The (Mostly) Holy Father, a.k.a. Miracle Mateo

Overview

This is an attempt at a different kind of Mystic, one that:

a) is less reliant on heretical spells for clue gathering,

b) aims for consistency, similar to Jim,

c) is fun to play, with some nice janky combos, and

d) increases Mateo's odds of pulling , because it's awesome.

So Spike, stop reading; Johnny, carry on. Since the holy father is weak in combat, we run a few offensive spells to smite Those Who Have Been Naughty In His Sight, but in general the deck relies on one of the newer Mystic mechanics, revealing additional tokens from the chaos bag. This suits Mateo well, as he no special synergy with spells (apart from extra XP), while he wants to draw as many tokens as possible. You could also run this shell of cards out of Jim fairly easily with a few modifications. I have only run the deck a few times solo with mixed results on Curtain Call, but I do think it will be better in multiplayer, where it has a little more time to set up the combos.

The Key Cards:

Ritual Candles: For those who don't know, the Reaction of this card is based on when a token is revealed, not resolved. [EDIT: This is NOT the official ruling; see the comments below. The official ruling does invalidate the usage of Ritual Candles to a large degree, but most of the other interactions described below still do hold.] That means that the more tokens we reveal, the greater the chance of getting the bonus (or even getting +2 or higher), even if we don't resolve the extra tokens. Recall the Future also has similar text, and would be a good early upgrade. This effect plays well with:

Dark Prophecy: The candles help to mitigate the drawback of this card; the fact that we generally have to resolve a "bad" token. It is also entirely possible to get +2 or higher for a key check with the candles out, almost assuring a -1 or better in most scenarios, thus helping fulfill the objective of being consistent. This card also plays well with Defiance and Song of the Dead. Just don't use it with Shrivelling!

Olive McBride (Alyssa is a proxy here): The church has come a long way since those witch-burning days, now we choose to employ one instead. Her ability does work extremely well with this strategy of revealing extra tokens, and she is a nice sanity soak for only 2 resources. Note that she also works very well with Mateo's ability; if you pull the as one of the three tokens, you automatically pass the check regardless of what else you pull. No other investigator able to play Olivia can claim this.

Grotesque Statue: One of the first upgrades to go after, this does combo with the candles and is just a great card for consistency. We have to be a bit careful with Hand slots here (due to candles), but since the Codex and the Statue are both not going to stick around for long, we shouldn't run into too many cases where we want to grow extra limbs.

The rest of the cards are generally standard Mystic fare which can be tuned a variety of ways for more combat or more investigation. Some comments on the includes:

St. Hubert's Key over Holy Rosary since we can then investigate reliably without relying on Rite of Seeking.

Song of the Dead is included to provide more consistent access to combat spells since the deck does not run Arcane Initiate, and has good synergy with our revealing extra tokens tech. In fact, with Olive, your chances of pulling from the Forgotten Age bag are about 40%. With Dark Prophecy, it's about 60%!

Shrivelling could easily be dropped if combat isn't a high priority. I would suggest removing it and Uncage the Soul for Alyssa Graham and Flashlight if you want better cluevering. Upgrades would then include a single Charisma.

Protective Incantation. The key cards above work even better when the chaos bag is "nicer", since you technically are improving your chances of pulling something bad.

The inclusion of Uncage the Soul might seem a bit strange, but since it has for icons, it can be used as a Guts if no Shrivelling is available. It's also there for future proofing, just in case some interesting Spells or Rituals are released.

Possible upgrades:

1. Delve Too Deep -> Grotesque Statue (8 xp)
2. Arcane Studies -> Recall the Future (2 xp)
3. Unexpected Courage -> Seal of the Elder Sign (5/10 xp)
4. Shrivelling (3/6 xp)
5. Ward of Protection(2/4 xp)
6. Fearless (2/4 xp)

The Math

Here's a link to a spreadsheet with most of the odds:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14-hKNw59BwHK79ROTsHSRwXlRIfg8MOCg4C3E5cBxRA/edit?usp=sharing

Most columns should be self-explanatory. "Difficulty" here is actually difficulty - skill, so a +2 is a difficult check while -5 is very easy. I felt this range is more than large enough to get some idea of how the cards can increase your odds. Since the value typically changes within a scenario, 2 values are included for comparison. Jim is also included as a comparison. There are three pages of tables, based on different chaos bag compositions, just to get an idea of how this affects the results. Some key findings include:

• Candles by themselves do very little (we kinda knew that already).
• Olive can actually HURT your chances when used in certain situations. She is generally more effective for checks of difficulty 0 or higher, and especially effective for pulling off a miracle; a check with a difficulty that is at least 2 higher than your skill.
• The combination of the two is fairly effective at increasing odds, but essentially amounts to roughly +1 skill for a single check a turn. This is probably a good rule of thumb.
• Jim is more consistent at hitting zero or even +1 with this package, but since his is only +1, he can't pull off the miracles that Mateo can. How thematic.
• The tables do not express the increased chances of pulling , which should happen when using [Olive McBride](/card/04197) and [Grotesque Statue](/card/01071). I may add this to the results at some point.

In conclusion, I'm not sure exactly how effective all this tech is, but it is something a little different, and hopefully somebody will try to perfect it. I do feel that there is more support coming for this mechanic, so it should make the upcoming packs a little more exciting. Thanks for reading my silly idea.