Agnes w/Daisy! Core Hard + Rougarou [Hard] Playthrough

This is a special deck for Agnes intended to complement Daisy. I'll be playing through the Core + Rougarou scenarios with it.

A few key points: The baseball bat is there initially for two reasons:

• There's nothing else in the deck that uses hands.
• Agnes will be doing all the fighting, so it is a good idea to save ammo when possible by using the baseball bat to kill small fry.

Note: the 0-level Blinding Light is not that great, but I have them in the deck for three reasons:

1. Can be useful to help stretch out Shrivelling.
2. They are a spell, so they are often drawn "for free" (Initiate) and you get another draw if you have Heirloom out.
3. Their icons are useful for skill tests.

Use scrying to protect Daisy from getting any monsters. This lets you some degree of independence.

The expected strategy is for Daisy to help you get Arcane Initiate and Heirloom of Hyperborea out early using her book of lore. Once Agnes get these two out (or at least the Initiate---I must confess that sometimes if I get the Holy Rosary first I just use the Heirloom on a skill), she will have tremendous card economy.

Daisy was lead investigator.

First scenario: The Gathering [Core 1] Got a Drawn to the Flame early on to accelerate things a bit, but Daisy was flagging a bit because Dr. Milan Christopher was slow to come out. I made good use of Baseball Bat, probably killing 3 or 4 easy monsters with it.

We ended up eventually clearing all the clues but we had both the strong enemies (Icy Ghoul and Flesh-Eater spawn). I took out the Icy Ghoul pretty quickly, but I was concerned about the Flesh-Eater because I had used up 1 of my Shrivelling and so only had one left. Using two shots to kill the Flesh-Eater would mean only two left for whatever came after.

I decided to jump into the hallway (where the Flesh-Eater had moved), use a Blinding Light to do one damage (Flesh-Eater is super easy to evade) and then use just 1 shot from Shrivelling and 1 direct damage from Agnes Baker special ability (pulled from Forbidden Knowledge).

That left Agnes with 3 counters on Shrivelling. We advanced, spawning Lita Chantler and Ghoul Priest. Daisy ran into the Parlor and managed to get Lita, bringing her back into the hallway. Unfortunately, Agnes pulled an Autofail on one of her shrivelings, so she could only do 6 damage (2 x3 attacks) plus 1 more direct from her special ability. Unfortunately, I had Dark Memory in my hand and could not afford to play it. Between those horror and the attack of the priest, I go exactly insane and expire when Ghoul Priest hits me, but I am able to do one more damage to him from my special ability before dying. So that is 8 total.

Luckily, Daisy has a Mind over Matter and, with her last action and 8 doom counters on the card, she connects for the final 2 points to kill the priest. We ended up with 6 Victory points (Attic + Cellar + Icy ghoul + flesh heater + priest).

To transition to the second scenario, I used my 8 xp in the following way: 1 xp to sub in Scavenging, traded out 1 Manual Dexterity 4 xp for Grotesque Statue, traded out 1 Blinding Light 3 xp for Book of Shadows, traded out my other Blinding Light.

Scenario 2 did not go well. Agnes does do well against Acolyte cards because they only take 1 damage to kill. Daisy used Mind over Matter plus Lita Chantler to take out one of the cultists, and I had to run around killing others before they got too much doom. Unfortunately, Daisy made a tactical error and choose to keep Dr. Milan Christopher out rather than bring out Lita Chantler to soak up damage. On the last round of the game an encounter card gave her too much damage and she died. Agnes managed to kill the The Masked Hunter and then resign. We got 3 xp total.

I used 2xp to sub in the strong Blinding Light card, replacing Baseball Bat. Used my last xp to pay the cost to play Rougarou as a one-off mid-campaign.

Rougarou (played on Hard) was Tough, especially since Daisy was lead investigator, meaning that she got the Curse of the Rougarou---highly problematic because she has trouble doing damage. We did note that she now has less reason not to use Medical Texts since if she fails the skill roll and does damage, she won't take horror from Curse of the Rougarou.

Anyways, we just did not move fast enough and ran out of time. Agnes in general is a good investigator for Rougarou because she can use her direct damage to knock off Insatiable Bloodlust, and if you have Lita in the party it means you can do 4 points of damage each time you engage The Rougarou (use 1 resource from Forbidden Knowledge to take a horror, doing 1 damage, then 1 shot from Shrivelling does 3 points). Unfortunately, then The Rougarou runs away, breaking engagement and accelerating doom (if you are in the final agenda).

I got nice use of Scrying in this final scenario for warding off my Amnesia weakness. Once I got down to the last 12ish cards, I knew there were not many spells left, so I did not have as much reason to use Arcane Initiate's ability each turn. Instead, I used Scrying to check for Amnesia, knowing I could use her shuffling ability once the card showed up.

I now think that Agnes just does not quite have the firepower to complement Daisy. She does fine handling her own creatures, but she runs out of ammo quickly if she is having to kill off both her own and Daisy's.