Studcake Silas (Deck Guide)

.::OVERVIEW::.

Clue: 5.5 | Enemy Mgmt: 9 | Treachery: 7 | Tempo: 8 | Consistency: 7.5

Most of the enemy management specialists in Arkham often are dominated by a heavy focus on fighting or a heavy focus on evasion. A small subset of the investigators, however, have both options available to them, Rita Young, "Skids" O'Toole, Finn Edwards, and Winifred Habbamock being some of those characters. Nevertheless, all of these characters still prefer one primary stat and tactic to achieve their enemy management whereas Silas can be truly flexible in his choices. The deck has reasonable means to manage clue gathering as well as treacheries, so fear not if taking it Solo. Don't be afraid of the Exp cost for the deck. The core engine cards are around 26~ Exp (2 x Eucatastrophe, 1 x True Survivor, 2 x Grisly Totem, 2 x Brute Force, Rise to the Occasion). Starter weapon options are Fire Axe, Meat Cleaver, Baseball Bat, and .18 Derringer.

.::FIGHTING THE ENEMY::.

• Brute Force - Fantastic burst of 3 damage to an enemy. Easy to recur with Resourceful and True Survivor. I would suggest adding skill cards like Daring or Inquiring Mind to the test to ensure you pass by 2 to trigger the full damage of this card. With Silas's ability to pull a skill card back, it's always better to overcommit, and then pull back a skill card if it's not needed to help you pass that threshold Brute Force requires.

• Old Hunting Rifle - Another decent 3 damage per hit weapon. The downside can be reasonably managed using cards like Eucatastrophe to gracefully circumvent the autofail. Alternative weapon options include Timeworn Brand and .18 Derringer which are both 1 handed making it easier to dual wield. Meat Cleaver can be combo'd well to pull horror off you while you stack some onto Peter. UPDATE: Play Chainsaw, its better! XD

• Fire Axe - The 1 Fire Axe is played as a tech to push an empty Old Hunting Rifle out of your hand slot so that you can recur the weapon using something like Resourceful. Fire Axe is cheap and can put down some reliable damage as well. But because we aren't running Madame Labranche and Dark Horse, it's better not to over-rely on this card. Don't be afraid to also play this card before you get down your rifles, because you can also recur these with Resourceful.

.::EVADING THE ENEMY::.

• Peter Sylvestre and Track Shoes - Give static boosts to Silas giving him an easier time using this stat.

• Skill Cards to Supplement - Daring, Manual Dexterity, Survival Instinct, Expeditious Retreat, "Not without a fight!" are all great innate cards that help Silas evade with good action compression and/or economy. Depending on how the game is going, consider taking some of these mentioned to improve your evasion tactics.

• Dig Deep - While this card is more used to deal with Willpower treacheries and skill tests, this is still a perfectly viable option to give you some needed evasion boosters.

.::MIXING IN A LITTLE CLUE GATHERING::.

• Granny Orne - This card is fantastic. The static +1 intellect boost will greatly help Silas pass some lower shroud investigations. Furthermore, think of Granny as a +2 intellect boost once per turn due to her ability. If you ever fail by 1, you can recover by using her ability to essentially get your intellect to a 4.

• Old Keyring - Since clue gathering isn't your primary role, you shouldn't be too worried about it. I prefer Old Keyring to Flashlight for a few reasons. It's cheap meaning it lets you push out the dead rifles from your hand slots so that you can recur them using Resourceful. Also, because Keyring is also a survivor card, it can be recurred using Resourceful whereas Flashlight cannot be. Also, it has a built-in fail resistance so that you only use a charge once you succeed. This card has fantastic synergy with "Look what I found!", which you can include in the deck if you find your team lacking some clue gathering support. You can use Old Keyring in conjunction with Granny Orne to even pull a 6 shroud location into a reasonable range for you to use "Look what I found!" with.

• True Understanding - This card helps you use your primary skills to gather some clues. Although, encounter/scenario cards that test fight or agility are less frequent than willpower tests, you can use True Understanding on a Locked Door to help your cluever and get a clue. You can also just pitch True Understanding to a teammate's encounter if they are in a comfortable position to pass.

• Skill Cards to Supplement - Inquiring Mind, Curiosity, Rise to the Occasion. Rise to the Occasion(3) is particularly helpful and rewards you for attempting shroud locations that are much much higher than you can normally attempt. The best part is that it doesn't conflict with Granny Orne since it calculates using your base value. Having both out makes you super reliable at dealing with 5 shroud locations.

.::DEFENDING AGAINST WILLPOWER CHECKS::.

• Granny Orne - Similarly to what was mentioned regarding clue-gathering, think of Granny as a potentially +2 Willpower check. This along with Peter Sylvestre means that Silas can sit at a Willpower of 4-5, which is very very comfortable. Additionally, should you fail a willpower test that dishes out some horror, Peter is a great soak to pad your low sanity.

• Dig Deep - I think I value this card much more than Dark Horse because it really lets you burst target where you need your key boosts. Depending on your playstyle, you can play the Dark Horse variant, but I prefer to keep resources on hand for some of your key events like True Survivor and Eucatastrophe.

• Skill Cards to Supplement - Inquiring Mind, Curiosity, Rise to the Occasion. Similarly to clue gathering, Rise to the Occasion(3) really beefs up your Willpower defense. You can even use True Understanding to help pass Willpower checks. If you failed, the willpower test, you can always pull the True Understanding back with Silas's ability so that you can try again.

.::TIPS AND TRICKS::.

• Grisly Totem - Fantastic card that gives you 1 extra icon of whatever you committed. It also has the survivor fail-check that allows you to take back something that failed. Great cards to use this with include Resourceful, True Understanding, Take Heart, Brute Force, Quick Thinking.

• Nautical Prowess - Silas's signature replacement skill card can be pulled using his ability when the token is revealed, and you can still trigger the Draw 1 part of the card. You can overcommit and pull this card back and get a card draw. Plus, you can also make sure the card doesn't go to waste by committing it using Grisly Totem, so that you can put it back in your hand should you fail.

• Defiance - Just like the trick with Nautical Prowess, you can pull back a Defiance to ignore symbols (particularly the upgraded Defiance) and the effect of ignoring the symbol tokens will still go through while you can pull the card back.

• Eucatastrophe - This is no secret how fantastic it works with Silas. Silas can recur this card with Resourceful. It is a great way to negate the downside of Old Hunting Rifle, and unexpected autofails, as well as your low Willpower/Intellect. You can even use this in situations to defend against particularly nasty Willpower treacheries while letting you get some engine pieces back. We actually run Versatile to play the one Double or Nothing which you can pitch from the discard pile and reap the benefits.

• Drawing Thin and Track Shoes - Of course Track Shoes gives you lots of mobility, but you can also use the Track Shoes test to get free economy from Drawing Thin. That is again, not a secret, but more for the newer players learning of the combo. Drawing Thin can also be used in combination with Take Heart, and whatever tests you're intending to fail. It also helps keep Silas at his max hand size.

• Double or Nothing - I really value this card in Silas because Silas doesn't have access to high damage compression cards that Guardians do. In order to do his job properly, we can use this card to really ramp up the damage. We can also tag along our key economy cards like Nautical Prowess, Quick Thinking, Resourceful, True Understanding, Brute Force.

• True Survivor - Get back Resourceful which is crucial to a lot of the recursion in the deck (for Eucatastrophe, Old Hunting Rifle, and even True Survivor. Everything in this deck is Innate other than Double or Nothing, so really take whatever you want. It even searches back Nautical Prowess.