[Guide] ∥Agnes' Infinite Toolbox (with K'n-yan for 8)

Card draw simulator

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Derived from
None. Self-made deck here.
Inspiration for
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iwanokimi · 106

Introduction

  • This deck is built entirely around ∥Agnes' front text. Playing spell events for effectively free and recurring them is insane. The ∥Agnes back contributes like 1 card. We could really play the exact same deck with original back and have access to Sparrow Mask, Spirit of Humanity and Ancient Covenant. Which are fine tools for bag-cheating and healing but we can also do that without , such as through Time Warp. The main draw of ∥Agnes Back is the 25-card deckbuilding.
  • This deck has a few things going for it. With a 25 card deck and ∥ Heirloom of Hyperborea, we can quickly draw through it and get to <3 cards in deck. Then, we will sit there forever and never shuffle, using 1 or both copies Arcane Initiate to play...
  • Because we do not play any expensive spell assets, we get to first buy Memories of Another Life + Charisma for Leo De Luca and play the game with 4 actions every turn. That's enough to make up for the action compression we lose through not fielding those big spell assets.
  • Later on we have access to Blood of K'n-yan. We are the only investigator that can loop it multiple times a turn every turn and the spare XP to easily afford the whole package to make it good. We're swinging for 6-8 up 10+ skill points, 3 times every turn at the bosses.
  • And we have a banging early campaign. The text on our investigator card is just absurd value early in the campaign compared to what everyone else gets to do. The broken-ish loop thing is something we have access to scenario 1 without even taking In the Thick of It. It's just there.

Upgrade Path

Here is the base list (arkhamDB | arkham.build). agnes.png

  • This deck absolutely comes out of the gate swinging. The 0XP version is easily one of the strongest scenario 1 flexes. There isn't really a clear upgrade path to speak of, but rather packages of cards to pick up along the way.

  • ∥Agnes' back has the coveted 25-card deckbuilding, which makes the upgraded version of this deck impossibly lean. Because of the way it seeks to recur its toolbox of spells, the deck practically has 19 'assets'; (cards that give recurrent value every turn). The only expendable cards are the ones that draw (Scrolls of Secrets, Sacrifice, and Backpack (2)), and the Promise of Powers.

  • Therefore, finding cuts for the deck usually just involves cutting down 2-ofs into 1-ofs, until there's no fat left to trim.

  • You will notice that we are not taking any of In the Thick of It, Arcane Research or Down the Rabbit Hole, rather unusual for a modern mystic. Part of the reason is that we do not use Arcane Research or Down the Rabbit Hole well. There are no spell assets to upgrade. Another reason is that our health is a resource we leverage with ∥Agnes front, so any starting trauma affects how liberally we can play with our health.

  • [8XP Memories of Another Life + Charisma]

    • The first thing we pick up. We are using this MoAL on Leo De Luca just about every game. Mystic action compression is almost entire bundled into high cost spell assets and we are not doing those. This does free up our XP to do one of the most absurd things in the game though: fast, 0 resource Leo De Luca is incredible.

  • [3XP Relic Hunter]

  • [2XP Backpack (2)]

  • [8XP Memories of Another Life + Charisma]

  • [1XP Sacrifice]

    • Draw 3 is just insane. We're using this on dead Scroll. Very much later down the line it helps to empty our hand slots for Blood of K'n-yan.

  • [2XP × 2 Ward of Protection (2)]

    • Get the first copy early since we only need 1 to have an endless number of them. The second can be put off much longer. We may also cut second ward completely if the Mythos for the campaign is soft. Generally anything that doesn't mess with out hand/assets we do not care about.

  • [4XP The Key of Solomon]

    • Ideally, we would want early and later. Just a single copy of Deep Knowledge / Faustian Bargain or few Promise of Powers resolved early is enough to fund our entire game. And those cards are ubiquitous enough that your teammates should be packing 'em. If not consider playing with Original Agnes Back instead for Spirit of Humanity (it's like the same deck except with 30-card deckbuilding).
      On the front, we have a somewhat jank solution in Hand of Fate. Once we are set up we can loop this against attacks of opportunity on purpose to fill the bag with 10 in a turn.

  • [5XP Deny Existence (5)]

    • This card is okay. It's one of our ways to heal. Looping it against a hard-hitter can refuel our health quickly.

  • [3XP × 2 Arcane Initiate (3)]

    • The first Initiate upgrade should come in before Scroll of Prophecies gets cut to make up for the lost draw. It's a nice QoL upgrade. The second one can be made whenever it's convenient.

  • [2XP Time Warp]

  • [3XP Crystalline Elder Sign]

    • I played alongside Daisy so this was more for the team. It's good for cracking high shroud against tough bags with Read the Signs since we don't play many boosts. 9 vs 10 can make a meaningful difference. A card I've tried early on was Summoned Servitor. Servitor gets the omniboost and fighting/investigating at 5 was pretty good for him. He was aight but turned out to not be the best thing we can be doing.
      Honestly a super bells and whistles upgrade. I think at 1-2 players this is just a slight upgrade over Holy Rosary and the best thing we can play in our accessory slot for a boost.

  • ...less than 40XP in and we're already out of meaningful upgrades. Well, that's not entirely true. The next suite of upgrades is centred all around the single card Blood of K'n-yan and serves to boost it's damage to absurd numbers.

  • [3XP × 2 Blood of K'n-yan]

    • This card has a lot of text. A short breakdown:
    • It attacks with , and gets +2 skill and +1 damage for each empty hand slot.
    • When it defeats a non-elite enemy, that enemy and this card are removed from the game. This line of text is extremely annoying as it stops ∥Agnes from recurring it, so it can only be used for dealing with elites.
    • so the whole goal is to get the maximum number of hand slots possible and get it to come in for 4+ damage. The maximum this deck is set up to hit is 8. And we can play it 2-4 times in a turn, every turn.
    • ✦ The following upgrades are ordered based on their return on investment in terms of buffing Blood of K'n-yan ✦

  • [3XP Occult Reliquary]

  • [3XP Astral Mirror]

    • Gives us 1-2 hand slots when played (depending on if we are running Eyes of the Dreamer), and enables all the cards to follow.

  • [4XP Binder's Jar + Relic Hunter]

    • This gives use 2 more arcane slots and thus hand slots through Astral Mirror.

  • [3XP The Hierophant • V]

  • ...To be very clear, playing the Blood of K'n-yan package is a lot of XP and moves the deck's curve up significantly with do-nothing assets like Astral Mirror and The Hierophant • V. We are cutting our spells and draw for the bloat. It more or less makes the deck worse if boss-killing isn't something Agnes needs to help with. But it is stupid fun so I'm doing it every time.

Upgrade Path Continued (What to Cut)

  • [Drawn to the Flame]
    • I am very much not convinced this is the best card. If there's no one on the team that's Delving absolutely play that instead and maybe cut a Shrivelling. I don't think this ∥Agnes is a great delver as her list is really tight and we'll feel pressured to cut it early on.
    • Otherwise playing anything from Unexpected Courage to Backpack are all fine.
    • Definitely the first cut.
  • [Shrivelling]
    • We don't plan on upgrading this. It's good for consistency early but cut it when our 6 base starts becoming insufficient.
  • [Drain Essence]
    • We are playing this at 2-of for a large part of the game. The first one gets cut when we pick up Blood of K'n-yan as another fight spell. The second one can get cut near the very end as long as we have Deny Existence (5) and The Key of Solomon that reliably heals (some minimal support appreciated).
      A fun card this deck can play is Captivating Performance. I've never gotten it to perform well but note that Drain Essence is in fact a parley that helps in triggering it.
  • [Spectral Razor]
  • [Scroll of Prophecies]
    • Cut when the deck starts getting too lean. This card is great for digging us to our endgame state but at some point we'll be playing everything important at 1-of and there's nothing for Scroll of Prophecies to discard.
  • [Eyes of the Dreamer]
    • This card is just pretty decent. Let's us convert our 4 actions into 'book v shroud' during any downtime. We can cut it down to 1 fairly early but the final 1 could still be played here over something like second Ward of Protection (2) / Blood of K'n-yan / Promise of Power. Depending on the Mythos resilience vs clue tempo of the particular team. We could upgrade it to Sixth Sense (4) but I'm not sure if +2 is mathematically better than 2-tokens-choose-1.
  • [Holy Rosary]

A few Notes/Interactions

  • [∥ Heirloom of Hyperborea]
    • the ∥ is absolutely worth play just for the extra 2-3 health. 2 health is worth 4 resource, ∥ Dark Memory costs 2 extra so looking at it naively it's just a net gain. This card is important early on to refuel.
    • Later on once we have gotten to the end of our deck we are usually just rejecting the trigger to draw. This is due to not knowing what we will draw. We would rather just tutor off Arcane Initiate.
    • This is partly a rulings issue. There is an infamous-ish ruling in AHTCG where a single card cannot be shuffled into an empty deck (to prevent some shuffling weaknesses from looping themselves indefinitely and softlocking the game). We would like to sit at 0 cards in deck and just always redraw what we played, letting us cut an Arcane Initiate for another value ally like Olivier Bishop. Unfortunately that's not possible.
    • If we tutor off Arcane Initiate twice and draw once in upkeep, then we'd need to play 3 cards and reject every ∥ Heirloom draw to not lose cards in deck. There are very few cases at that point where we'd take the draw.
    • But the card is still absolutely insane to find early, up till the point we have 3 cards left it's an all-star.
  • [Blood of K'n-yan]
    • Be slightly weary of clearing away used Scrolls of Secrets, either by saving Sacrifice or The Key of Solomon until you've played both. It's only a loss of one damage though so it's not really worth warping the early game around either.
  • [Deny Existence (5) / Hand of Fate]
    • Loop these lategame against attacks of opportunity for effect. These are times where you are taking significantly more actions than Arcane Initiate uses thus this is a case where it could be valid to take ∥ Heirloom of Hyperborea draws.
    • Hand of Fate and Time Warp are great against retaliate, be sure to stand around your fighter when they're tackling such enemies.
    • Hand of Fate and Deny Existence (5) also completely negate boss attacks, so a team of 2 or 3 without a good tripper can also just stand around the boss room with impunity, tanking through the enemy phase.

Notable Exclusions

  • [Hallowed Mirror (0/3)]
    • This card is definitely great in ∥Agnes. We would play it by letting the first 2 Soothing Melody go for 3 value and keep the last one around. The ceiling of this is not as high as The Key of Solomon as it still takes actions to play and cannot make money. However a big part of The Key of Solomon's value comes from the half making money early. While that only requires ∥Agnes' team dabble in the most incidental enablers (Faustian Bargain / Deep Knowledge / Promise of Power), Hallowed Mirror (3) becomes less opportunity cost without it. The accessory slot is also somewhat contested, although this can be circumvented by just sacrificing the Heirloom of Hyperborea later on, which is also when ∥Agnes is most likely to need healing.
  • [Storm of Spirits (0/3)]
    • This is something you should definitely play in the right campaign/table. Only reason it's not included is that I brought this ∥Agnes to a 2 player campaign where AoE is less valuable. Cut some number of Shrivelling / Drain Essence / Spectral Razor / Blood of K'n-yans for it.
  • [Astral Travel]
    • This card is actually pretty banging. I would not want to play it without a dead Scroll on board or Time Warp in hand but the effect is really powerful. This is something I would like to wish for off my second Memories of Another Life. It's not very powerful early on when less of the map is revealed and I don't have the luxury of spending Time Warp on it. This also gets better later into a scenario after we've filled the bag with or , as Astral Travel is not a skill test and thus does not trigger the re-draw effect. I did not play with it in my campaign but I can definitely see this card being good in the main deck somewhere. Definitely be open to MoAL for it.
  • [Tempt Fate]
    • This enables The Key of Solomon in a janky way. Note that The Key of Solomon does not work when there are the same number of and in the bag, so we'll be reliant on drawing one of them every time we want to use The Key of Solomon. Its a fast cycle though, something extremely valuable for this deck. I thought about playing it in a flex slot of the base list but in general Tempt Fate is a net negative card without synergy (since is most likely to cause you to fail while usually just cause you to win harder when we test at a number planning to beat most of the bag). The small window before The Key of Solomon enters the deck and the flex slot for Tempt Fate being replaced isn't worth playing it in the base list.
  • [Captivating Performance]
    • Mono is probably the worst class for extra actions. That's why we are first-buying a Leo De Luca. Captivating Performance is, in theory, not that hard to trigger. Note that any card can count for a play/activate action or their bolded basic action. For example,Read the Signs can count for both a play or investigate action, whichever we deem convenient. So something like..
    • Read the Signs - play
    • Read the Signs - investigate
    • Eyes of the Dreamer - activate
    • ..is enough to get us a free action to either move, fight, take resource, draw etc. And that's not bad, but its rather expensive to play at 3 resources (not to mention the XP cost). We are only reliably play 2+ Read the Signs in a turn after getting our lategame set up. And It really just was a big mental burden to try and fit it into each line. Not just how ∥Agnes played her turn but also investigator turn order.
  • [Summoned Servitor]
    • This card was okay. It was another thing I tried to give more actions. In reality the Servitor just fell behind and became irrelevant the moment ∥Agnes took 2 move actions in a turn. He doesn't do enough as a solo agent off doing his own thing. It's not too hard to get 3 move actions out of him in any scenario with some doubling back but it didn't feel worth the XP or deck slot. A thing to note is that he does make Captivating Performance better. You can train the servitor in evade and have him sit on the map tripping the same enemy to fulfil 1/3 of Captivating Performance every turn.

This Particular Binder's Jar Interaction

  • The main downside to Blood of K'n-yan is that we cannot use it on non-elite enemies liberally. However, with the deep magic of AHTCG rules, Binder's Jar may be able to circumvent that.
  • On Blood of K'n-yan, it reads 'If this attack defeats a non-Elite enemy, add that enemy to the victory display and attach Blood of K'n-yan to it'.
  • Binder's Jar reads 'After a non-Elite enemy is defeated at your location: Place that enemy facedown beneath Binder's Jar.'
  • 'If [event]' is a faster timing than 'after [event]', so the Blood of K'n-yan will trigger first, attaching itself to the enemy and moving the enemy to the Victory Display.
  • Then, Binder's Jar will move the enemy to under it. This has been ruled to work with vengeance so there is precedence for grabbing enemies from Victory Display.
  • Now, we much acquaint ourselves with the rules on attachments. The rules reference states that 'Once in play, an attachment remains attached until either the attachment or the game element to which it is attached leaves play (in which case the attachment is discarded)'.
  • '[L]eaves play' refers to a card entering an out-of-play area. Binder's Jar attaches cards 'facedown', which is considered out-of-play.
  • That would fulfil the condition of the 'the game element to which [Blood of K'n-yan] is attached leaves play' and result in Blood of K'n-yan being discarded.
    (To note, the Blood of K'n-yan being attached in the Victory Display is another out-of-play area, but that is one it explicit had permission to be in unlike to a facedown card.)
  • this whole sequence is floating within resolving the entire play effect of Blood of K'n-yan, which means the eventual discard is within the timing of ∥Agnes' replacement effect of 'you may shuffle that event back into your deck instead of discarding it.'
  • In short, while you have space in the Binder's Jar, You can recur Blood of K'n-yan by placing the enemy it kills in the Jar. This is its own section since AHTCG by nature has really messy templating and very barebones rulings. This should work but who knows really. If you'd like to play accepting this interaction then Blood of K'n-yan with Binder's Jar becomes very strong pickups even early on.

Closing

  • I have found this deck really fun. You get to do something very powerful. You also get the feeling of doing something broken without actually doing anything broken. You're still mostly play 4-5 action turns with 2-3 output-per-action rates. But working with the last 3 cards in the deck as a toolbox to pull from feels broken in infinite-esque way without breaking the game on a power level axis and ruining the experience for others at the table.
  • Well, Blood of K'n-yan for 8 multiple times definitely strays to the side of broken. But surely that can be forgiven after we've spent the whole game dropping 3 resource garnets.
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