Father Mateo - A Most Ingenious Paradox

Father Mateo - A Most Ingenious Paradox

The best answer to the mythos, and all of its horrors? Clearly it's a crucifix, a bible, and lots of swear words. Mateo will run rings around enemies (and possibly allies alike) with this unique blend of and tokens.

The premise of this deck revolves around two general mechanics. Adding bless and curse tokens to the bag, and then maximizing the effects of those tokens through cards like Armageddon. It has excellent support potential as well, as we will eventually be adding a suite of bless token cards - beginning with 0xp cards like Ward of Radiance, and building to truly awesome cards like A Watchful Peace, Hallow, and Blessing of Isis. The latter is particularly powerful in Mateo, since he has an extremely potent . To polish all this off, we get to unleash the potential of green's Eye of the Djinn, taking super powerful turns, and leaving behind a wake of destruction and clues. We also add several tools to greatly increase, or even outright guarantee our chances of seeing our bless and curse tokens.

A Most Ingenious Paradox

Here's where the fun beings. Once a turn, whenever we finishing resolving a skill test where both a curse and a bless token were revealed, we auto pass the test. This means that even if our resulting tokens result in a -20, so long as we see these two tokens, we're sitting pretty. With this in mind, we want to pull as many tokens as we can, during our important skill tests.

Why this covenant over Ancient Covenant? I know you might be tempted to use the latter, but trust me, you want the paradox. The ancient covenant requires you to STOP pulling tokens as soon as you see the bless token. Conversely, paradoxical covenant allows you to keep on pulling, keep on pulling... until you are completely finished. This will be a super important mechanic once we upgrade our curse spells (See "Whistles and Bells, These Two Key Spells"). You'll get far more usage our of paradoxical covenant. Trust me.

When you activate your two key spells (See "Whistles and Bells, These Two Key Spells") you'll want to use one of your multi token mechancics described below.

Olive McBride- She will allow us to pull three tokens total, and choose to resolve two of them. Remember,you'll want to choose to resolve a bless and/or a curse token, so they will therefore allow you to use Paradoxical Covenant. Furthermore, choosing a bless and or a curse token will allow you to pull additional tokens (since by their nature, they each require an additional token pull). Remember, you don't care if you see -8, -6, all you're looking for is your bread and butter curse and bless tokens to auto pass.

Dark Prophecy - Similiarly to McBride, this event will allow you to see a whopping 5 tokens. Remember, that bless and curse tokens, according to the furrent FAQ count as tokens that you can choose to resolve as part of this test. This gives you an excellent chance to auto pass.

Favor of the Moon/Favor of the Sun - If you ever must have one of the tokens revealed, you have this in your toolbox. You can choose instead to guarantee the curse/bless token you're needing.

Bless and Curse Tokens, keeping the bag stuffed!

Spirit of Humanity, my goodness. What an incredibly powerful card. At a laughable TWO xp, this card is going to be the cornerstone of our bless and curse addition to the chaos bag. I suggest you use an application to manage your tokens. You'll be adding many, many tokens to the bag. Also remember that Spirit of Humanity can be used to heal as well as damage us, so manage your health/sanity with this card.

Remember, Mateo gets to start with 5 xp, so you're already well ahead of the game. There's extra punch to keep the bag well stocked with Keep Faith and Tempt Fate.

Whistles and Bells, These Two Key Spells

And now to abuse those tokens! You will never replace your Olive McBride. She'll keep you pulling multiple tokens once per turn, and you're specifically looking for bless and curse tokens. Remember, when you've see one of each, you can activate your Paradoxical Covenant, and auto pass the check (after all tokens are resolved). In addition, any elder sign you pull is just gravy on the biscuit. You ideally want to use Olive McBride when you activate one of your two key spells, Armageddon or The Eye of Chaos. Take all those curse tokens, roll them into extra tokens, pull a bless and auto pass.

This gets even more ridiculous when Eye of the Djinn is added to the deck. At that point, along with auto passing, you'll also be taking extra turns, and refreshing the eye. Go nuts.

You will have some minor spell slot issues until you find a sign magic. You'll be deciding between Spirit of Humanity, and your action spells Armageddon and The Eye of Chaos. Use Sign Magick to overcome this burden, but keep an eye on your hand slots. Typicall one of these is enough to give you the three slots you'll need to be a full operational battlestation.

Upgrade Path

• Armageddon/Eye of Chaos should be upgraded depending on your party composition, and needs. Both are tremendously powerful for action economy with Olive McBride. The upgraded versions will reward you for EVERY curse symbol pulled ruing those tests. Keep this charged as a primary motivation, and get extra clues or deal extra damage as a secondary consideration.
• Alter Fate. My oh my. Certainly in the conversation of best red card in the game. Your fellow investigators will thank you. You'll save failed missions with this little beauty. Every single mission in the mythos has targets for this card, and most of those targets are supremely annoying.
• Eye of the Djinn. Wowsers. One of my favorite green cards. With multiple token pulls, you'll get to trigger and use this multiple times a turn. Remember, it sets your base skill to 5, giving you the ability to conquer almost any challenge. Take extra actions, refresh it constantly, and let the mateo holiness shine.
• Hallow and/or A Watchful Peace may be run. Too many of each, and you might find yourself short of bless tokens in the bag. I find A Watchful Peace is probably the safer option, since you only need 5 bless to ignore drawing mythos cards.
• Blessing of Isis. No, not THAT ISIS! The one that regins down extra actions, or free resources and cards! For those times you pull multiple bless tokens, why not turn it into one of the best elder sign effects in the game. With Isis, and Eye of Djinn, i've take 8 action turns with Mateo before. Ridiculous. Just make sure the bag is constantly refueled with tokens (see the aforementioned (cough, broken) Spirit of Humanity.
• Charisma. Pick up in the same purchase of Nkosi.
• Nkosi Mabati. Paired with one or two copies of charisma, you now have another way to guarantee a bless or curse token is pulled. When you play her, name curse or bless, and how all those other symbols magically become your desired token! Wonderful. I would recommend you choose curse tokens for this so your upgraded Armageddon and Eye of Chaos are going to stay charged with much more frequency.
• Harmony Restored. If you're going to run 3 or more bless token eaters in the form of Hallow and A Watchful Peace, I strongly recommend picking one of these up. It'll give you even more power to keep more bless tokens available. Just keep in mind, this is going to remove curse tokens from the bag, which comprimises your ability to keep your spells hitting hard.

Potent Notables

Below is a list of alternative choices for cards that I find particularly good in this deck. They didn't quite make the cut for me, but are still strong.

• Spectral Razor. Notably this will deal with your annoying weakness in one foul swoop.
• Rite of Sanctification. Listen, I love this card. It's frequently going to net you 10 resources BUT... and here's a big but... it takes up one of your precious spell slots. If you want the increased money this gives you, and you're willing to work around spell slot issues, then by all means put it in.
• Familiar Spirit. If you're going with more spells, and you want to also go deeper with allies, then spirit is worth consideration. Cheap, can soak ina pinch, and relieves you of a hand slot spell slot from sign magick.
• Signum Crucis. With its taboo buff (no longer consting any XP, this is worth consideration in your deck. The problem is, it can be tough finding times to test on very high values to make it super worth it. This card really shines with the aboslutely ridiculously broken Drawing Thin, which sadly is out of our grasp unless you Versatile it in.
• Priest of Two Faiths. Well, this seems very very good. Whenever I include him however, I always find myself stuggling for ally slots. This being said, if you pick up another charisma, you can certainly run him. He's probably a better additional later in the xp chain, when you feel like dropping the tempt fates or keep faiths.