Unlimited Events Guide – Survivor Edition

I saw the other deck first, which had a 19xp core. This core is only 9xp (Relic Hunter, 2x Grisly Totem, so it's certainly a lot cheaper. It seems less flexible if you really want to conserve actions and not go fail-forward. I'm wondering, have you had issues with economy with this deck?

@ghastlybob This strategy is easier and cheaper, but as a trade-off it is definitely more one-note, in that fail forward is pretty much a necessary part of the build (because of how Grisly Crystallizer works). But depending on what other events you choose, the fail can just be the mechanic of the event recursion, and you can spend the rest of your time on other stuff.

As for economy, I've had absolutely no trouble. Drawing Thin and OYO together offer me 6 resources a turn, and while I'll admit I definitely have pushed that at times, I was able to play Will to Survive almost every turn in one of my runs with this deck, thanks to another powerful Survivor combo–Take Heart plus Grisly Totem. If you spare one or more of your Grisly uses per round, you can use them on Take Heart instead of getting back an event, thus drawing you two cards, gaining two resources, and returning the Take Heart to hand to be used again immediately or saved to be used indefinitely.

This is especially useful in the early part of the game when I still want to assemble all my most important cards, but it's one of the more powerful economic engines in the game so you can certainly keep it running throughout if you're looking to repeatedly replay more expensive events.

It feels redundant to say but your survivor main is showing...

You know I love my event-based survivor decks, especially with those metrics and that relatively low-cost curve and satisfyingly diverse icon spread.

Might have to take some inspiration when I finally try a fail-forward build.

@ThatLittleVoice My overuse of Survivors in my early years of playing this game (which you know all about) led me to do a lot of different fail forward builds, and this is definitely my favorite ever. It's pretty easy to set up, it's pretty easy to run, it can easily compete with Seekers for clues or Guardians for damage (if you swap to Chainsaw Oops), and it's also just a lot of fun. Highly recommend.

Neat deck! Might it be better suited to Wendy? Failing forward is action intensive, and Wendy has access to Leo and Haste to soften this a bit. I appreciate that Grisly Totem allows you to play the same event twice in a turn with Pete, but likely the ability to recur good events is already a strong enough engine without this additional situational capability.

Great deck, would like to give it a try. I really like OYO, had some tries with old versions of it, but permanent one is a lot better and I think it's pretty much needed for economy here. So that's the main reason, I guess, for not bringing Leo which is unfortunate because of those Will to Survive turns. Haste is a good call tho and I think Wendy Adams would work but I think Wendy's Amulet is a bit of anti-synergy with this whole combo. There are some things that both of them can take like Quick Thinking/Swift Reflexes which can also help with number of actions.

BTW there are other options of cheating out allies like "You owe me one!"/Flare in addition to A Chance Encounter which I think is amazing card here.

@HungryColquhoun @damirius Thank you both for the compliments!

The thing is, Wendy doesn't need this combo at all. She can play any number of events an unlimited number of times with relative ease thanks to her Amulet. There's a player in my playgroup who runs her all the time, so I regularly see her just dump her deck and begin looping Cheat the System every phase, that kind of thing.

So although you could definitely run this combo with Wendy, it's basically a worse version of what she's doing already. That's not to say it wouldn't be great with her, though! And lots of fun. But I wanted to bring event looping to another character, and one with a wider pool of options to play.

As for failing forward being action intensive, I want to challenge that idea. Failing an investigate test here and LWIFing is strictly better than passing an unmodified test. Track Shoes gives us an actionless fail when we move, Live and Learn makes any fail actionless. Take Heart, Unrelenting, and Drawing Thin turn failed tests into the ultimate economy surges. For this deck, passing a test is almost always the worse of two outcomes.

If you want to focus more on the Will to Survive turns, though, be my guest! Swift Reflexes is an amazing callout, and you could probably balance the economy well enough to drop OYO for Leo De Luca if you wanted to. If you do keep OYO, all of the cards Damirius mentioned are also great. I didn't add them because I didn't want to take up too much deck space, XP, or a flex slot just accounting for the OYO weakness. ACE to me seemed the simplest and easiest way to grab someone to fill the ally slot.

Agreed! Better "Look what I found!" totally rounds up the deck and gives those "fail" actions additional value. Giving the flexibility of leveled up "Look what I found!" where you can sometimes choose better shroud values it's even possible to combine it with, like you mentioned, Drawing Thin/Old Keyring/Take Heart/Unrelenting to absolute crazy one action gains, even more manageable with Will to Survive to get to exact value you want without any worries of "on fail" special tokens. Yes it's 4 resources with one use of OYO, but with just some of the cards mentioned you'll get resources back.

As you mentioned it Oops! and Dumb Luck are also good picks if going more flex and/or teching for specific campaign/standalone.

Personally I would keep OYO, but mostly because I really would like to try out this card and see it shine in deck like this. As for options for allies I agree that A Chance Encounter is probably best one, Flare is an option but in most cases other players will hate you, "You owe me one!" is similar. Most of the times investigators don't have strong recur options (non-) and especially for Ally assets so they wouldn't mind in most cases. Just remember to be careful with unique allies :)

@damirius You are right on all counts! OYO is super fun here, so I hope you find it exactly as useful as you expect. I've found its biggest weakness in normal play is just making sure you have a Survivor event to play every turn, which this deck handily provides. I fondly remember an Excelsior run where I used Will to Survive almost every turn, usually for precision failure rather than success–which is enough of a twist on typical gameplay to keep me coming back to this deck over and over again.

But I also almost always run ACE to counteract OYO's downside, just in case! I do recommend anyone doing that trick (or using Flare, YOMO, etc.) to check with your party first, because as you mentioned if nobody is running non-unique allies (as is often the case in my group), there's no point with ACE and you just have to sadly accept the empty ally slot.

@ElseWhere Any ideas for level 0 deck and upgrade path? Since we can't get Drawing Thin at a start so economy hurts a bit, plus to get Grisly Totem we need Relic Hunter at the same time. So let's say we have those two exp bumps in that which is 6xp and On Your Own which is also 6 exp. Afterwards is smooth sailing with lower exp cards.

@damirius Well you got me thinking so I put together a level 0 list and planned upgrade path. You'd already noted the most important parts, which is that first 6xp to get the combo assembled, another 6 for Drawing Thin to get your economy going, and then what I'd actually call 9-12, because I usually connect On Your Own with also getting Will to Survive.

My general thoughts are here: arkhamdb.com

But the gist is that at level 0 you're a fun and basic Duke deck that pretty quickly morphs into an increasingly effective LWIF combo cluever.

Holy hell, bro, you really cooked with this one, this is awesome! I was looking for decks that try to capitalize on Pete's ability, and this is a really creative and cool way of doing it!