Akachi Carcosa Ironman

The dream of "investigate and get 3 resources" all scenario is real. However, this is a moderate complexity deck. You want to be competent with basic game mechanics. Please read "The Awkward Bits" before embarking.

Built for Return To Carcosa Ironman speedrun.

Strengths:

• very high clue tempo
• consistency

Cons:

• basic investigates (Spires of Carcosa)
• combo deck requires 11 XP, but just one card of several to find
• drawing symbols can be awkward
• early economy

Our party:

• Michael McGlen fighter (could be any fighter)
• Jacqueline Fine flex/support (strong synergy)
• Monterey Jack movement support

Upgrade priority:

0. Twila Katherine Price -> 0 xp with In The Thick Of It
1. 1x Rite of Seeking lvl 4 -> 0 xp with Arcane Research over 2 scenarios
2. Eldrich Brand -> 11 xp. PRIORITIZE SAVING UP FOR THIS
3. Ward of Protection level 2 -> free with Arcane Research
4. Charge generation a. Enraptured -> 1 xp with b. Twila Katherine Price c. (optional) Lost Arcana
5. (Optional) Sixth Sense level 4 ->
6. Grotesque Statue
7. Guts

Cards you can cut for upgrades or level 0 swaps: Hallowed Chalice, Combat cards (sword cane, occult lexicon, spectral razor), Unexpected Courage, Robes of Endless Night, Katarina Sojka, 1x Cat Mask, Sixth Sense.

Other deck interactions:

• Sixth Sense for grabbing singleton clues and an early campaign backup before you reliably assemble your combo. When you have Eldrich Brand, 2x Enraptured 2, and 2x Twila Katherine Price, then you are fairly consistent and can drop Sixth Sense. Or read below for a late-campaign variant with Sixth Sense.
• Alchemical Transmutation for early economy
• Scroll of Prophecies helps you assemble the pieces.
• Combat cards do combat things and aren't related to the rest of the deck. Our group was light on combat; you may not need so many deck slots.
• Holy Rosary, Robes of Endless Night, and Katarina Sojka are mostly for the soak. Their abilities don't do too much. Investigate at 7 is +4 from shroud 3 locations, and shroud 4/5 locations don't have many clues.
• Cat Mask and Guts give you consistency to be up +4 on high shroud locations.

---- The Awkward Bits ----

WARNING: Starting with fewer resources (like indebted) bricks your build. If you start with 4 resources, Eldrich Brand fails and you have to find your 1x Rite. EB does not put Rite into your hand if it fails.

Economy: Spending 5 resources on Rite turn 0 leaves you with none left. That's ok. You can turn 1 resource resource investigate, then turn 2 Twila and you're good to go.

Charge Generation: Generation isn't difficult to sustain on this build. Twila Katherine Price, Lost Arcana, and Spirit-Seeker are your refillable charge generators. These are for redundancy, you don't need them all. Once you keep one of them in play you shouldn't run out of charges. Your first priority in a scenario is to find one of these. Enraptured lvl 2 does a lot of work. The +3 charges is usually enough to get you by if you can't find permanent solutions. If you're still waiting for a solution, do not spend your last charge on Rite of Seeking. Twila Katherine Price requires you to have a charge, and Arcana requires the last clue.

Pacing: Usually your turns are [action][action][investigate] or [action][investigate][investigate]. The actions can be move, play, draw. You want to investigate your 3rd action each round even as early as turn 1.

Drawing symbols: Drawing a symbol with Rite of Seeking ends your turn. Compared to other high level mystic spell downsides, this is relatively minor. This is why we choose to build around Rite of Seeking, because we can't afford to take 2 damage/horror with Clairvoyance or a fighter asset. Symbols are not a tempo problem. Most of our investigates are on the last action, and the downside doesn't exist. If you draw a skull on your 2nd action, then you've essentially taken a double action to get 3 clues -- other investigators would be thrilled to get this "downside."
However, symbols can be a pacing problem. Consider the case where you move into a 6 clue location, then investigate and symbol. You progressed by moving and getting 3 clues. But then the next turn, maybe you don't have an asset to play and then you want to investigate-move-investigate. A symbol on your first action then is quite bad, even worse if it's the autofail. I ran into something like this (symbol then autofail) on an xp location that damages you every round. Ended up leaving and scooping the clues up when we came back through. The symbols hurt me quite a bit this campaign -- they are about a 1/3 to draw, but I was drawing them about 2/3 of the time when it wasn't the final action. Even still, the tempo was more than enough to overcome this RNG. Grotesque Statue (even level 2) solves this, but I made the mistake of not getting that upgrade.

4 player challenges: You grab clues in chunks of 3, and for 4p clues are placed in chunks of 4. One line is to get Sixth Sense lvl 4, Charisma, and run 2x Katarina & Katherine. Another line is to ask your flex to take care of these. Gené Beauregard can make 4|8 locations into 3|9 locations and Deciphered Reality can have its chance to shine.

Mythos deck: If your group is counting on you for clues and you lose your Rite of Seeking, you probably lost the scenario. If Crypt Chill can be drawn, then you need either Ward of Protection or another asset in play Turn 1.

Angered Spirits is much more difficult for us than a typical many-assets Akachi. Alchemical Transmutation and Spirit-Seeker can solve this.

---- Variants ----

Investigators: Akachi is very strong early in a campaign (<20 XP). Spirit-Seeker is another out for infinite charges, the +1 charge to start and on elder sign goes a long way in an early campaign. Past 20 XP, you can consistently get charges other ways, but then she can run Dial of Ancients (Cataclysm). Anyone with access to Level 5 mystic has potential:

• Jacqueline may be even stronger than Akachi especially for high XP campaigns. In the context of Ironman Carcosa with low XP and important early scenarios, I'm happy with Akachi.
• Father Mateo's ability is strong to prevent the occasional autofail, and the extra XP can get the build online after scenario 1. We don't take many active tests, so we aren't fishing for his elder sign.
• Agnes gives Survivor access, you could build a Scavenging deck.
• Maybe a Jim Culver fan can seal the 0's and make a Clairvoyance build.
• Plenty of unexplored space, especially with off-class cards.

Other cards:

• Sixth Sense lvl 4, Charisma, and run 2x Katarina & Katherine for scooping up odd clues
• This run was too XP poor to consider accessories, but so many here. Dial of Ancients (Cataclysm), Red Clock (2), and Jewel of Aureolis are contenders.