Silas Marsh goes Dark

Silas Marsh

Ever since Silas was spoiled, I knew he was a perfect candidate to rival my popular and very successful Dark Horse Duke build:

https://arkhamdb.com/decklist/view/4857/dark-horse-duke-solo-updated-my-best-solo-deck-7.0

I love that Dark Horse Duke build. But I truly felt that Silas had the chance to be just as good or even better in that Dark Horse role - especially with that laser focus on skill cards that work so well with Dark Horse as you don’t want your deck full of expensive events like maybe you would with other decks but. So far, this deck hasn’t disappointed. I’ve taken this deck successfully through Dunwich without issue and I’m through the first two scenarios of the Forgotten Age and have faired very well so far.

How does the deck work?

• It’s all about Dark Horse. The deck is very cheap with few events in order to turn on Dark Horse consistently

• Lots of skills! His access to innate skills - some of the best cards in the game - is huge and he definitely takes advantage of them. Eureka! for selective card draw. Resourceful to often get back Lucky!. Inquiring Mind is a clutch card for Silas to help him with investigations or whatever he needs. Inspiring Presence I’ll talk about this card more later but it’s been an amazing card for primarily Yaotl to get extra uses out of his ability. Skill cards obviously take no resources, help with his card draw, and most importantly adds so much to the consistency of his deck

• There’s some great combos in this deck. Many of them are still here from my Dark Horse Duke deck like Madame Labranche and Lucky!. You can see my other write up from my linked deck above as many of the principles and tricks carry over to this deck.

Upgrade Path

So as I alluded too earlier, Yaotl plays a huge role in this deck and pulls so much weight with his ability to add icons to tests. As much as I love Peter Sylvestre, I have opted to replace him with Yaotl. Even though Pete has his incredible horror soak, I’ve found that I have enough horror soak/healing with cards like Cherished Keepsake, Fearless (especially level 2!), and Inspiring Presence.

Charisma is often a good early upgrade to benefit from the allies in this deck including some other ones like Aquinnah and The Red-Gloved Man which May be upgraded into later.

Lucky! is an obvious upgrade

Upgraded Newspaper has proven to be very good in solo

One of the most powerful cards in the game can unsurprisingly make this deck unbelievably powerful and consistent. That is Key of Ys. Crazy good card.

As mentioned earlier, with Silas’ low starting horror pool, upgraded Fearless is a terrific card.

Other cards I like to upgrade to a bit later is Stroke of Luck and A Test of Will.

You can play around with those upgrades and the order you choose to get them, but those are the bulk of what I’m looking to upgrade into.

Notable Exclusions

A card I wish I could find space for in this deck but can’t seem to is the great Rogue innate skill Quick Thinking. I love this card but can’t find something I like less to cut. Plus it’s wild icon doesn’t synergize great with Yaotl.

Unexpected Courage and Last Chance. Great cards. Again, biggest reason i didn’t include it is it doesn’t synergize well with Yaotl.

Conclusion

If you were one of the Lucky ones to get The Deep Gate recently (which I fortunately was!) which has Silas’ cards in there, I’d invite you to sleeve up this deck and give it a shot. If not, just proxy him and run it anyway. I love the consistency and power this deck brings to pass tests consistently, obtain clues, defeat enemies, and just overall control the game. Silas’ innate ability is so strong giving you that knowledge if you need to use the skill card or put it back in hand if you failed the test or didn’t need the card to pass. He allows for loads of clever and strategic play all while still being an incredibly fun investigator to play and pilot.

As always, comments or suggestions are welcome. Game on!