The Feast of Hemlock Vale pack's trio of Spell comes in Lv. 2 Event form with a recycle effect. You need 2 resources to play them each time, and should reveal a symbol to trigger the recycle. Book of Living Myths is an obvious combo to force or to show up and get the recycle going. But as a signature with no search, you can't always rely on this.

Enter The Key of Solomon which we will spend the first 8 XP for 2 copies to make sure you can setup without Book of Living Myths. It can keep selling for 2 resources to support those spell events, as well as healing with to mitigate his low 6 health and lack of damage soaks in this deck.

► About "2 Packs Deck Guide"
　A series of decks made with the new distribution model in mind, requiring a Revised Core Set box + just 1 more Investigator Expansion box. ✂ character on the deck's name means the additional box it uses is The Feast of Hemlock Vale Investigator Expansion.
　It maximizes the chance of newcomers being able to build and learn to play the game, enjoying the story on Standard difficulty ASAP. They can then get into deck-building later if they wished to do so. See other decks in the "2 Packs Deck Guide" series here.

Accolades : This 2 packs deck won The Feast of Hemlock Vale campaign on Standard as a duo with Kate Winthrop!

(View at arkham-starter.com)

0 XP Gameplay

Investigation is less of a problem with 4 ready to go and 2x Perception supporting to get some draws and setup the fighting side. There are also 2x Flashlight just in case the scenario is heavier on the investigation, or your team has an another fighter and you need to flex more on investigation. And lastly, the classic 2x Drawn to the Flame to just cheat some clues out of hard locations, as well as could be committed for basic investigation to get to 6 .

Making Shrivelling work is critical to fight. By making it work, this deck lacks Holy Rosary and he'll be stuck with 4 without other support. You don't want to repeatedly Wicked Athame something more than 1 HP to death adding a ton of along the way, unless you just got a lot of from Ancestral Token and want to cash out into action and is lacking .

Cat Mask gives you +2 that seldomly replenishes depending on how the Agenda is designed. Other than this, try using Arcane Initiate cleverly to refill the mask when Agenda is rather long. If you got Arcane Initiate ahead of finding the mask, you might try your luck waiting for the mask first so you can get a quick replenish.

Other than this to find commits you have 2x Guts and 2x Unexpected Courage. The Unexpected Courage is quite serviceable on Kohaku since he is 4/4/3/1, it works on everything except .

There is one more sneaky trick to get that is Absolution. You can get Absolution with Arcane Initiate since it is a Spell. I have not actually play it to add at all in my test play, they are good enough til the end game just as the only card in the entire game (as of May 2024) that is Lv. 0 Spell with icons. I have been saved many times digging up with Arcane Initiate right before a treachery test in Mythos Phase.

The other card that can fight is 2x Drain Essence, can be searched with Arcane Initiate, still needs support to land, but can safely put damage on enemies on your friend without friendly fire and engaging since it is a Parley. It is a very versatile problem solver. Put some damage on you instead of killing off Arcane Initiate to take advantage of the damage heal from draining.

2x Overpower are here for 2 reasons : You can make use of your 3 to finish off 3 HP enemy that got Shrivelling once without using any more charges, the same task of Wicked Athame but doesn't require setup. You can just draw into Overpower and punch, and get more draw.

9 XP Gameplay

Now you have got one or two copies of The Key of Solomon, a card that pairs up with your ability just as well as Book of Living Myths. Two copies are purely for redundancy since it is so important. If you found an another one later, enjoy the commit icons. (Especially , can almost surely make Shrivelling lands on 4 enemy on Standard.)

A basic combo is that when your bag is 0 / 0 , since it is a tie, you can keep adding 1 or 1 with your ability, and immediately do the 2 heal () or 2 resources () as the situation requires, bringing the bag back to 0 / 0 .

Sometimes Ancestral Token or Wicked Athame will sprint one side ahead and you no longer have a choice. Kohaku's ability adds what's lower, and The Key of Solomon works on whats higher, now sometimes you want to do the other thing that you can't do.

The key to bring harmony into this chaos is the 2 + 2 = action ability. Other than action, you get to bring down the count.

If is ahead, often you might want to not do the at all to avoid adding and just play with a bag of until they are gone, or you get Wicked Athame last shot to add 2~3 at once to attempt to exchange them for action next round.

This trick is also cool : After adding 1~3 on Wicked Athame Fight but before pulling token, use this window to sell one of those for 2 resources with The Key of Solomon. Of course needs to be ahead for this to work, but often being able to vary adding 1~3 would do the trick.

If you ended up selling a lot of you might be overflowing with resources. At this point you don't have Spectral Razor or Read the Signs to burn those resources. You might try dumping them as X on Absolution for fun...

12 XP Gameplay

With Spectral Razor (2) in the deck you can now fight more without worrying too much about Shrivelling running out. But you have a new worry : You feared about playing Spectral Razor (2) without Book of Living Myths to call out the symbol tokens!

It's great if you got the combo going, but if 3 HP enemy appears that could be one shotted with one razor and it speeds up the game greatly if you can kill it fast (especially Aloof one, which you can get a bonus auto-engage) I'd say just try it. You can still naturally hit the symbols naturally especially if you got some in there.

The Key of Solomon will be working harder to sell those because you want 2 resources to repeat the razors. Arcane Initiate can hit more often as the razor replaces Drawn to the Flame which is not a Spell.

2x Overpower have a new purpose other than mentioned at 0 XP, you can commit to razor's Fight. (You can't commit to this Fight, no replacement of test skill here.) But you already start at good 4 + 3 = 7 , likely only would lose to 4 enemy pulling -4 token. Cat Mask also has +2 compatible with this.

I found an extra Wicked Athame's single icon is handy to get 8 , it is likely a "win except " value. I remembered this vividly because there is nothing else with single in this deck except Shrivelling that I likely don't want to commit.

19 XP Gameplay

You got Read the Signs (2), it work similar to Spectral Razor (2) and you have even better accuracy of 4 + 4 = 8 .

Occult Reliquary grants you ability to hold The Key of Solomon or Wicked Athame on your new slot, now Book of Living Myths can come late and still be played. Note that 2x Flashlight are still here and never going to be removed, Occult Reliquary might be just the right card that let you flex to Flashlight at some point in the scenario without losing anything you are holding.

After 19 XP

I add 2x Olive McBride as an another way to call out symbols for the repeatable spell events. Now you won't strictly need Book of Living Myths anymore to make those plays.

Olive McBride having 3 sanity pairs well with 2 heals when exchanging on The Key of Solomon, it also works on Ally. Olive McBride also commits for as an another way to support Shrivelling when you already got Arcane Initiate and don't want to play her. She can also just bump out the doom on Arcane Initiate with slot conflict.

If you got more expansions...

• Shrivelling ••• (The Dunwich Legacy) : Removes the requirement of finding support to use it with the built-in +2 . Good!
• Blood Pact ••• (The Dunwich Legacy) : Since it does not require setup, it is an opportunity to replenish Cat Mask before Agenda advance without requiring Arcane Initiate if you have something to test. After agenda advance, here you try to use 2 charges on the mask, because it is going to replenish again when Agenda getting its first doom.
• Ward of Protection •• (The Path to Carcosa) : Generic upgrade and always good for your friends.
• Alter Fate ••• (The Forgotten Age) : Makes you able to handle more wacky things in the scenario. The card is a Spell as well so you can quickly get it ready to use on your hand with Arcane Initiate.
• Uncage the Soul ••• (The Scarlet Keys) : It can play Spectral Razor (2) from discard pile, so now you have a new way to recover from recycle miss. You must go through attack of opportunity though, but if enemy is on your friend you can uncage and then use the built-in engage on revived razor to fix that. If you now get a symbol on this from-discard play, then it goes back to your hand! Lastly, it can discard empty Shrivelling and immediately replay it for fresh 4 charges and 0 cost.