Blood Money | Chapter 2 Starter Guide

Blood Money

This series provides 10 playtested decks using the Chapter 2 Core and new Starters, with each deck compatible for two player with at least 7 others (and working well at high player counts). Marie gets Cash4Blood using Offering Bowl and Jim Culver, which also activates her excellent ability. She also hoovers up clues like a Seeker, while giving enemies the slip with Shadowmeld - definitely more the Witch and less the Performer!

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At a Glance

Stats
Clue-finding:	★★★★★
Consistency:	★★★★★
Enemy Management:	★★★☆☆
Encounter Defense:	★★★★☆
Survivability:	★★★★★
Simplicity:	★★★★★

Overview

• Putting the band back together: With Jim on sax and a Bloodstone amulet, Marie clue-finds at 6 with Second Sight. Meanwhile, Hand-Crank Flashlight means you to investigate at a 5 too (useful to avoid losing charges Sight with a pull). Will of the Cosmos gives clues for "free", putting the doom on the easily discardable Flashlight or an Offering Bowl. Augur of Elokoss can test at a 10 for high shroud locations, with Premonition to activate its bonus. Grand-Mère's Charm can recharge Second Sight (e.g. after Bloodstone has been discarded).

• Deck-churning behaviour: By taking damage, Marie draws two cards and discards one every phase. Offering Bowl and Blood Curse provide damage readily, in addition to enemy attacks, encounter effects and whenever you use Grand-Mère's Charm. Upgraded Jim also provides a resource and an extra card for damage you receive once per round. All told, you should usually have a sizeable hand to tackle Called to Guinée.

• Cash4Blood: Each Offering Bowl nets five resources for 3 damage, which is readily healed with Cosmic Guidance, Infuse Life, your ability or Blood Ward (or soaked with Jim or Bloodstone). As highlighted Jim also gives you resources once per turn when you take damage or horror, and Emergency Cache provides more on top. This resource generation means high cost events like Infuse Life are feasible. I guess it's Arkham's version of Cash4Gold?

• Enemy management: Enemy management is Shadowmeld and basic evades, as well as cancelling attacks with Blood Ward. You can use Shadowmeld for action compression by spending a charge to move to an adjacent location, but you don't have to and it doesn't spend charges otherwise. This is a great way to refund an enemy management action.

• Horror soak and encounter management: I've mentioned that Jim is good damage soak, turns out he's good horror soak too. With Marie's above average stat, you shouldn't take much horror to begin with. There's a crazy amount of icons for treachery tests, but the neat part is sometimes you'll want to fail these and take damage to trigger Marie's ability.

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Campaign starter and planned progression

0 XP deck is below (and link here):

A recommended order of purchases/upgrades is:

• Jim Culver → Jim Culver ••••

• Guts → Blood Ward

• Perception → Augur of Elokoss

Post-19 XP suggestions are:

• Second Sight → Second Sight •••••

• Potentially Retribution if you want a boss-killer, possibly in the place of Premonition.

Explain Yourself!

Just like Jacqueline Fine, a great feature of Marie is her stat of 4. It means that with a Hand-Crank Flashlight you can readily find clues even without Second Sight, especially with all the icons in the evergreen Mystic card pool. For me this casts Marie as a clue-finder, so I lent into that - focusing on Shadowmeld (to get to new locations and find clues), plus any additional clue support I could get. I also couldn't resist Jim Culver, mainly because he incentivises Marie's ability (but also he can play sax while Marie does vocals).

Even considering the Mystic cards I ringfenced for Dexter, I don't think there's any changes I would make to this deck. For me there isn't enough targets of Favor of Baalshandor for it to be worthwhile, and with the evade focus then Spiritual Charm isn't sensible. Arcane Initiate, while normally a life-saver for Mystics, is much less needed here due to Marie's ability. Ritual Dagger feels pricey in terms of XP just to shuffle events back into your deck, especially when you can use assets to duplicate a lot of what events can do.

Compatability Matrix

Everyone likes a good matrix! Below are all the decks that are compatible at two player using one Chatper 2 Core and one 2026 Starter Deck set:

For higher player counts I've not 'compatabilized' the basic skills (Overpower, Manual Dexterity, Guts, Perception and Unexpected Courage). There are only 4 copies of each in the Chapter 2 core, enough for any two decks. If playing 3+ players and there's a clash, you can either:

• Swap with an appropriate level 0 class skill which that deck can use (e.g. On the Brink for Unexpected Courage).

• Swap with a class event or asset with matching or similar symbols (e.g. Working a Hunch for Perception).

• Swap with a different underused basic skill you still believe would be useful for the deck (e.g. Guts for Unexpected Courage).

• Proxy however you see fit (especially if you own Chapter 1 cards, just use the old school versions and remember the slight difference around who draws the card).

I empower you to do sensible things!

Final thoughts

Marie is really good! She plays similarly to Trish, with slightly worse movement (but still good movement with Shadowmeld) but on the whole better clue assets and events. On top of this she has absurd card draw, so her consistency is extremely high. I'd say Augur of Elokoss is the slight sleeper hit, while 3 XP for a +1 clue event is pricey by Chapter 1 terms - I kind of like the rebalance of XP costs for Chapter 2. It makes your charges on Second Sight easier to conserve, and the skill boost it provides is massive, so its presence gels the deck together...

Any thoughts - drop them below!