Calvin Wright, doomed to a life alone

A Calvin deck for solo play through The Forgotten Age, built on the principle that you are always going to want to throw skill cards at a skill attempt, and will likely need to keep drawing regularly to keep up his options.

Skills: at 14 skill cards this deck is skill-heavy, but these allow the deck to function to some degree early on, and then provide the main engine of the deck when it gets going once it's taken a bit of damage and horror.

Overall I've gone for a balance of skills. This is because at the time of writing, much of The Forgotten Age is unknown and some skills that you might drop in other campaigns, like Manual Dexterity are a seemingly more useful in this campaign.

When looking at skills that didn't make the cut, I didn't go for the Desperate skills because I'd rather have the draw, and want the skills to be relevant early on. The same goes for Fight or Flight (albeit not a skill card). These cards seem like win more, and I'd rather have a deck that works adequately until you power him up, rather than waiting around for him to get some horror and damage on him before he starts to work - especially important in a solo deck. Rise to the Occasion also didn't make the cut - it was in there originally, but with testing it proved to end up sticking around in hand once Calvin had taken a bit of damage. Potentially good early on, but once you're powered up it's just blocking up your hand.

The skills are also key to how to pilot the deck. This is a deck that is built to (try, at least) to complete things quickly. Getting to 5 damage and horror is great, but with the skill cards you can get things done before you get there, and you're not then stuck on 1 health or sanity remaining that's going to mean one bad pull from the chaos bag and you're dead.

Assets: When it comes to assets (and events for that matter) keeping the cost curve down is important. The cards I've gone for provide some key features that the deck needs:

1. Weapons with a big to hit bonus - Fireaxe is a given, but I've gone for the shovel over any of the other choices available because it is a reliable solid +2 to hit. The extra damage is nice, but given how Calvin works, especially this deck, he can afford to take a few hits and deal with his enemies over a few actions if necessary. The action compression of +1 damage weapons is nice, but I'd rather have a decent chance of actually hitting than having the chance of the weapon fail on me. Plus the testless clue it provides is money in solo play.

2. Card Draw: Rabbit's Foot makes the cut over Cherished Keepsake because it provides draw. Much as I want the deck to function from turn 1, it's unlikely, so the additional draw gives you the cards that you need to get firing.

3. Damage control: the remaining cards are there to manage damage. There's perhaps not as much as you might expect or like, but the idea is that the deck gets the job done quickly by being functional earlier on than a Calvin deck might otherwise manage.

It is perhaps surprising that there's no allies in the deck, but I don't think there's much to be said for a +1 bonus to a stat in this deck in the early stages, and most of the time you want to be taking the damage or horror to help power up, so there's not much call for the super horror soak that Peter Sylvestre provides. Similarly, you never want to go down to low cards, and given the cost curve will rarely struggle if you go to low resources, so Madame Labranche is also less useful. That said, given the skill cards in the deck, I think Yaotl is going to be one of my first XP spends.

Events: The deck is seriously light on events. Lucky! is a given for pretty much any survivor deck, but I actually think this Calvin deck makes better use out of it than most. In the early turns it's possible (likely?) that Calvin is going to fail even if you do throw a skill card or two into the test. Lucky and "Look what I found!" are great at getting you results early despite the low starting point. On top of that, Ward of Protection is great as not only does it cancel a treachery that might really scupper things up for you, but also gives you a horror to help build up your stats.