The Scat Man

After playing through all of Carcosa as Solo Jim, this is where I've landed with him as a 0xp starter.

Key Players

• St. Hubert's Key turns him from a middling 4/3 garbage man into a respectable 5/4 scat man. Jazzy! I usually mulligan for the Key.
• Shrivelling, Mists of R'lyeh, and Knife are how you deal with enemies. Storm of Spirits is also great if you get swamped, although you'll likely drop it for an XP card. I mulligan for one of these.
• Your cost curve isn't as severe as it would be for a multiplayer Agnes or Akachi deck, so I found Cache + Lone Wolf to be sufficient econ. Not seeing one of them early hurts. I mulligan for Lone Wolf.
• Lone Wolf generates you mad cash after about 4 turns, and Jim often wants to boost by just 1 or 2 to be comfortably above the difficulty for a test. Enter Arcane Studies. Basically, AS and Flashlight are the only ways to get clues aside from a 4 (from the Key) and a friendly chaos bag. Zip Zubba Zop!
• Solo characters often have movement issues, and Mystics are no exception. Elusive has been a game changer and is an absolute must, particularly mid-to-late scenario where you need to escape from a specific location. You could in theory do 2x Astral Travel and get back two Out-of-Faction slots, but I didn't know what else I'd drop for them, and plus Elusive is just really good.
• Unexpected Courage is almost mandatory for solo gators IMO, as it lets you handle the variety of tests the agenda and act decks impose upon you.

Questionable Includes

• I don't really like Olive McBride. She requires you to be 3-4 above a difficulty, which is tricky for this deck to do. Really she's there as a combo piece for Song of the Dead, as well as Horror soak.
• Scavenging is there to get back Grotesque Statues. However, it's slow (action to play, action to replay the item) and it's inconstant as a 1x. Maybe you'd go 2x Scavenging, 1x Elusive, 1x Astral Travel to get that going. Still, this becomes an asset-heavy deck in a faction that already has a lot of tempo issues.
• Storm of Spirits might be the most situational card in here. It's best when the game throws an enemy at you from the agenda deck and then you draw into another, but that doesn't happen often.
• Ward of Protection and Delve Too Deep are just good cards, but are theoretically flex spots. Ward spares you from action-siphoning treacheries (Whispers et al) and Delve gets you the XP for Grotesque Statue and Seal of the Elder Sign. Skabba be bop!

Tested Cards that were Cut

• I was really excited for Dark Prophecy as a pseudo-skill card. Pull out a and watch me beat this test on the nose. I think I probably used in 8 times in testing and pulled skulls 3 times. The remaining 5 were either or, worse, negative consequence and . For an 17-token bag with 3 , you'd think it would perform better. But if there's 3 , 2 , and a , you're basically going to hit what you want half the time, and what you don't half the time. It might be okay if you were in a support role and had slots to seal tokens. But I don't, and so this has lost its spot.
• Machete was originally in here, but Song of the Dead is better, and with Grotesque Statue the hand slot became highly contested.
• Defiance feels like a combo piece to go along with Dark Prophecy and Olive McBride. It's okay in Carcosa because you often have 2x of a given token in the bag. But even then it feels situational at best.
• Fine Clothes is a neat tech card for scenarios 1 and 2 of Carcosa, but slots are really tight in solo play and it doesn't pull its weight.
• I think The Chthonian Stone is a multiplayer card because it only gets trashed if you're the one who pulls the . It's expensive and takes up a hand slot.
• Arcane Research gives you unnecessary horror and there's pretty few targets for upgrades (Shrivel(3) and...?).
• Protective Incantation is really expensive and basically requires Lone Wolf to play. Plus it takes up a valuable Arcane slot.
• Jewel of Aureolus seems good but competes with the essential St. Hubert's Key for the accessory slot. Maybe you go Relic Hunter? But then you're sinking tons of XP into a draw card.

Upgrade Plan

1. Song of the Dead x2 replaces the Knives. You'll need lots of options to handle enemies, and as a Mystic you need spells to do it.
2. Grotesque Statue x2 acts as like four skill cards in one. The bag is so friendly to you as Jim that you can often be two-up on a Shriveling and not commit anything to it besides a Grotesque charge. Biddley deedley bo-bop'n pow!

After your first 12xp, options open up:

• I like Arcane Studies(2) a lot here. AS becomes very important as a reusable +1 or +2 on a lot of checks. The deck is low on icons in general, so those are very welcome.
• Emergency Cache(2) is actually pretty great. There's a lot of pieces here than incrementally improve your deck, so the draw is strong, and I think you really do need more money cards besides Lone Wolf. Plus you convert extra money into successes with AS.
• Shrivelling(3) is a staple, although because you have SotD you might not need it as much as Agnes or Akachi. I've avoided it in my playthrough and I've done fine. However, the +2 on the attack is very nice.
• Seal of the Elder Sign is strong in Jim I think because of how it combos with Song of the Dead (and less so with Jim's Trumpet). It's an auto-3 damage, and sometimes you need that. Plus your poor action econ means that sometimes there's a lot of must-pass tests at the end of the scenario.

Jim is a little more well-rounded statistically than his sisters, so in theory he's a good solo choice. However, the faction struggles with reliance on key pieces and poor action economy. I do think he's really interesting and would love to hear your experiences with him.

And that's Jazz!