Aggressive therapy with Carolyn Fern

Establishing Trust - Investigator overview:

Carolyn Fern starts with the worst statline (along with Ashcan Pete, but it's not a fair comparison since he has Duke, and Calvin obviously is a special case), and currently also has probably the worst signature weakness in the game, and a pretty lacklustre signature asset. But her esoteric deckbuilding requirements give her a huge amount of flexibility, and she ends up being able to investigate like a seeker, but with guardian combat tricks in place of, or in addition to, seeker combat tricks. She can stack a wide range of bonuses, and has an impressive Sanity/Health total - supplemented by tons of healing and access to a wall of extra toughness from allies. In short, she's unconventional, fun, and potentially very effective - as long as we make the most of her flexibility.

Caring for Our Patients - Healing and protection:

Carolyn massively increases the efficiency of sanity healing for our fellow investigators, but it's still an inefficient choice unless it's an emergency. Liquid Courage is hardly ethical psychiatry, and taking unnecessary skill tests is a terrible idea, while Clarity of Mind is completely outclassed, so that leaves Logical Reasoning and First Aid. We're taking them both, but prevention is better than cure: our friends should still avoid taking unnecessary horror and we should feel free to toss the cards into tests if we need to.

One of our regular patients is Peter Sylvestre. Thanks to our care he can heal horror every round, and we earn a resource every time. Prescribing Painkillers helps us keep ourselves healthy while keeping Peter scared enough to fill our wallets, and if he comes into contact with Forbidden Knowledge we can double our rates, getting 2 resources for free every round.

Hitting the books - Investigation and intellect:

Once we've made our diagnosis, we need to research the best course of treatment. St. Hubert's Key improves our and , and thanks to its therapeutic applications, it doesn't even count towards our 15 Seeker or Mystic cards. Magnifying Glass helps to spot subtle symptoms, and calling in Alyssa Graham for a consult gets us even more investigation power. More conventional academics might team up with Dr. Milan Christopher, but our treatment fees keep us rich without him, so we can do without him - and leave him free to help a friend with their dissertation if needed. With our reliable income, we can afford Working a Hunch to ensure clues from difficult locations.

Group therapy - Using our allies:

To start with, it's hard for us to stack too many bonuses, but our priority should be to expand our patient list with Charisma - two copies as soon as we can.

Upgrading Peter Sylvestre and turning our Guard Dogs into Brother Xavier gives us more - and see below under Aggressive Tendencies for how that can help us out.

With a big patient roster, it's sometimes necessary to reschedule our sessions. Calling in Favors is the best way to do so. Early on, this will help us get out the ally we need - say, if Forbidden Knowledge has run out and Peter Sylvestre is no longer paying for treatment. Later on, it'll help us to fill up our Charisma slots as quickly as possible and stack all the benefits from our roster. Putting a session on hold and taking an ally back to our hand also gets rid of the horror and damage on the ally - we won't get a bonus resource as it's not "healing" as such, but it helps our already impressive sanity and health stretch even further.

Aggressive Tendencies - Dealing with enemies:

Diagnosis is vital and keeping our friends healthy in mind and body is our calling, but danger is everywhere. Manifesting our father's .45 during lucid dreaming was a piece of cake, and our growing connection to the dreamlands lets us do this in the real world with Shrivelling. Early on, we're attacking with base 3 (or 4 with St. Hubert's Key), which is a decent stopgap if ambushed by a Ghoul or Mobster, especially if we commit spare icons to the test and use Arcane Studies, but we can't expect to match a proper mystic or guardian in a fight. Later on, we can easily hit 6 or 7 base , giving us strong backup combat potential.

A Guard Dog helps protect us from harm, and we have the toughness to handle an attack of opportunity to put it into play if ambushed. Later on, we want to upgrade to Brother Xavier for a stat boost and protecting our friends from harm as well as testless damage. With the money we make from our practice, we can happily afford Dynamite Blast and kill - I mean, treat - multiple infectees at once.

Dreaming Awake - Signature cards:

Our hypnotherapy sessions with Josephine took us to the Dreamlands, and the Dreamlands followed us back. We've taken on the heavy burden of To Fight the Black Wind, but our mercurial feline friend Foolishness is ready to stand by our side - if we can help him manifest.

To Fight the Black Wind is an absurdly horrible weakness. Alyssa Graham is our insurance against it. Use her ability each round when she's out to check if the weakness is on top of our deck. If it is, we have a few options. If the Agenda is about to advance anyway, we can just let it be drawn in Upkeep or draw it manually - the doom it adds doesn't automatically cause the agenda to advance like Ancient Evils, and once the agenda advances it falls off into our discard pile. This is the ideal situation.

if Alyssa Graham finds the weakness lurking on top of our deck when we're several doom away from advancing, we're better off putting the doom on her to send the weakness to the bottom of our deck. We can kill her off or recall her with Calling in Favors in order to remove the doom on her before it triggers the agenda, though this will shuffle it away from the bottom of our deck. Even if we can't get rid of her, the 1 doom on her is better than the nearly guaranteed 1 doom from To Fight the Black Wind and more possible doom besides. Alternatively, we can forego adding doom to Alyssa and instead use Calling in Favors once she's found To Fight the Black Wind, as this will shuffle our deck and hopefully bury To Fight the Black Wind somewhere deep down.

Foolishness is an odd kitty. Early on in a campaign, it's very hard for us to heal the horror off him. We could use Logical Reasoning and First Aid, and maybe our Elder Sign effect, to help him manifest in our reality, but that's a lot of effort. For the first few scenarios we're generally best off pitching him into a skill test as Unexpected Courage. With Well Prepared, however, his 2 wild icons become incredible. Once Well Prepared is in our deck it can be worth playing Foolishness even without getting his stat boost. Later on, we can upgrade into Moment of Respite, which will heal him of all his horror in one go. Of course, it can always be worth playing him to trigger Calling in Favors if our other patients are feeling shy.

Relying on method, not skill - Why no skill cards?:

This deck uses no skills. With the incredible flexibility of Carolyn, we can get cards that give us powerful options for everything we need to do, and many of our cards such as Working a Hunch and Logical Reasoning have great icons letting them double as skills if we don't need their effects. On higher difficulties, the neutral skills such as Guts become less attractive, as we're more likely to fail regardless and less likely to see a return on our investment. However, skills can have their place, as discussed under Differential Diagnosis below. Even if we do end up taking skills, we should probably upgrade them into more flexible cards down the road.

DIfferential Diagnosis - Flex slots and other options:

Our flex spots here are Working a Hunch, First Aid, Arcane Studies, Painkillers, Shortcut and Ward of Protection. To replace these, we can consider an extra Shortcut, Dodge, a second Painkillers, The Chthonian Stone, Fearless, Deduction, Inspiring Presence, and Emergency Cache. For certain groups and situations, we can also consider "I've got a plan!", Anatomical Diagrams and even Heroic Rescue if the group isn't good at working out its violent impulses, or "Let me handle this!" or True Grit to cover for groups with low Sanity or Health totals. Alternatives to Working a Hunch are Drawn to the Flame if we like taking risks, or Scene of the Crime if we want to branch out into forensic psychology. We want at least one Tactic and/or Supply card after our two Dynamite Blasts, to put under Stick to the Plan when we get it, and any of Dodge, Shortcut, "I've got a plan!", or Emergency Cache are fine options.

Going From Dream to Reality - Upgrade priorities:

Our first upgrade priority is growing our patient list with Charisma. Once that's out of the way, we should consider a second Charisma, Well Prepared, Pathfinder, Stick to the Plan, Brother Xavier and Peter Sylvestre (2), taking on new and interesting cases while expanding our static bonuses. At some point we'll want to beef up our horror healing with Moment of Respite, keeping our mind sharp and helping Foolishness to manifest in our world.

After these core upgrades, we can work on rounding out our deck, with Dynamite Blast (3), Magnifying Glass (1), and any of Ambush, Emergency Cache (2) or Ever Vigilant to put under Stick to the Plan if Dodge or Shortcut is no longer working for us. Protective Incantation is also an option, as we can usually afford the upkeep cost. We can offer our forensic skills to the police directly, taking Relic Hunter and Police Badge to get fast access to crime scenes and help us use Shrivelling. A good psychiatrist will Stand Together with her patients to face their fears, and First Aid (2) is a nice efficiency boost, especially as the double willpower icons work well together with Well Prepared. After all that, if we somehow have exp to spare, we can pick up Cheat Death - either because we have incurred so much trauma that we need the option, or because we want to eventually have one card from every class. After all, we can't help our patients if we're dead.