My first Akachi

This was the first Acachi deck I put together for a team of 4 doing NoZ. I have to say that Akachi is now one of my favourite mystics. Her ability is not flashy like Agnes’s but she is a very robust and muscular mystic. With 2 Grotesque statues you can manipulate the chaos bag, ok not quite as well as Jim but if spirit-speaker comes out you can keep returning them to your hand to recharge them, not that you’ll need to do that very often because Akachi’s ability means each statue will come into play with not 4 but 5 charges, that’s nearly two whole turns worth of double Chaos tokens!

Upgrade wise I favour alternating shrivelling with Grotesque statue which I would swap out my flashlights for. Of course with Akachi’s 3 fight you could take some knives to begin with but I was in a group with Zoe Samaras so chose not to. I would still upgrade knives for Grotesque Statue as you want to land your spells whenever possible.

Astral travel is very situational but with Akachi’s respectable 3 evade can come in handy for the extra agility pip to commit to a test. I would upgrade this for Bind Monster for later in a campaign when more difficult monsters start to appear, with Ms Onyele’s high baseline willpower of 5 she has among the best chances of any mystic to keep those hunter enmities stumbling around for a long time. The other choice here could be spirit Athame depending on the party your with, but the satisfaction of blinding some preposterous abomination should not be underestimated and it saved our bacon when it came to the boss fight as it meant we could quickly move on and deal with the elite enemy in relative peace.

As Akachi is so robust I’ve forgone multiple allies to play to her strengths, this means however that the arcane initiate is abligatory as is the forbidden knowledge, designed to help kill her off in case you need to get her out early before the agenda is due to flip. The same goes for pain killers which have the added bonus of healing damage which is Akachi’s weaker stat. The other Flex point here is Clarity of Mind which was mostly intended to keep our zoey sane but could be swapped for an Alyssa Graham, handy for solo play. I probably wouldn’t go for David Renfield as uncage the soul helps to keep the costs of playing you spells down, though he could combo well with Arcane studies.

Hypnotic gaze is a great card for economy as it allows you to finish an enemy off whilst focusing on other things and is another potential target for upgrading for those who have an abundance of xp. Akachi could easily take Arcane Research x 1 or 2 if keeping clarity of mind to help fuel her upgrades. For the hardcore ward of Protection could be swapped for Delve to deep as Akachi naturally resists the encounter deck well but personally I like cancelling those ancient evils more as this gives everyone an extra turn to help gain the scenario specific XP.