The Grim Jim

Starts with 1 mental trauma (due to Arcane Research).

This deck is intended to play as a solo Jim, updated with the latest cardpool (up to The Depths of Yoth). Although I do like combo of Grotesque Statue and Scavenging, I'm finding it a bit slow and less flexible for soloing. So I tried to mirror it via Sleight of Hand and it came out as an interesting alternative.

With pure solo (i.e. only one character), you stand before rather limiting deck options due to the need to be kind a jack-of-all-trades: you have to be able to consistently deal with monsters, to gather 1-2 clues per location, to compress/save actions whenever possible, and even more to be capable of swift movement time from time. And this is no way easy task to balance. Luckily, Jim has access to rogue cards which are IMO best suited for any solo approach.

This is a fresh deck to start with any campaign and it should do well with correct cards in starting hand. The most obvious is Leo De Luca, followed by Flashlight (or Drawn to the Flame with St. Hubert's Key). Additionally, you will also need a Lone Wolf, Emergency Cache or Forbidden Knowledge. Cards for fight are not that important to start with in the first scenario of any campaign, and they should generally come by in the second half of it (i.e. when you might eventually need them). Still, you might want to swap Fine Clothes for a second Kukri (more effective with Sleight of Hand) or perhaps for a Knife.

Looking at the weaknesses, the most hurting are (obviously) Doomed (you might not be able to finish the whole campaign) and Indebted (you need Leo out as-soon-as-possible).

Jim's ability to turn almost every into success really shines with a thin Chaos bag (like at the start of most campaigns) and you should further both build your deck around Chaos token manipulation and try to follow a path with the least Chaos bag clogging. Also, the option to turn into might be further utilized by several cards (like Jim's Trumpet, Song of the Dead or Jewel of Aureolus).

When you receive your experience, go for Grotesque Statue (4) in the first place whenever possible.

The other options (more or less obvious) are:

• Shrivelling → Shrivelling (2) → Shrivelling (1)
• Song of the Dead (2)
• Mists of R'lyeh → Mists of R'lyeh (3)
• St. Hubert's Key → Key of Ys (5)
• Fearless → Fearless (2)
• Ward of Protection → Ward of Protection (4)
• Fearless / Dark Prophecy → Seal of the Elder Sign (5)
• Charisma (3)
• Jewel of Aureolus (3) + Relic Hunter (3)
• Blood Pact (3)
• Time Warp (2)
• Recharge (2)
• Emergency Cache → Emergency Cache (2) / Emergency Cache (3)
• Lone Wolf → Scavenging / Elusive / Think on Your Feet / Shortcut

(Note that I list the altered XP costs for spells by -1xp from AR - but this applies only for the fïrst upgrade after each scenario of course)