Jacqueline Fine Chapter 1 Evergreen

Most folks who own a Jacqueline Fine investigator deck are going to also have a Chapter 1 core set. As I fool around with limited card pools in order to replay older content without either cranking the difficulty or feeling like I’m cheating, I noticed there aren’t many ArkhamDB deck lists for her that are constrained to that “evergreen” Chapter 1 environment. Consider this my attempt to remedy that.

Jackie’s investigator ability is strong, in that it will reliably let you pass most standard difficulty skill checks as long as you’re up 1 before the token draw. As the scenario progresses and you get one or both ritual candles out to mitigate the downside of those symbol draws, you can rely on her ability a bit more in situations where you’re even on the skill check before the token draw, but that still feels to me like a bit of a gamble based on my experience running this deck. Since you can only use her ability once per round (unless you’re lucky enough to get Arbiter of fates into play), it makes her playstyle more about consistent incremental progress where you want to balance slow asset deployment with setup for one good skill check per round. If you’re not using her ability each round, you’re putting yourself behind the 8-ball.

Of course, this is Arkham and there will inevitably be turns where you’re making back-to-back skill checks or trying to avoid Jackie’s ability altogether because you’ve got her signature weakness in play. In those instances, you’ve hopefully curated a decent hand of cards to commit your way through the tests. Her ability, if used regularly, will help save those commit cards for when you truly need them the most, and Crystal Pendulum will generally ensure a decent draw rate to support that strategy. I’ve read plenty of online chatter about how Crystal Pendulum is an analysis paralysis nightmare as people mull the odds on each and every card draw. Sure, I can probably squeeze more efficiency out of it than I already do, but it’s generally enough to look at the token distribution and symbol values at the start of a scenario to determine the most common outcome, and apply that outcome every time I activate the Pendulum. So as an example, if the most common outcome in the bag is -1 and I’m making a willpower check of 3 with Jackie’s base value of 5, I’ll say I’m going to succeed by 1. With her ability, I’ve got 3 chances to draw that -1 (or a symbol equal to -1 with the ritual candles) which is good enough to both have the card and keep the game moving.

I tend to do true solo when I’m playing Arkham on my own, and I tend to prefer balanced decks when I’m playing with my buddies, so this Jackie deck is designed to do a bit of both while leaning slightly more towards combat. The combo of Azure Flame and Shrivelling is only in there because I want to ensure a combat spell in my opening hand, and I will mulligan for one if I don’t have one on the initial draw. If I’m fortunate enough to have the choice of which to play, I opt more for Azure Flame since I tend to trigger the negative outcome less often with Jackie’s ability than I do with Shrivelling.

While I would ideally like a spell dedicated to clue gathering in here, I’ve found that Ineffible Truth just greases the wheels of this deck a little bit better. It gives me a way to do ping damage when needed so I don’t need to burn a charge on my 2-damage combat spell or take a gamble by punching with Jackie’s combat value of 2. It also gives me a willpower-based evade to help with damage mitigation on larger and more dangerous baddies. Thankfully, Jackie’s intellect of 3 isn’t the worst when paired with her investigator ability, so a flashlight or perception/unexpected courage is enough to get her around most of her clueing. For particularly high shroud locations or just in times where I need a bit of action compression, Drawn to the Flame is also in here, but I tend to save these for a decent board state so as not to blow up the match with a bad encounter card draw.

While the above covers the core of the deck, notes about the other inclusions can be found below:

Robes of Endless Night: These are primarily here to help soak damage since Jackie is squishy, but there are enough spells that it will generally pay for itself if played early on.

Arcane Initiate: I try to play her during the witching hour, right before the agenda advances so her doom is immediately removed. She is primarily here for cheap damage/horror soak. This deck is consistent enough that I’m generally not using her to fish for big pieces unless I got really unlucky with the initial draw. That said, there are 12 spell cards in the deck so her ability is decent card draw for my commit engine if I haven’t managed to get Chrystal Pendulum into play.

Ward of Protection: Just all-around great encounter card protection, especially since Jacqueline has the ability to take a lot of horror. This is especially handy to pair when playing Drawn to the Flame if the board state isn’t the best.

Voice of Ra: Paired with Jackie’s investigator ability, I will most often hit either 3 or 5 resources gained with this card, which is about all of the extra resources I need for this deck to function smoothly. Sure, there’s the occasional terrible draw where I walk away with one resource, but the upside is high enough for me that it isn’t worth switching over to the more dependable 3 resources of Emergency Supplies.

Hypnotic Gaze: This is probably the weakest card of the deck due to its cost, but the cost isn’t terrible if the Robes are already up. There also isn’t anything in Jackie’s pack or the core set that I ultimately like better alongside the rest of this deck. Jackie’s ability makes the retaliate damage pretty reliable, so I treat this as a bit of action compression where I’ll move with an engaged enemy and let it do damage to itself.

Guts: Just a little bit of extra help for important willpower tests when I’ve already used Jackie’s ability for the round.