Agnes Baker

Agnes Baker is one of the most powerful investigators out there and here's why:

  • First of all, with her 5 , she can withstand most of the treacheries requiring skill tests the encounter deck throws at her.
  • Her other stats are quite low, but the class has so many ways to hande that, that it is not really relevant in the end.

With the solved, she just needs way to mitigate her 3 other low stats. And ways there are in the class card pool, most of them Spells that can be triggered using her strongest stat .

  • Her 3 is already quite acceptable, considering you won't be using it much, except to sometimes, in an emergency, evade an enemy if you can't currently kill it or blind it.
  • Her 2 may be the most difficult stat to balance, if you're playing solo. If you're playing multiplayer, you probably want to focus Agnes on killing the damn enemies. Back to solo then. Again, cards have so many ways to mitigate that: Drawn to the Flame, Rite of Seeking, maybe use that "Look what I found!", and the neutral cards Flashlight and Perception.
  • Her 2 may be the easiest stat to balance, right off the bat with Shrivelling and later on with Shrivelling (3), Shrivelling (5) and Song of the Dead (2). What's more, all those Spells have a strong synergy with Agnes' ability, dealing even more damage to the enemies you're attacking.

Finally:

  • The ability of Agnes is very reliable, as lot of things can deal damage to Agnes: treacheries, enemy attacks, even her own Spells. She also has access to ways of mitigating the sanity hits: Fearless and Peter Sylvestre.
  • Her modifier is quite good too, for the same exact reason.

With the mulligan rule in this game, grabbing a Spell in your starting hand is not that difficult, and you still have the Arcane Initiate to help you out.

Here is a (solo) sample deck: arkhamdb.com

banania · 409
You mention Peter Sylvestre, but if you're assigning horror to him then you can't use Agnes's reaction. Am I missing something? — micahwedemeyer · 62
I imagine banania means if the Sanity hits start to get out of control. A couple is great, too many will take her out just like any other investigator. — whisp · 1
Yep, exactly — banania · 409
Also, there's no benefit to more than one horror taken per phase, so Peter can take the extra. — Time4Tiddy · 249
Defiance

I play with 4 investigator. Our team love Double or Nothing. Our team love stacking bonuses. When you're doing a test (was done in a real game) with : Defiance + Double or Nothing + 2 Quick Thinking + Deduction (XP) (+ some other buffs) on Rex Murphy You really want to have defiance to decrease the chance of failing to only 1 chaos token. That's not necessarily clever to put all our ressource on one test, but that's fun to discover 8 clues and gain 4 actions in one action.

Moreover, in a 4 investigator team, it may be difficult to finish your deck, since other people migth be interested in the good card of your faction. This card is never a bad pick, since in the worst case, it is a little more than a +1 to any test.

So not the best card ever, but a decent 0XP card. However, it may be difficult in 1 or 2 extension to find a place in our decks for this card, since better cards will probably be published.

MoiMagnus · 63
I hate to break it to you, but with the cards you suggested, you could only get 7 clues from a location. Double or nothing doubles the results of a success which includes discovering the clue and the additional two from Deduction. (3*2=6) But Rex’s ability is a Reaction trigger ‘after you succeed’. While DoN doubles the effects of success, you still only succeed once, so Rex’s ability only triggers once. (6+1=7) — Death by Chocolate · 1489
Roland Banks

A solid investigator. Strong in killing and clue-gathering, the core of the game. Guardian and Seeker are among the stronger of the classes, so you have access to excellent upgrades. On the other hand, the lack of sanity is very hard to manage. Elder Sign Amulet is obviously an important first upgrade, which undermines the access to the better class upgrades.

camipco · 41
Guardian and Seeker are the most specialized classes - its an important distinction because they both are fairly weak in Solo (and even duo) play. — Difrakt · 1325
If you're really really worried about Sanity, Brother Xavier provides three-fourths of an Elder Sign Amulet's Sanity buffer for one-third the XP cost, while also having other useful effects. — CaiusDrewart · 3198
Brother Xavier costs 5 resources though. If he's running high cost cards like Dynamite, Shotgun or Lightning Gun it's probably better to just get cheaper defenses like Elder Sign Amulet (though it might compete with Police Badge if you are running it) — Telumbra · 4
Lightning Gun

Not much beats this weapon for dominating as a combat character. The steady +2 damage and a modifier that all but guarantees successes makes this expensive killing tool unusually flexible.

Here's a comparison: You're Roland, with your .45 Automatic you aim to kill a Ravenous Ghoul, you're 2 above the required skill check, you lay down a Vicious Blow to net you a clean kill and spend 1 on Physical Training to hit that sweet spot of +4 over the skill check, and even then on higher difficulties you might throw on another just in case you get that -5. And boom, the Ghoul is gone. That there cost you: 4 for the gun, 2 for Physical Training, 2 and an action to play Physical Training in the first place, and a Vicious Blow as well, end cost: 3 cards, 8 resources and the extra action. You will be able to fire the gun 3 more times, but you wont kill any 3 hp enemies in one shot.

Now the lightning gun. One shot, aaaaand DONE. That set you back 6 resources but you're geared to do this two more times without having to pay for any boosts or playing extra cards!

Of course it wont be that simple, with a gun that big in your deck you will want to bring Prepared for the Worst to search for it and Extra Ammunition to keep it firing. You still want to draw into Vicious Blow to deal with those 4 HP enemies and the initial cost will inevitably slow you down in the earlygame.

This card does exactly what it should do and has all the drawbacks that it looks like it's got, it's a big unwieldy boomstick that will never disappoint you, but setting this up mean's you wont be doing much else.

Other cards that aren't immediately obviously good with this card: In class: 1) Dodge and Prepared for the Worst are a big help against bosses, they essentially let you set a trap for a hunting enemy where you get a full round of emptying this gun at the foe, useful in some specific missions. 2) Stand Together, this is effectively a second set of Emergency Cache, the key benefit here is that you usually only go for Lightning Gun when you have someone else doing the clue gathering, in which case you can give them a big buff while you set yourself up. A perfect first turn would be playing this into the lightning gun and immediately playing it. 3) Beat Cop, Lightning Gun is wasted on 1 and 2 HP enemies, Beat Cop helps you mitigate these enemies.

Out of class: 1) Quick Thinking is often all but a guaranteed action. Good if you need to wade into a big fight or need to accomplish something after it. 2) Drawn to the Flame and Scrying. You don't do much when you're totally focused on fighting and there are no enemies to zap, these cards let you guide encounters onto yourself. 3) Pathfinder and Shortcut. Entering a fight quickly can be key, perhaps you need to spend an action engaging a foe or perhaps you need to fire all three shots to down a foe in one round.

Tsuruki23 · 2578
I agree with most of this, but I don't think Quick Thinking is a good combo - spending one card to get one action is only marginally useful, and at Combat +5 it's pretty unlikely that you want it for its ? symbol. Double-or-nothing is a vastly better Rogue combo for Lightning Gun. — sfarmstrong · 271
"I've had worse…"

This card has 3 main advantages: (1) The encounter has a harder time playing around it because it's fast. (2) it can be used to get resources from damage. (3) it doesn't cost anything to use as protection.

All of these combine to make it better than Plascrete.

edrof55 · 24
What's plascrete? Google tells me it's some kind of armor from netrunner. — Django · 5163
@Django Yes, it was very commonly used against a certain kind of deck archetype that was very effective at killing the runner :) — Shiro1981 · 1
@Django Adding onto what Shiro said, the joke is on the fact that this card has the same name as a netrunner card that counteracts damage. So he's pretending he's reviewing netrunner's I've Had Worse and comparing it to Plascrete. I thought it was pretty clever. — youngoli · 1
Amazing comment! — Quantallar · 8