This is a deck designed for a 3-player Dunwich campaign on Standard difficulty using all three of the (currently available) Guardian investigators: Roland Banks, Zoey Samaras, and Mark Harrigan. I may choose to update this deck when a fourth Guardian investigator is released later this year.

Decklist for Zoey can be found here.

Decklist for Mark can be found here.

Table of Contents

1. Overview
2. Deck Composition
3. Mulligan Guide
4. Playstyle Guide
5. Upgrade Guide
6. Scenario tips
7. Card Exclusions
8. Acknowledgements

Overview

SPOILER WARNING: This guide is for experienced players who have been through the Dunwich Legacy campaign at least once. It contains both gameplay and story spoilers for that particular campaign, so read on at your own discretion.

Playing through a campaign with only a single faction of investigators provides an interesting challenge, and forces you to approach deckbuilding from completely new and unusual angles. With each faction having its own strengths and weaknesses, you'll have to find creative ways to leverage the areas where your faction excels, and to compensate for the areas in which they are lacking.

Our Guardian team has some clear advantages:

• Defeating enemies - With their naturally high (), access to the games' most powerful weapons, and damage-dealing character abilities, this team will laugh at lesser enemies and will make short work of most bosses. A great team for assassination-based scenarios.

• Very high health - All three members of the team start the game with a whopping 9 health. Though keeping tabs on damage is more important for Mark, in general this stat is so high you can almost ignore it until you've taken several hits.

• Very strong special abilities and unique cards - Both Zoey Samaras and Mark Harrigan have signature cards that expedite what they are already great at - killing baddies. For this Roland build, we opt to replace Roland's .38 Special with his presumably soon-to-be-released replacement card, Mysteries Remain, which will help augment his clue-gathering abilities. The special abilities of each member of Team Blue will help you with discovering clues (Roland), a boosted economy (Zoey), and card draw (Mark).

• Great cross-deck synergy - Cards like Stand Together are already quite strong, but their power amplifies significantly with the potential to run up to 6 in a group, as opposed to the usual 2. Extra Ammunition can be used to refuel each others' weapons, and Leadership can be used as a turbo-charged Guts - great for helping your fellow Guardians deal with those nasty horror-inducing treacheries.

While you will enjoy the above benefits on your journey, there will of course be difficulties to face as well:

• Low Intellect - Of the five factions, the Guardians hold the dubious honor of having the lowest average (). As discovering clues is fundamental to advancing the act deck, this poses obvious problems.

• Very low sanity - Whereas the low Intellect stat may stifle your progression, the Guardians' low sanity is a gaping hole in your defenses. Zoey is a bit hardier, but even so, Team Blue still comes in dead last overall - with Roland and Mark tied for the lowest sanity of all available investigators at a miserable 5.

• Mediocre Economy - Guardian cards are expensive, and you'll need to be creative to find the resources you need to afford them. Fortunately, each of the three has their own method to help deal with this issue, and it will become less of a problem as you upgrade your decks.

Now that we've given a high-level overview, let's drill down a bit and see what each member of our team is bringing to the table:

• Roland Banks - With his higher () of 3 and access to the Seeker class cards, Roland is the obvious choice to serve as your primary clue gatherer. He'll still kill an enemy here and there, but in general his teammates should keep the baddies away from him so he can focus on advancing the act deck as quickly as possible

• Zoey Samaras - Zoey wears several hats on this team, making her perhaps more fun to play than in a campaign where she is focused exclusively on murdering monsters. She will need to switch back and forth between clue gatherer and monster hunter, as needed.

• Mark Harrigan - The brawniest member of the team stays the truest to the usual Guardian role; Mark is the first line of defense against the encroaching hordes, and he'll often be all you need. But he's not completely off the hook - Mr. Harrigan will still be required to pull his weight in the clue department during those rare moments of downtime.

Deck Composition

As you may have noticed, this deck is very different from a typical Roland build. In its Level 0 incarnation, it contains only TWO Guardian cards. However with two other Guardians watching his back, this allows Roland to take full advantage of his access to the Seeker class of cards, greatly improving his already quite decent investigating skills. Indeed half of the cards in the deck are included to increase your clue-finding tempo:

• 2x Flashlight The cornerstone of this deck gives a big boost to your () and will automatically let you discover a clue on locations with a shroud of 2 or less. Ideally though, you'll want to use the Flashlight on higher shroud locations, since you'll be boosting Roland's investigation stat with a combination of several other cards that should make investigating low-shroud locations a cinch.

• 2x Magnifying Glass Cheap and fast asset that dials up your investigation even further. The best part is that its ability stacks with the flashlight, so ideally you'll have both on you at once.

• 2x Art Student Ally that immediately discovers a clue upon entering play, and soaks some horror to boot. She has some somewhat unfortunate anti-synergy with Dr. Milan Christopher (who you don't generally want to leave play once he's been summoned), so don't hesitate to assign damage/horror to her as quickly as possible.

• 2x Dr. Milan Christopher The quintessential Seeker ally, the good doctor not only helps you investigate, but will turbo-charge your economy as Roland should be performing several successful investigations each turn.

• 1x Fieldwork Talent asset that - in most cases - will be used to investigate your new location at +2. Can also be used to help mitigate nasty Forced location effects that might require a skill test upon entering.

• 2x Working a Hunch Fast event that lets you immediately discover a clue at your location. Save it for a high shroud location if possible.

• 1x Mysteries Remain Roland's replacement signature card, a cheaper and more flexible version of Working a Hunch. Use it to discover a clue at a high shroud location, or generate one on a low shroud location for your less investigation-savvy teammates to discover on their turns.

• 2x Deduction Skill that improves your investigation, and rewards you with an extra clue upon success.

• 2x Perception Skill that improves your investigation, and lets you draw a card upon success.

Even though Roland will be discovering clues in a more Seeker-styled fashion, that doesn't mean that you won't be able to take advantage of his ability to find clues by defeating enemies:

• 2x Knife The perfect weapon for delivering the finishing blow to an enemy. Ideally Mark and Zoey will whittle an enemy down until it has 1 or 2 health, and then you can toss this at them to defeat the enemy and gain a clue. Its +2 () and +1 damage bonuses simply can't be beat for the cost, and throwing the knife away frees up a valuable hand slot.

As always, you'll need to keep a close eye on Roland's sanity at all times. However, I believe you'll find that with two other Guardians at your back keeping horror off your FBI agent will prove less difficult than you might think:

• 1x Smoking Pipe In the Triple Guardian Challenge, Roland can heal a horror, and Mark can draw a card by taking the damage on True Grit. Even if this combo isn't to your liking, Roland has enough health to soak the damage himself if need be.

• 2x Logical Reasoning Extremely handy Insight event that allows an investigator at your location to heal 2 horror (always great) or discard a Terror card from their threat area (situationally useful). In additon, it has two () icons, to help deal with treaceries from the encounter deck.

• 1x Dodge Fast Tactic event that will keep an enemy off you or one of your partners, in the event that it somehow survives into the enemy phase.

Finally, we have some support cards to round out the deck's utility:

• 1x Bandolier With six hand assets in the deck (and even more waiting in the upgrade wings), you'll be happy to have this card around, as it will actually let you swing your Knife for multiple attacks if necessary instead of feeling the pressure to throw it at something.

• 2x No Stone Unturned Helpful Insight event that can help mitigate a bad opening draw or speculatively look for a specific card in an investigator's deck.

• 2x Shortcut Fast and cheap asset that will help your give your pokey Guardians a much-needed mobility boost.

• 2x Unexpected Courage With so many cards in the deck that help boost Roland's (), you may want to save this for other tests, particularly () for when the encounter deck decides to serve up something gross.

• 2x Inquiring Mind Functions essentially the same as Unexpected Courage, but with the restriction that there must be a clue on your location. Roland will be vacuuming up clues quickly, so don't be afraid to commit this card before you empty the location.

Mulligan Guide

• Mulligan any card not named Flashlight, Magnifying Glass, or Dr. Milan Christopher. It is vital to get at least one of these cards out on turn one; if you are lucky, you'll find two, or even all three.

Exception If you drew No Stone Unturned, you can keep it to look for one of those cards on turn 1. This may seem a bit extreme, but keep in mind that your team is going to depend on Roland for the majority of the clue-finding throughout the campaign, and you are already playing catch-up on your () stat when compared to a dedicated seeker. Therefore, you'll want to do everything you can to boost that stat up as high as you can, as fast as you can.

Once you have upgraded your deck a bit, here are some cards you can add to the above list:

• Stand Together Great card for your opening hand to help expedite turn 1 setup

• Ever Vigilant You can hang onto this if you draw at least one of your key cards in your opening hand. Mulligan everything else, hope to draw another key card(s), and play both (or all 3) at a nice action-and-resource-saving discount.

• Encyclopedia Lower priority than the others, but can be a great turn 1 play in certain scenarios.

Playstyle Guide

Your general strategy as Roland is to aggressively investigate locations, discovering clues as quickly as possible while your teammates watch your back for enemies and assist with investigating where they can. For the rest of this section, I will be referring to Flashlight, Magnifying Glass, and Dr. Milan Christopher as Roland's key cards On your first turn, you will want to do the following:

• If you were lucky enough to draw all three of your key cards, equip a Magnifying Glass and summon Dr. Milan Christopher; then move toward a location with clues. On your next turn, assuming you complete at least one successful investigation, you will then have enough resources to also play your Flashlight.

• If you drew one or two of your key cards, equip as many as you can afford and move toward a location with clues. Prioritze playing Flashlight for high shroud locations (3+) and the others for lower shroud locations.

• If you did not draw any of the key cards, you will want to draw from your deck in the hopes of finding one, but you should still move toward a location with clues so that your teammates can follow.

On subesquent turns - assuming you are set up with one or more of your key cards - you should be spending the majority of your actions investigating and discovering clues:

• You should almost never have to draw a card or take a resource, especially if Dr. Milan Christopher is in play.

• Prioritize investigating over playing other assets from your hand, unless they will help you with discovering clues (i.e., Art Student or Fieldwork)

• As soon as your location is empty of clues, quickly move on to the next location.

Eventually enemies will start to spawn, and here you should coordinate with your teammates to determine the best course of action. Remember that Roland can discover a clue by defeating an enemy:

• Mark and Zoey will each be packing two copies of Evidence!; so if one of them has a copy of this card, they should be the one to kill an enemy so that Roland can continue investigating.

• Otherwise, Roland should try to defeat the enemy himself if it is very weak, thus triggering his ability to discover a clue.

• If the enemy is strong, Mark Harrigan and/or Zoey Samaras should attack the enemy until it has 1 or 2 health left. During his turn, Roland should equip his Knife if possible, and then deliver the finishing blow to the enemy by throwing the knife for 2 damage.

• If there are multiple enemies at Roland's location, it's best not to be too clever. Let the other Guardians defeat the enemies until the situation is under control.

Although you need to advance the Act deck to win, advancing it at the wrong time can make your journey more difficult than it needs to be:

• If Roland can advance the Act by himself on the current turn, he should should go first. Then Mark and Zoey will still have their turns to deal with any nasty creatures that may materialize as result of the Act advancing.

• Roland should also go first if it looks like he can empty a location of its clues AND it's not likely that the team will be able to advance the Act on the current turn. Ideally he can do so before his last turn, so that he can end his turn on a new location with clues on it.

• If neither of the above is true, then Roland should usually go last, especially if he is engaged with enemies.

With this Seeker-focused deck, Mysteries Remain is preferable to Roland's other signature card. Unfortunately, this means you will have to deal with The Dirge of Reason when you draw it:

• Above all else, never leave Roland with only a single clue in his possession.

• Since Roland will be doing the bulk of the clue gathering, you should usually have two clues on hand to place on your location. In this case, the card will generally cause you to lose two actions to pick them back up.

• Only having a single clue when you draw this card is much, much worse: not only do you lose the clue and take a horror, but the weakness is shuffled back into your deck, forcing you to potentially deal with it a second time. As such, you should never have only a single clue in your possession at any point where you might draw a card.

• Unlike with Cover Up, your teammates cannot help you deal with this weakness, so it's up to you to safeguard yourself against it.

• If you have more clues than you need in order to advance the scenario, Roland should be the one to hang onto the extra clues if you have at least two extras. Otherwise, Zoey or Mark should keep the extras.

Upgrade Guide

Priority S

• +1x Charisma ••• : Permanent talent asset that is vital to unlocking the full functionality of Roland's deck. Since it is so important to get Dr. Milan Christopher into play, and then to keep him around for as long as you can, the Art Student will often be a dead draw until you get this card. Purchase it before anything else so that you can take full advantage of her ability. Fortunately this will not be much of an issue during the first scenario of the campaign (See Scenario Tips for more details).

Priority A

The purchases at this tier are great tempo boosts - not only for Roland, but for the rest of the team as well.

• 2x No Stone Unturned 2x Stand Together ••• : Outstanding Spirit event whose strength is compounded by running multiple copies across your team. The Guardians' overall tempo becomes vastly accelerated once each member is running two of this card in their deck. As such, it's not only a priority for Roland, but for Zoey and Mark as well. You don't necessarily need or want to buy both copies right away, but try to get the first one as soon as you can, and come back for the second once you've added some more powerful cards to your deck.

• 1x Shortcut Ever Vigilant • : With the large number of Assets in the deck, this Tactic will help you get them into play quickly and cheaply. A nice card to draw in your opening hand, as it almost always results in saving at least one action and one resource.

Priority B

Now that you've boosted your team's economy and tempo, it's time to turbocharge Roland's cluefinding ability even further:

• +1x Keen Eye ••• : Powerful Permanent asset that will get a lot of mileage once you've purchased it. With Dr. Milan Christopher, you should be generating enough resources to reliably use this every turn.

• 2x Deduction 2x Deduction •• : Expert skill that not only boosts your chances of passing investigation tests, but has the potential to discover three clues in a single action.

• 1x Fieldwork 1x Encyclopedia •• : Tome asset that takes up a hand slot and is more action-intesnsive than Fieldwork, but gives a longer-lasting bonus that is much more flexible, as you can use it on other investigators.

• 2x Magnifying Glass 2x Magnifying Glass • : This upgrade is not only cheaper, but also allows you to bring the asset back into your hand essentially whenever you need to, freeing up a hand slot for something more useful. Don't be afraid to commit it to a skill test if your hands get full.

• 1x Dodge 1x "I've had worse…" •••• : Maybe I'm being results-oriented, but this extremely powerful Spirit event has bailed me out of so many jams that I always wish I had it in my hand. In addition, it provides extra fuel for your Keen Eye. It's expensive in terms of XP, so buy it at your discretion, but the peace of mind it brings is worth it.

Priority C

• 1x Shortcut 1x Extra Ammunition • : Supply event that you won't use yourself, but will help keep Zoey and Mark's guns firing.

• 1x Smoking Pipe 1x Elder Sign Amulet ••• : Relic asset that gives Roland some additional breathing room concerning his low sanity. A nice item to have, but the deck and your partners have enough safeguards against sanity loss, that it shouldn't be a high priority.

Scenario Tips

As mentioned at the top of the notes, this is not a spoiler-free guide! Read on at your discretion.

This section will give a very high-level plan of attack for each scenario to help maximize the amount of XP you earn, as you will need every last one you can get your hands on.

The House Always Wins

In this playthrough, you should always choose to do this scenario first, before Extracurricular activity for several reasons:

• Art Student is not a dead draw for Roland, as you can discard her to the Clover Club Lounge.

• Extracurricular Activity features the unholy combination of the Sorcery and The Beyond encounter sets, which severely punish you for running out of cards, while also helping you to run out of cards. As such, it's preferable to attempt that scenario when you have fewer rounds in which to complete it (you lose 3 rounds when you attempt Extracurricular Activity as the second scenario of the campaign)

• In the first part of the scenario, all your clue gathering will be done through unorthodox means, so you will have plenty of time to get your team set up for the second half, where things go back to "normal". By that point, Roland will ideally be equipped to quickly vacuum up all the clues in the locations connected to the Darkened Hall.

• Since an enemy left alive is generally worse than an investigation gone wrong, for now we'll opt to save Dr. Francis Morgan (for Mark) over Professor Warren Rice (for Roland). With a little luck, you'll be able to find Professor Rice a bit later on anyway.

Extracurricular Activity

Your goals for this scenario are to get the Victory points at both the Orne Library and the Dormitories and to also defeat The Experiment. If you are lucky you will draw additional Victory enemies from the encounter deck as well. This is a pretty ambitious task and you might have some difficulty, depending on what the encounter deck decides to throw at you.

• Your best bet is to split into two groups:

  • Send Mark to the Science Building.
  • Send Roland and Zoey to either the Orne Library or the Humanities Building.

• As soon as you've got all the clues you need to advance the Act, spend them - but continue discovering clues until you have cleared the Orne Library, Humanities Building, and Science Building. Once each subgroup has cleared their area of the board, get them to the Student Union as fast as possible.

• Use the ability on the Act in rapid succesion to summon "Jazz" Mulligan at the Student Union. If you can gain control of him before The Experiment appears, then you are in great shape.

• Send as many investigators as you can to the Dormitories and start investigating like crazy.

• Use your judgement to decide who to send to deal with the The Experiment when it arrives, but do not defeat it until all the clues have been discovered at the Dormitories.

• You shouldn't need to enter the Administration Building at all, unless you are extraordinarily unlucky when searching for "Jazz". In this case, you should probably cut your losses and accept that the XP from the Dormitories is probably lost.

The Miskatonic Museum

After the hell that was Extracurricular Activity, your Guardian team gets a bit of a breather with this scenario, as Zoey and Mark will help you quite a bit with discovering clues, while murdering the Hunting Horror over and over again.

• At the Museum Entrance, Roland should grab the clues, but have Mark break the door down anyway. This will give you a massive headstart on revealing the various Exhibit halls.

• Once inside, head for the Administration Office and start investigating.

• Assuming that Mark was able to break the door down, you should never need to go to the Security Office at all unless you are very unlucky with the locations that appear.

• This scenario is one where it's ok to split up since (a) there is only one enemy around and (b) your teammates won't be far away if they need to catch up to you. You are taking a slight risk in that you won't always be able to commit cards to each other's tests, but it is worth it to be able get the max XP for this scenario.

The Essex County Express

Arguably the swingiest scenario in the campaign, you'll need to be fast to stay ahead of the Agenda deck. Roland's role is as straightforward as ever in this scenario:

• More so than any other scenario, Roland needs to focus on investigating.

• Mulligan for your key cards, and get as many as you can out on turn 1. After that, don't waste time playing any other non-fast assets or events (other than Art Student) unless you are very far ahead of the Agenda.

• Zoey and Mark should be helping Roland investigate as much as possible; don't be stingy with committing cards to her tests, as wasted actions are very costly in this scenario.

Blood on the Altar

• This scenario features a high degree of randomness in the layout, depending on which location is removed during setup. I would recommend drawing a map to illustrate how the locations are connected, as you may end up moving down one-way paths if you're not careful, costing you several valuable actions.

• Losing Dr. Milan Christopher to Kidnapped! is the absolute worst thing that can happen during this scenario, and will effectively cripple Roland for the remainder of the campaign. If he is at risk, do everything in your power to make pass the required () test, or even better - let Zoey handle this treachery when it pops up.

• At the end of this scenario, you will have to decide between putting Silas Bishop out of his misery, or restoring him by discovering a lot of clues in The Hidden Chamber:-Killing Silas plays to the team's strengths - at this point in the game, Zoey and Mark should be able to deal massive damage with the Lightning Gun and Shotgun respectively, so Silas shouldn't give them much trouble.

• Ending this scenario quickly means that there will be fewer sacrifices made to Yog-Sothoth. The more characters that survive, the stronger your Powder of Ibn Ghazi will be in the next scenario - and hoo boy, are you gonna need every bit of help you can get.

• The main downside is that ending the scenario in this way means you will have to deal with a Conglomeration of Spheres early on in Where Doom Awaits, and will have to deal with the Hideous Abomination encounter set during that scenario.

Undimensioned and Unseen

This scenario will prove rather difficult, as your team's primary advantage - killing enemies - is largely negated when dealing with the nasty story enemies which are immune to normal attacks.

• Without the luxury of a () powerhouse like Agnes Baker at your disposal, who can overwhelm the brood with her high numbers alone, you will need to rely on the various location effects to move clues onto the enemies.

• Encyclopedia is a godsend in this scenario - once you have the Esoteric Formula out, you'll want to use it on Zoey so that she can attack the monsters at +2().

• It's up to you how many clues to put on an enemy before sending Zoey in for the kill, but you probably should shoot for at least two per enemy to have a reasonable shot at damaging a brood.

• Since Roland will often be the investigator with the most clues, he will often be the one performing the tests for the location effects as well.

Where Doom Awaits

• There isn't a whole lot ot say about this scenario other than that you'll want to move to the branching paths with only a single action remaining to mitigate the ill effects of the move.

• Mysteries Remain is a superb draw in this scenario, as it allows you to spend less time in the dangerous branching paths by generating a clue on the safer central paths.

Lost in Time and Space

• Hooray! You're at the end of the campaign!

• The Guardians may struggle with a lot, but they are well-equipped to deal with the final boss if it you don't escape in time. If you decide ahead of time to end the scenario this way, you may want to consider have Roland pack a second copy of Extra Ammunition to achieve maximum blastiness.

Card Exclusions

• No Machete Since Roland generally wants to have a Flashlight in one hand and a Magnifying Glass in the other, it doesn't make sense to include this relatively expensive asset, especially since your teammates will be doing most of the monster killing. In addition, the one-time ability of the Knife is superior and significantly cheaper.

• No Dr. William T. Maleson This was a tough call, but in the end I opted for Art Student over what is normally one of Roland's best allies. As we all know, the doctor is great for helping Roland deal with Cover Up, but without that card to worry about, I'd argue that he loses a lot of his shine. Furthermore, with The Dirge of Reason around, you really can't afford to be dropping more clues on your location, so his special ability is effectively nullified.

• No Evidence! At first glance it would seem as though this card would be perfect for a clue-centered Roland. The issue is that Roland simply won't be killing enough enemies to make including this card worthwhile. Now Zoey and Mark on the other hand...

• No Guts bricklebrit, you must be crazy not to include this card! Everyone knows that Roland needs Guts. In reality, the release of Logical Reasoning makes Guts a less appealing card for Roland. The ability to heal 2 horror is probably better than drawing a card, so here we are. Plus, your teammates will be packing both Guts and even some Leadership, so you really don't need your own.

• No Emergency Cache When played in the usual fashion, Roland is notorious for having serious money issues. However, when freed from the inclusion of all those expensive Guardian assets, his economy is greatly improved to the point of no longer needing this card. Indeed, the most expensive card in the deck is Dr. Milan Christopher, who will pay for himself within a couple of turns.

Acknowledgments

• DadouXIII - for setting the gold standard in deckbuilding guides. Their guides have made me think about the game in ways I never would have otherwise - high praise all around!
• Fantasy Flight - obviously for making such a great game!