Parallel Front Jim Culver is what is known as a Jim Culver that has ascended past a Jim Culver.
And Parallel BACK Jim Culver... is to go even FURTHER BEYOND!!
To imperfectly sum up: Parallel Back Jim gets a separate 10 card "spirit deck", full of allies. Every turn he draws one and it enters play, free of charge, requiring no slots. They can't soak (no HP/sanity), but can do just about everything else they could as a regular ally.
You get to put Allies of ANY COLOR into this deck, of L2 or less. This can mean things like a free Leo DeLuca on turn 1.
The downside is reliability- most of the text on The Beyond amounts to "When you put a 4th ghost in play, (probably) discard each ghost." It's based on a token pull for each one, but without chaos bag manipulation, odds are they're gone.
So if you just chuck a bunch of powerful allies into the deck, Jim will ride an erratic wave of powering-up-and-down. With a bit of planning, though, he can instead get a couple high-powered allies in play and keep them there.
Keeping Your Ghosts ... uh... Alive?
This control falls into 2 main categories:
1. Token manipulation
Self-explanatory; when you hit 4 ghosts, you can still use most of the standard tricks to influence what tokens you pull on them, thus protecting the ones you'd like to stick around and allowing the others to move on.
Firstly: Curses in general. Curse tokens keep a ghost alive, and Parallel Front Jim further benefits from Curses, so really you're heavily incentivized to run a curse deck. Consequently...
- Favor Of The Moon is almost an auto-include here, providing 3 on-tap stay-alive tokens.
- Grotesque Statue(2) is always welcome; better yet, Parallel Front Jim can generate charges to make it last.
- Dark Prophecy & Premonition are semi-reliable one-offs.
- Note that Olive McBride is NOT a good option. Keeping a ghost alive requires her to find 2 stay-alive tokens, largely cancelling the statistical advantage of drawing 3.
2. Manual Ghost Removal
Discarding ghosts from play on your own time lets you to avoid the 4-ghost threshold to begin with. Now, there's not a whole lot of tech available to do this externally...
(UPDATE: An official ruling has invalidated the first two options here, see bottom of post.)
- Sacrifice is great if you choose to run a few purple ghosts
- Summoned Servitor transforms its usual drawback of discarding an asset on play into a blessing here, becoming the single most versatile "bump off a ghost" tool available to Jim. Just keep it as a normal ally so you control when it's played.
- Promise Of Power indirectly helps here- one of the ghosts in the ghost deck is a nasty creature weakness that DOES count towards the 4 ghost limit. Connecting a single fight or evade removes it; Promise Of Power gives Jim strong odds of landing that punch.
... but the best manual removal comes from what's in the Ghost Deck to begin with, thanks to self-discarding allies. Stacking it with allies who's abilities cause them to discard themselves lets Jim aim for a few high-powered ghosts he wants to keep around, and a variety of little guys who give small boosts and then get out of the way.
Ghosts Of Interest To Jim
Self-Discarding Ghosts:
Add these, and use their ability when drawn to stay under the 4-ghost threshold, keeping your Superghosts in play longer.
- Stray Cat, Beat Cop - Fairly reliable, so long as you can find a baddie.
- Mysterious Raven - More reliable, free clue, shame about the horror.
- Priest Of Two Faiths - Terrific for Jim. 3 free blesses, he's happy to get curses, and can discard at will.
- Treasure Hunter, Hired Muscle - Niche, require 1xp each, but 100% discardable at will.
Superghosts!
Allies with great powers that you can build your deck around, and want to remain in play as long as possible.
- Leo DeLuca - Yep
- Summoned Hound - He gets "attached", not "played", thus you don't add the Bad Dog to your deck.
- Tristan Botley, Pete Sylvestre(2) - Guaranteed +2 stats. (Sadly, Pete's horror-heal is useless as a ghost.)
- Whitton Greene (2), Dario El Amin - Conditional +2 stats, plus other utility. Notably, Whitton will help you fish out your Trumpet.
- Dr. Milan Christopher - Stack INT onto, and earns money from, investigating with Summoned Hound & Servitor.
- Field Agent - Since horror dealt to ghosts falls thru onto Jim, pairing Field Agent with a strong healing engine (like the Trumpet!) could eclipse even the Summoned Hound as a free clue every turn. And yet another +1INT static boost!
Delivery Ghosts
Another angle for building the ghost deck; these are Allies who give you something on arrival and/or over a few turns, and whom you don't mind losing upon hitting the 4 ghost limit.
- Lab Assistant - 2 cards, always welcome
- Art Student - Wierdly risky as it whiffs if you're not in a location with clues
- Research Librarian - Great if you have a few tomes; I'm fond of Scroll Of Prophecies, personally
- Medical Student - You WILL be taking damage and horror, also you're probably running In The Thick Of It so hey
- Jeremiah Kirby - Bordering on Superghost, he'll likely give you 2 cards even if you DONT build your deck around him. Up to 5 if you do. On top of that, static +1INT while he sticks around.
- Venturer - Can stretch Bandages and Flashlights
- Gregory Gry - Go big, then go home!
I'm sure there's others who have potential value to Jim- this ability and his statline are amazingly versatile; it's not hard at all to picture a STR or INT based Jim given all the static boosts available, and base stat replacers from Hound & Servitor.
No matter what you do though, you'll have fun with your personally customized audience that gives even Charlie a run for the money.
(Appendix: At time of writing, there's apparently some debate as to whether the text on The Beyond removes the "Asset" quality from ghosts. If so, some of the methods listed above- such as sacrificing a ghost to bring a Servitor into play- would not work. My interpretation of the card is that this isn't the case, and it only affects italicized text traits, but if an official call comes out to the contrary, I'll modify this review.)
UPDATE: As of Mar 13 2024, @HatfulBob posted on Discord an official response to several questions asked about this card. The full list of questions, and their answers, follows:
For spirits attached to Jim Culver's "The Beyond":
- Are they still considered assets or some other card type entirely?
- Are they still considered under Jim's control?
- If 2 is yes, If Jim fails a test on "Crypt Chill" and must choose and discard an asset he controls, can he choose to discard a Spirit attached to the Beyond?
- Can he play a card like Summoned Servitor, which requires him to discard a card he controls, to discard a spirit from play?
- If the geist weakness in his spirit deck is engaged with him, then defeated, is it placed in Jim's discard pile or at the bottom of the spirit deck?
RESPONSE:
Yes, the spirits are still considered assets, but they are not Ally assets, and cannot be removed from play except by the abilities on The Beyond or abilities on the spirits themselves (e.g. Stray Cat). Jim could not discard a spirit from Crypt Chill or Summoned Servitor. And because the Spirit deck “owns” Vengeful Shade, if it entered play and was later defeated, it gets discarded to the bottom of the Spirit deck (per the rules for discarded spirits).
