How do you Solo a problem like Mary?

Sister Mary is a bit of an oddity. Her ability and stat line scream "support" but upon further inspection, her ability is best utilised with as few players as possible!

• With more players, you divide your tasks and end up spending fewer actions moving overall
• With fewer players, you're able to divide up tasks less and spend more actions moving

So with fewer players, you take fewer tests per turn, which means the tests you do take will benefit more from Sister Mary's bless tokens. Taking that to its logical conclusion, the best use of Sister Mary's ability is in solo!

Solo Sister Mary

Unfortunately, her stat line leaves something to be desired. Her and are at a mediocre 3: not able to be relied upon. And more importantly, her is an abysmal 2, which means she's going to need to rely on her cards to help her get clues...

So she's a mystic who leverages her . So what? Well, she starts at 4, which in general means the investigator is going to need help, especially if she relies on it for everything. Additionally, she can't take mystic cards above level 2! No Shrivelling (3) or Sixth Sense (4)! She needs to boost her through static boosters or committed cards. In other words, she is Not A Very Good Mystic either!

Blesses in Disguise

Her ability is what makes her interesting. From my experience, I've found that the bag tends to end up with 8-10 bless tokens, which is about 30-40% of the bag. This usually adds to your probabilities in a way that means you're at effectively +1 to all your stats.

With +1 , Sister Mary can hit a 3, and combined with her ability, she can reasonably often hit 2 shroud locations without help.

This also means that she can reasonably often evade enemies with 2 evade, saving precious Shrivelling charges and fight spells.

Playing the deck

This deck plays like a normal mystic: mulligan aggressively for spells. Shrivelling is top priority. If you're missing Sixth Sense, that's okay: plan out your path through the scenario so you can brute force low shroud locations with Flashlight and St. Hubert's Key, and hopefully have found Sixth Sense by the time you get to the high shroud ones.

You'll usually have to spend a number of actions setting up or digging, and that's okay. If you mulligan into the nightmare hand, don't bother doing anything but draw for cards: if you get caught without your defences, the scenario's just straight over. Spending a turn or two setting up is also sets up the bag with bless tokens, so when you do get going you can really start powering through the scenario.

My Favourite Things

Scroll of Prophecies is for those times when you get caught with your pants down and have none of your spells. In those cases, you just need to dig dig dig.

Azure Flame is a tough sell at 5 health, but at level 0, there just aren't any other reliable damage options. Upgrade out of this as soon as you can!

Rite of Sanctification is a huge economy card! Seal even 2 bless tokens and it's 4 resources. It awkwardly hogs an arcane slot, so plan ahead. I'd usually keep Shrivelling in the other slot, and look to pick up clues without Sixth Sense until you've squeezed Rite of Sanctification for all it's got. Remember paying costs comes before the card actually gets put into play, so you can use your last bless from Rite of Sanctification to pay for the Sixth Sense that's going to replace it.

St. Hubert's Key, alongside Flashlight, solves Sister Mary's consistency problem with clues when she doesn't find a Sixth Sense.

Deny Existence can ignore the horror from Crisis of Faith. The weakness is really nasty so make sure you always have a Deny Existence on hand. (Check out the Weaknesses section of the rules)

Ward of Radiance is a less reliable Ward of Protection that saves you a resource and a horror. In practice, missing is pretty rare, but the horror is relevant because we're playing with St. Hubert's Key.

Promise of Power and Take the Initiative are both cards with loads of icons. Useful for solo because you'll need to pass unexpected tests for each scenario, and occasionally for evading an enemy or picking up a clue when you don't have Sixth Sense.

Upgrades

Radiant Smite is an obvious include. This, Shrivelling, and Spectral Razor is usually enough damage spells to last.

Stick to the Plan, holding Emergency Cache (2) and Ever Vigilant will mean you'll never have resource problems in the first few turns of the game: vital turns you're meant to use setting up.

Four of Cups and Brother Xavier both give +1 , which Sister Mary sorely needs.

Dynamite Blast (3) can be a useful panic button to put underneath Stick to the Plan.

Time Warp in general I think is underrated, but is pretty cool as an extra shot at getting bless tokens (or to undo accidentally taking all of them out...)

Climb Every Mountain

I hope you enjoyed this guide to solo Sister Mary! It was good fun trying out a bunch of ideas to see which ones stuck and stood the test of playtesting, and I hope you'll find Sister Mary good fun to play!

So long, farewell!