Marion My Wayward Soul | Deck Guide

Credit: Aleksander Karcz

As someone who plays a lot of combat characters in my group, Marion is probably the most fun Guardian () I have played in quite some time. This is because she gets to perform the two most fun actions in card games more than many other Guardians ():

1. Drawing cards (and)
2. Playing cards

Eventually, as one does, I started tossing out slightly less serious builds for her and proposed putting Nautical Charts into her hand. Discarding A Glimmer of Hope (or Winging It) is pretty low cost when you get a free action to play an event every turn. A friend suggested upgrading Nautical Charts with Reliable and the core of the deck was established.

This deck focuses Marion on gathering clues, getting 2-4/round reliably (the audience groans). This is achieved using Nautical Charts, Reliable, Alice Luxley, and Winging It. The rest of the deck includes a package of strong commits, and a broad array of support and combat events to help keep yourself and your team alive in a pinch. You will draw your deck once or twice per scenario. Even if you miss Nautical Charts after you hard mulligan for one, you're going to find one pretty quickly, along with all your other one off assets.

• Overview

• Main Strategy

• The Core Engine

• Draw, Economy, and Commits

• Staying Alive

• Sneaky Tricks

• FAQ

• Upgrade Path

• Get Nautical Charts into play and attach 2xReliable to it.

• Pitch Winging It and A Glimmer of Hope to Nautical Charts to get extra clues.

• Play Winging It and A Glimmer of Hope from your discard pile to get them back.

• Leverage your exceptional card draw for additional clue gathering and utility.

The combination of Nautical Charts, 2xReliable, and Alice Luxley let you investigate for a base of 7 once a turn for a very consistent two clues per round. Your flexible and reusable commits including A Glimmer of Hope make sure we're very likely to succeed, and Bound for the Horizon keeps you in position. When you also factor in your other clue gathering tricks such as Winging It, Scene of the Crime, True Awakening, and even your second Nautical Charts, you have a clue gathering monster on your hands.

That said, you do have to pay for the one "drawback" of Nautical Charts: discarding a card to pick up the additional clue. What's the best thing to do with a "drawback"? Make it a benefit of course! To that end, you have 6 great targets in the deck that you practically want to have in your discard pile.

First are your Glimmers. Recurring these for a buck, drawing a card and possibly playing another event is extremely strong. Alternatively, if you have a single event you want to play and then don't draw into a second one, Glimmer is a great backup plan because you have so many uses for them.

Next, you have your Improvised cards: Improvised Weapon and Winging It, which is the best discard target for Nautical Charts. Once discarded, you can play Winging It for more clues, and then potentially draw it immediately because Marion's triggers after Winging It shuffles back into your deck.

The most important thing to keep in mind when piloting the deck is preventing your Glimmers from being in your discard pile when you cycle your deck. Once your deck starts getting below five cards, start planning how to have them in your hand when your deck reshuffles. While it's not the end of the world for them to shuffle back in, it is preferable to discard them all to hand size at the end of a round to keep them available.

As mentioned in the intro, a goal of this deck is to have a lot fun by drawing lots of cards and playing lots of cards. Fortunately there are a ton of old and new cards that fit the bill here, not to mention Marion's , which should have you drawing at least two cards per round essentially for free with 20+ events in the deck.

Ready for Anything and Second Wind are your start of campaign card draw package. As you begin upgrading, Stand Together•••, True Awakening and Emergency Cache•• will have you moving through your deck even faster. Not to mention the help you get from Soothing Melody, both before and after you upgrade Hallowed Mirror.

On the economy front, this deck is a little deceptive in how much money it can cost. That is why you have 2 copies each of Emergency Cache and Stand Together, and they basically never leave the deck until you maybe consider cutting an Emergency Cache very late in the campaign. Even though there aren't that many assets, all the event cycling adds up, especially in recurring Glimmers, so be very careful about upgrading out of Emergency Cache. Prophetic can help, but it can be a while before you start getting a lot of milage out of Prophetic because the deck doesn't include many applicable events besides Glimmers••. Upgraded Stand Together••• is possibly the only card you keep if you don't have a Nautical Charts when you Mulligan. The team drawing 5 cards and gaining 4 resources, even if you whiff the extra event, is worth it.

For commits, the deck prioritizes Wild () icons over everything else because you want flexibility. This is not a combat focused deck, so the few combat events you start out with are strong or automatic, and only improve from there. Combat () icons just aren't needed that often. On top of that, your strong card draw means you don't need to use skills like Daring, Overpower, or even Perception, to shore up your card draw like many Guardians () do. Unexpected Courage, Take the Initiative, and even Determined all fit the bill perfectly for you, not to mention, A Glimmer of Hope.

Speaking of Determined, do not feel obligated to save Marion's signature for events, especially early in a campaign. There are very few events in the deck that you can commit Determined to at the outset. Winging It is and will remain the best target for them, but Sweeping Kick and Improvised Weapon are the only other events with skill tests in the deck until you start moving towards stronger combat options. Use your skills to get to the value you need to succeed a test, especially something that might make you discard your Nautical Charts and keep cycling your deck. They'll be back! Later in the campaign when you are able to cycle Winging It more easily, then you can start thinking about hanging on to Determined's to ensure you get extra value from your investigates.

This deck uses a stream of healing cards and flexible commits to make Marion more resilient than she appears at first glance. Despite her low Willpower () and Sanity, you have a ton of great options that shore up these weakness to the point where you can zero out your entire party's damage and horror without much effort once you have Hallowed Mirror•••. In fact, you might consider starting with one of each trauma instead of two physical trauma because Marion's healing is so strong, and because the deck starts with two copies of Ready for Anything but only one Second Wind.

This ratio is important because your Sanity is both a) a little more tenuous, and b) can be stressed by your weakness, especially if you draw it early. Ultimately though, you're going to replace one of each with the super flexible True Awakening. Need cards? Draw cards. Need clues? Get clues. Need Health? Sanity? Get them. Not to mention you get to do 2 of the above, for 0 cost and on top of that trigger Marion's . Why yes, a casual draw 3 cards, pick up a clue, play an event for one action does sound great.

Then you have your Hallowed Mirror. Even without upgrading it into Hallowed Mirror•••, this card adds 3 events to your hand/deck which you can use with Marion's . Now Soothing Melody effectively says "Heal 2 damage and/or horror, draw 2 cards, play an event." When upgraded, you get to decide whether to have extra healing now or later by reshuffling them. Just be a little careful because even though you can redraw the same Soothing Melody off of Marion's , the one teensy downside of Marion's is that you have to play a different event.

As mentioned above, your commit package is awesome at dealing with the encounter deck, especially after you upgrade to A Glimmer of Hope•• for the extra Willpower () and Agility () icons.

As for Marion's signature weakness "I'll do it myself", A Glimmer of Hope single handedly solves it if you draw your weakness late in your deck cycle. You might need to pull them from your discard pile, but one resource, one horror, and one action is a pretty low price to pay for a signature weakness. Once you have "Fool me once..." in your hand or on Stick to the Plan, you can even turn "I'll do it myself" into a fast trigger of Marion's .

Combat wise, at the start of the campaign the deck is capable of dealing with small enemies itself while having the tools to get out from under larger threats if necessary. Anything with more than a couple health should probably be your fighter's problem, but you also shouldn't be scared to go off on your own because between Improvised Weapon, Sweeping Kick, and Toe to Toe, you're pretty capable of handling most surprises. Alice Luxley can pick off low health aloof enemies, and Alice Luxley•• can help you pick off 3 health enemies with little risk after tossing in a combat event. Just be careful with Toe to Toe until you get Hallowed Mirror into play.

Regardless, Toe to Toe's are the first cards you replace because the bonus evade on Sweeping Kick is perfect when you draw that nasty elite enemy from the encounter deck. Later in the campaign, you can start spending experience on stronger combat events like One-Two Punch•••••, Counterpunch••, and Fang of Tyr'thrha. Just don't expect to take down a boss yourself.

• Is that second copy of Nautical Charts burning a hole in your hand? Use it from your hand to get two extra clues after your held Nautical Charts have been exhausted.

• Speaking of the second Nautical Charts, if it's in your discard, you can get it back with Scrounge for Supplies and pitch it again for even more clues.

• Want to do something before playing a Bold action? Play a fast event and trigger Marion's to play an event before your "first action" of the turn.

• Once you have "Fool me once..." ready, wait until your turn to discard "I'll do it myself" so you can use Marion's after "Fool me once...".

• Keep in mind that you can't discard "I'll do it myself" in the middle of using Marion's . So for example, if you play A Glimmer of Hope so you can discard them to "I'll do it myself", consider whether you want to play the extra event off of Marion's and take the extra horror, or get rid of "I'll do it myself" first, without drawing the card. While it is safe to draw the card, once you trigger Marion's and decline to play a second event, you don't get a second chance that round.

What about Improvised or Gambit instead of Fortune?

First off, choosing either of these means you don't get to upgrade A Glimmer of Hope into A Glimmer of Hope••. Those extra Willpower () and Agility () icons are a very strong solution to the encounter deck, not to mention other occasional skill tests.

Next, Improvised in general feels like a trap choice for Marion, especially because the most recent set did not include an upgraded Winging It. Improvised has the smallest card pool of the three, so unless you have something very specific in mind (like partying hard), I think the other card pools are pretty much objectively stronger, no matter what your build. Improvised Weapon•• is strong... but you have access to Guardian () events for fighting.

Gambit actually has some fun options, including Bank Job, Honed Instinct, Swift Reflexes, and Practice Makes Perfect, but needing two Nautical Charts's makes your Survivor () card pool pretty tight and I would rather have both A Glimmer of Hope and Winging It than have to choose. I think there is a viable build here (even Belly of the Beast might have a home), but that's not this build.

That all said, there is one card that deserves special mention from Gambit: "You owe me one!". With this, if you can convince a friendly Seeker () or other investigator with the appropriate card pool to spend an experience on Fine Tuning, you can use Nautical Charts twice per turn. That's probably not quite enough on its own to bring "You owe me one!", but if your whole party includes a few cards each that they don't mind you playing, "You owe me one!" can be extremely strong. These might include cards where the team doesn't particularly care who plays them like Cosmic Revelation, Stand Together, and Bank Job, or other selfish boosts for yourself and/or extra copies of cards your teammates draw like Death • XIII, Dr. Milan Christopher, Safeguard, Cornered, or Lone Wolf.

What about other Fortune Cards?

I tried Lucky! in a combat focused Marion, but I found I was discarding them to hand size more often than I was using them. Good Weather is anti-synergy because you don't actually play it during your turn. "Look what I found!" might work but you're not trying to fail investigates here, though with three base Intellect () this isn't particularly hard. Hot Streak might be an interesting upgrade for Emergency Cache, but the extra card draw is probably better at the end of the day, assuming you don't remove the second Emergency Cache altogether.

What if I need to start out more focused on combat? Clue gathering?

There is definitely room to move the starting deck in either direction.

For combat, you can start with a Brand of Cthugha instead of the Sweeping Kick (which might be worth it to begin with on certain campaigns). "Get over here!", Clean Them Out, and Monster Slayer are all event options. It would be extremely greedy but not totally crazy to replace a Nautical Charts with a second Improvised Weapon.

For clue gathering, the first thing to do is swap out a Toe to Toe for a second Scene of the Crime. Improvised Weapon can be replaced with a different survivor card that gathers clues (e.g., "Look what I found!", Contemplative). And while Evidence! probably doesn't make the cut, Task Force can be quite strong in the right circumstances, especially because Marion's functionally refunds the extra action cost.

What if I need to upgrade more towards combat?

Counterpunch••, "Get over here!"••, and Hunter's Mark are good options, and you could shift your Skills towards Vicious Blow•• or Strong-Armed for additional damage, though overall that makes your other tests weaker. If you find yourself doing a lot of combat, Galvanize lets you ready your Nautical Charts, effectively giving you two extra actions during your turn, and Alice Luxley•• prevented you from taking attacks of opportunity during the first investigate. Gang Up is another option that synergizes well with Prophetic. Not to mention that the more you start adding expensive Spirit events do your deck, the more you're going to want Prophetic anyways.

Any other thoughts about the starting deck?

In a previous campaign I tried running two Remington Model 1858, a Tinker to make the hand slots work, and Track Shoes, but I basically never used them. Toe to Toe and Scrounge for Supplies are the more experimental cards in this version, so if you want to run different events or something even weirder (e.g., Handcuffs to take care of a certain La Comtesse?), those are the cards to swap out. Improvised Weapon is another card that could be replaced pretty easily, especially if you aren't expecting to fight a lot, and it frees up one of your level 0 Survivor () slots.

When should I buy/what goes on Stick to the Plan?

I would not recommend taking Stick to the Plan before getting the True Awakening's and upgrading to Stand Together•••'s. Definitely do not do it before taking the core upgrades. Before or after Bound for the Horizon is debatable. I'd definitely do it before throwing experience at combat events.

If you buy Stick to the Plan at those points, you'll want to put these cards on it:

• Emergency Cache•• (assuming only one is upgraded)
• "Fool me once..."
• Sweeping Kick

After you start getting more combat oriented, I've tossed One-Two Punch•••••, Counterpunch••, and even "Get over here!"•• on Stick to the Plan in various circumstances.

Marion doesn't rhyme with "Carry On".

That's not a question.

Link to the 0xp deck

The late game options aren't intended to be 1:1, just noting potential cuts on the left, and upgrades on the right. Fiddle to your taste.

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