Sister Mary
The Nun

Investigador

Believer. Blessed.

Guardião
  • 4
  • 2
  • 3
  • 3
Health: 5. Sanity: 9.

During setup, add 2 tokens to the chaos bag.

When the round ends: Add 1 token to the chaos bag.

effect: +1. If you succeed, add 1 token to the chaos bag.

"The Lord watches over my path. I am armored in faith."
Cristi Balanescu
The Innsmouth Conspiracy #1.

Sister Mary - Back

Investigador

Deck Size: 30.

Deckbuilding Options: Guardian cards () level 0-5, Neutral cards level 0-5, Mystic cards () level 0-2.

Deckbuilding Requirements (do not count toward deck size): Guardian Angel, Crisis of Faith, 1 random basic weakness.

The more Sister Mary learns of the strange and arcane forces that sometimes manifest in this world, the more certain she is that she has been set upon a path to ward off these forces and protect the innocent wherever possible. Armed only with the trappings of her church and an unshakable faith, Sister Mary seeks out every supernatural threat she hears of through her fellow priests and nuns. Other members of her church may dismiss such things as medieval nonsense, but Sister Mary knows the real evils that exist in the shadows - and she knows that if such evils are left unchecked, they will bring ruin and horror to all of creation.
Sister Mary
Sister Mary
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FAQs

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Reviews

Welcome to the Nun Girl, shes got fun and games

She’s got everything you want, honey we know the memes

She’s got the people that can find the token that she needs

So, if you want a gunny, nunny, pack her one of these

.

Shes a Nun Girl, makes an awesome Gun Girl

Watch her bring em’ to their shun n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n knees, knees

Uh ah, She’s kickin’ ass with creed

.

Welcome to the Nun Girl, she likes to pray by day

If you want your rosaries, she’s the deck to play

And she’s a very hexy girl, packing spells with ease

She can cast the bright lights, and even get them for free

Shes the nun girl, welcome to the nun girl

See my, my, my, my seraphim

Ooh, ah, I want a holy team

.

Welcome to the Nun Girl, she gets blessings every day

Covenant em’ hard an keep em’ all, an’ in the bag they`ll stay

You gotta hold some back you see, you'll use em’ eventually

You can spend em if you want, but you wanna seal two or three

.

Now that Gun Girl has Favor of the Sun Girl

Watch her bring em’ to their shun n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n knees, knees

Uh ah, she packs Guns N’ Rosaries!

.

Those on high you never ever wanna come down

So down, so down, so down, yeah!!!

You know where they are?

They're with the Nun Girl baby

They’re gonna die

Shes a Nun Girl, an’ a tonna Fun Girl

Watch her bring em’ to their shun n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n knees, knees

Shes the Nun Girl, not that priest out in the jungle

See my, my, my Holy Team

Get down with the Nun Girl, Blessings one and done Girl

Watch her bring em’ to their shun n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n knees, knees

Shes a Nun Girl, the fun has just begun girl

Watch her bring you to your

Shes gonna bring it down!

Huh!

StartWithTheName · 68860
Masterpiece — Moleow18! · 1
amazing — FlyingSolo · 1
Nothing more cringe-inducing — bilous · 1

Hey everyone,

Now that the whole Innsmouth Conspiracy (and more) has been released, how about having a new look at our friend Sister Mary?

Please leave your suggestions for her in comment section! What are your successes and disapointments while playing her?

That being said, it seems like there are 3 different Paths to take for her:

The Path, the Path, and the Path.


1) The full Path

A] How to boost her ?

Sister Mary has 4 , being her higher base stat.

On top of that, Sister Mary benefits from a certain amount of cards that bring to our fellow .

• Bandolier (2) if you are packing a .35 Winchester or 2 Spirit Athame

• Holy Rosary first and Holy Rosary

• Nephthys that is insane for her, test-less damage and capturing all the tokens

• Police Badge that we most likely won't be using as it competes with Holy Rosary

• Brother Xavier that is a bit expensive and not really used to his full potential here

• David Renfield that is great to set up the game, but we don't have many easy ways to kill him except for Ward of Protection

Once your game is set up, Sister Mary will have around 7 to 8.

B] What to do with that ?

Then to leverage that high , we have a certain amount of cards available:

• Radiant Smite is the first one that comes to mind: many damages and cheap. A staple for that Path.

• Of course, all the suite of Spells, preferably horror dealing oriented, Clairvoyance, Shrivelling and why not updating our spell to Rite of Seeking (2).

• Using Sign Magick thanks to your Bandolier (2), you can also bring Sixth Sense and Wither to save charges when they are not useful.

• Sword Cane always good for Evading.

• Enchant Weapon is insane but is not necessarily the best in this build unless attached to your Spirit Athame for a once-a-turn 2-damage hit.

• Enchanted Armor that makes this build extremely tanky, but if that's what you're looking for, Shield of Faith is a solid contender.

C] Overall build:

Even though Sister Mary will not be as strong as a built-in such as Jacqueline Fine or Akachi Onyele, thanks to Stick to the Plan, combined with Ever Vigilant and Emergency Cache Sister Mary has the reliability that is comon to to make this build viable and easy to set up for beginner players.


2) The full Path

A] How to turn her 3 into a damage dealing machine?

Sister Mary has access to the full pool. This means that you can equip her with big guns: .35 Winchester, Shotgun or the thematic Holy Spear.

• In order to have a good use of her weapons, she needs to improve her base : For this there are the commonly used Beat Cop (0) and Beat Cop (2) and Grete Wagner.

• Well Prepared is also mandatory once you have purchased your big gun option.

With Shotgun + Well Prepared + Grete Wagner + Beat Cop + Charisma, you shoot with 10, not even considering the fact that you have high chances of finding a . If you use the Holy Spear instead, you fight with 11 when sealing tokens.

That is good, but still lower than most guardians.

B] How does Sister Mary compete with other ?

Drum rolls: 3 things: her splash, her high and her constant generation of tokens.

• You may be asking why I've mentioned Shotgun over Every Other Big Gun? Now consider having this combo: any of these combos: Bandolier (0) or (2) + Grotesque Statue (2) or Premonition + Favor of the Sun, Favor of the Sun + Recall the Future, Scrying Mirror + Enchant Weapon (after pulling the chaos token with Scrying Mirror, you can decide to use Enchant Weapon or not as they are both activated between Phase 1 and 2 of the Skill Test), and most likely many others...

_You can shoot hard and tutor the number of damages you make based on your needs._

• The Holy Spear on its side requires more management, for example Hallow to release all the seals tokens of your Holy Spear after 5 boost attacks, to remove 1 doom. The absence of Ammo makes it more reliable.

• Finally the .35 Winchester can be really powerful with Olive McBride, Favor of the Sun, Grotesque Statue and Recall the Future to compensate your low .

C] Overall build:

Thanks to Enchant Weapon and/or Holy Spear that you can fuel thanks to your unique token generation, Sister Mary can be as effective as most guardians when it comes to dealing with enemies, with the bonus of helping your teammates to pass their tests.


The Path in between:

A] Why should you take an in-between and Path?

There are multiple reasons why a focussed Sister Mary should still think of improving her later in the campaign:

• For solo/flex, a high with Sixth Sense / Clairvoyance improved into Rite of Seeking (2) to still be a good cluever.

• For a better use of your Enchant Weapon which is most likely an overkill anyways.

• For a better encounter prot as well as an increased generation of tokens thanks to Holy Rosary and "Let me handle this!".

B] Cards to consider to improve your

As a second priority, after the purchase of a reliable source of damage as mentioned earlier, you can look at improving your with cards that have a double use:

• Bandolier (2) that also allows you to bring you Grotesque Statue (2)/Sword Cane along your main weapon.

• Holy Rosary as explained earlier.

• Rite of Seeking (2) in the late campaign if you want more flexibility.

C] Overall build:

Out of the 3 builds here: Shotgun is really fun, .35 Winchester also brings the excitement (or frustration?) of pulling that or not, and Holy Spear is both deadly and reliable...

Nevertheless, they are all working properly, especially for the Holy Spear that can be taken easily to Hard or even Expert difficulty if you want true horror.

And the obvious big advantage of this build is that you can also investigate when there are no enemies, with Clairvoyance/Rite of Seeking (2) if you're playing multiplayer, and Sixth Sense if you're going solo while also giving you really solid encounter protection against tests.


Conclusion:

It first seemed that Sister Mary needed her to be prioritised over her , giving us another "fake " like Carolyn Fern. But as the cycle was released, the game designers showed us that they had other plans for her. Thanks to some tricks, juggling with tokens and manipulating deadly weapons, she is a real damage dealer. That is why she is a well-deserved .

If you're looking at creating a deck for a less common investigator, one that is a bit more elaborated than a full-gun Mark or Leo, then I would highly invite you to look at Sister Mary, the real Dark Horse of Arkham Horror.

Valentin1331 · 67663
I ran Sister Mary as a Shotgun Nun and loved it. Favor of the Sun + Ancient Covenant melts big enemies. I couldn’t run that Covenant, but my co-Investigators were Stella and Mateo - who both brought copies. — Death by Chocolate · 1440

((UPDATE: Revising my notes, as the campaign continues it’s clear there are a lot of seal and release tokens for bless effects. So the goal of Sister Mary is to fill the bag and autosucceed, then trap them again. With that in mind, she doesn’t need to level up her weapons much from the Winchester, can focus on assets and events that put that weapon into play.))

Most of the reviews on this site do a good job of telling you what a card does and how to use it. They point out cute little exceptions, tell you whether something is worth a second look or not worth your time at all.

It’s super hard to write that review for Sister Mary. At the time of writing, the TIC pack is just coming out. There are cards for all five classes that use bless and curse tokens...And we get four very interesting, clear-cut investigators. Amanda likes skill cards, especially ones that get her clues. Silas likes to dodge and fight. Dexter likes putting new assets into play and using rogue chicanery to get rich doing it. Trish can evade and take advantage of monster presence to get even more clues...

Sister Mary adds good tokens to the bag. Now, if you’ve been playing Arkham for a long time, (and during the pandemic you probably have), you’ve internalized a lot of thoughts about the chaos bag. It’s best to have a skill +2 above the challenge you’re trying to beat. if you’re ever stuck, look at the bag and chart out how many of those tokens will give you a success.

But what if some of those tokens give you a +2, with a chance of driving the autofail? What if some of the tokens are negative, with more draw?

So already the anchorite is tricky.

Then you get the card pool. She’s the first five blue/2 purple character, and those are deep carpools with many many ways of playing them.

With access to Mystic cards between 0 and 2 XP, you might try Mary as a mage. But eventually, you’re going to find you want the really upgraded versions of spells and they’re not available.

With guardian level 0 to 5, you might try for a build similar to Carolyn. But Miss Fern has a few things going for her that Mary doesn’t: horror healing cards like Peter Silvestry, seeker access, built-in moneymaking, and a four next to the little picture of a book.

So you have a mago-guardian who is extremely indirect. You have an evasion of three, which neither class will help you with. Same with your fight score, and with five health you don’t wanna be sitting on top of monsters whiffing all day. At the same time, paying three bucks for a spell to give you plus one to your fight or evade seems like a nonstarter in an already asset-heavy deck.

That is why sister Mary is, at least at the start of the cycle, a three or four player character. Because you can do some fabulous support. Ward of protection (and ward level two), word of radiance, stand together, I’ll handle this…the power is yours to mitigate the mythos phase. The book of Psalms heals horror from people like Silas and Roland. while massively boosting the token pool, and it doesn’t exhaust. You can put scrying mirrors in each hand or teamwork them over to allies, so that your pals have no excuses for failing checks. You can make sure everyone is properly equipped (passing money between rogues and survivors, or passing weapons to Amanda.)

And when nobody fails checks, the game goes faster, there are fewer problems with the mythos deck... Everyone’s happy.

There are already inklings of what blessed tokens can do. Rite of sanctification protects you from Mary’s weakness, can be played in both slots, and gives passive economy to your teammates. (They’ll definitely appreciate putting a six resource Tommy gun into play for two bucks.) Combo with tides of fate to turn a very ugly bag into a pile of future money.

And the future abbess has another neat trick: her ability is automatic. She doesn’t need to trigger an action, play a card or move.

Over the next few months, we’re going to get dozens of cards that give us cool new uses for blessed tokens. There will be spell and guardian upgrades, cool covenants, and everything will make sense.

But until then, it can feel like solving a jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces. Is it worth three bucks for a token adding version of dodge? Is a beat cop reasonable? Physical training?

If you can’t make sense of her, that’s OK. All will be revealed in time. You’re simply lacking the one thing that sister Mary has in spades: faith.

MrGoldbee · 1443
Cute ending. Don’t forget one major thing the sister has over the psych: She can take Lightning Gun. While the +5 has long been considered a bit overkill, it makes you barely care that she has only 3 base combat. Flamethrower’s pretty good too. — Death by Chocolate · 1440
I may just try it! — MrGoldbee · 1443
The BAR might be worth considering, as well. — Zinjanthropus · 227
The issue with the BAR is that without a high base combat, you lose a lot of the value from being able to attack with 2 or 3 ammo for smaller, efficient hits. — Death by Chocolate · 1440
Sister Mary is probably a cenobite rather than an anchorite, considering that her card talks about fellow monastics. Sorry for the pedantry. — LivefromBenefitSt · 1051
You’re probably right. They didn’t teach me this while I was prepping for my bar mitzvah. — MrGoldbee · 1443
You cannot pass Sea Change Harpoon to Amanda. Signature cards cannot be controlled by other investigators (see FAQ). — Yenreb · 15
Fixed. — MrGoldbee · 1443
There are some decent offensive options for her like Radiant Smite and Spectral Razor. Similarly, for clues, there are various event options from guardian and rogue that should be plenty. — Chitinid · 14
Rogue? — MrGoldbee · 1443
He must mean mystic: i.e. Read the Signs, Drawn to Flame. — SGPrometheus · 809
Agreed with the update. Paradoxical Covenant, Tempt Fate, Rite of Sanctification, and Olive, make Sister Mary very capable to do just about whatever she wants, at least once a turn. The updated spells make it so that she can not only succeed almost on demand, but decide if she wants the cursed benefit for each spell. Bonus if you use Eldritch Inspiration (1), then you can fire off the curse benefit twice... Eye of Chaos = 4 clues, or 3 clues and 1 charge. Armageddon = 4 damage, or 3 damage and 1 charge. and these are level 1 spells. — Abbojm01 · 5
Forgot to mention that Favor of the Moon is the card that makes this all happen. — Abbojm01 · 5
why she can only add a beat cop not 2 of them? — natartnat · 1