Ch1 True Solo | Grindstone Sailor (TIC)

Moving on Chronologically to The Innsmouth Conspiracy Campaign, and a chance to do something a little unusual. I wanted to try making a deck that could leverage Nose to the Grindstone (3), and I think Silas is one of the investigators that can be successful with it, Although I don't know if I'd be in a hurry to do this again on a difficulty other than standard!

I prefer his book signatures, but if you don't have those (or print&play copies), there's no reason this deck wouldn't work with his default set.

Innsmouth is an interesting campaign as a solo prospect because the enemies often punish you for evading them, but unlike say, Web of Dreams, you're not really rewarded for defeating enemies in the scenario either. Silas has the benefit of high and which means he can be discerning: fighting deep ones to avoid re-engagement penalties, while evading the more typical humanoid enemies or giant squids that don't punish evasion. The problem for Silas will be investigating. Typical of -faction investigators, I took an 'all of the above' approach to addressing clues.

In lieu of suggestions for how to play out the campaign, I focused more on 'how to maximize Silas's ' so no spoilers in this one!

I didn't find In the Thick of It necessary this time around, but if you wanted a head-start for the (difficult) first scenario, I'd pick 2 physical trauma and start with one unrelenting and the strong-armed.

edit: while writing this one, FFG released a new taboo list. Strong-armed is worth 2xp, but I'd probably stick to just one copy in that case instead of considering a second one.

Mulligan

• Dig for: investigation tool (Flashlight, "Look What I found!" etc.), Meat Cleaver.
• Keep: allies (Peter Sylvestre or Story Allies), Rabbit's Foot
• Pitch: redundant copies of the above, Skills other than Unrelenting (1) (half the deck is skills, you'll redraw more soon.)

In later scenarios, consider digging for Unrelenting (1).

General Playstyle

Investigating One of the difficulties I've had in the past with Silas is that he is very dependent on Assets and Events to successfully investigate. Nose to the Grindstone (3) doesn't really fix this, if anything it makes it worse (you now need grindstone and flashlight in play) but it does guarantee 3 clues per flashlight, and boosts your modest by a further +2 while using the flashlight, which starts to be enough to actually clear scenarios. Note that Nose to the Grindstone (3) does not recharge Old Keyring ("keys" aren't "supplies") and does not skill boost Meat Cleaver. (not a tool...) More on that in a little bit. Cleaver will help you get to 3 or less sanity for Desperate Search too.

Fighting with 5~6 evading is your first choice. For stuff you want to kill, use your Meat Cleaver if you've got it in play, or just use basic fights if not. The deck does have plenty of draw power, so despite only running 2 weapons, it wasn't too hard to find by the time I needed it in most scenarios, even if it wasn't in the mulligan.

a word of caution about the Cleaver though: Try to stay at 3+ remaining sanity, getting hit for 2+ sanity at once is terrifyingly common in this campaign. If you're using the original signatures Sea Change Harpoon is worth putting into play if you find it first. I would just use Silas's Net for its icons.

Skill-Test timing; Why Silas Cares

you can find the full timing rules reproduced on arkhamdb here. For convenience, here's the chart:

Silas's -ability resolves "after" ST.3 (before ST.4). While Silas's ability is helpful in ensuring you get the most of your skills, Most Skills won't have their effect until ST.7, so the ability just lets you save that sort of skill for when it'll be most impactful.

However, a small number of skills have effects which trigger on ST.2 or ST.3, which means you can gain the benefit of the skill, and still return it to your hand to gain the benefit again later. Of those skills, Silas can take:

• Accursed (which triggers during ST.2)
• Daring (which triggers during ST.2 - but it's a negative effect so why would you?)
• Defiance (which triggers during ST.2)
• Ghastly Possession (1) (which triggers during ST.2 if you add a doom - but it's a negative effect so why would you?)
• Persistence (1) (which triggers during ST.2)
• Signum Crucis (which triggers during ST.2)
• Unrelenting (1) (which triggers during ST.2)
• Beloved (which triggers during ST.3; although the removal effect is incompatible with Silas's )
• Nautical Prowess (which triggers during ST.3 - although if you want to pick it up you can only gain the card draw...)
• Stroke of Luck (2) (which triggers during ST.3; although the removal effect is incompatible with Silas's )
• Strong-Armed (1) (which triggers during ST.3)

While Accursed and Signum Crucis have some interesting potential for a blurse Silas build, the ones I was interested in leveraging for this build were Token Manipulators (Defiance and Strong-Armed (1)) and Card Draw (Unrelenting (1) and Nautical Prowess) Unrelenting is actually both which is really nice.

In these cases, the basic play pattern is, you commit the skill, you do what the skill says to do during commit (ST.2) or token reveal step (ST.3), then you trigger silas's ability to return the skill. (end of ST.3) You'll miss out on the icons, but it's probably worth it for the opportunity to repeatedly use their other effects.

Note that for Strong-Armed (1) you don't get the +1 damage if you return the card, just the token manipulation. Similarly for Nautical Prowess you don't get the extra -icons if you return it, so you can only get the card draw.

And of course, you only get to do this for one skill per round.

Notes on Specific Card Selections

Weaponry:

Despite not functioning with Nose to the Grindstone (3), I think Meat Cleaver is the most efficient weapon for this Silas Build, because the build needed a 1-handed weapon that would dispatch 3 health enemies in 2 actions (important so you can move after if you're in a fully flooded location) and it had the added benefit of making it easy to turn on Desperate Search. If you didn't want to run desperate search, Fire Axe can hit higher modified skill values, or you can upgrade into something like Hatchet (1) or Fire Extinguisher (3) which can be boosted by Grindstone.

I'd save Chainsaw (4) for multiplayer.

Skill selection:

Other than the "reusable" skills (like Defiance) most of the rest of the skill picks are intended to help with investigation. Desperate Search is easy to activate and grants a massive boost. Inquiring Mind grants exactly when you most want it (to get a clue), etc. I wanted to find room for True Understanding but it always ended up on the cutting floor. If you're not worried about Sanity hits, maybe it's worth running over Fearless?

Fey (1) is an unexpected courage that gives a third icon vs. treacheries, and happens to be extra good in one scenario of Innsmouth, Silas doesn't have great so it was an easy pick for me.

Misc:

Technically speaking none of these cards is core to the concept, you could replace any of them if you felt that there was another card you'd rather see here.

Rabbit's Foot helps you dig into your deck for Flashlights and Cleavers while still making some progress on investigation. (take a test: succeed, get a clue and progress the scenario, fail: still draw a card) which beats just taking 'draw a card' actions and hoping you don't run out of time.

Old keyring gives some useful redundancy in the early scenarios, but eventually I replaced these in my playtests.

Track Shoes gives some needed mobility to negotiate the larger maps. However, I do not believe it negates the additional costs of movement in Horror in High Gear or Devil Reef, so don't get too excited about using it to skip certain scenario mechanics - because you can't. Still a good card, though.

Charisma (3) is included so that you can have the story ally and a Peter Sylvestre (2) out at the same time, which is a nice stat boost and helps ensure you can always use Meat Cleaver's bonus damage when you need it.

Upgrades

There's potentially 55 XP available in the Innsmouth Conspiracy before the final scenario. Fortunately only 2 of these are on encounter deck cards(!), but 15 of them are locked behind scenario resolution criteria which a solo probably won't full clear. To make matters worse, the restrictions on when you can spend XP mean you may spend as much as half the campaign with less than 10XP actually spent, even if you've earned more.

Core Upgrades represents the cards that you want to take care of with that initial XP, realistically you'll need to make some choices: delay buying Fey (1) until after scenario 4, or skip Charisma (3)? Maybe make do with just one Nose to the Grindstone (3)... In my testing I usually skipped the Charisma, since un-upgraded Peter Sylvestre isn't very exciting, but that did lead to some tense moments in Devil's Reef where I didn't have the spare Sanity to get an important Elite killed in time... So ultimately you'll need to decide what you're comfortable with leaving for later.

In the end, a conservative full campaign estimate is around 35-40XP, so the table below covers roughly 40XP of upgrades. Because of the necessity of clearing most of the campaign with very little XP, I built this deck with a short 'critical' path (basically just nose to the grindstone x2, +unrelenting x2, for 8XP) which means the bulk of your spend will be all those 'nice to have' direct upgrades in survivor that survivor decks rarely end up taking, I suggested an order below but feel free to pick your favorites, or skip over the ones you don't have in your collection.

Variations and Other Campaigns

Meat Cleaver is Boring!

The Alternatives above are option if you don't like the Meat Cleaver and Desperate Search plan. I'd probably still keep Pete in this case since he has useful skill boosts and you'll want sanity soak anyway as Silas, but if you'd prefer a different ally, Granny Orne, Lawrence Carlisle (just for the ) or Guiding Spirit (1) are all reasonable subsitutions.

Other Campaigns

Campaigns that heavily pressure Sanity or cards in hand / hand-size are going to be hard on this deck, so I'd avoid Dunwich and Carcosa, and probably consider a different investigator for Circle Undone too. Otherwise, Silas has the tools to succeed at most other campaigns, and I think this build would be pretty well-suited as-is for something like TDE-B or TFA.

Remarks

I thought about exploring the blurse-Silas concept but having just done Blessed Tommy, I figured I'd save that for another time. Next deck in the series will be one more Innsmouth Investigator and then on to Edge of Earth!