Saturday Night Sleuthing (Solo, Dunwich)

This deck is all about hoovering up those clues as early as possible. With multiple options for dealing a cheap blow to enemies where possible. Whether by Blinding the ones you know you can't waste time on to keep moving, or a quick knife throw to deal with the less pesky ones.

Given the copious number of -3 effect chaos tokens that you face off against in Dunwich, the Ritual Candles provide a nice means to make that +2 over challenge staple you want to hit a nice statistical bonus particularly early into a mystery.

Ward of Protection allows a cheap means to avoid the more pesky occasional cards like Locked Door or simply to buy yourself a little more time with against a Ancient Evils.

Forbidden Knowledge allows not only a quick means of gathering extra clues without having to waste time, while dishing out a little hurt in preparation for a Shrivelling or a Knife throw against Life 3 creatures for a single action.

This deck gets progressively weaker the longer a game drags on, so try to avoid the temptation of thinking you still have time on the agenda clock.

Peter Sylvestre is a natural addition, allowing you to minimise the horror to unleash your special ability, and reduce total horror accumulation. If you want a more aggressive deck, I suggest dropping the Clarity of Mind and throwing in another Lucky! to help improve the odds of getting it so you can bolster Agnes' already decent evasion abilities, or to nullify a knife throw that went bad ....

For when you finally get some exp behind you, I suggest Bind Monster to really give you an out. Perhaps even dropping that Clarity of Mind. Maybe even an Elder Sign Amulet if you are feeling particularly vulnerable and to better assist in only taking a maximum of one horror to make use of that freebie damage.

With this deck, consider letting the enemy give you that attack of opportunity if it means getting that single damage in, being able to cue up cards you want later, or moving to another room while engaged, and because Agnes' ability triggers each phase, not each round (allowing you to potentially kill monsters with little or no clicks while setting yourself up to complete objectives with fewer encounter draws to boot). Sometimes it might be worth it, particularly if you take said character into Night of the Zealot. If you have Peter Sylvestre out and another in hand and you'redealing with a creature where you positively have to kill it and you can't waste actions with evading.

If you find that 6 Health is scaring you with no real means to shore up against it ... Aquinnah is a decent card and a very cool if expensive choice if you're going to swap out Peter Sylvestre if you suddenly think you're going to get swamped by monsters returning to hub rooms (particularly relevant in Night of the Zealot and in Dunwich early on, but far enough that you'll definitely have the xp by then). She wouldn't be my pick ... but I can see the appeal. The Aquinnah strategy works well with the idea of taking the occasional attack of opportunity to get freebie damage, with no clicks spent, while damaging enemies at your location. Allowing you to move from one evaded enemy, inflict pain on it, and get to another room (albeit with one enemy still engaged).

Action-less damage on enemies is always a beautiful thing to see and I've killed two enemies without directly spending clicks on them this way (Forbidden Knowledge + Aquinnah + Agnes' ability over two phases). But janky is janky and I wouldn't suggest it.

Speed is essential with this deck. Try not to waste time if it means less encounter draws that will be the primary cause of you getting bogged down into costly fights to begin with.