Card draw simulator
| Derived from |
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| None. Self-made deck here. |
| Inspiration for |
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| None yet |
DjMiniboss · 44
The Calvin Conundrum
Calvin, since he was released, has been labeled as a clunky investigator. Starting with zero stats and having to wish misfortune upon yourself to merely get up to other investigators' standards, not hitting 5 in a single stat unless you want to be on the brink of death. It all adds up to a complicated, mediocre investigator that at the most of times is merely good at everything, and at the best of times is great, and that isn't what you want out of a deck with some assembly required.
Of course, most would note that a few cards have come out in recent times that have raised Calvin's ceiling, most notably (and literally) Five of Pentacles, but also includes Meat Cleaver and Trial by Fire, which give Calvin a benefit to accelerating his stat buildup and allow him to boost a stat by five (5!) for his whole turn. These options are nothing to sneeze at. But what most heavily limits Calvin at the best of times is his cardpool; Survivor's cardpool is defined by allowing high consistency in actions, but fully powered-up Calvin is hurting for high impact actions, which Survivor almost completely lacks. The Spirit keyword only can grab you so many cards to fill in those gaps (although I will say, a lot of Nathaniel Cho's cards are tagged with Spirit!). So why go through all the trouble of boosting Calvin up to only be able to grab one clue an action and whose most exciting weapon does two damage only if you have a sanity to spare?
Meet SadoMaso Calvin.
Don't Kinkshame Calvin
I believe that Calvin (in multiplayer, anyhow) operates best as investigator with two modes: tanking/receiving damage from others, and playing cleanup with a consistency not seen in any other investigator. Let other classes do the high impact stuff; let Guardians blast with their Lightning Guns, Seekers deduce a bunch of clues, and so forth. Your job as Calvin is to enable them, and even better, enable them by enabling yourself. A card that I think is overlooked in Calvin's cardpool is Solemn Vow. This will allow you to take on the pain and sorrow of your buddies, and can be played and used fast. This way, you don't need to hurt yourself intentionally to turn yourself on, you can heal the other investigators at the same.
"But DjMiniboss!" you ask, "That only covers the masochistic side of things! Your theme lists Calvin as a sadist, too. What gives?" Let me introduce you to your old best friend Peter Sylvestre and new best friend Jessica Hyde. Friends that you like hurting.
With these two in tow, once you've hit a saturation point with your own damage and horror, you can start Solemn Vowing damage and horror onto these two, actionlessly healing your compatriots, allowing them to do whatever they do best. It's also worth noting that these two also boost your stats besides intellect by one, giving you even more consistency that you crave. Your job besides soaking up bad things is cleaning up the jobs that the others happened to fail at. Need a little extra damage? Calvin's got just the tool for the job. What about a clue or two? Maybe Calvin's got an old key or two that will do the trick.
This build also means, in conjunction with Five of Pentacles, you will be consistently and safely at a 7 6 7 7 statline with Until the End of Time down (I wouldn't do this unless you had it down due to the perils of direct damage taking you out), with Rise to the Occasion and Trial by Fire boosting stats as necessary to take down those tricky tests. And for whatever cards you want to use again, make sure to use Resourceful to its fullest, pulling back your Take Hearts to fail better, and so forth.
Of course, there's the question of how you find and fund those Solemn Vows, your allies, and get to that indomitable point. Take Heart and Rabbit's Foot helps you speed through your deck while failing at tests, and when you get the experience, Drawing Thin will accelerate this even more. "Look what I found!" allows for some contribution before finishing setup, and Heroic Rescue, Lucky!, and Ward of Protection give some more value to your team even without high stats.
Note: Flashlight is supposed to be Old Keyring, although both fit the same niche. Old Keyring definitely fits the theme of the deck better, however.
Upgrades
Core Upgrades (11 exp)
Seeing as the deck is built around the damage and horror healing allies, along with giving Calvin more health and sanity to begin with, your priorities upgrades are:
- 2x Leather Coat 2x Jessica Hyde
- 2x Peter Sylvestre 2x Peter Sylvestre (2)
- 1x Charisma
- 1x Heroic Rescue, 1x Your least favorite other card 2x Five of Pentacles
With these, you already can become a stat monster that enables the other players. Everything else is added for consistency's sake or for icing on the cake.
Secondary Upgrades
There are three other cards that I would highly consider for this deck after the core upgrades. In order of importance:
And then either
OR
Drawing Thin is important to keep enough money to play events and plays into failing to get through the deck. Ward of Protection (2) versus Will to Survive is based upon the group and their playstyle; if cancelling a few treacheries will help grease their wheels just that much more, then that's a pretty neat upgrade. Otherwise, Will to Survive will make gotta-have-it actions be 100% successful (and, oddly, if you use it to fail on purpose, you won't ever accidentally succeed), and can be recurred by Resourceful.
Extension Upgrades and Other Cards to Consider
At this point you'll likely get the most mileage out of cards that exile, most notably:
Fortune or Fate allows you to cancel a critical Doom, which can always make or break a scenario. Devil's Luck is there if you want to play by the razor's edge without Until the End of Time, which is inconsistent in coming out. Lastly, Flare finds you one of your critical allies or, in a pinch, hits an enemy quite hard.
Two other cards that Calvin can recur using Resourceful that could also make an impact are:
Brute Force and Sharp Vision are quite good, and require you to be using a basic fight action or investigate action, both of which Calvin excels at. Three damage or two clues are nothing to turn your nose up at, I just feel there are higher impact upgrades you could be grabbing first.
Insofar as other cards I'd consider for the deck, but have trouble justifying over other picks, we have:
Self-Sacrifice often acts as a worse Take Heart, but for the sake of consistency, I could see playing both. In my first test of this deck, I had both, but never found the opportunity to get Self-Sacrifice to fire. And I'd be remiss without mentioning the incredibly cute combo between Track Shoes and Drawing Thin, although by the time you get to the end of the campaign, you're likely to succeed at your agility tests more often than not, so you likely would replace it before too long. It was also brought to my attention that Live and Learn fits this deck better than Lucky!, which makes a lot of sense; you can trigger Take Heart and "Look what I found!" off of the failed test, then use Live and Learn to try to succeed. Lucky! is still quite good, but I think it's up to your preference.
Playstyle
Finding your acceleration cards is more important than anything else. Take Heart, Rabbit's Foot, Drawing Thin once upgraded into, and maybe some of your Solemn Vows. I would also highly consider keeping Until the End of Time, since it's very useful, cheap, and hard to find. I wouldn't necessarily mulligan out of your allies or Emergency Cache, or even Meat Cleaver, since they are immediately useful as well. Most other things can wait.
Hopefully you've found some way to draw cards by failing; start out by failing investigations or treacheries to pile on the damage or horror and draw cards and get money for doing so. Drawing Thin, of course, rewards you for making tests harder, so feel free to use those on whatever tests you already plan on failing (once a turn, of course). Once you have enough money and your allies + Solemn Vow, you are basically set up. Start siphoning damage and horror from your companions, and place them on yourself, Peter Sylvestre and Jessica Hyde as necessary. Meat Cleaver can also give you horror on demand to do extra damage, and clears a horror upon kill if you so desire.
From this point onward, you exist to keep your investigator friends upright, and to deal with problems that crop up on their turns. You have high enough stats and emergency cards to deal with anything you need to, albeit not in the most efficient way.
Conclusions
I think Calvin Wright built in this way plays to Survivor's strengths as a class and enables your other investigators to do what they do best. He plays like no other investigator, and at his peak feels like a powerhouse. So feel free to take some punishment, and deal it out too. Just remember: don't kinkshame Calvin.
disclaimer: really though don't kinkshame in general
weeeeeee