The Hierophant • V and Binder's Jar.

So play it just for fun, to try new mechanics and cards from the latests expansion, or just to see how fast can you complete that combo's mini-quest.

And most of all, have fun with it!