One for All Roland - One Collection for Every Investigator

If you're looking for investigator specific tips, scroll to the last section of this guide; or keep reading to learn about the "One for All" deck series I've created and how to pilot them.

One for All

Using a single set of cards, I've created partial deck templates for (nearly) every single investigator in my collection. Find the rest by searching the deck title "One for All". The last section of these notes also includes a brief description of the pros and cons for its respective investigator, including suggested archetypes and cards to complete the deck. In order to publish the decks, I'm required to have all 30+ cards, so any of the higher level cards are only included as filler and aren't actually intended for use. If going through the amount of setup required to organize these decks isn't your thing, I hope they'll still serve as a showcase of some of the most effective cards for each investigator!

Why?

Deck building takes time. This allows you to do a lot of the work in advance so you and your group can get playing the game faster!

Choosing cards can be intimidating, especially for newer players. This setup helps showcase effective card synergies for newbies, and gives experienced players who still want some control over their deck a solid starting point they can quickly build from.

By utilizing a lot of cards that don't normally see play, each investigator feels more unique. Some "bad" cards still haven't made the cut, but leveraging each investigator's strengths instead of relying heavily on having universally strong cards gives each investigator a more distinct flavour.

This setup can help ease some of the burden of having a lot of your staple cards locked down into a few of your decks while running multiple players across multiple simultaneous campaigns. This gives players more options even after a few decks have already been made.

It gives you the flexibility to complete decks based on varying team compositions and campaigns, which is harder to do with full pre-made decks.

Why not?

You want a maximally optimized, hyper-synergistic deck. I play these decks true solo on hard mode, and it is challenging but possible. They're great for standard and easy, but most of these templates will struggle in expert.

You don't care much for organizing. Getting things organized in advance, and then post-campaign can be more of a chore depending on how you normally set things up.

Your collection is wildly different than mine. Odds are very good your collection will differ from mine. I've included some considerations to take when modifying these templates to suit your own collection, but for some whose card pools are quite different, it may not be worth the additional tinkering.

Making the Templates Your Own

Every template was designed with 17 level 0, non-permanent cards in mind. This was calculated to utilize as many cards as possible with my own collection while still managing to keep my remaining sanity above zero. The rules and numbers listed on these decks are only a rough guideline. There's no reason to stress over things lining up perfectly and results will vary based on what's in your collection and how much tinkering you want to do.

If you simply wanted to dedicate a handful of key cards to each investigator they could be very small. I wouldn't recommend going higher than 17 cards though - unless you're a masochist. Lola Hayes was also left out of the equation to avoid over-complicating things. For reference: if you had every player card released for Chapter 1 (with a Revised Core set) you'd be looking at roughly 1100 level 0 player cards spread out amongst 60 (non-neutral) investigators, which equates to approximately 18 cards per investigator.

You could easily just slot in the cards that match your own card pool and leave it at that. You'll want to double up on some of the cards in each deck if you have a smaller collection. If you do want to get more in depth, the first thing you'll want to do is figure out which card sets we have in common. My current roster of owned investigators includes the majority of Chapter 1, with the exception of Dream Eaters, Scarlet Keys, and Drowned City investigator expansions.

To begin, you'll want to create your own copy of each "One for All" deck I've created, and go through each - removing any cards that don't match your collection. If you have cards not in the sets listed above, or you're missing investigators (which frees up cards from their respective templates), you'll need to either write up a list of these, or more simply you could put together all the actual unused cards in your collection.

Next, if you have any investigators I haven't featured, you'll likely want to flesh their decks out by scouring my existing decks for obvious synergy choices (horror healing in Carolyn Fern, for example), ideally without removing any cards that already fit well in their respective deck. Then you can start adding leftover cards until you hit the desired deck size for each investigator. I've tried to make each card unique for nearly every investigators; but with smaller collections you'll find that having 2 copies of key cards is necessary for most decks.

Depending on how many cards you need to re-assign and how intense your process is, this can get complicated pretty quickly. A few pointers:

• Get the obvious cards out of the way first. (Tome Synergy for Daisy, damage soak for Mark, etc.)
• I'll attempt to lay out some effective archetypes for each character further down. These should help dictate the not-so obvious card decisions.
• There are only so many of each card type, so distribution matters. The numbers I used should stay fairly consistent between collections and they are as follows:
  • Hands - 2-3
  • Accessory - 1
  • Body - 1
  • Arcane (primarily for Mystics) - 2
  • Ally - 2
  • Unslotted - 2
  • Events - 6
  • Skills - 2
• These numbers will fluctuate for each investigator and class (i.e. Guardians use more hand slots, Mystics less)
• I like cards with stat buffs in investigators who need them most (those with 3 or 4 in an important stat). It's not necessary, but I think it's a good guideline.
• Cards like Unexpected Courage or Emergency Cache that apply generally to a wide range of investigators make great filler to pad out deck sizes at the end of the process.
• Once you've locked in the cards you want for your investigators, make sure to save the decklist on your builder of choice. Using ArkhamDB I can quickly find out which investigator has specific cards by doing an advanced decklist search - specifying my username and the card I'd like to find.

Playing with your Decks!

• Pick an investigator and start adding cards! Scan through other decks that match your investigator's classes and play style and start populating your deck with suitable cards from those.
• Find duplicates of all the best cards that fit the archetype you're building for. If I'm setting up decks for new players, I'll have them start by simply hunting for doubles of cards already in their deck.
• Design for your team composition / campaign and prioritize cards to suit. For example: if you're playing a fighter on a team of 3 and only have one strong clue-getter, you'll probably want a few extra cards that help you find clues.
• Be mindful of your card types. The above listed distribution isn't perfect, but when in doubt, keep the ratios fairly similar, noting any differences your specific investigator or class might require (i.e: Mystics accounting for arcane slots, or oddballs like Sefina who love events)
• I've purposely tried to leave 1 or 2 splash slots ("Up to 5 of X class") on applicable investigators open for customization, so don't forget to fill those out!
• For those more comfortable with the game, you can obviously replace cards from these presets for a more optimized deck, and Arkham Cards is a great app for those already familiar with the cardpool to quickly browse cards specific to their investigator.

How to Organize

Everybody is going to have their own system, but I've gone ahead and placed each class in its own stack, with the investigators at the head of each deck in order of release, and reversing investigator specific cards to keep them clearly separated. Colour coded card sleeves really help keep things organized, but they aren't necessary and can even be a nuisance when you're removing cards from off-class stacks to fill out your campaign-ready decks. You can also build dividers out of cardstock, cardboard, or whatever else you have handy and disperse them as liberally as you see fit.

Investigator Specific Tips

Roland is good at doing the things that win scenarios. He has all the tools to remove the biggest threats in the game (enemies) and advances through acts for doing it. Along with access to seeker cards that allow him to pick up even more clues in his downtime; Roland is very good at going off on his own, whether it's true solo, or just as a self-sufficient team member.

On the flip side, Roland typically dreads most things in the encounter deck that he can't kill - particularly treacheries that threaten his fragile sanity. He also struggles paying for his expensive guardian cards, and you'll need to account for both of these things. To top it off, his signature weakness is particularly nasty: either grinding your tempo to a halt or threatening your already squishy brains if you choose to ignore it.

Archetypes this template can build into:

• Monster hunter - Roland plays best chasing down baddies and bringing them to justice (with murder!), so cards that help him find/get to/kill them are all great picks. Just make sure you can afford your fancy guns (Roland also likes 1-handed weapons due to his signature .38 and preference for targeting lower health enemies)

• Part-time cluever - Guardians often need something to do in their fighting downtime. Either get some tools to investigate better, or just gain testless clues, and you'll never wonder what you should be doing next.

• Solo Sleuth - Figure out early whether or not your teammates are going to need you nearby. If not, you'll want to focus more on cards that will stop you from getting bogged down or driven insane by the encounter deck, otherwise, build around the next archetype...

• Bodyguard - You'll want to lean heavier into fighting, with a healthy dose of cards that allow you to easily deal with enemies your poor, helpless friends will inevitably draw.

• Cards in this template worth having duplicates of: Dr. William T. Maleson, Handcuffs, On the Hunt, Smoking Pipe, Inquiring Mind, Emergency Cache, .45 Automatic, Machete, Prepared for the Worst, Guts, Take the Initiative,Evidence!

• Excluded cards worth adding: basic neutral skills, Beat Cop, Vicious Blow, Dodge, Evidence!, Shortcut, Geared Up, Magnifying Glass, Dr. Milan Christopher, Backpack, True Grit, "Get behind me!", Logical Reasoning, Scene of the Crime

I hope you've found this helpful! Let me know if you have any questions or feedback in the comments!