Sojo's Dojo

Versatile solo/2p easy to pick up, good stuff decks

Welcome to Sojo's Dojo, featuring a series of decks that have taken me through my 2P games and the occasional true solo. They have all been tested in actual sessions, and were constructed with versatility and resilience in mind. I'm a fan of smaller combos and just efficient "good stuff" cards, rather than combo decks that need set-up time and/or just the perfect draw. Especially in smaller player count games where quite often you can't rely on other people to cover for you, and just have to make the best of the hand you've drawn.

These decks are also built with Standard in mind, as Hard and above lend to different deckbuilding considerations.

My approach to Kohaku:

Get an extra action/turn as much as you can. The utility of an extra action is much easier to get value out of, rather than trying to spend time and effort trying to shape both your hand and the context to get some cool blurse effect off.

Quickly generating and then just as quickly spending tokens makes the deck much easier to pilot, and the deck more resilient in the sense that every card draw is much easier to help your immediate situation, rather than build to some niche scenario.

The core cards that support the above:

Tempt Fate
Auto-include. It's basically a free action almost on demand on your turn, and even replaces itself with a draw!

Deep Knowledge and Faustian Bargain
I like building my decks to have access to more resource generation than they really need to, and that's because scenarios and treacheries can quite often mess with the curve you've planned on paper for the deck. Fresh no-xp Mystics usually have an issue with resource/card draw, and these 2 out of faction cards are simply the best at what they do, and also generate curse tokens to be eaten by Kohaku's ability for actions.

Read the Signs, Spectral Razor
Simply efficient and impactful cards that can turn your game around if it's headed in the wrong direction. Kohaku has quite possibly the best stat spread too for these 2 cards, meaning it's a base 8 for Signs, and a base 7 for Razor. Razor is also great for getting rid of Weeping Yurei if needed.

Priest of Two Faiths
Perfect for this Kohaku build which is focused on getting tokens to eat for actions. Cheap at only 1 cost, and very good health and horror soak. Switching your David Renfields out for 2 priests, is the best use for your first 2xp.

Keep Faith
token generation is usually harder than spitting out , and relying on kohaku's ability to generate them is too slow on its own. I find Keep Faith essential in keeping up the Kohaku 4 actions/turn train. Spending 2xp to make at least 1 of these free, is a decent option in the long run.

Holy Rosary
This is more a placeholder for its upgraded version. As mentioned, any token generation is welcome, and getting +1 is always good for a Mystic. Your next 2XP after getting double Priest of Two Faiths should be for Holy Rosary.

Promise of Power, Drawn to the Flame, and Ward of Protection
All 3 are just efficient and impactful Mystic cards. Do consider swapping out Drawn to the Flames for Stirring Up Troubles. This isn't essential though, and you should consider it more as a nice to have. It's tempting to play Promise of Power as soon as you can, but save Promise of Powers for when you really need it. For example, Grasping Hands or crippling ones such as Locked Door.

Interesting tech choices:

Singles of Armageddon and Ethereal Form.
I used to run 2x of each, and Shroud of Shadows over Ethereal Form. However experience showed that I didn't really need double of each, as they are really more of emergency cards than anything. Playing 2 instances of Armageddon is almost out of the question with each copy at 4 cost, and the card draw from Tempt Fate and Deep Knowledge is enough to get your your Armageddon and Spectral Razors in hand. Ethereal Form is a good emergency card. Evading for base 5 is okay, and throwing a couple of at it usually makes it safe. Shroud of Shadows is just too expensive and slow in the sense you got to spend an action to prep it up first, and you may not even need to evade at all that scenario.

Blasphemous Covenant over all the other covenants.
Mostly because it returns the token to the bag. You want to eat those for actions, not spend them, and protecting against the first you draw makes the run much smoother. This should be your 5th and 6th XP spend.

Not building for too much Book of Living Myths synergy.
Outside of Armageddon and an upgraded Ethereal Form (which should be your first upgrade with Arcane Research, there really isn't much need to search for tokens to trigger effects. Which is fine, because I bias for eating tokens for actions, and reserve the ability for searching only when there's a really important test coming up and I need as much help as possible, which means searching for or failing that, a if Blasphemous Covenant is in play. Getting upgraded version of Signs and Razor is also cool, but not as urgent as upgrading Ethereal Form and Armageddon.

Flex cards

Living Ink is a real XP hog, but a 0 cost +1 is very easy to find value in a deck with double Read the Signs and Spectral Razor. There is some minor synergy with Macabre Depiction and the blurse token generation though I prefer just getting making it Subtle first and just juggling when I need it the most. Overall Living Ink is more a nice to have rather than essential component of the deck. Feel free to swap these out for anything else you'd like. However it should be noted that getting Living Ink fully upgraded with Vibrant + and towards the end of the campaign does make Kohaku a real monster though. That said, if you already have The Key of Solomon for healing, it does help mitigate some of the intense damage you have coming in from crappy . Save your Promise of Powers for tests! You may not pass the test, but quite often it can help you fail "better" and reduce the damage suffered.

Speaking of which, the Voice of Ra placeholder into The Key of Solomon. The Key of Solomon may seem like an almost auto-include in any Kohaku list, but it does go against a bit of the philosophy of this deck. The issue is that it requires you to engineer the situation a little bit in terms of having a certain token more than the other in the bag, and you should be eating those tokens for actions as much as possible anyway. However, the flexibility of actionless healing either health or horror cannot be understated especially if you start taking more trauma in the course of a campaign. Also, eating a for 2 resources without an action is an excellent good-to-have too. I like decks with more resource generation than not after all. Also Voice of Ra over an Emergency Cache because of the flexibility of using it for a icon if needed.

Accursed is more a flair card than anything else, but in this deck it has more utility than usual. A , token generation, and really helping out when you have an essential test coming up? Perfect. While a cool fun tech piece, do feel free to swap these out for just straight up Unexpected Courages for general resilience or simple Guts.

Perception for a Sword Cane. A singleton Sword Cane is a great emergency card for Kohaku, and you should really consider this depending on your 2p partner or you just want a bit more safety in your starting deck.

Upgrading a Perception into a The Skeleton Key should also be considered! You have the extra actions to drag it around.

All in all, I hope this blueprint for a versatile Kohaku serves you well. I'll be sharing decks for more investigator decks built with a similar philosophy, so do look out!