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This is the Jacqueline Fine deck I have prepared for the 5th Season of the League of Extraordinary Investigators. I'll do a quick discussion on some level 0 deck choices, the upgrade path, and then we'll open up the room for questions. Ready? … well, maybe I should talk about the way the League operates a little bit. In order to make sure people aren't getting scores hammered on highly variance based scenarios (Wages of Sin), we play a curated list of scenarios. This league was scenarios 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 of The Circle Undone. I chose Jacqueline Fine because a) 5 is extremely good for the treacheries in TCU, b) Jacqueline's ability can make it so that you Diabolic Voices far less often, c) I'm trying to play a different faction each league, and finally d) Mystic is by far my least preferred class and if I'm going to play them at all I want to play them in a campaign they uniquely excel at!

Ok, now are we ready?

Key Level 0 Cards

Sword Cane is the answer to a prayer I have been repeating nightly since the Core Set released. Finally my mystic decks can, from level 0, have combat/evade redundancy built in from level 0, reactively, and without using up an Arcane slot. I don't think I can overstate just how important this card is for making this decklist work. I would be so absolutely crushingly fucked over if it weren't for Sword Cane letting me evade Witches and conserve charges when the Azure Flame damage output doesn't line up with enemy health.

Scroll of Secrets comes with Taboo now, and since the only other thing I need in hand is my Sword Cane, I may as well increase the draw speed of the deck so that I can more reliably get my economy cards and my spells. This card is very good, and my complete draw suite of Guts, Crystal Pendulum and cancelling means that most games I was drawing through my whole deck, ensuring that everything I put in the deck is used to the best of my ability.

A quick roll through of most of the rest of the deck: Azure Flame for a fight spell, Sixth Sense for an investigate spell, Flashlight early on for some investigation redundancy but I'll be dropping this later on, Voice of Ra and David Renfield for the economy package, Spectral Razor for The Secret Name Swarm of Rats and Brown Jenkin, Read the Signs for Haunted and 2 per investigator locations, and finally Prescient to recur them. Finally, Unexpected Courage because I didn't know how to use the Curse tool on Tabletop Simulator for Promise of Power, and Arcane Research to make sure I could afford all of the upgrades I needed before I reach scenario 6.

You may be saying to yourself: Pax, why is this basically Cuherdir's Every Mystic Deck Ever (VIDEO Guide) list but with like 3 cards different? I figured my draw package is already plenty robust, so Arcane Initiate can be David. Why didn't I include Deny Existence you may ask? Well please do not ask because I do not have a satisfactory answer.

League Specific Upgrade Path

My primary goal for this league was to get my deck to a place where I can defeat the Swarm of Rats in The Secret Name, and to that end I wanted to sprint to Azure Flame so I could smoosh them, which meant I needed to upgrade both level 0 to Azure Flame after the first scenario, then upgrade again to level 5 after the second scenario. To that end, I succeeded, and The Secret Name was an absolutely mind boggling slog of a scenario, but I always was able to do enough damage.

After that, my other goal was to shore up my absolutely crap health. Turns out base 6 and 2 David's that I want to keep in play for the willpower boost and money are pretty fragile with a fully upgraded Azure Flame. To this end I purchased The Black Cat, which is probably the single coolest Jacqueline card ever, because suddenly the bag is like 50% -1 tokens, and since I am doing pull 3 choose 1 (or 2 if ), you pull an absolutely truckload of ! If you haven't, you need to try this card out, because Jacqueline's ability ensure The Black Cat gets nine lives.

The final upgrade to the deck is ensuring that I have a Crystalline Elder Sign for the Union and Disillusion Circle tests. Getting a +2 to each of the minor Circle tests and +4 to the final Circle test while also removing a +1 to make Azure Flame a tiny bit safer is really quite good.

I'm super happy with how I have performed this League, getting full score on each scenario so far except for a few deductions due to rules mistakes. If you're interested in watching me play Union and Disillusion live to see how the deck functions, I will be streaming to my Youtube channel at 9PM Atlantic Standard Time (GMT-4) on February 6th.

Minor Clarification on the upgrade path: At one point I drop both Delve Too Deep for Deny Existence and then also upgrade one to Deny Existence, however ArkhamDB doesn't allow for Arcane Research discounting that upgrade all in one deck upgrade step, so I had to do a separate upgrade for the replacement, then another for the Deny 0->5 upgrade for the -2 XP to count properly.