Circling Back to Some Investigators | ARKHAM INVESTIGATOR DISCUSSION #59

[@GuerricSamplesGames]

Since you had some rules confusion around Microscope here's some clarifications: - First it's worth pointing out you can use the reaction when anyone at your location successfully evades or defeats an enemy, it doesn't have to be you - Kymani will get two evidence for successfully evading enemies twice, but Kymani discards enemies rather than defeating them so Kymani does not place evidence for defeating enemies unless you're finding a conventional way to do so - Swarm is half a combo half a nonbo. When you evade a swarm enemy, regardless of how many swarms there are you only get one evidence (both because you disengage and exhaust other swarms but don't actually evade them, and because even if you did it would be automatic evades and not successful evades). However swarms do provide a lot of enemies to defeat, so Microscope can be very lucrative with conventional fighters on your team for sure.

[@emergency.jergens]

Oooh you know what would be really interesting? Your perspective on archtypes like Cluedropping, doom, play for one turn rougue assets, etc…

[@RatherIncoherent]

@@emergency.jergens I'll probably cover archetype overviews at some point. Sounds fun.

[@danielgilson4731]

Ill comment on Diana. I think that you should always get sacred covenant on her, even if no one else is doing bless. Since savred covenant actually helps conserve blesses, can support it with just 2x purified and 2x tempt fate. That's just 2xp, 0 actions, 0 resources, 2 cards, and 4 deck slots to enable an extra card and resource each round. If the deck slots are too valuable to squeeze that in, you can get versatile when you buy sacred covenant to suddenly move into your bless package (but I think not getting versatile is still better.)

[@shaxberd7211]

This Covenant/Diana thing is blowing my mind. Is there a place where that interaction/ruling is confirmed? EDIT: Holy shit it’s on ArkhamDB. What a wild interaction.

[@HatterLelouch]

It's Good to see Joe Diamond slowly clawing his way up

[@sevento7]

Another video series idea: Something I read almost nothing about are pairings. There are some investigators that really work if payed together and noone takes the time to really think about this, while still always mentioning that you need a team that can take advantage of the helaing or ressources or whatever the characters provide. Something obvious would be like Carolyn and Agnes. We also liked Trish with ammo doubling and a Flamothrower Roland with handcuffs.

[@dragonhawk00]

I've enjoyed this entire series and it has lead to me being what I wanted to be, the spike at the table. I ensure our group wins while everyone else does what they want. After having closely followed a few of your decks, I see the efficiency in certain cards now. We got traumatized by curses while running a blursed team in Innsmouth so everyone else wanted to take out all the faustian bargains and deep knowledges, I just reminded them there was actually only rex and 1 bad scenario that were really hurt by it.

[@KrishnaRoskin]

I ran that Ursa deck (Glyph, Red Clock, Quill) solo a while ago and had a rough scenario and won at 7 out of 8 doom... and then realized I had an another agenda to go. So yeah...

[@NapoleonSoares]

I don't get it, Jenny is so capable at every level of play and outscales so many things. She's also an excellent solo investigator and has really good deckbuilding. Shes significantly better than everyone around her on the tier list What exactly is bad about her early scenarios? She can build to testlessly kill enemies or find clues by just using her extra econ and playing Faustian bargain and bank job. She runs over early scenarios in my experience because dynamite blast will 1 shot 2 enemies and she'll find some clues whilst being pretty mythos resilient. What more do you need? Then with proper green man's medallion usage and charons obol She gets ludicrously strong so fast.. I don't get it

[@RatherIncoherent]

Dynamite Blast doesn't just kill 1 or 2 enemies. It hits your team and costs flex spots. Anything she's doing within green testlessly is something other characters are also either capable of doing, or are doing better than it by just having better statlines and card pools. Her statline is atrocious and holds her down quite a lot in those early scenarios.

[@DreamerOfTheEnd]

@@RatherIncoherent But Jenny's statline is basically irrelevant when you're spending all of your actions on events or Double cards. Once you have a decent card draw engine with two Scroll of Secrets, Easy Mark, Thorough Inquiry, Cheat the System, and Double Double, Jenny can just spend every turn playing events like Vamp (3) and Call for Backup, and then use Double Double + Thorough Inquiry to draw 10 cards for 3 actions to repeat the shenanigans all over again on the following turn. Also, the thing that Jenny does better than any other Rogue is her ability to include assets from all 5 classes. If you include Thorough Inquiry 2x, Scroll of Secrets 2x, and Safeguard in her initial deck, Jenny can just grab Call for Backup and Double Double by the end of her first scenario and turn into an absolute beast.

[@NapoleonSoares]

@@RatherIncoherent I find that doing things test-less is the single most consistent way to play the game, almost whenever you can, especially as difficulty rises. Dynamite blast shouldn't ALWAYS be hitting your teammates, that seems like a weird reason to mark the card as worse, and even if it is, i would gladly take 3 damage in scenario 1 as the fighter as a tradeoff to my cluever being capable of managing an enemy or two on their own, it saves your entire team so much tempo if the person who is supposed to be soft to enemies can kill them in a single action. Dynamite Blast is ABSOLUTELY worth the flex spot if it makes your early scenarios entirely more playable so you can ratchet up into having like 20+ experience after scenario 2., and by that point she can transition into big money (which you claim to be a big fan of and note that it's very powerful) faster than anybody else in the game. When you buy Geas and Black Fan on Jenny, you're basically set for life in the mythos phase and you're actually good at everything, including campaign tests, mythos tests, fighting, clueing, all of it, while still reaching your money caps faster than most rogues other than Preston. HOWEVER, When you buy those assets on Preston, you are no where near set for life in the mythos and you still have to spend money or commit skills to complete anything worth your time, so she gets to the powerful endgame build faster than anybody else experience wise, can abuse double double almost as well as anybody in the game, and has an extremely flexible card pool and the money making to support it, but is comparable to... Roland?

[@NapoleonSoares]

Also to be clear this series has been awesome, I'm just a big believer in Jenny, love hearing your thoughts on the game.

[@sevento7]

❤ So glad to see some love for Jenny. She maybe is the best investigator for Adaptable and With the Medallion you get the best deck possible. I would also rank her higher.

[@Fogshaper]

I played a very similar Winifred through Dark Matter and while it was very good when it worked, I also think you're slightly overrating her. Sure, Savant fixes her mythos to some degree, and when she gets going with her Thieve's Kit and Biritsh Bulldog that's cool, but I've not seen the consistency from the deck that you're describing. I got shit upon by the mythos phase, by the autofail and by the order the cards in my deck were stacked in. She's definetely very strong when everything clicks, but I don't think getting her to click is as trivial as you make it sound. I don't have her in my S, rather somewhere in the middle of my A.

[@rupert7565]

Seriously don't skip on fieldwork in an Ursula red clock stall Archaic Glyphs deck, they are 1 clue per turn. You are going to have 1 very meaningful action and then 2 bonus actions, that's the whole plan. There is no shortage on available play actions, unlike in most decks. I really like astounding revelation too, combined with backpacks, no stone unturned and the tutor mode on the raven quill.

[@HatterLelouch]

Its good to see this video cycling back Q: For Roland did you get around to trying his book version alternative weakness? Or is that part of the to do list during drowned city?

[@RatherIncoherent]

@@HatterLelouch It's part of the to-do list for sure. I've got no idea what to expect out of Marion and Michael's cards but I expect Roland will be able to make some meaningful use out of it.

[@mr.blackpitts6850]

This was an enjoyable series and I now have a much higher appreciation for some investigators. That being said... Now do one for assets! (I may or may not just want to see you rate runic axe 😌)

[@hannahvickery4683]

really wild to see some investigators have wildly different rankings for different investigators. also some creators purposefully ranking characters discounting certain cards for some investigators whereas they would never do it for others?

[@RatherIncoherent]

@@hannahvickery4683 If I'm doing that it's 100% a mistake, but a lot of other creators rank investigators in a general sense and don't account for full card pools of specific decks. I don't think my min/max approach can do that accurately so I try to rank them accounting for specific cards / all of the cards.

[@RobGoodwin-f2s]

Your list grossly underrates Marie IMO. She has the perfect statline to abuse Astronomical Atlas. Almost every card in your deck is going to have either a will or book pip (or frequently both), so they're all committable, which effectively gives her a similar amount of draw to Harvey once it's in play. The interaction with Divination 4 and Ghastly Possession make 6 clue turns a common occurrence, so she can be an incredibly efficient cluever. I ran that deck through a 4p Dark Matter campaign and ended up being responsible for about 90% of the clues we discovered. She's obviously not A/S tier or anything, but to list her down among the Aminas and Lolas feels very wrong to me.

[@Monsieur_E]

Maybe I'm biased, I'd like to see Jacqueline move up into the S-Tier again. Her ability won't cancel the autofail once per round but I feel like it's so strong to save very important tests like 3 charges on Runic Axe or Deduction (2) on Practice Makes Perfect (sure you need to be up by ~7 to not fail to autofail, -4, -3) every other or third round and increase the odds on normal tests (imagine 16 tokens, skulls = -1, squid, cultist and tablet = -2, you're up one, you have a 50% chance of succeeding (8 out of 16 tokens), with Jacquelines ability it's around 75%, I didn't want to do the math when autofail gets pulled😅).

[@sevento7]

On higher difficulty this gets worse quickly, good ability, but not S-tier. I can’t remember playing on standard, since we use a full card pool it seems too easy, but symbols on hard are more like -4 and -5. It is good, but other S-Tier characters are just on another level and I think different difficulties should be considered in a tier list.

[@Monsieur_E]

@@sevento7 I think there should be a different tier list for every difficulty. Otherwise, you have to take different decks for each investigator into consideration. Succeed-by-characters are obviously better on easy than expert, so you should play another deck and then it really gets complicated. Thus, Rather Incoherent wisely uses only standard for ranking and another list would be interesting for sure.

[@sevento7]

@@Monsieur_E I can see the argument, but with the same argument some effects are rella great against swarm enemies, some are great against vengence snakes... By the same logic you would need a list for every campaign, since also every campaign uses different modifiers. I think it'S best to use one tier list and focus on one thing, but also acknoledge variations like difficulties, even if it is not the main factor.

[@Monsieur_E]

@@sevento7 Fair point. Honestly, only minutes after I finished my comment I had similar thoughts, if we distinguish between difficulties, why not between player amounts and campaigns as well? Either way, the tier list will include only standard so I'm curious how he will decide Jacqueline's placement in the end.

[@RolandIronfist13]

You made an error but not sure if unintentional, but in your joe discussion about Unearth The Ancients, you said you "don't" get the clue. This is only true on level 0. The level 2, you STILL get the clue. That does mean you can commit deduction to it and get more clues

[@RatherIncoherent]

@@RolandIronfist13 You are 100% correct. Misremembered the level 0 card when talking about it.

[@sevento7]

I still feel the need to make some arguments for poor Jenny. We actually played her for some end of the year fun. Jenny with two newspaper and some burglary can generate some ungodly amount of ressources with almost no experience. You can give them away, too. Use teamwork or I'll pay you back. Yes you probably contribute negatively for 1-2 scenarios, but this steamrolles so hard and is really fun to try at least once. I finished above 100 exp and I think every useful permanent possible, while taking an average of like 6+ actions a turn at like scenario 4 with 5 in all stats, how can this be the lowest tier? How can this be worse than Jim or Tommy?

[@sevento7]

I was too fast. Just keep her in C and I am okay...

[@thepwn121]

It is another good day for calvin enjoyers. This is the 2nd time he has moved up the tier list once again. He can only go up. Put runic axe on the tier list.