The Jim Culver Mysteries. First ever build. Critique and adv

I think you'll have quite a challenging run with this deck. Jim is not the strongest investigator and unfortunately there's not that many good cards that do Chaos Bag manipulation that synergize with Jim's ability, especially at 0 XP. Nkosi Matabi, Protective Incantation, Grotesque Statue and Dark Prophecy are some of the few cards that synergize particularly well with Jim's ability and all but the last one cost XP. I don't know if you're playing with just one investigator or as part of a group because Chaos bag manipulation gets better the more investigators/players are in your game.

Generally the deck is very unfocussed. You have very expensive cards and Dark Horse in the same deck for example. I would recommend making a couple of choices before deckbuilding like: Do you want to focus on clues, combat or both? Do you want to use Weapons to fight and Intellect to gather clues or use Willpower and spells to do both. This will determine which stats you need to boost and will give focus for your build. All options are viable with Jim.

On individual cards:

Ritual candles aren't particularly good for Jim because Skulls already count as zero so you probably won't need the extra boost for that.

Rite of Seeking and Shrivelling both have negative synergy with your ability so maybe pick other spells that do the same thing if you have access to those cards.

Clarity of Mind costs too many actions to be worth including and Jim's Trumpet can do the same thing less reliably but for a lower (action) cost. Also you probably have better use for your arcane slots.

Dynamite blast works better if you can dodge lots of enemies and move away from their location. There are probably better picks then this for 1 of your 5 off colour cards.

Moonlight Ritual doesn't do anything in this deck because it's unlikely you'll get Doom on a card you control.

Ward of Protection is great. I'd recommend putting more in.

I just realised you probably only have Core Set and Dunwich cycle so you're very restricted in what you can put in.

Jim is cool but is one of the weaker investigators and hard to build for so you've set yourself quite the challenge :).

Ultimately just have fun, run the deck as is. I suspect you'll have a hard time but you'll learn what works and what doesn't and especially if you're doing it solo you can just make some adjustments or start over if you don't like your deck.

Thanks for the advice and comments. Part of the issue is my card pool currently consists of the core, Full Dunwich Cycle and the first half of Path to Carcosa. But I agree the deck doesn't seem to have a solid focus. At first the idea was to run this solo, but having read your comments it might be reworked into one of the 4player decks

I really enjoy playing Jim, but by the time I got Dunwich I had a full collection, and many of the cards I use for him came out in later cycles. Mostly cards which have benefits for pulling a Skull token and cards which let me have more control of which tokens I pull during tests.

If your collection is just Core Set and Dunwich cycle, then I think Grotesque Statue is the only card which can filter token draws. This lack of token manipulation means Jim's ability is more about the bag being more lucky for him, a higher percentage chance to pass tests, and less about actually trying to hope for Skull tokens. I like to build into that luck with cards that react after the test: cards like Lucky! and "Look what I found!". I also tend to track the chaos bag odds and try to maximize the amount of tokens I pass vs amount of cards/effort I use to pass them, which is where boosts like Ritual Candles and skill cards might become part of my plan.

With Jim's more flat stat-line, I am more willing to test and to get clues and deal damage when playing solo. So I tend to include a couple of weapons and intellect boosts to supplement the spells, especially when there are fewer cards in this collection to boost his willpower. I do still focus on as his main stat, but I don't go all in like my other mystic builds. I do find it difficult to get Jim to evade enemies without specific spells, so I tend to assume he will have to fight his way out of trouble.