I’m currently trying to solo with her, and running into the investigation issue. I’m trying to deal with it through Lucky, Look what I found, Arcane Studies, and the usual Flashlight / Perception (edit: and Unexpected Courage - but that is an auto include as of now, right?). I’m back and forth with Drawn to the Flame and Scrying (or just DttF by itself - YOLO). When it works, it is great…
Most of the time, you don’t actually have to kill an enemy.
The times you do need to kill an enemy you have a few options.
1.) Derringer - Helps you off someone in a few shots.
2.) Baseball bat - Probably her best weapon.
3.) Hard Knocks + a ton of resources - She does have burglary available after all.
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Yeah, solo I think Look What I Found is a must for her. Lucky is probably my favorite card in the game right now, so good in so many situations. I run Drawn to the Flame as a one of, because it is situational but can be quite clutch. Agnes is actually pretty well equipped to deal with random cards from the encounter deck I have found. Her high will and decent agility plus Ward of Protection can deal with treachery pretty well and she can usually kill most enemies that pop up.
Plus… you know Scrying is a thing =).
Yeah, is Scrying good in his game? It seems like a lame card, but who knows.
Scrying is crazy useful in solo play. It slows you down a bit but being able to reorder the top of the encounter deck (and your own deck occasionally) can save you from really rough situations. For example, I found it was really useful to force myself to draw a Willpower test from the encounter deck instead of spawning an enemy because I didn’t have any way to deal with an enemy yet.
In multiplayer I imagine it’s also great to dole out the encounter cards to who can best deal with them. Say you reveal an enemy, an agility test card, and a willpower test card. Reorder them so that Roland will draw the enemy, Skids draws the agility test, and Agnes draws the willpower test.
Another example from my solo game last night - I used it to reorder Obscuring Fog, Hex, and Acolyte (original order) so it didn’t screw my investigation on the current spot and spawn an extra Acolyte (wasn’t another one on the board). Net, saved me probably three actions (getting rid of the fog, hunting down the extra spawn).
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Scrying is probably Agnes’ best spell right now, simply because it allows Agnes to take on more of a support role, either in the form of Encounter deck manipulation or helping partners dig deeper for answers. Right now spells seem to be more about support in the core set as almost all of them are about prevention or mitigation.
The rub really comes from the fact that if Daisy is already in your group you probably don’t need two support characters as you will fall behind a bit on both dodgers/exploring, investigating or fighting.
I would say, as a rule of thumb that if you are running solo or in a crew with Daisy I would focus on a tanky/damage dealing build with Scrying as a back up.
I am going to be trying Agnes in my next game I play with my group and I look forward to trying to run her as a tanky/damage build.
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The issue I find with Scrying is the 3 charges. It makes it really hard to know when to use it. But I do see the use in solo.
Don’t worry about when to use it. Use it whenever you can. Fire and forget unless you can combo it with Drawn to the Flame.
Average game of AH is probably 8/10 rounds in my experience. Knowing what is coming out of the encounter deck for roughly 1/2 to 1/3rd of the game (for 2ish players) is very, very powerful.
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It also may become very powerful if there is an Oracle Mayesque card in the future. I have not yet used it for an investigator’s deck.
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Use it and always use it on the encounter deck! Its worth it!
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I also like staggering it to bury some jerk who I don’t want to deal with, like the aforementioned GP in stage 2/3 - nope! 1 2 nope! 1 2 nope!
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I’m coming to the conclusion that Skids is the weakest investigator, and that Rogue might have the weakest card pool overall. Switchblade and Derringer are hot garbage, and Rogue doesn’t have much that allows them to investigate well, as opposed to literally every other class.
Rogue has to run perception and flashlights.
At least Rogues get the all mighty sneak attack and ellusive, along with Leo, burglary and pickpocket.
Also Wendy gets look what I found.
Probably wouldn’t bother with Skids until later. He can’t get shotgun.
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All of the core investigators have abilities that increase their effective actions per turn. Roland can deal with an enemy and get a clue. Daisy gets to use a Tome once a turn for free. Agnes can hand out damage like nobodies business. Wendy can avoid a wasted skill check with her redraw. Skids can just outright buy an action.
I’m undecided on Skids as a whole. He can get like 5 actions in a turn and that can be extraordinarily useful as an attack mitigation role. With Leo de Luca and a bit of money you can have a turn where you can split 5 actions between evades and engages. With Pickpocketing that could land you a few draws as well. Alternatively, 5 actions is a leeway on failing close checks. Miss an investigate? Just try again.
It seems the trick with Skids is a combination of having Hard Knocks and being rich as fuck. This makes Derringer and Switchblade not so bad. Well, maybe not Switchblade, it seems really bad. But without loads of cash you are just relying on being super lucky (not a great way to hedge your bets in this game).
If you can’t get the piles of money you need for those to work? It’s probably best to grab a Machete from Guardian. Skids is great at being selective with his engagements, so you’re going to be getting a lot of +1 damage attacks.
Agreed. If you want to play Skids you probably need to pack 2x Hard Knocks and maybe even 2x Physical Training so that you can become a competent to good fighter on command.
Run 2x Burglary so you get a huge infusion of cash each turn.
x2 Leo because four actions is great and five actions is even better.
As a plus, Skids is probably the better character to play Dynamite Blast (which also takes a ton of cash).
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Another thing to note: Rogues have a single Willpower icon amongst their current cards (Cat Burglar… need XP for it) and Skids willpower is only 2. This means you’ll probably need Physical Training to keep afloat the Treachery’s that test Willpower, or slot Guts to help out. Yikes…
Yep. I had not considered that. I have steered clear of Skids for now because of his pool. I am sure you can build a good deck with him, I was just more excited for Wendy.
The new rogue from the Dunwhich Horror deluxe looks exciting. Jenny Barnes is probably even better at doing what Skids wants to do than Skids though because of that sweet double resource income per turn.
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Where’s the Jenny Barnes spoiler?