This is a deck designed for a 3-player Dunwich campaign on Standard difficulty using all three of the (currently available) Guardian investigators: Roland Banks, Zoey Samaras, and Mark Harrigan. I may choose to update this deck when a fourth Guardian investigator is released later this year.

Decklist for Roland can be found here.

Decklist for Mark can be found here.

Table of Contents

1. Overview
2. Deck Composition
3. Mulligan Guide
4. Playstyle Guide
5. Upgrade Guide
6. Scenario tips
7. Card Exclusions
8. Acknowledgements

Overview

SPOILER WARNING: This guide is for experienced players who have been through the Dunwich Legacy campaign at least once. It contains both gameplay and story spoilers for that particular campaign, so read on at your own discretion.

Playing through a campaign with only a single faction of investigators provides an interesting challenge, and forces you to approach deckbuilding from completely new and unusual angles. With each faction having its own strengths and weaknesses, you'll have to find creative ways to leverage the areas where your faction excels, and to compensate for the areas in which they are lacking.

Our Guardian team has some clear advantages:

• Defeating enemies - With their naturally high (), access to the games' most powerful weapons, and damage-dealing character abilities, this team will laugh at lesser enemies and will make short work of most bosses. A great team for assassination-based scenarios.

• Very high health - All three members of the team start the game with a whopping 9 health. Though keeping tabs on damage is more important for Mark, in general this stat is so high you can almost ignore it until you've taken several hits.

• Very strong special abilities and unique cards - Both Zoey Samaras and Mark Harrigan have signature cards that expedite what they are already great at - killing baddies. For our Roland build, we opt to replace Roland's .38 Special with his presumably soon-to-be-released replacement card, Mysteries Remain, which will help augment his clue-gathering abilities. The special abilities of each member of Team Blue will help you with discovering clues (Roland), a boosted economy (Zoey), and card draw (Mark).

• Great cross-deck synergy - Cards like Stand Together are already quite strong, but their power amplifies significantly with the potential to run up to 6 in a group, as opposed to the usual 2. Extra Ammunition can be used to refuel each others' weapons, and Leadership can be used as a turbo-charged Guts - great for helping your fellow Guardians deal with those nasty horror-inducing treacheries.

While you will enjoy the above benefits on your journey, there will of course be difficulties to face as well:

• Low Intellect - Of the five factions, the Guardians hold the dubious honor of having the lowest average (). As discovering clues is fundamental to advancing the act deck, this poses obvious problems.

• Very low sanity - Whereas the low Intellect stat may stifle your progression, the Guardians' low sanity is a gaping hole in your defenses. Zoey is a bit hardier, but even so, Team Blue still comes in dead last overall - with Roland and Mark tied for the lowest sanity of all available investigators at a miserable 5.

• Mediocre Economy - Guardian cards are expensive, and you'll need to be creative to find the resources you need to afford them. Fortunately, each of the three has their own method to help deal with this issue, and it will become less of a problem as you upgrade your decks.

Now that we've given a high-level overview, let's drill down a bit and see what each member of our team is bringing to the table:

• Roland Banks - With his higher () of 3 and access to the Seeker class cards, Roland is the obvious choice to serve as your primary clue gatherer. He'll still kill an enemy here and there, but in general his teammates should keep the baddies away from him so he can focus on advancing the act deck as quickly as possible

• Zoey Samaras - Zoey wears several hats on this team, making her perhaps more fun to play than in a campaign where she is focused exclusively on murdering monsters. She will need to switch back and forth between clue gatherer and monster hunter, as needed.

• Mark Harrigan - The brawniest member of the team stays the truest to the usual Guardian role; Mark is the first line of defense against the encroaching hordes, and he'll often be all you need. But he's not completely off the hook - Mr. Harrigan will still be required to pull his weight in the clue department during those rare moments of downtime.

Deck Composition

This is a fairly standard Zoey build that puts the hurt on enemies while keeping your teammates safe. Her out-of-faction cards focus mostly on digging for clues in bursts at higher shroud locations, while Flashlight lets Zoey investigate lower shorud locations when there are no baddies around. But at the end of the day, Zoey is Zoey and we all know what she does best:

• 2x Machete With Mark Harrigan tagging along, this staple Guardian weapon is even more powerful than usual, as you will likely be forced to deal with its restriction less frequently. However, there are some jerks out there against whom this weapon will be less effective.

• 2x .45 Automatic Another staple Weapon asset that offers greater reliability at the price of limited uses and increased cost over the Machete.

• 2x Beat Cop The quintesssential Guardian ally brings improved () to the table, as well as a small damage and horror soak. His damage-dealing ability is ok, but a little expensive.

• 1x Prepared for the Worst Even though you'll rarely fail to draw a weapon in your opening hand, this Tactic event is a nice insurance policy.

• 2x Vicious Blow Beefy skill that helps you to pass your tests as well as dish out some additional pain to your enemies.

• 1x Zoey's Cross A contender for the strongest signature card in the game, the cross takes Zoey to the next level in monster battering. Its free point of damage will save you a ton of actions over the course of the campaign.

Since wasted actions are extremely costly, it is imperative that Zoey has some tools to discover clues when there are no enemies around - which will be quite often during this Team Blue playthrough:

• 2x Drawn to the Flame Cheap and efficient Insight event that allows you to discover two clues at a location regardless of shroud value, Locked Door, or other restrictions. Zoey's high () and () make her better-equipped to deal with the encounter card than any other investigator released so far.

• 2x Evidence! Another efficient Insight event that lets you discover a clue at your location upon defeating an enemy. Try to trigger this at a high shroud location if possible.

• 2x Flashlight While Roland Banks is busy discovering clues at high shroud locations, Zoey and Mark should collect as much low-hanging fruit as possible. This asset will turn all 1 and 2 shroud locations into auto-successes, so your fighters should try to gather clues at these spots, so that Roland can spend his energy on the more difficult () tests.

• 2x "Look what I found!" With her low (), it is inevitable that Zoey will whiff a non-trivial percentage of her investigations, so use this Fortune event to turn the tables on the chaos bag by converting a failure into a success.

With her higher willpower and sanity, Zoey is the guardian angel of the team, and she has several tools in her arsenal to help her in this role:

• 2x "Let me handle this!" Oustanding Spirit event that can be used in a myriad of situations. Pull an enemy off Roland to gain a resource - or more often, face down a nasty horror-inducing treachery so that the boys don't have to.

• 1x Dodge Since Zoey will be engaging enemies frequently, she is the most likely member of the team to face an enemy attack, should an enemy survive long enough. Use this Tactic to avoid such an attack, preferably against a big enemy.

• 2x Guts Great skill card for both you and your teammates. Should one of the boys stumble upon some Rotting Remains, use this to help them keep their cool. Alternately use it on yourself to help beat up a certain enemy.

• 2x Leadership A little bit too speculative for a heterogenous investigator party, but with two Guardians as partners, this card gains a lot of value. Since Mark Harrigan is packing this card as well, you should never need to play it on yourself. Played in this fashion, this card is an Unexpected Courage at worst, but is even stronger when applied to a partner's () test.

The remaining cards round out the utility of the deck in various ways:

• 1x Smoking Pipe Though Zoey is more resistant to horror than her teammates, her sanity is still low overall. Use this to keep her horror at manageable levels.

• 2x Emergency Cache Essential event to pay for the expensive Guardian assets included in this deck.

• 2x Unexpected Courage What is there to say about this card, really? It sets the standard for power and flexibility, and is useful in just about every situation.

• 1x Double or Nothing Speculative Fortune skill that - when timed correctly - can be used to set off some real fireworks. You will want to combo this with other cards such as Flashlight, Deduction, or Vicious Blow for maximum effect.

Mulligan Guide

Compared to her teammates, Zoey can take a significantly less militant approach to her mulligan. Normally Zoey would like to have a Machete ready to go, with some backup in tow. But with Mark Harrigan as the primary damage-dealer on the team, it's not a complete disaster if Zoey does not have a weapon in play on Turn 1.

• Getting a weapon into play is still ideal, but this doesn't mean you should necessarily pitch your entire hand if you don't find one in your opening draw. Instead, hold onto the following cards, in the listed priority:

  • Prepared for the Worst (only if no weapon on opening draw)
  • Zoey's Cross
  • Flashlight
  • Emergency Cache
  • "Look what I found!"
  • Drawn to the Flame (only if you have a weapon)
  • Beat Cop

Once you have upgraded your deck a bit, you can add the following cards to the above list:

• Stand Together Great card to expedite your turn 1 setup.

• Ever Vigilant You can keep this if you draw a weapon in your opening hand. Mulligan every other non-asset card, and hope to draw more assets to play.

Remember that after a few scenarios, your team will be running multiple copies of Stand Together which will smooth out your bad opening draws more and more as the campaign goes on.

Playstyle Guide

In general, Zoey should tail Roland Banks and help out in whatever fashion is the most relevant at the moment. Sometimes this means helping to discover clues:

• If you have a weapon equipped or if Mark is nearby, then Drawn to the Flame is a great option - especially at a high-shroud location, or one with a Locked Door. If you plan to use this card, it's best to do so as your last action, but with Mark still left to act.

• Otherwise, with her terrible (), Zoey won't be much help at a high-shroud location unless she has both a Flashlight and "Look what I found!". In those cases, go ahead and investigate using the Flashlight and follow up with "Look what I found!" if you need to. Sometimes, you'll even pass the test - which is great, as it allows you to continue investigating as long as your Flashlight still has juice.

• At low-shroud locations you should use Flashlight or "Look what I found!" (but not together) to discover clues.

• Though it's tough to setup, one of the best combos you can pull off is Roland's Flashlight + Deduction paired with Zoey's Double or Nothing at a location with 3 or lower shroud to discover 4 clues in a single action (or even 6 with upgraded Deduction).

Zoey also serves as the team's Guardian angel (no pun intended):

• Zoey should always be Lead Investigator. This way she will be the first investigator to draw her encounter card during the Mythos phase, and you will be in a much better situation to gauge how much you can extend yourself to helping your teammates when they draw theirs.

• During the mythos Phase, Zoey should be using "Let me handle this!" to great effect:

  • If Roland has wandered off by himself somehow, and draws a big enemy, Zoey should snatch it from him.

  • To really maximize the card's efficiency though, it should be saved for the very worst treacheries:

  • Cards like Eager for Death and Rotting Remains - which can be game-ending for Roland and Mark - are laughable to Zoey when she steals them.

  • Beyond the Veil is a good target if Zoey already has a copy in her threat area.

  • With Dr. Milan Christopher in Roland's deck and Brother Xavier in Mark's, Kidnapped! is an almost automatic target. Not only is it easy for her to deal with, but the penalty for Zoey failing is miniscule compared to what the boys would face.
• Since the worst horror-dealing treacheries tend to involve passing a () test, Leadership is a very strong commit for helping the boys out if you can't "let Zoey handle this".

And of course, sometimes Zoey just needs to be Zoey and unleash the murder. Zoey will often function as a clean-up hitter for any enemies the Mark Harrigan onslaught doesn't finish off, and she is well equipped to do so. This is pretty straightforward stuff: equip a weapon as soon as possible and go to town:

• Whoever of Zoey and Mark has a copy of Evidence!, should be the one to defeat an enemy.

• If no one has any Evidence!, you might try to weaken an enemy to a point where Roland can deliver the finishing blow to trigger his special ability and discover a clue. You should only consider this if there are other things you need to accomplish on this turn, such as playing an important card.

Upgrade Guide

Priority S

• 2x Emergency Cache 2x Stand Together ••• : Outstanding Spirit event whose strength is compounded by running multiple copies across your team. The Guardians' overall tempo becomes vastly accelerated once each member is running two of this card in their deck. Zoey should get both copies of this card as her first two purchases. When playing this card, always give the extra cards and resources to Mark if possible, as Roland has a much stronger economy with his Seeker-heavy build.

• +1x Keen Eye ••• : Vastly underrated Permanent asset that powers up both of the stats you need to win the game. Zoey should have enough resources stockpiled from engaging enemies to use its abilites quiet often.

Priority A

• 1x Prepared for the Worst 1x Extra Ammunition • : With the added card draw from Stand Together you will have less need to search your deck for weapons. And with four Firearm weapons on your team, you'll want to keep them loaded at all times.

• 1x .45 Automatic 1x Lightning Gun ••••• : Zap! This huge weapon essentially never misses and will save you many actions onco you get it into play. Your team will eventually be running four copies of Extra Ammunition, so don't be that player who is afraid to "waste" a shot on a enemy that "isn't worth it".

• 1x Dodge 1x "I've had worse…" •••• : Outstanding Spirit event that gives you some much-needed resources for your expensive deck upgrades while absorbing an enemy attack, or other damage/horror dealing effect. Try to save it for something nasty, as this card improves its effect against stronger threats.

• 1x Flashlight 1x Ever Vigilant • : As Roland's investigation abilities continue to improve, it will be less and less necessary for Zoey to assist. At the same time, her assets will grow more expensive with the addition of Lightning Gun and Police Badge.

Priority B

• 1x Smoking Pipe 1x Elder Sign Amulet ••• : This Relic asset increases your effective sanity by almost 70%, and without incurring damage.

• 2x Guts 2x Police Badge •• : Very flexible asset that boosts your will as long as it's in play, and can make for some epic turns. Comboes nicely with Keen Eye and Roland's Encyclopedia. In additon, it has more flexible icons than the skill it replaces.

• +1x Relic Hunter ••• : You won't want to get rid of Zoey's Cross once it's in play, rendering your other Accessory assets unplayable. Relic Hunter solves this problem nicely - with four accessory assets in the deck, you'll be happy to have it.

Priority C

• +2x Beat Cop 2x Beat Cop •• : A great upgrade - two additional points of guaranteed, action-less damage on top of all the things that make the original so great.

• 1x .45 Automatic 1x .45 Automatic •• : If you somehow have XP to spare, you should give your remaining handgun this small boost.

Scenario Tips

As mentioned at the top of the notes, this is not a spoiler-free guide! Read on at your discretion.

This section will give a very high-level plan of attack for each scenario to help maximize the amount of XP you earn, as you will need every last one you can get your hands on.

The House Always Wins

In this playthrough, you should always choose to do this scenario first, before Extracurricular activity for several reasons:

• Art Student is not a dead draw for Roland, as you can discard her to the Clover Club Lounge.

• Extracurricular Activity features the unholy combination of the Sorcery and The Beyond encounter sets, which severely punish you for running out of cards, while also helping you to run out of cards. As such, it's preferable to attempt that scenario when you have fewer rounds in which to complete it (you lose 3 rounds when you attempt Extracurricular Activity as the second scenario of the campaign)

• In the first part of the scenario, all your clue gathering will be done through unorthodox means, so you will have plenty of time to get your team set up for the second half, where things go back to "normal". By that point, Roland will ideally be equipped to quickly vacuum up all the clues in the locations connected to the Darkened Hall while Zoey and Mark provide cover.

• Since an enemy left alive is generally worse than an investigation gone wrong, for now we'll opt to save Dr. Francis Morgan (for Mark) over Professor Warren Rice (for Roland). With a little luck, you'll be able to find Professor Rice a bit later on anyway.

Extracurricular Activity

Your goals for this scenario are to get the Victory points at both the Orne Library and the Dormitories and to also defeat The Experiment. If you are lucky you will draw additional Victory enemies from the encounter deck as well. This is a pretty ambitious task and you might have some difficulty, depending on what the encounter deck decides to throw at you.

• Your best bet is to split into two groups:

  • Send Mark to the Science Building.
  • Send Roland and Zoey to either the Orne Library or the Humanities Building.

• As soon as you've got all the clues you need to advance the Act, spend them - but continue discovering clues until you have cleared the Orne Library, Humanities Building, and Science Building. Once each subgroup has cleared their area of the board, get them to the Student Union as fast as possible.

• Use the ability on the Act in rapid succesion to summon "Jazz" Mulligan at the Student Union. If you can gain control of him before The Experiment appears, then you are in great shape.

• Send as many investigators as you can to the Dormitories and start investigating like crazy.

• Use your judgement to decide who to send to deal with the The Experiment when it arrives, but do not defeat it until all the clues have been discovered at the Dormitories.

• You shouldn't need to enter the Administration Building at all, unless you are extraordinarily unlucky when searching for "Jazz". In this case, you should probably cut your losses and accept that the XP from the Dormitories is probably lost.

The Miskatonic Museum

After the hell that was Extracurricular Activity, your Guardian team gets a bit of a breather with this scenario. For most teams, there are essentially two clocks you are racing against: The Agenda deck and the ever-growing Hunting Horror. But with Team Blue, the latter is virtually a non-factor, as you can easily take it down over and over again.

• At the Museum Entrance, Roland should grab the clues, but have Mark break the door down anyway. This will give you a massive headstart on revealing the various Exhibit halls.

• Once inside, head for the Administration Office and cover Roland while he investigates.

• Assuming that Mark was able to break the door down, you should never need to go to the Security Office at all unless you are very unlucky with the order in which the Exhibit Hall locations appear.

• This scenario is one where it's ok to split up since (a) there is only one enemy around and (b) your teammates won't be far away if they need to catch up to you. You are taking a slight risk in that you won't always be able to commit cards to each other's tests, but it is worth it to be able get the max XP for this scenario.

The Essex County Express

Arguably the swingiest scenario in the campaign, you'll need to be fast to stay ahead of the Agenda deck. Zoey

• More so than any other scenario, Zoey will need to help Roland with investigating. De-prioritize mulliganing for a weapon, and instead dig for her Flashlight, Drawn to the Flame, and "Look what I found!".

Blood on the Altar

• This scenario features a high degree of randomness in the layout, depending on which location is removed during setup. I would recommend drawing a map to illustrate how the locations are connected, as you may end up moving down one-way paths if you're not careful, costing you several valuable actions.

• If Roland has Dr. Milan Christopher in play and he draws a Kidnapped! treachery, Zoey should play "Let me handle this!" if she can. If you don't have this in your hand, then do everything in your power to help ensure that Roland passes ths test, as losing the doctor will make Roland nearly useless for the rest of the campaign. Leadership is a great card here.

• At the end of this scenario, you will have to decide between putting Silas Bishop out of his misery, or restoring him by discovering a lot of clues in The Hidden Chamber:-Killing Silas plays to the team's strengths - at this point in the game, Zoey and Mark should be able to deal massive damage with the Lightning Gun and Shotgun respectively, so Silas shouldn't give them much trouble.

• The main downside is that ending the scenario in this way means you will have to deal with a Conglomeration of Spheres early on in Where Doom Awaits, and will have to deal with the Hideous Abomination encounter set during that scenario.

• Ending this scenario quickly means that there will be fewer sacrifices made to Yog-Sothoth. The more characters that survive, the stronger your Powder of Ibn Ghazi will be in the next scenario - and hoo boy, are you gonna need every bit of help you can get.

Undimensioned and Unseen

This scenario will prove rather difficult, as your team's primary advantage - killing enemies - is largely negated when dealing with the nasty Brood of Yog-Sothoth which are immune to normal attacks.

• Without the luxury of a () powerhouse like Agnes Baker at your disposal, who can overwhelm the brood with her high numbers alone, you will need to rely on the various location effects to move clues onto the enemies.

• For the first part of the scenario, give the Brood of Yog-Sothoth a wide berth. Sometimes one will move onto your location, and you'll have no choice but to engage it. If this happens, try to put a clue on it either with the Powder of Ibn Ghazi or with a location effect, and then make your escape before the next enemy phase.

• Go ahead and play Zoey's Cross if you draw it early, but if you draw your Police Badges first, then go ahead and toss the cross to a () if you need to, as you will need those badges later. This is probably of the only scenarios where it makes sense to do this.

• By the time you get the Esoteric Formula up and running, you will ideally have the following assets in play:

  • Roland: Encyclopedia
  • Zoey: Zebulon Whateley and at least one Police Badge
  • Mark: Brother Xavier

• Once you're ready to go, your basic gameplan is as follows:

  • Try to have all three of your investigators end their turn on the same location two spaces away from a Brood of Yog-Sothoth.

  • If you are lucky, a Brood will move to the space next to you at the end of the enemy phase.

  • Have Roland use his Encyclopedia on Zoey to give her +2 () for the entirety of the phase.

  • Send Zoey in to attack the Brood. If the enemy has a single clue on it, you'll be attacking with a () of 8+, depending on how many Police Badges Zoey has equipped. If you discard a badge, you will be able to attack the Brood four times, giving you a reasonble chance of killing it outright.

  • If Mark is available for backup, then Zoey should avoid commiting cards to her own tests while attacking, so that she can boost Mark's () in case she can't kill the creature.

  • If Mark is busy dealing with another enemy or is not able to reach Zoey's location, then Zoey should boost her () as high as possible using commits.

  • Do everything in your power to kill the creature in a single turn. They hit hard, and then may move away from you - costing you many valuable actions in the process.
• It's up to you how many clues to put on an enemy before sending Zoey in for the kill - one clue is decent, and will have you passing the majority of your attacks (assuming you use the Encyclopedia strategy outlined above). With two clues, you are in great shape against the creature.

Where Doom Awaits

• There isn't a whole lot ot say about this scenario other than that you'll want to move to the branching paths with only a single action remaining to mitigate the ill effects of the move.

• Prioritze drawing a Firearm on turn one if you didn't find one in your mulligan, as you will have to deal with a Conglomeration of Spheres enemy almost immediately.

Lost in Time and Space

• Hooray! You're at the end of the campaign!

• The Guardians may struggle with a lot, but they are well-equipped to deal with the final boss if it you don't escape in time. If you decide ahead of time to end the scenario this way, you may want to consider have Roland pack a second copy of Extra Ammunition to achieve maximum blastiness.

Zoey's Fifth Splash Card

The Dunwich investigators such as Zoey allow you take up to five out-of-faction cards. As such, you'll generally have only a single copy of at least one of them. This is why I like Double or Nothing as Zoey's fifth out-of-faction card - you really don't need two of them in your deck, and indeed you won't always be able to use it even when you do draw it.

With that said, here are some other one-of cards you might consider in its place:

• Alyssa Graham Alyssa is a superb ally for Zoey in solo - her () boost is a tremendous help, as is her 3 sanity. You'll need to balance her presence in the deck with your Beat Cops, as it's not worth purchasing Charisma just to have both of them in play.

• Holy Rosary In case you want to go even further in the Mama Bear direction, this highly defensive card will give Zoey (and the boys) even more protection from the encounter deck, and will be a great help in Undimensioned and Unseen when trying to kill the Brood.

• Quantum Flux Another defensive card that you'll mainly use to defend yourself from Beyond the Veil. Pairs nicely with "Let me handle this!" - pull Beyond the Veil from your teammates, and then proceed to ignore it completely!

• Quick Thinking Because sometimes you just really need another action right now.

• Elusive Another good one-of card for those rare times when an enemy somehow survives into the enemy phase.

Acknowledgments

• DadouXIII - for setting the gold standard in deckbuilding guides. Their guides have made me think about the game in ways I never would have otherwise - high praise all around!
• Fantasy Flight - obviously for making such a great game!