A note on Mystics

I generally do not consider myself as a great deckbuilder. My builds often require a lot of tweaking to be at least viable, in a solo environment. Nearly one year down the road, and I always struggle playing , and investigators.

I do play the class though (check my Agnes Baker deck here: https://arkhamdb.com/decklist/view/2635/sure-i-m-gonna-break-dat-clean-glass-on-a-byakhee-1.0). And I have several reasons for that.

I like how mustics can do a little bit of everything, and is very resilient due mostly to:

• The high allowing those investigators to cope with most of Treacheries effect so far.
• The access to downright cancellation with Ward of Protection
• The access to efficient combat with Shrivelling from the get go, even Hypnotic Gaze as an emergency trigger, and later on Shrivelling (3) and Shrivelling (5) as well as Song of the Dead.
• The easy access to those Arcane cards, every single one of them being in the current meta! Seing as all the other slots (Body, Accessory, Hands, Allies) are pretty well dispatched between classes, investigators are the best investigators to get benefit from all the available slots.

Marie Lambeau

Stats

So here's the stat-line breakdown of Marie Lambeau:

• at 4 , and as said before, she has the ability to cope with a lot of what the encounter deck will throw, at least in terms of Treacheries.
• I focused Agnes Baker's deck on her ability to fight, taking advantage by other means of her low . Here, the 4 of Marie Lambeau puts her on par with Minh Thi Phan and Rex Murphy, at second place behind Daisy Walker, all of them being investigators! This is really amazing. This time, we might want to use that strength to get those Clues.
• at 3 , nothing to sneeze at, Marie can always evade what she can't fight.
• at 1 though, she has no way to defend herself, at least until you get that Shrivelling out.

Ability

Her ability is a bit tricky, but can be powerful.

First, remember that you only check for the Doom threshold during the Mythos phase, allowing you to pile up some Doom tokens on the board the turn before the Agenda is supposed to advance. That said, when the Agenda does advance, you remove every doom token in play, even the ones on player cards.

This entitles three things:

1. Willingly getting a player card out with a Doom token on it to trigger Marie's ability will reduce the time you have before the Agenda advances by 1 turn. Then for the X-1 turns remaining, you have 1 extra action . But wait! There are restrictions on those actions: you can play Spell cards or trigger their .
2. When the Agenda advances, you lose the benefit of Marie's ability, as all doom tokens are removed. So you need a way to get those Doom tokens back in play.
3. Going blind on most scenarios (or not), no matter what, you're probably not so prepared to help the encounter deck advancing too fast. So you may want to trigger that ability with parcimony, thus getting extra doom tokens on the penultimate turn before advancing the Agenda.

All of this require :

1. Experience of the scenarios you play
2. Experience at actually playing the deck, and being tricky overall
3. Getting a reliable and consistent way to put those doom tokens on player cards

That last point is not that easy. Marie's ability is not reliable. Browsing the current card pool, the alternatives are:

• Alyssa Graham gives you further , parring Marie to Daisy, and encounter deck control as well as Doom management
• Arcane Initiate gives you at least the Doom token you want, and helps you grab those Spells. And... that's it! Granted, those two allies are pretty good in their own right.

Weakness

Yes, yes, and just when you think those two cards are perfect for Marie Lambeau and just after you add 2 copies of each in your deck, you take a look at her special weakness: Baron Samedi. I think Baron Samedi is a very punishing weakness:

1. He cannot leave play until he as 3 Doom tokens on it. It's action yes, but as it requires to exhaust him, you need 3 damn turns to get him out and obviously before the Agenda deck can advance, so in most Agenda (with a Doom threshold at 6 or less) it's not even possible. In the meantime, you can always benefit from Marie's ability true, but 3 Doom can really hurt.
2. It fills the damn sole tiny, tiny, tiny ally slot you need so badly.

Overall, on your first scenario, pray not to draw him too early, and get at least 3 victory points. If you do, you will be able to buy Charisma.

Signature

All this blabbering on Doom management makes you want to introduce some shielding. Marie's special event Mystifying Song is one way to go: for 3 Resources and no (it's a Fast event) it buys you one more turn to pile those Doom tokens. That's pretty good if you draw it.

If you do not though, include 2 copies of Moonlight Ritual. At least, you'll be able to hold on to the current agenda if something has Ancient Evils comes your way.

The deck

Skill cards

I always go heavy on Skill cards. Skill tests make you win the game. You want to pass those tests right? So you put Skill cards, mostly those abiding to you strengths and not your weaknesses. I'm probably not passing any test, so why should I bother including Overpower?

Assets

• One hand slot is filled with the Magnifying Glass, which with the help of Alyssa Graham get Marie to a high 6 while investigating.
• The other are the Ritual Candles. This card should not be overlooked as it offers a bit of "bad-luck" mitigation. +1 on roughly a third of the chaos bag gives you a +0.33 to all your stats, yes sir.
• The Arcane slots are filled at start with Shrivelling and Scrying.
• The Accessory and Body slots are the obvious choices Holy Rosary and Leather Coat. You might want to consider putting on your Fine Clothes instead.

Allies

We already talked about them, didn't we? :)

Events

• Lucky!: just because my usual blabbering on skill tests ;)
• Uncage the Soul, because at start, it's nearly the same as Emergency Cache for a that will be playing a lot of Spells. And it has two icons.
• Ward of Protection because Test of Will
• Moonlight Ritual because of the reasons mentioned before

Mulligan

Mulligan for: Alyssa Graham, Magnifying Glass, Shrivelling, Arcane Initiate, Uncage the Soul and some skills cards.

Updates

1. Get Charisma as soon as possible.
2. Update the Shrivelling to its 3 or 5 level (but 3 is already so good)
3. Consider replacing Uncage the Soul by Emergency Cache (2), because you get a card as well as the resources. You lose that potential action on playing Uncage the Soul which is a Spell but, man, you draw. This is a card game. You want to draw.
4. Get Song of the Dead