Sister Mary - The Crusader

In the Name of God

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A Sister Mary guide for those who believe divine retribution is best delivered with an axe.

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"Deus lo vult!"

It was the last phrase the Ghoul Priest heard in his unholy existence before he was cut in half by Sister Mary's Runic Axe.

As she drops her Spectral Shield, she slowly falls to her knees. While pressing her Ancestral Token tightly against her chest, she shouts a prayer to praise His Glory.

After finishing her prayer, she straightens up and a shiver runs through her body at the sight of her work.

“Thou shalt not kill.” teaches the Bible. But ever since Mary looked Down the Rabbit Hole, those words no longer matter. She knows now that God's enemies must be stopped. And even if she has to break the Ten Commandments a thousand times more, she won't stop until every last one of them lies dead at her feet.

“One down.” She whispers to herself as she looks down at the priest. “Tomorrow I'll get the others. God wills it..." She crosses herself. "Hopefully...”

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Introduction

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If you've ever wanted to play Arkham Horror as a Crusader who smites the enemies of God with Axes, Swords, Shields and Holy Fire - this deck is for you.

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Pros

• Strong enemy management
• High consistency
• Strong group support with
• Shines with other investigators who are using , but does work perfectly fine without additional synergies
• Leveraged experience gain with Down the Rabbit Hole
• Mythos resistant with 4 and 3 + Wolf Mask
• Some clue potential

Cons

• Very dependent on assets, you can barely scratch a Swarm of Rats without support
• Sister Mary's 5 Health can be a liability
• Card draw could be better

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The core ideas of this deck are to

• Fix Sister Mary's low with Runic Axe's Ancient Power(ed) Accuracy, Wolf Mask and Living Ink ()
• Protect her low Health with Spectral Shield and the charges from Living Ink (or Runic Axe and/or Brand of Cthugha (1))
• Support the team with a steady flow of with her Ability and Ancestral Token
• Use the "Symbol-Synergy" of the created with Olive McBride (2), Read the Signs (2), Spectral Razor (2) and Living Ink's Macabre Depiction
• Maximize the value generated by Down the Rabbit Hole, partially with In the Thick of It

The result is a thematic Deck for Sister Mary which allows her to be the main fighter, but also support the group with unlimited and also some Clues.

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Card Choices

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Our most important card is

• Runic Axe as our primary weapon. Mary needs as much support as possible to become a capable fighter. Therefore, we run Ancient Power, Saga and Scriptweaver. These upgrades give us a very strong and precise killing tool.

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  The Enemy is a wimp?

• Do not spend any charge and use the free +1

The Enemy is mediocre?

• Spend 1 charge to invoke POWER and ACCURACY

The Enemy is a bit tough?

• Spend 2 charges to invoke 3x POWER and ACCURACY

et cetera.

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Our other key cards are

• Living Ink to increase our and to provide an unlimited amount of charges

• Spectral Shield to protect our low health with charges from Living Ink and Runic Axe

• Olive McBride (2) to reveal symbols in each tests for Living Ink, Spectral Razor (2) and Read the Signs (2)

• Wolf Mask to increase our for tough enemies, while using Machete or to save charges from Runic Axe. It provides also a nice boost to protect our low health against nasty mythos cards

• Spectral Razor (2) and Read the Signs (2) since they combo very well with Olive McBride (2) and are strong cards overall

• In the Thick of It let's us start the campaign with Brand of Cthugha (1) for better consistency

• Down the Rabbit Hole reduces the cost of nearly every upgrade we need. You should be able to save 14 XP after 7 Scenarios, bringing the XP cost of all upgrades down to only 20 XP. You don't have to maximize the value of this card though. If you have enough XP and want your upgrades earlier, go for it! Even if Down the Rabbit Hole saves only 2 XP, it is worth it in my opinion, because it accelerates the power of our Deck in the early campaign where it is weakest.

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Furthermore, we run

• Machete as a back up weapon if we can not find our Runic Axe

• Brand of Cthugha (1) as a back up weapon, but it does also provide many charges for Spectral Shield. This spell does also not affect the hand slots we need for Runic Axe making it the perfect "sidearm"

• Ancestral Token to support the generation of

• Glory to provide some needed card draw

• Prepared for the Worst to find a weapon. This card does increase our chance to find Runic Axe drastically

• Voice of Ra to provide resources

• Emergency Cache (2) to help with resource generation and card draw (nice!)

• Overpower to boost and to provide card draw

• Sacred Covenant (2) to keep in the bag

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Piloting Tips

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• You need a weapon! And the best weapon we have is Runic Axe. Therefore, hard mulligan for Runic Axe and keep each copy of Prepared for the Worst in hand. Since we do also run Machete, Brand of Cthugha (1) and Spectral Razor (2) the chances are very high, that you will find something to fight with (~93%). This and other strategies for mulligans are analyzed at the end of this guide.

• If you have Runic Axe in your starting hand, mulligan for Wolf Mask and Olive McBride (2).

• Please do not take the physical trauma from In the Thick of It

• Don't forget to add 2 to the bag during setup.

• Your full kit costs 11 resources. Ancestral Token has the lowest priority of all your assets. Spectral Shield can usually also be delayed until later in the scenario, bringing the cost or your core assets down to a manageable amount of 7.

• Always consider if you really need the boost from Living Ink at the start of your turn. If you don't need it, save the charge for Spectral Shield

• Even if you have Machete or Brand of Cthugha (1) in hand (or play) it is still worth to search for Runic Axe with Prepared for the Worst

• Make sure not to overspend your charges. If you run out of charges and there are still enemies alive, you might be in trouble. Don't forget to boost with Wolf Mask.

• If you have Olive McBride (2) in play and plan to play either Spectral Razor (2) or Read the Signs (2), make sure to not use Olive's activation before playing these cards.

• You can attach Spectral Shield to your Investigator Card or to Guardian Angel. If you use Spectral Shield on Guardian Angel you can generate , but you wont the able to prevent horror damage.

• Do not forget to use Sacred Covenant (2) after the activation of Olive McBride (2) to keep as many in the bag as possible.

• You can use Olive McBride (2) with Voice of Ra for 6 Tokens in total. If you pull 6 Symbols, this can give you up to 12 resources.

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Upgrade Priorities

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Make sure to use Down the Rabbit Hole after each scenario. You can use it for the customizable cards, making some upgrade completely free.

1: Runic Axe - Scriptweaver

2: Living Ink - Subtle Depiction

3: Runic Axe - Saga

4: Living Ink - Macabre Depiction

With the discount of Down the Rabbit Hole these updates cost only 7 XP after 2 Scenarions.

5: Olive McBride (2)

After you have upgraded Olive, the order of upgrades comes down to personal preference. There are for example strong arguments to upgrade Emergency Cache first, but everything works. I like the follwong order.

6-10: Runic Axe - Ancient Power

6-10: Emergency Cache (2)

6-10: Spectral Razor (2)

6-10: Read the Signs (2)

6-10: Sacred Covenant (2) for 3 XP

After this, everything else is optional. Later in the campaign, if you have left over XP, you can for example consider to upgrade into

• Brand of Cthugha (4)

• Overpower (2)

• Prepared for the Worst (2)

Or maybe you want to upgrade the Machete into Blessed Blade (4). Or do you prefer fighting with a Holy Spear (5)? There are many options.

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Level 0 Deck

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This deck is fully functional as a campaign starter. You just have to

• Swap to Olive McBride

• Swap to Read the Signs

• Swap to Spectral Razor

• Swap to Emergency Cache

• Remove XP from Runic Axe

• Remove XP from Living Ink

• Remove Sacred Covenant (2)

• Keep Brand of Cthugha (1) and save 1 XP from In the Thick of It

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About Odds

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From my point of view there 3 general strategies for mulligans. You can either maximize your odds to find

A) The Runic Axe

B) Any Weapon

C) At least a Kill Spell

So let's have a look at the odds for each strategy.

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Strategy A

"Only Keep Runic Axe and Prepared for the Worst"

Chance to start with Runic Axe or to find it in the first round

• 71,0 %

Chance to start without Runic Axe but with Machete or Brand of Cthugha (1) or find Machete in the first round

• 19,0 %

Chance to start at least with Spectral Razor (2) but no other weapons

• 3,8%

Chance to start with no combat card

• 6,2%

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Strategy B

"Keep Runic Axe, Machete, Brand of Cthugha and Prepared for the Worst"

Chance to start with Runic Axe or to find it in the first round

• 66,7 %

Chance to start without Runic Axe but with Machete or Brand of Cthugha (1) or find Machete in the first round

• 27,3 %

Chance to start at least with Spectral Razor (2) but no other weapons

• 3,6 %

Chance to start with no combat card

• 2,4 %

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Strategy C

"Keep Runic Axe, Machete, Brand of Cthugha and Prepared for the Worst and Spectral Razor"

Chance to start with Runic Axe or to find it in the first round

• 64,3 %

Chance to start without Runic Axe but with Machete or Brand of Cthugha (1) or find Machete in the first round

• 29,9 %

Chance to start at least with Spectral Razor (2) but no other weapons

• 4,5 %

Chance to start with no combat card

• 1,3 %

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In summary:

Strategy A offers the best odds to draw your Runic Axe early, while Strategy C minimizes the risk of starting without a combat option. Strategy B is somewhere in the middle.

Personally, I prefer Strategy A, but B and C are also valid options.

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Finally, lets briefly analyze what Olive McBride (2) brings to the table.

In a standard chaos bag, there are 16 tokens, 6 with a symbol (NotZ Standard Difficulty). Without any in the bag, Olive McBride (2) has already a ~88% chance to reveal a symbol.

If the standard chaos bag is fully loaded with , this will increase to ~98%.

Thus, chances are high to add charges to Living Ink in nearly every round. This does also increase the value of Spectral Razor (2) and Read the Signs (2) by alot.

If you have your set up in play and use Olive for example exclusively for Read the Signs, you can become a competent Cluever.