Support Jim

This is a support Jim deck that focuses mostly on encounter card manipulation and tanking treacheries, but it can also help other players by improving their game state, as well as contribute to the team in regards of progressing the scenario by gathering clues.

Deck Overview

This deck features the newish Scroll of Secrets card that was introduced in the Secret Name pack. This card has 2 primary uses in this deck:

1) Give another player a card draw (unless you see a weakness, in which case you discard it), and

2) Use it discard nasty encounter cards or weaknesses, after you have bottomdecked them with Alyssa.

Scrying will be our primary tool for encounter manipulation and it's important that we upgrade to Scrying (3) as soon as possible. In this deck, Scrying can do a lot of good things. It can assign enemies to your fighters (which you do not want to be seeing at all), it can assign the difficult tests to the ones that have the greatest chance of passing them, but most importantly, it can assign the damage/horror dealers to yourself, which you can counter using Delay the Inevitable and Deny Existence. This way you protect your teammates from bad treacheries, allowing them to play more comfortably and/or take more risks and also, most importantly, keeping them alive.

Alyssa can be used to spy on the Mythos deck while you don't have your Scrying out yet, or if it has run out of charges. If you are the lead investigator, you can use this to your advantage: By seeing a nasty damage/horror dealer you can play Delay the Inevitable and counter it, similarly with Scrying. She can also be used in conjunction with Scrying for a particularly bad encounter card, in order to put it on top of the deck, then bottomdeck it with Alyssa and then discard it with Scroll of Secrets, if you want.

Alyssa can also be used on player decks to spy for weaknesses. If you see a weakness on another player's deck, you can bottomdeck it and then discard it with Scroll of Secrets (as also mentioned above). There are 2 Moonlight Rituals in the deck, so bottomdecking cards with Alyssa should not be very concerning. If you see Final Rhapsody on top of your deck with Alyssa, except from bottomdecking it, you can also counter it by using Delay the Inevitable or Deny Existence. With Delay the Inevitable you cancel all of its effects and with Deny Existence you can cancel either the damage or the horror you are going to be dealt. Either way, these cards can also be used to counter your weakness if you want to avoid putting doom on Alyssa for whatever reason.

Ok, so this is as far as encounter manipulation is concerned. Now what do we do during the game? With Alyssa and St. Hubert's Key our jumps to 5, so we become good at investigating. Flashlight can also help with high-shroud locations. We 're not doing the hard work, but we can contribute. We also have Mists of R'lyeh for some self-protection and also 1 copy of Shrivelling for insurance. The latter can be dropped if you think another card can be more important.

Other cards

Since we will not be doing the hard work, we 're bringing our Fine Clothes with us so that we can help at other parts of the game, like parleying. Note that Fine Clothes is also perfect soak for Final Rhapsody (if it hits). Take Heart is mostly to feed your teammates with cards and resources and enhances the "improving your teammates' game state" theme that is created by Scroll of Secrets, but you can also use it on yourself during a test on a treachery card that you are likely to fail, especially after assigning it to yourself with Scrying and tanking it with Delay the Inevitable or Deny Existence. Enraptured will let you get more milleage out of Scrying or Scroll of Secrets and since this deck focuses on encounter protection, Delve Too Deep becomes less dangerous and you can use it more safely in order to net 1-2 XP more in the scenario.

Ugrades

The core upgrades of the deck are 2x Scrying (3) and 2x Recharge. Recharge is important, because we want to be Scrying as much as possible. Then, after that, feel free to upgrade to whatever cards you feel like that will help the team, maintaining the support role as much as possible. Some options are:

• Sacrifice: For more "resources". You can use it on an empty spell or Scroll of Secrets (not sure about the last part, but I believe it's possible).

• Mists of R'lyeh (4): For better protection against enemies.

• Shrivelling (3)/ Shrivelling (5): For more damage.

• Recall the Future: For token management.

• Blood Pact: You have 2 Moonlight Rituals in the deck, so this can be viable.

• Time Warp: For more Support.

• Seal of the Elder Sign: Same as above.