Parallel Father Mateo has a Renaissance at Arkhamcon

In preparation for Arkham Con 2025 I have taken it upon myself to make a series of pre-made Standalone decks all with different alt-art treatments. What started with a goal of 3 decks, a flex, cluever, and goon, blossomed into 7 with a range of wild designs. Here is a link to some low res files so you can see what they look like: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1J-EYuY12iov-oja2xg88ubVSyOuZRmfr?usp=sharing

Don't forget to check out the other decks, and say hey at Arkham Con if you see me! I might even have a an alt-art surprise for you. ;)

This is another all-time favorite flex deck from my latest playthrough of Innsmouth. Parallel Mateo is frankly cracked at times. The core of the deck hinges on guaranteeing a bless token every turn for Ancient Covenant. It turns out that is you can guarantee the result one action a turn is all you need to get some crazy stuff done. Guided by Faith, Read the Signs, and Rite of Seeking all get you guaranteed two clues. Spectral Razor is a dead enemy a turn without fail. And Banish can guarantee shutting an enemy down for a several turns as you yeet them across the table. Prescient and Crystal Pendulum are busted if you know what the result is going to be every time, and put Purified on an easy test to pack the bag with bless tokens. Prophetic can juice your non-guaranteed tests, but often I just fell back on free money to pay for all the spells. Sacrifice and Voice of Ra round out the economy, and Ward of Protection and Deny Existence offer some Mythos protection. With only one test a turn being locked in, this deck isn't going to sweep a scenario on its own. But turns out when you KNOW you can pass any specific test many scenarios lose their intended bite.

For the art theme I wanted to lean into the kind of things that would be found in Father Mateo's church, so Renaissance art was used for every card. https://www.wga.hu/index_wide_alt.html proved crucial for this having a large archive of art from around the world that is fairly easy to search through. Funny thing I realized going through this process is that some messed up imagery is in no way unique to our modern era. There were some disturbing images I came across in this process, such as the one that a portion was used for in Rite of Seeking. It is one thing to whip that up digitally in an afternoon now. But with oil based paints Frans had to be committed to that for months! All in all love the end result, and will likely return to this art style again in the future.