Written by Gladwin J. Singh
*This is a write up about a True Solo attempt of Daisy Walker in the Night of The Zealot campaign. As such there will be spoilers for this campaign so please read at your discretion*
In my previous post, I was writing about my experience with The Innsmouth Conspiracy, scenario 1 & 2. Normally I would continue writing about it, but it’s been real hard to obtain the mythos packs here in Malaysia. I’ve just recently got some of them, so stay tune for a write up about the upcoming scenarios. In the mean time, here’s a sneak peak of the adventures of Stella Clark in the Devil Reef.
Fortunately, I was able to stock up on The Dunwich Legacy expansion along with its 6 mythos packs, so maybe I’ll start there first. Throughout the month of collecting, I yearned to play and I was particularly gunning to play seeker investigators. It was decided that I would try out the infamous librarian of Miskatonic University, Daisy Walker. With a pool of new cards from The Dunwich Legacy, I was filled with high hopes to build a stronger Daisy deck.
The problem was, I ONLY wanted to play True Solo. This made deck-building harder than it already has to be. As it is, deck-building itself is my kryptonite. If you have read my thread of articles, you will know that I am helpless when it comes to deck-building. After two years of playing, I still feel like I have much to learn. It’s like I just can’t see the bigger picture of it all. I went through the same issue when I played Pokemon TCG. I won’t lie, it gets frustrating at times and I do feel useless at times for not being well-versed in this area of the game. If you’re like me, I feel ya!
So, I build a number of decks through the many trials and errors. Frustrating? Yes. Any wins? Nope! But it was a learning journey, trying to build a strong and adaptable solo Daisy Walker deck to take on the Night of the Zealot (NoTZ) campaign.
Deck 1: After reading multiple Facebook posts and comments on the ArkhamDB site, I really wanted to build a spell casting Daisy deck as I could use her will power backed with Holy Rosary and David Renfield to take on the monsters and cultists. Along with Blood Pact Level 0, I thought I would be able to pull through. I tried this deck multiple times just to see how far I would for each try. In a way, I did survive, but I almost always had to resign from the first scenario of NoTZ. I could never kill the Ghoul Priest because I would run out of charges for my spells and I would run out of skill cards to commit. One of the highlight of The Dunwich Legacy campaign was the Strange Solution cards. One of its upgrades would give a fighting power for seekers. I thought this would be a great addition to Daisy. Almost always I had the chance to upgrade it, but with only 3 supplies, the solution never last long and it wasn’t enough to beat the many cultists and freaking Nightgaunts! When it came to the final scenario, I almost always had to sacrifice Lita to Umordhoth.
Deck 2: Looking back at the mistakes made from the first deck, I thought maybe I should make full use of tomes since it is Daisy’s strength. I decided that I should include Archaic Glyphs into this deck so that I could get its upgraded version that allowed investigators to evade enemies as well whilst investigating! With more firepower spell assets, I was able to defeat the Ghoul Priest as it was more probable to draw my spell assets. With the experience points, I was able to upgrade the glyph and added on Encyclopaedia and Abyssal Tome as well. There you have it. A bad a** Librarian ready to beat the crap out of cultists and monsters with her wide array of books and spells. In a way, that did happen. However, I was limited by time and resources as it took awhile to power up the various spells and tomes for Daisy. Before I knew it, I had to resign, with only two cultists interrogated. I was limited by my movement and resources that I barely had the time to get two clues in The Devourer Below. When Umordhoth spawned, I thought I could use my Abyssal Tome and ‘I’ve Got a Plan‘ to defeat it. Unfortunately, my resources ran out so I could not even play ‘I’ve Got a Plan’ and I got the autofail token on the Abyssal Tome. Unfortunately, I didn’t have Lita for this round and so I became the sacrifice instead (-_-). I tried this scenario twice and the results were always the same. Resources and time was a big constraint.
Back to the draw board. I sought advice from the community and I was fortunate to receive a lot of support and advice from Vincent Barlow, Petar Mitrovic and Nic Michaud from the Arkham Horror Card Game Facebook Group. Thank you so much for the insight guys! I really appreciate it and it definitely gave me a different outlook on how I should approach true solo Daisy.
Deck 3: With movement being a huge issue, I decided that I needed the Pathfinder upgrade. I also sought to build up a good resource pool so I decided to include Voice of Ra as well. As much as I wanted to upgrade Emergency Cache, I just didn’t have enough XP’s. Taking the same approach of maximising tomes in the deck, I was able to reduce my spell assets, relying fully on Abyssal Tome for attack and the upgraded Archaic Glyph for evasion. I still had one Shrivelling and one Ineffable Truth as backup. As a result, I had more action because of the free tome action once per round and the pathfinder free triggered ability as well. I covered more grounds and I was able to interrogate at least 3 cultists. Could have gone up to 4 cultist if it wasn’t for the autofail token (-_-). Regardless, I was gaining the three clues needed to advance the act deck in the third scenario faster than usual. If at all I had to deal with was enemies, Abyssal Tome was there to wipe any enemy out. With ‘Moonlight Ritual,’ in the game as well, I was able to control the speed of the doom progression too. Well, not always but it still worked. Now you might be thinking, how would I get past the THREE remaining cultists as soon as I advance the act deck right? Fortunately, Abyssal Tome wiped out one cultist. Then I use the parley action for another cultist and I was lucky enough to evade the last cultist. Here’s how it looked like, step by step:
>Start of the round. Daisy is at the main path. The act deck advances and the three cultist emerged.
>Additional Action for Abyssal Tome: Killed a cultist and added it to the victory display.
>Second action: Parley: Second cultist added to the victory display.
>Third action: Investigate action, using Archaic Glyph to evade third cultist
>Fourth action: Played ‘Moonlight Ritual’ to remove 3 doom from Abyssal Tome.
>Free Triggered ability on Pathfinder to move Daisy to the Ritual Site.
While it may look like something awfully strategic, I would say that I was quite lucky as well. Nonetheless, I was able to stop the ritual later on and won the scenario. Then again, this was only one victory. I decided to test it out again and I realised I was extremely lucky when I won, because I lost at the other rounds. I tested this deck at least 15 times. I can honestly say that out of the 15 times, I was able to stop the ritual ONCE and killed Umordhoth TWICE. For the remaining times, I either lost miserably or I almost won (when I say almost, I’m either referring to one more blow to kill Umordhoth and/or One more clue away from stopping the ritual).
Yes, among the 15 times, I also thought of killing Umordhoth as it did seemed like I would actually stand a chance to kill it. And it worked, twice. Got myself a Level 3 Barricade which I used to keep the enemies away from my location while I slowly powered up Daisy with two Abyssal Tome, Armageddon, Shrivelling and Arcane Studies for maximum attack on Umordhoth. With David Renfield accompanying Daisy, I was able to accumulate a massive amount of resources to cast my spells and tome the crap out of Umordhoth. It has been said that ‘The Devourer Below’ is still one of the hardest scenarios to beat. 3/15 victories ain’t much, but I’ll take it. Moving on, I should be getting my hands on all the Innsmouth mythos packs by the end of next month I hope. I am bound to receive ‘The Lair of Dagon‘ next week!!! Can’t wait!!! Until then, I will take on ‘The Dunwich Legacy.’
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