Agnes Baker, Blood Mage

Our favourite waitress turned witch, Agnes Baker, has gone through some changes since the game first release with the much wider array of cards but the most notable change had to be the introduction of a parallel version and with it a new way to play the character.

Core Theme This deck centres around Agnes’s new ability to channel her blood into her spells, making them easier to cast and letting her recast them over and over. This deck looks to use her abilities to in order to play powerful spell events all throughout the scenario rather than just once, and also protect your one of assets from being lost to the discard pile forever.

Pros The deck is resilient. Unlike many other investigator’s the power of this deck isn’t centralised in a small collection of cards but rather in the wide berth of options you have for any situation. Being able to cycle virtually every card in the deck you're not too upset losing any individual events or even the assets you have in play, as paired with a reduced deck size it won’t be long before you find them again. Additionally, Agnes’s 5 gives her extraordinary resistance against most treacheries, the handful of “cancel” cards in Ward of Protection can take care of those you can’t risk, and Soothing Melody means you’ll always have health to keep triggering her ability while also topping up your horror pools or the survivability of your fellow players.

It’s flexible and powerful. With powerful tools to fight in Azure Flame and Spectral Razor she can easily clear enemies, with Spectral Razor giving her a value of 7 without any modifiers, combining engaging and attack into a single action and dealing 3 damage to boot (against non-Elites). Then using Clairvoyance and Read the Signs you can quickly scoop up clues, with Read the Signs you again get a skill value of 7, you get an extra clue, and you ignore any effects that might trigger from the investigation be that part of the location or a treachery. Then you have a few other pieces of support with Soothing Melody to provide healing and cycle a card, Sword Cane for when you do need to evade, and Uncage the Soul for helping get your more expensive assets out cheaper (though you could swap that for Voice of Ra if you want resources, I just like the action compression). Most importantly by using your ability you can both recycle the powerful events of the deck like Spectral Razor, Read the Signs, and Soothing Melody (even though it costs zero you can use your ability to be able to shuffle it back in) and play them for cheap they become free while using the ability which means they can clutch regardless of when you draw them.

It’s focused. With only 25 card slots this deck is very lean, not having the space to waste on more than 2 or 3 niche cards. The entire deck is comprised of the most widely applicable and useful spells which makes it highly consistent. Additionally, it has some draw power built in through both of its relic slot items. The #Heirloom retains its ability to replenish your hand whenever you play a spell, and since you’ll be recycling them that’ll be pretty often. With #hallowed each time you heal yourself (or others) it’ll do you the favour of replacing itself with a new card. Either of those can help you quickly cycle through your deck for whatever piece your missing, but you won’t need to do that very often as more often than not you’ll have what you need in your hand already.

Cons The reduced deck size. With only 25 cards in the deck that gives you a bigger chance to be seeing each individual card which extends to the weaknesses and #dark is one of the worst as far as signatures go adding a doom to the agenda and giving you two horror every turn you delay it so it eats an action, costs resources, and adds a doom. Chances are high you’ll see it in every scenario unless your absolutely blitzing through. Anything that mills through your deck hurts more than most as you have fewer cards to lose. If you end up losing both copies of card to a random mill won’t be enough to stop you but it’ll still curtail your momentum.

There is tough competition for space. This deck doesn’t have a lot of flex slots, each card is either helping you fight, investigate, or survive as it needs a critical mass of each of those which restricts the number of “fun” cards you can include (winning is pretty fun imo). This means you need to really spend time critically examining each card in your deck, if you find yourself thinking “if only this were something else” then don’t hang on to it “just in case” replace it with something that will come up more. When you can go through your deck as quickly as this you don’t want to blank your draws with duds.

It requires more active management. With Agnes’s ability your health goes from a measure of your life to another resource for you to use. This is a switch in playstyle that I found rather refreshing, but it is more involved as now you have to more carefully manage all your resources; cards, health, and resources alike. By using your health, you can quickly deplete your hand if you don’t have tools to refill it and it’ll put you in a precarious position once a couple enemies start cropping up. So you have to consider when you play your spells and how you pay for them, with your deck being another factor as you don’t need or want to shuffle back every card as it lowers your chances of seeing your other playmakers.

Conclusions The deck is flexible, resilient, and consistent. This is a deck I would consider to be viable for True Solo being able to reliably flick between gathering clues and killing enemies, and you can easily lean more heavily on either depending on what you need more of. With a high primary stat, you have a natural resistance to most treacheries and your spells will go off more often than not.

But it requires a lot more thought to successfully pilot. With a need to manage card slots, your weakness, and your resource pools this deck needs to have your brain switched on to use it to full effect as you need to always be performing a balancing act both in scenarios and deck building.

Overall it’s an explosive and flexible deck able to demonstrate both of those qualities every other turn as it flicks between gathering clues and slaying monsters. You will need to watch out for its weakness which has a tendency to crop up at the most inconvenient times, but other than that you should have no trouble either filling in a missing role or taking on the mythos solo.