Dark Horse Jim

Card draw simulator

Odds: 0% – 0% – 0% more
Derived from
None. Self-made deck here.
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Faranim · 393

This is meant to take advantage of Jim’s mostly balanced stat line combined with Dark Horse.

is used with Fire Axe to fight most enemies, at least until you can upgrade into Shrivelling (3) or Shrivelling (5), or potentially Song of the Dead (2)

is used to investigate or parlay. With either Alyssa Graham, St. Hubert's Key, Dark Horse or Arcane Studies Jim should be able to boos his to 5+ fairly easily. The deck also includes Drawn to the Flame for some auto-clues.

is used at least initially to evade with Mists of R'lyeh or with Shrivelling when you don’t find Fire Axe. It will be more useful after getting some XP

Piloting should be pretty straightforward. Play whatever weapon you have, then 1-2 other assets. Once you get low on resources, play Dark Horse. The other assets can be pitched for skill pips and likely won’t be played. Even though the deck has a lot of assets, you will likely only play 3 or 4 of them during a scenario.

The event cards are all cheap, so it should be fairly easy to stay at 0-1 resources once Dark Horse hits the table.

2 comments

Oct 07, 2018 Greatsageishere · 141

I've played lots of Dark Horse Jim builds in my time, they're a lot of fun. If I may offer a few points for consideration? Disregard as you will, of course.

Since you have no permanent for dumping resources in order to turn on Dark Horse at will, I've found Arcane Studies is very important. It may be worth including 2 copies.

The Fire Axe/Dark Horse/Labrance combo works beautifully. Since you only have space for 1 Labranche in your splash, have you considered 1 or 2 copies of David Renfield in case she can't be found?

Uncage the soul for free shrivelling/mists, once dark horse is down?

This one is really more a matter of preference but you may find your intellect is high enough without Alyssa (her ability is awesome though, perfectly acceptable to keep her for that. But then maybe you could consider a means of clearing her doom?). I included her in my earlier decks, but that was before St. Hubert's Key came along. Both of which are 4-cost assets in a dark horse deck, so you're not going to get both out.

For a secondary ally, Arcane initiate could be worth a thought instead. You're probably going to want to see those spells (I see you've got Arcane Research in there). In fact you may find that the same thing ultimately happens with Jim as what happens with Dark Horse Minh: that your in-faction "weapon" (Shrivelling 5, Strange Solution) ends up outshining the fire axe combo, which then becomes more of a back-up weapon. Still good for saving ammo mind you, but not what you want to see most.

Finally, you've probably already though of this but when spending XP Crystalline Elder Sign makes a nice upgrade to St Hubert's Key.

All that said, these comments don't really take into account your strategy of including lots of single-copy assets and only playing a handful, which I'm not used to, so some things may not apply.

Oct 07, 2018 Faranim · 393

Thanks for the feedback. After further thought I agree that it would be better to drop Alyssa Graham and instead focus on playing St. Hubert's Key as my 1 expensive asset.

I also added 1 copy of Rite of Seeking and replaced the Emergency Cache with Uncage the Soul so that the spells can be played even with 0-1 resource.

Lastly I dropped a few of the skill cards to make room for a 2nd copy of Arcane Studies since you’re right that you need a consistent way to spend resources to turn Dark Horse on. I also forgot that the mystic permanent card Blood Pact doesn’t cost resources either, so Arcane Studies and Fire Axe are the only reusable recource sinks in the deck.