Silas Mar(sh)-ching to glory

Resourceful will need to be in the discard before the test explained in the Recursion Engine section. Cards committed to tests aren't in the discard pile until the very end of the test (step 8).Still a crazy good combo.

Indeed, I mentioned that in step 1 of the sequence :) Thankfully there's no shortage of tests you can chuck a Resourceful at.

@mihnea13 Cool. It read like it was all part of the same big test. Great deck.

@Taevus I see, I wasn't very clear on that point indeed. Tnx!

Hi, lovely deck. I wanted to use this for a campaign using the novella version of Silas but I don't understand what you mean by replace his Harpoon with 2 Fire Axes. If you remove his net and harpoon, you need to add Dreams and Prowess. That leaves no room for the Fire Axes. Do you mean I should replace the meat cleaver with the Fire axes?

@evokerHey! What I meant was that, since you lose the damage output (low as it is) from the Harpoon you should put 2 Fire Axes into the deck (or at least 1), which replace some other cards. I'd most likely take out Quick Thinking.

@mihnea13 Thanks a lot for the super fast reply and for this great deck. Can't wait to try it tomorrow. I'll follow your advice and remove Quick Thinking.

@evokerYou commented just as I was browsing arkhamdb :) Good luck!

@mihnea13Since another player in my group is using Peter Sylvestre, what could I use as a replacement for him?

@evoker Agnes Baker is probably the only other investigator that benefits as much from Peter as Silas, with Carolyn Fern in third place. Consider trading. There are a lot of great Allies, the trouble will be horror soak, which can take Silas out quickly. Cherished Keepsake and Cherished Keepsake become more important than Grisly Totem.

@mihnea13Thanks! My friend's playing as Carolyn actually but I cannot find a better horror soak. Maybe she can find something else to replace Peter but I have no idea what.

@mihnea13 Well then the good news is that you have someone to help you with your horror. You two should try to stick together. Safeguard can be a great card for Carolyn. Back to your actual question, most go with Madame Labranche when they don't get Peter. She can be good to start with, especially with Fire Axe, but I find that trying to be poor (even with Dark Horse) a bad strategy, so upgrade quick. Granny Orne, Jessica Hyde, or even The Black Cat can be good choices. I wouldn't recommend On Your Own, ask Silas likes skills far more than events (at least until he gets some good xp under his belt). Yaotl can be really fun, but you have to plan a deck around him.

@mihnea13I guess I can start with the Keepsake and upgrade to Granny, Jessica or the Black Cat. I actually wanted to try the Black Cat for a while now.

I mostly agree with @Taevus. Since your friend is playing Carolyn you'll get a lot of horror healing so you should be fine without Peter. Granny Orne and Madame Lebranche are too niche imo, they're for specific deck types (fail decks and poor decks), which this one isn't. I guess you could take Dark Horse and go poor though. Yaotl is also bad, he doesn't work with wild icons which are the majority in this deck. Assuming Carolyn will be the main clue gatherer, you're left with more of a fighter role so I'd personally just take Jessica.

@mihnea13I've already played a poor deck as Lola, and wasn't all that excited. So I'd rather stick with your choices here. All the cards mentioned have weak sanity anyway apart from the Cat. I guess I can play Jessica as a health soak.

Wonderful deck! And easy to play!

I play this deck solo in the innsmouth cycle and get a lot of success so far(horror in high gear). Maybe that cycle doesn't test Silas's will enough ;>

My suggestions are:

1. Upgrade into "Look what I found!" and Lucky!. Comining with Inquiring Mind and True Understanding, you'll be great in clue finding. Remember to use True Understanding on Treachery tests to get easy clues. (A single Inquiring Mind simply wins me horror in high gear)

2. Don't waste too much rounds' ability on Quick Thinking. Most time it is better to use it on Inquiring Mind. ([-1 to get an action +1 to pass the test] VS [+3 to pass the test], bad especially if you only commit one skill per round). Consider use Quick Thinking with other skill and let it sleep in your discard pile, then wait for your to pop.

I like this deck but I don't think it is optimized at 0xp:

1. I suggest Scrounge for supplies & Belly of the Beast --> 2x Live and Learn
2. 2x"not without a fight" --> 2x Guts or your favourite Skill Card.

Questions:

1. How do you feel about Winging It vs Old Key Ring?
2. How do you feel about Last Chance?

What difficulty you played on? And how many players? We are playing 4 on hard and I find Silas unplayable- This build would not work at all for that.

@niunuinuiNice, I haven't played Innsmouth yet (at all) but good to hear the deck works there too. Thanks for the suggestions btw, getting Quick Thinking into the discard and waiting for the Elder Sign so you're sure it nets you an extra action (if needed) is really neat and something I haven't considered. Especially once you get Eucatastrophe in and can force the Elder sign.

@Nicarus_noticarusSure, those are good ideas. I like Scrounge for Supplies as a failsafe for when I can't find my second Old Keyring. But Belly of the Beast is the one card in this deck with the highest chance of being dead in han and I quite like Live and Learn so...yeah :) Re: Not without a Fight!, I honestly like it's consistency (3 types of icons) more than I like the card draw from something like Guts! I personally don't feel the lack of card draw in this deck (mainly because it has strong recursion, which is like targeted card draw). Winging It! vs Old Key Ring: no, the Ring is the biggest clue gathering tool you have. I am not a fan of Winging It! outside deck running Cornered or Patrice. Would be even less consistent then Belly of the Beast imo. Last Chance: not a bad card, although what irks me about it is that it would be the only non-Innate skill :))

@atilakThis was mainly tested as a solo deck on Standard, although I tagged it multiplayer because like most solo decks, works fine with other generalists in the team. I don't know about unplayable but yeah...Hard is tough for Silas. I would stick with enemy management and leave clue gathering to someone more geared towards it.

Hi! There's something I don't fully understand about the recursion engine: If you played Eucatastrophe is because your skill value was reduced to 0, which means that if you want to succeed with Resourceful, the shroud value must be no more than 1..., right?

That sounds very situational. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding the combo?

Thanks in advance!

As of the latest Taboo List (2021-06-28), the Recursion Engine no longer works indefinitely: now Eucatastrophe is removed from play after use and cannot be recurred.

If you check skill test timing on page 26-27, you do not discard committed cards until the skill test ends, and thus cannot use Silas's Elder Sign ability to commit the same Resourceful again, as it has not yet been discarded. Commit on step 2 draw chaos token/Eucatrastrophie on step 4 Discard committed cards on Step 8

@Berwind (my formatting in the last comment didn't come out properly) I may have misunderstood the wording, but I'm interpreting the section under "The Recursion Engine" as all one skill test, however I'm not questioning if this is over multiple skill tests if that is what was intended.

@Berwind It's over multiple tests, see the first couple of comments :)

With new taboo list the engine is broken :( There is a good alternate version?

Just took this through Innsmouth Standard and this deck performed fantastically even with lower XP than I expected to gain. I followed the suggested upgrade path only through Alter Fate, then took a Sledgehammer (3) and a teddy bear for the final scenario. 10/10 would smash Dagon for an easy 6 damage again. Mr. Pawterson didn't even see any play, he just made me feel safer while he sat in my hand. Honestly, I thought that 2 WP and 5 sanity would be a lot more hazardous than it actually was, even thought I was definitely going to take a mental trauma and lose scenario 6 after taking a Rotting Remains auto-fail with no soak on the first mythos phase... but I just held on to an Inquiring Mind and stayed on locations with clues until I could get Pete and Meat Cleaver out.

My only regret is playing this 2-handed with the Amanda Red-Gloved Man deck - they were both fantastic, but it was just too mentally fatiguing to keep track of complicated skill interactions in both characters. I did decently well (I think?) in terms of flashbacks (8/15 IIRC), but there were definitely some suboptimal plays just from losing track of Silas's capabilities as I tried min-maxing Amanda's crazy seeker stuff every turn. Might replay this deck next in a solo campaign.

Ran this deck for Innsmouth and have to say it performed so damn well (Silas was the main fighter)