Mary, Spiritual Warrior

Card draw simulator

Odds: 0% – 0% – 0% more
Derived from
None. Self-made deck here.
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ArkhamGaymer · 417

Introduction

I recently joined the League of Extraordinary Investigators. The league carefully chooses scenarios from each of the campaigns, members play as either solo or duo, and record their games for judging. Each scenario has unique goals called league points which are used to score the success of each member during the season. Sister Mary was newly available during our current TCU season that is ending this week. This write up is an assessment of both play and deck design for my 'face check' run of Mary.

For this run, I teamed up with my friend Numeroaro who played Jacqueline Fine and so any play thoughts should be tempered by the knowledge that we played toward each other's strengths. His deck is linked here. The original Mary deck can be found here.

Objective: Spiritual Warrior

When I built this deck at level zero, I focused on her core capability (adding tokens) and using it to proc the newly tabooed .35 Winchester. It offers Mary a consistent boost of +2 that makes her a very reasonable monster killer. As with all builds, one must also add in extra options. I chose in this case to go with the Enchanted Blade which similarly offers Mary the +2 . This costs Mary dearly because it chews into her arcane slots and also has only three charges. However, it's really worth it because Mary needs all the help she can get to hit.

This brings us to the final choices, firstly, Prepared for the Worst for quick access to the all important .35 Winchester and secondly Spectral Razor which is just fantastic. The latter ultimately being upgraded into our blessing tech via Radiant Smite.

I want to finish this section of the write up with a quick nod to the MVP of the deck, Olive McBride. When separated from Jacqueline Fine, Olive McBride was my only way to "guarantee" seeing those all important . Olive paid out in dividends throughout the campaign with maybe only one or two missed extra damage shots from the .35 Winchester.

Objective: Help Find Clues

I don't know why, but I adore using Sixth Sense with Mary. It feels thematic and lets her grab clues with such great capability. This will stick with her throughout the whole of the campaign.

In addition to that, I of course included Scene of the Crime, a card that consistently pulled its weight in so many situations.

Objective: Stay Alive

Maybe this should be the first objective? :-) I knew that Mary would have trouble, going in with two squishy investigators. I added one copy of True Grit to compliment her Guardian Angel, the Hallowed Mirror, one copy of Second Wind, two of Hand of Fate, and two of Deny Existence (do I need to justify this one?).

Upgrading:

It's important to note that:

  1. I don't own all the cards available
  2. I don't care to proxy cards that I'm missing
  3. this was played while the first five scenarios of Innsmouth Conspiracy were being released.

I chose to push hard into Mary's tech and keep my primary weapon as the .35 Winchester. This resulted in the following upgrades:

the last two on the list replaced Premonition, which is great early on, but is outweighed by these wonderful techs.

Final Thoughts

This deck was performant at standard difficulty. The only issues that came up were when we would separate from each other. That lesson was learned and is why I would probably consider including Safeguard or Safeguard in lieu of maybe Premonition.

Our games were recorded on youtube and will persist there if you'd like to observe or even offer a comment!

Thanks for reading, and I hope you find this useful.

18 comments

Feb 06, 2021 Trigunner · 1

I just recently build a Mary with Winchester for standalone play and came to a similar list. Although I didn't got around to playing it.

You don't have many ways to fill the bag with bless tokens, does it really work out that well? I put Blessed Blade and Bandolier into my deck, also because I want to be able to attack without spending ammo. Speaking of which, Extra Ammunition would be nice too.

Promise of Power gives nice burst, but also dilutes the bag with curse tokens, why not Daring, Steadfast, or Vicious Blow?

Feb 06, 2021 ArkhamGaymer · 417

Hey @Trigunner, those are great suggestions. I think you have some great points.

I think the Blessed Blade might be an acceptable substitute for the Enchanted Blade in this deck but I didn't want to have two weapons that "required" Olive McBride, Jacqueline Fine or Arbiter of Fates to be useful. I think I'd like to take your suggestion though and see how it works.

To your point about keeping the blessings in the bag, I feel like my rapid upgrade into Sacred Covenant was very very helpful and that was followed by the use of Blessing of Isis. What I think is interesting about your comment is that there may be multiple pathways for Sister Mary to really work well.

I think I wanted the flexibility of 4 icons versus the restriction on Daring and limits of Vicious Blow only giving 1 . I didn't find damage output to be my problem, (except for maybe during The Secret Name).

I thought long and hard about Steadfast, but also worried about its weakness given Mary's limited health and possible low sanity caused by her weakness.

Feb 06, 2021 mogwen · 253

Great deck! And anyone who loves Mary deserves my upvote! Maybe The Lair of Dagon will have an important upgrade for your deck! ;)

Feb 06, 2021 ArkhamGaymer · 417

Thanks @mogwen! I know for sure, when I opened up the latest shipment, I found something to replace my Hallowed Mirror...---- Spoiler Alert ----I love the idea of the new level 2 Holy Rosary :-D

Feb 07, 2021 mogwen · 253

And you're right to love it, it's a fantastic Blessing engine for Mary, especially in multiplayer where she can use Let Me Handle This and First Watch for morechances to trigger it.

Feb 07, 2021 LaRoix · 1643

Really enjoyed your playthrough with this deck. I love Mary's dive into chaos with stuff like the winchester so it was nice to see you build around what are usually atypical or less reliable cards. I'm just fine tuning my own Mary deck for my first Innsmouth run with my sisters and am definitely feeling that itch to have Olive fish out those Blessings, so nice to hear that I can expect decent results with her. Fine playing all around my friend!

Feb 08, 2021 ArkhamGaymer · 417

@LaRoix, thanks and please send me a link to your final Mary build. She’s just too much fun. Check out the end of our final TCU video for all the blessing of isis excitement,

Feb 09, 2021 niklas1meyer · 1

Really cool deck! I so wanna try out mary but im nervous till all the blurse cards are revealed for not missing out on stuff :D There is one particular high xp upgrade that i first want to wait on, but this is already looking amazing without it

Feb 10, 2021 ArkhamGaymer · 417

@niklas1meyer, thanks for the comment. I actually gave Mary a 0 xp trial run before the league started last year at The Witching Hour and The Pit of Despair winning both. I highly recommend jumping in head first if you want to give the most holy nun a run.

Feb 21, 2021 chicklewis · 1

Looks to me as though you may have replaced your basic weakness with a desired upgrade. True? That is seriously contrary to the RAW.

Then again, I'm probably just misunderstanding.

Feb 25, 2021 ArkhamGaymer · 417

Hey @chicklewis, thanks for the comment. Since this deck was specifically for the League Of Extraordinary Investigators, I was required to use Haunted for this deck. Also note that this season we knew ahead of time what our weakness would be and we played scenarios 1, 2, 3, 5 & 6 of Circle Undone. I hope that answers your question.

Feb 25, 2021 chicklewis · 1

Ah, good, ArkhamGaymer, that explains it. Thanks.

Chick

Mar 09, 2021 Abbojm01 · 5

Is Radiant Smite better than Spectral Razor it benefits with 1 lower resource, and 1 potential more damage, is that worth the cost of 2 XP and using 1-3 Blessed tokens on each use? Razor has a base 7 skill to test and deals 3 damage to non-elites. I think that 2 XP might be better on an upgraded Backpack. Thoughts?

Mar 10, 2021 ArkhamGaymer · 417

@Abbojm01, you know, those are legitimate thoughts and I feel that additional playtest is required to really get to the answer. I don't recall that during our play thru with the league that changing to Radiant Smite wasn't a game changer the same way other upgrades were (e.g. Righteous Hunt). Smite very much plays into the bag and having both Olive McBride and Jacqueline Fine on the team, made it 'easier' to find those blessing tokens when needed.

Mar 10, 2021 ArkhamGaymer · 417

@Abbojm01, you know, if I had it to do again, I would have prioritized my Recall the Future upgrades over Radiant Smite.

May 04, 2021 bern1106 · 2

Really good deck, going through Dunwich with Trish. The only thing I really changed was to give her Bandolier so that she can load up with the blade if it shows first and then not throw it away if the rifle turns up without it being used. I use her as a location clearer and kind of bodyguard for Trish, clueing should Trish fail a roll.

Apr 09, 2022 An_Undecayed_Whately · 1185

@ArkhamGaymer I'm about to try a version of this out and wondering about running out of ammo on the .35 Winchester.

What would you think about 2x Survival Knife and 2x Bandolier (instead of teh Enchanted Blades or Blessed Blades)?

It might have potential to fight mooks and save ammunition, or to pile extra damage onto bosses.

Apr 12, 2022 ArkhamGaymer · 417

@An_Undecayed_Whately, I think it might be a good choice depending on player count. For our two player run, which this was built for, I didn't have trouble running low on the ammo. Jacqueline Fine was also running some kill spells, which meant we could both really flex.