I can't help but feel this Investigator Discussion might have been blinded a bit by the magical christmas land of Sea Change Harpoon. The Nautical Prowess + Dreams of the Deep signature package seems much more optimal to my eye. Dreams of the Deep is a nothingburger weakness (especially if you play it as-written where the icons only subtract from your skill value and not the performing investigator). And Nautical Prowess is a miniature Unrelenting (you can fire the Draw clause and then return it to hand, don't be fooled by the word "If" into thinking it's a step 7 effect) that does double duty as a pseudo Lucky. Whereas Siren's Call can be a major pain if it comes out at the wrong time, Silas' Net is effectively deck bloat, and the Harpoon is a 3 cost conditional +1 damage 1-of with the dream of being a pseudo True Survivor that forces you to buy Backpacks and cater your gameplan to support it. Instead of building a combo deck around Harpoon, you can just run generically good Survivor weapons (including the two-handed ones you might have avoided to save a hand slot for Harpoon) and free up deck slots for more generic value. It's not as exciting, certainly. But in a power tier list I have to think it's the better version of Silas to be talking about
I put both signatures in the deck together and I would agree. Nautical Prowess was absolutely a standout in his deck, while Harpoon was never more than a decent ish 2 damage weapon. The dream of committing a bunch of skills on it and pulling them back is just not viable, and I was even running S-Catalogs and E Cache. It's too expensive and behind tempo to ever be worth it, and there aren't enough worthwhile skills to do it with (Overpower and Vicious Blow? Maybe, if it happens to be worth it to throw them on a single enemy right now). I did it once and it put me behind, not ahead. Nautical Prowess is not just an unrelenting, but it also makes you much more Mythos resilient. And yeah, of the two weaknesses, Dreams of the Deep is very simple to get rid of even applying it RAI instead of RAW while Siren's Call absolutely grinded my deck to a halt every time it came out. Even with a more streamlined deck, I don't think highly of Silas. He draws a lot but doesn't do a lot. He has little in the way of action compression, kind of the same problem Patrice has but worse imo since Patrice can pump any of her stats more easily than Silas can, she can fight basically just as well with Fire Axe or FIre Extinguisher while also getting clues, and gets some fight and especially clue compression from her off class sometimes (Drawn to the Flame, Read the Signs, Nature of the Beast, Winging It). Pretty much any Survivor fighter than isn't Yorick just makes me go "why am I not playing Yorick?"
I could see stunning blow be very usual for a red fighter if pared on a team with Miss Kymani Jones. Siden up some big monster, of the blow itself would not kill it, leave it to Kymani who will free engage it, and one action nuke it into the discard pile, now that is been beaten down a bit.
I like to grab Eucatastrophe on Silas once I'm past core upgrades. His star is good enough for me to want to force it every so often and like you said his core kit is so cheap that you don't really care that it is over costed at 3xp.
I’m running a dark horse Silas through scarlet keys on hard right now, and with the mariner’s compass and fire axe, I’m doing well. I feel like I agree with your take that he doesn’t feel like a top tier character because his action economy is just the usual three, and the whole scenario is based on whether or not he gets the couple of cards he needs while he has the resources for them.
I can definitely see being low on Stunning Blow, but in a world where Sweeping Kick is considered good, I feel like Stunning Blow does a beautiful Level 0 imitation (especially when committed to an attack that’s already dealing 2 damage). For low-Agility fighters, Stunning Blow is often categorically better than Sweeping Kick. Why? - Doesn’t cost experience. - Doesn’t cost a resource. - Can be committed to your own fights or another investigators. - Stunning Blow can be committed on top of another Fight asset or Fight event, as well as along with other skills, for more concentrated value. Where Stunning Blow loses out is the skill bonus to the Fight test. For a character with 3 or 4 Agility, Sweeping Kick is gangbusters. For a character with 1 or 2 Agility, Stunning Blow’s Combat icon plus the Combat bonus on your Fight Asset compares nicely.
If his core XP is so cheap, what about going into the Exile cards for mythos resilience? Test of Will 1, Stroke of Luck, maybe even Fortune or Fate? Flex with Burn After Reading?
@@emergency.jergens I agree with that 100%. I'd say Silas" is less punishing than those for sure, since it can often just be a double action tax, but it feels bad in similar ways.
100% agreed. It's one of those cards where I'm not super familiar with it and had to make sure I was reading it right. As written, it's so narrow that I thought I was misunderstanding it.
The ruling for damage effects was changed so that "For each" effects such as Rotting Remains/Grasping Hands and Mary's/Diana's weaknesses are individual instances of damage/horror. This means that you can't use deny to soak 100% of the horror from those signatures anymore (and is also just generally a massive nerf to deny).
@@RatherIncoherent was the ruling changed for all of them or just the cards with choices, like Mary's and Diana's signatures? The current FAQ (section "Card Ability Interpretation", point 2.23) seemes to indicate that Deny Existance can still fully ignore the damage/horror from cards like Grasping Hands/Rotting Remains that have no choice on them.
@@rognin5603 If I'm not entirely wrong, this only applies to things that give you a choice. Grasping Hands fails by X, and then deals X damage, so you can Deny the full damage. Diana's weaknes deals either a horror or discards a card for each card, so you make a choice X times, and you only get to Deny one of those instances. Take this with a grain of salt, but that's how I understood it.
@rognin5603 Huh, you're correct and I'm misremembering it. I think I'm misremembering it as being a simplified, more universal reading because the actual rules doesn't make any sense to me. The way it's phrased includes the word 'calculated' and that's not a word I'd ever use to describe the resolution of Mary's weakness. It just makes "choose" and "otherwise, for each" effects separate instances. The way it goes about phrasing it doesn't really feel logically grounded to me at all.
@@RatherIncoherent nah i agree the ruling's a mess and i honestly wouldnt blame anyone who told me their group just plays with the original rules or whatever houserule they came up with cus its kinda just annoying and unclear even if you know how it's supposed to work because you have to think about it on every other encounter card
Interesting that we finally agree on Jaqueline. Now Jenny needs to get back up to C at least, how is getting a 50 exp deck after 4 games not at least C tier :-P?
Mostly the statline. It's a very bad statine with very limited non-rogue cards allowed to fix the deck. It's also worth noting that as good as Jenny gets with that exp, she starts off terrible and is actively made worse in the opening two scenarios by funneling her resources into GMM. I could see myself bringing her to the top of D on a good day, but I don't think I can bring her to C.
@@RatherIncoherent Jenny's statline is much less of an issue if you just accept that her stats will never be good and that her actions are better spent on guaranteed effects. If you just build an event based deck around Double cards like Thorough Inquiry + Bank Job, synergy cards like Call for Backup and Cheat the System (1), Vamp (3) + Fine Clothes, and Double Double. Her poor statline means that there are fewer opportunity costs on spending actions on Double Cards or cards with guaranteed effects like Call for Backup, and Jenny can just clone those events with Double Double to ludicrous effect. Add in the fact that Jenny is one of the few Rogues that has access to Thorough Inquiry and assets from every class, and Jenny becomes one of the best abuser of synergy cards in the game. I know it sounds weird, but my table almost exclusively plays Hard and we've house banned Jenny from the table due to how degenerate her deckbuilding options are now. Assuming you're willing to play with Parallel Jenny's face and her standard Dunwich 5 back, it's basically impossible to deal with a Jenny once she can comfortably draw 10-12 cards a turn from cloning Thorough Inquiry, play Call for Backup 2-3 times per turn, play Counter Espionage + Money Talks (2) during the Mythos Phase to completely dismember 90% of Treachery cards, and then repeat the process on the following turn.
I can't help but feel this Investigator Discussion might have been blinded a bit by the magical christmas land of Sea Change Harpoon.
The Nautical Prowess + Dreams of the Deep signature package seems much more optimal to my eye. Dreams of the Deep is a nothingburger weakness (especially if you play it as-written where the icons only subtract from your skill value and not the performing investigator). And Nautical Prowess is a miniature Unrelenting (you can fire the Draw clause and then return it to hand, don't be fooled by the word "If" into thinking it's a step 7 effect) that does double duty as a pseudo Lucky. Whereas Siren's Call can be a major pain if it comes out at the wrong time, Silas' Net is effectively deck bloat, and the Harpoon is a 3 cost conditional +1 damage 1-of with the dream of being a pseudo True Survivor that forces you to buy Backpacks and cater your gameplan to support it.
Instead of building a combo deck around Harpoon, you can just run generically good Survivor weapons (including the two-handed ones you might have avoided to save a hand slot for Harpoon) and free up deck slots for more generic value. It's not as exciting, certainly. But in a power tier list I have to think it's the better version of Silas to be talking about
I put both signatures in the deck together and I would agree. Nautical Prowess was absolutely a standout in his deck, while Harpoon was never more than a decent ish 2 damage weapon. The dream of committing a bunch of skills on it and pulling them back is just not viable, and I was even running S-Catalogs and E Cache. It's too expensive and behind tempo to ever be worth it, and there aren't enough worthwhile skills to do it with (Overpower and Vicious Blow? Maybe, if it happens to be worth it to throw them on a single enemy right now). I did it once and it put me behind, not ahead. Nautical Prowess is not just an unrelenting, but it also makes you much more Mythos resilient. And yeah, of the two weaknesses, Dreams of the Deep is very simple to get rid of even applying it RAI instead of RAW while Siren's Call absolutely grinded my deck to a halt every time it came out.
Even with a more streamlined deck, I don't think highly of Silas. He draws a lot but doesn't do a lot. He has little in the way of action compression, kind of the same problem Patrice has but worse imo since Patrice can pump any of her stats more easily than Silas can, she can fight basically just as well with Fire Axe or FIre Extinguisher while also getting clues, and gets some fight and especially clue compression from her off class sometimes (Drawn to the Flame, Read the Signs, Nature of the Beast, Winging It). Pretty much any Survivor fighter than isn't Yorick just makes me go "why am I not playing Yorick?"
I could see stunning blow be very usual for a red fighter if pared on a team with Miss Kymani Jones. Siden up some big monster, of the blow itself would not kill it, leave it to Kymani who will free engage it, and one action nuke it into the discard pile, now that is been beaten down a bit.
I like to grab Eucatastrophe on Silas once I'm past core upgrades. His star is good enough for me to want to force it every so often and like you said his core kit is so cheap that you don't really care that it is over costed at 3xp.
I’m running a dark horse Silas through scarlet keys on hard right now, and with the mariner’s compass and fire axe, I’m doing well. I feel like I agree with your take that he doesn’t feel like a top tier character because his action economy is just the usual three, and the whole scenario is based on whether or not he gets the couple of cards he needs while he has the resources for them.
I can definitely see being low on Stunning Blow, but in a world where Sweeping Kick is considered good, I feel like Stunning Blow does a beautiful Level 0 imitation (especially when committed to an attack that’s already dealing 2 damage). For low-Agility fighters, Stunning Blow is often categorically better than Sweeping Kick. Why?
- Doesn’t cost experience.
- Doesn’t cost a resource.
- Can be committed to your own fights or another investigators.
- Stunning Blow can be committed on top of another Fight asset or Fight event, as well as along with other skills, for more concentrated value.
Where Stunning Blow loses out is the skill bonus to the Fight test. For a character with 3 or 4 Agility, Sweeping Kick is gangbusters. For a character with 1 or 2 Agility, Stunning Blow’s Combat icon plus the Combat bonus on your Fight Asset compares nicely.
If his core XP is so cheap, what about going into the Exile cards for mythos resilience? Test of Will 1, Stroke of Luck, maybe even Fortune or Fate? Flex with Burn After Reading?
Truthfully I hate weaknesses that punish you for playing the character’s ability to any degree (Sister Mary, Tommy Muldoon)
@@emergency.jergens I agree with that 100%. I'd say Silas" is less punishing than those for sure, since it can often just be a double action tax, but it feels bad in similar ways.
Will Schoffner's Catalogue not help with recurring the harpoon?
I've got no way of recurring it, so it'd just be an e cache that only works on harpoon, backpack, and sparrow mask, unfortunately.
I wish his net let you evade momsters not engaged with you. Then I could see it getting more play.
100% agreed. It's one of those cards where I'm not super familiar with it and had to make sure I was reading it right. As written, it's so narrow that I thought I was misunderstanding it.
How was Deny Existence nerfed?
The ruling for damage effects was changed so that "For each" effects such as Rotting Remains/Grasping Hands and Mary's/Diana's weaknesses are individual instances of damage/horror. This means that you can't use deny to soak 100% of the horror from those signatures anymore (and is also just generally a massive nerf to deny).
@@RatherIncoherent was the ruling changed for all of them or just the cards with choices, like Mary's and Diana's signatures? The current FAQ (section "Card Ability Interpretation", point 2.23) seemes to indicate that Deny Existance can still fully ignore the damage/horror from cards like Grasping Hands/Rotting Remains that have no choice on them.
@@rognin5603 If I'm not entirely wrong, this only applies to things that give you a choice. Grasping Hands fails by X, and then deals X damage, so you can Deny the full damage. Diana's weaknes deals either a horror or discards a card for each card, so you make a choice X times, and you only get to Deny one of those instances. Take this with a grain of salt, but that's how I understood it.
@rognin5603 Huh, you're correct and I'm misremembering it. I think I'm misremembering it as being a simplified, more universal reading because the actual rules doesn't make any sense to me. The way it's phrased includes the word 'calculated' and that's not a word I'd ever use to describe the resolution of Mary's weakness. It just makes "choose" and "otherwise, for each" effects separate instances. The way it goes about phrasing it doesn't really feel logically grounded to me at all.
@@RatherIncoherent nah i agree the ruling's a mess and i honestly wouldnt blame anyone who told me their group just plays with the original rules or whatever houserule they came up with cus its kinda just annoying and unclear even if you know how it's supposed to work because you have to think about it on every other encounter card
Interesting that we finally agree on Jaqueline. Now Jenny needs to get back up to C at least, how is getting a 50 exp deck after 4 games not at least C tier :-P?
Mostly the statline. It's a very bad statine with very limited non-rogue cards allowed to fix the deck. It's also worth noting that as good as Jenny gets with that exp, she starts off terrible and is actively made worse in the opening two scenarios by funneling her resources into GMM. I could see myself bringing her to the top of D on a good day, but I don't think I can bring her to C.
@@RatherIncoherent Jenny's statline is much less of an issue if you just accept that her stats will never be good and that her actions are better spent on guaranteed effects. If you just build an event based deck around Double cards like Thorough Inquiry + Bank Job, synergy cards like Call for Backup and Cheat the System (1), Vamp (3) + Fine Clothes, and Double Double. Her poor statline means that there are fewer opportunity costs on spending actions on Double Cards or cards with guaranteed effects like Call for Backup, and Jenny can just clone those events with Double Double to ludicrous effect. Add in the fact that Jenny is one of the few Rogues that has access to Thorough Inquiry and assets from every class, and Jenny becomes one of the best abuser of synergy cards in the game.
I know it sounds weird, but my table almost exclusively plays Hard and we've house banned Jenny from the table due to how degenerate her deckbuilding options are now. Assuming you're willing to play with Parallel Jenny's face and her standard Dunwich 5 back, it's basically impossible to deal with a Jenny once she can comfortably draw 10-12 cards a turn from cloning Thorough Inquiry, play Call for Backup 2-3 times per turn, play Counter Espionage + Money Talks (2) during the Mythos Phase to completely dismember 90% of Treachery cards, and then repeat the process on the following turn.