Solo Mateo Cheats his way through Forgotten Age

Love this list. It just looks so solid. Probably the only spot I'm curious about is the 1 of for both Allies. Seems like it should be one or the other. Having played it a bit would you keep your Allies the same or pick one in particular to focus on?

Had a chance to sneak peak this deck. Was solid and after failing a few times with my own creation and other investigators. This deck dominated it. Granted it has changed but if you're looking to not use Spirit and Shriv lvl3. Pick up the Elder Sign event and you're solid.

Good work

Thanks for the input! In retrospect I would have traded out the Arcane Initiate for another David Renfield, or possibly Alyssa. You can definitely go Seal of the Elder sign as a starting xp pick. It is VERY good, especially in solo and combined with Mateo's Elder Sign ability. In my own solo Mateo run, Spirit Athame (in both scenarios) and the Level 5 Shriveling (in Doom of Eztli) were key to his cake run. He could have certainly done without, and gone Seal of the Elder Sign instead. However, I feel the two Spirit Athames add consistency, as opposed to the SofES's bomb effect, which is very important in solo.

I really appreciate the build! What advice might you have to adjust Mateo in multiplayer?

If you are doing multiplayer in FA, it will greatly depend on who else is around. You could sub in another Rite of Seeking and take out a Manual Dexterity. Maybe a Holy Rosary for a Guts. And another David Renfield or Alyssa for Arcane Initiate. The skill cards let you draw through a little over half your deck each FA scenario, so finding spells isn't typically a problem. You may want to keep the 2x Perceptions in there for Ichtaca. That is a hard test to pass. Aside from that, it really just depends on Mateo's role!

If you're doing a different campaign, then you might not need so many evasion cards, like Manual Dexterity. But I'm afraid I cannot offer much more advice than that! This deck is meant to pass Willpower and Evasion tests, which can be universally useful in nearly any other campaign. But he can always go more cluevery or fighting, as needed.

Great deck, I was able to "breeze" through Scenario One in FA without too much difficulty - though I had to start evading a lot when my Shrivelling ran out. Might consider adding in spell recharge cards. Keep you posted.

@ZefyrusYou can always pick up Song of the Dead instead of Shriveling lv 3 with your starting XP, and sub out the Cthonian Stone, if you feel you need some more killing power. I personally evaded everything I could and saved my Shrivelings for must-kills. Definitely keep us posted. In subsequent plays I found the Cthonian Stone to be less useful, as a whole.

The The Chthonian Stone is a two edged sword. It removes penalizing tokens from the chaos bag, but decreases the number of tokens in total. So all others become more likely, including autofail and elder sign.

I have gone from lukewarm on the Cthonian Stone to super hot.

Most scenarios have one symbol that is terrible to draw and will always do something quite awful and that symbol is a great candidate for the stone.

It isn't going to mitigate anything until you can run incantations.

I don't understand "It isn't going to mitigate anything until you can run incantations." Could you explain more in detail please?

I wrote that on a few hours of sleep. I should have written "It won't actually improve odds of a pull that much until you get Protective Incantations".

Still a great deck, just finished Boundary Beyond relatively easy!

I am considering a more evasive deck though, to avoid the Fury of Yig. In scenario 1 and 2 I was lucky to get Shrivelling out early on, so I scored bad on the Fury track.

In Boundary Beyond however, I was 20 cards down through my deck without a Shrivelling in sight. Mists of R'lyeh helped to avoid raking in more Fury whilst moving out of harms way and towards the objective locations.

@Zefyrus I'm glad you like it. I was surprised at just how well Mateo handled the Boundary Beyond, especially with 2x Seal of the Elder Sign and 2x Shrivelling (5). I picked up a single Song of the Dead as a fallback option in case I didn't see either Shrivelling, and so far it has worked well. While not a huge damage dealer, it comes with 5 charges and is just enough to tide him over and deal with enemies.

Mists of R'lyeh and the Manual Dexterity x2 should make Mateo fairly evasion-focused, which is very helpful in the Forgotten Age. Please let me know what you find out in your own plays!

Maybe another Arcane Initiate to help search for spells? Ho about ditchting David Renfield if you didn't use him very often?

Did you consider Mind Wipe to ignore the vengeance quality?

Good ideas; I might ditch Renfield since I find myself with ample of resources to get through the scenarios. For now having 2x Mists and 2x Shrivelling gives me ample options to deal with enemies, just adds some randomness in gaining/preventing Fury.

Also [spoiler alert] : I keep doubting what to do with the Harbinger :) I've brought it down to 3 health, but am holding off the finishing blow.

I've never played FA (waiting for completion), so i can't really give you real advice. I suppose, evade him until he leaves from his ressource effect? Or do you not have time (doom) to do that?

My group will gather all vengeance points possible on our first attempt... and die horribly, i suspect.

Did this get so far on hard?

Thanks @Djangofor this deck! I've modified it a little bit for a multiplayer campaign. So far, it's going fairly well. :)

nice deck might sound like a silly question, but whats the use of David Renfield? And what would you start off a campaign, since spirit athame is 1 exp.

@xoxoalexa this deck isn’t from me but thanks anyway.

@OzValdo Mateo starts with 5xp so he can start with athame. Renfield is a good damage soak for mystics with 2 stamina and a great source of Ressources if you can manage the doom.

Love the look of this deck btw. Just out of interest, how did you get rid of the doom here? Using for Return to Dunwich. Did you just look for attacks of opportunity?

@Jim’s TrumpetYes, attacks of opportunity or horror/physical damage. It's not particularly hard. However, since making this deck I have arrived at a fail-safe: bump Renfield out of the ally slot with another ally! This gives you greater control over how much doom you place on Renfield and how soon you can bump him out.

Nice! Thanks. I added in a ‘Deny Existence’ too, to help with ‘Beyond the Veil’ shenanigans. Did the business in Extra Curricula Activity.