Carolyn Fern's Field Agent Training

Credit: Reiko Murakami

A lot of new cards for Carolyn have come out in the last couple of expansions, most notably, Field Agent and Ravenous Myconid, the combination of these means that you can do a lot of action-less test-less clue gathering, which makes her quite strong at being a cluever while also being able to support allies by healing horror and providing resources.

I think this deck scales better with the number of players in the game as it takes a couple scenarios to get going and Carolyn doesn't have a ton to offer in the early game outside of healing horror off of people or being able to leverage her base 4 to grab some clues.

• Overview

• Main Strategy

• Example Turn

• Tips and Tricks

• Other Cards

• Upgrade Path

• Make Your Own Deck!

• Get testless clues with Field Agent.
• Heal the horror they take with Ancient Stone, Inspiring Presence or Soothing Melody.
• Move any horror you can't heal to Ravenous Myconid to be healed later.
• Use Girish Kadakia as more soak for you and your allies, while he also helps fuel your Uncanny Growths.
• Gain resources either via your ability or Forbidden Knowledge or Stand Together.
• Draw cards via Archive of Conduits, Thorough Inquiry or Perception.

Here is an example starting with just Field Agent and Ravenous Myconid in play, with no other cards at a 4 shroud location.

1. Use Field Agent to get a testless clue.
2. Use Ravenous Myconid to add Uncanny Growth to your hand.
3. Use Uncanny Growth, committing Inspiring Presence or Perception if they're in your hand if your Myconid has any damage on it.
4. If you succeed by at least 1 then use that resource to move the horror from Field Agent to Ravenous Myconid.
5. You have two actions remaining to move and/or draw cards.

Here is an example with a full set up of cards.

1. Use Field Agent to get a testless clue.
2. Use Ravenous Myconid to add Uncanny Growth to your hand.
3. Use Uncanny Growth, tapping Girish Kadakia to give us +2.
4. We succeeded by 2, we heal 1 horror off of Girish Kadakia gaining a resource, then heal a second horror off of ourselves using Steady-Handed for a second resource.
5. We use Ravenous Myconid to take 1 horror off of Field Agent then another off of an investigator at our location.
6. We activate Archive of Conduits to Heal 1 horror, draw 1 card and gain 1 resource, we have no horror so we put a resource on Soul Sanctification.
7. We tap Forbidden Knowledge putting a horror on Girish Kadakia, to gain a resource.
8. We move using Pathfinder to a new location.
9. We activate Archive of Conduits again to heal an investigator anywhere on the map, healing 1 horror, giving them a card and a resource.

Obviously that was starting with no horror on our assets but represents a reasonably realistic turns for a testless clue and 1 test with a high chance of succeeding while also providing a large amount of card draw, resource generation and safety in terms of healing for both us and our allies.

Here are some tips and tricks for playing the deck:

• Ancient Stone heals should almost always be used to heal either Field Agent or Ravenous Myconid, almost all of our cards can heal investigators, fewer can heal allies so focus these on where they matter.

• Any extra actions you have can be pumped into Archive of Conduits for cards, resources and healing, either to give to yourself or to allies.

• If your game has fewer than 4 players then you can use the bonus leylines on Archive of Conduits to draw extra cards or heal more horror.

• Unless desperate, Soothing Melody should be used to heal 1 horror on two targets, this means your passive triggers twice.

• For the same reason, triggering Ancient Stone you should try and trigger it more times for one than a single time for a big number.

• Use Girish Kadakia aggressively to contribute to tests when he doesn't have much damage or horror on him and then when he is close to dying save his usages for tests that you are sure you will succeed on.

• I like to take any horror going out to allies in my location on Girish Kadakia and then save the damage soak for myself, this also has the benefit of being able to heal it later with his effect if they've left my location and I gain the resource from healing it.

• First Watch, Explosive Ward and "I've got a plan!" are your main enemy management tools, use First Watch to give enemies to other people or try and deal with them yourselves with the other two cards.

• Save Delve Too Deep for the end of a Scenario, if people can resign use it after they have so you get fewer draws from the deck, ideally you play two then resign yourself.

• Use any Soul Sanctification offerings to save yourself from scary treachery effects, evade any enemies you can't deal with or to make important tests. You shouldn't need to use them too often to investigate.

• A lot of your cards can heal damage instead of horror, Hallowed Chalice, Soothing Melody and Archive of Conduits, you prefer not to do this as it doesn't trigger your passive but works in a pinch.

• Warning: Rational Thought can really stop you in your tracks, you can't trigger your passive, you can't use Girish Kadakia to heal horror of himself and you can't even move it to Ravenous Myconid or use it to heal itself (though you can still heal damage on it), try and have a plan to deal with it when it pops up, normally best bets are Archive of Conduits, Soothing Melody or Hallowed Chalice, Hypnotic Therapy + any of these effects will make quick work of it.

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Core:

• Field Agent is the backbone of the deck in regards to gathering clues, testless clues that we can reliably trigger at least once a turn is great.
• Girish Kadakia is here to gain resources, improve our tests and act as soak for us and our allies.
• Ravenous Myconid is here just as a way to move horror off of Field Agent, it has the added benefit of being able to suck up horror and damage off of other people and heal it for investigating and we plan on doing that anyway.
• Archive of Conduits Card draw, resources and healing all in one package, kind of a pain to unlock though (certain scenarios don't play nice with either.
• Ancient Stone, another action-less way to heal horror off of our cards, especially important because it can target Field Agent and Ravenous Myconid. Also plays very well with Shrewd Analysis as an effective free 3 XP.
• Charisma lets us play a second ally, we don't run a ton of allies but they're very important.
• Soul Sanctification gives us protection from scary tests and gives us a way to continue healing while we don't have horror.
• In the Thick of It, gets us access to Ancient Stone early, always always always take 2 mental trauma.

Level 0 Deck:

• Stand Together and Forbidden Knowledge your basic resource package.
• Perception, helps you investigate early then gets more resources for Uncanny Growth later on.
• Inspiring Presence good way to retrigger Field Agent and can also be used on other players allies if needed.
• Hallowed Chalice it's not pretty but sometimes you need something that says : heal a horror.
• Shrewd Analysis for the small price of one seeker/mystic card slot we get 3xp.

Possible Cuts:

• "I've got a plan!" and Explosive Ward our approach to dealing with enemies, if you're sure you won't need them (have a really dedicated guardian or something) then they could be cut.
• Delve Too Deep A reasonably cheap way to gain bonus XP, if someone else is running it or you don't like it then feel free to replace it.
• First Watch gives you a little more protection from enemies and helps protect more vulnerable members of your team from treacheries.
• Grimm's Fairy Tales This was just an actionless way to trigger your passive, you'll most likely burn through the charges before needing the hand slot again.
• Thorough Inquiry action intensive way to draw a bunch of cards, can also be used to give other players cards.

Possible Additions:

• Preposterous Sketches, really any card that draws cards would be fine here.
• Book of Psalms, if someone in your party is using bless this isn't the worst generator, there's also some other bless synergy stuff that could be added and I have a deck for that don't below.

Luxury Upgrades:

• Stand Together draws cards, gains resources and your other players will love you for running it.
• Hallowed Mirror, you'll mostly use this for it's 3 mode unless you want to be really cute and shuffle them back into your to hold off from shuffling.
• A second Charisma most often paired with a second Girish Kadakia.
• Keen Eye We have a lot of resources, unfortunately we don't take a ton of actions, still if you plan on doing 3 back to back investigates, it's hard to beat.
• Surgical Kit if you're using archive of conduits it turns into a bunch of free cards, resources and healing, hard to turn down but takes up a hand slot and is a little too reliant on that for my liking.
• Liquid Courage as long as you're using it on yourself or people who are likely to make the test then it's free card draw.
• Gray's Anatomy Gives us a way to contribute damage if we're not engaged and you can do cute things like use it, "I've got a plan!", then use it again to give an ally the buff. Also can be used for burst healing if required.
• Logical Reasoning a little too expensive XP wise for something that is a one time effect, still it can trigger our passive multiple times and represents a lot of horror healed.
• Deny Existence it doesn't count towards our seeker/mystic limit because it technically heals horror though most likely you wouldn't use it for that. Way too high XP cost to consider early but a nice luxury buy.
• Key of Ys If you're playing with taboo it's almost unreachable but a nice bump to your stats and you can throw horror on Girish Kadakia to avoid triggering it. Takes up the same slot as Hallowed Mirror but if you're paying 10 XP what's another 3 on top for a Relic Hunter?

Notable Exclusions:

• Peter Sylvestre, Seems like just a worse version of Girish Kadakia, for 2 more XP and 1 more cost he protects us from damage and gives us an effective +2 per turn to whatever we need, as well as protecting our allies. Losing +1 and hasn't been relevant in my experience.
• St. Hubert's Key fought with Hallowed Mirror for an accessory slot and I prefer the mirror.
• Mystic spells ala Shrivelling or Mists of R'lyeh, testing a 3 instead of a 2 isn't much of a bonus, they also take up our mystic/seeker slots.
• Fearless I found it difficult to succeed on mind tests, adding 1 with the benefit of healing 1 horror wasn't really worth it.
• First Aid Hallowed Chalice has the benefit of infinitely reusable so seemed significantly better.
• Ward of Protection most of what the deck deals out is horror or damage, if you can tank that with Girish Kadakia or heal it then why bother with preventing it? Probably worth considering for certain campaigns.
• Safeguard, I run Pathfinder over this, though with the taboo they're the same XP cost so honestly they're pretty interchangeable, if you wanted to run Safeguard then it's a fine change, I just like Pathfinder because it means you don't have to rely on other people quite so much.

Link to the 0xp deck

(View at arkham-starter.com)

Disclaimer: The following decks have not all been tested. Some of them are the results of pure theory-crafting. I am happy to get any feedback to improve them.

Bless Version:

0xp Deck

37xp Deck

• An alternate version of the deck that uses The Key of Solomon to replace Ravenous Myconid as an actionless way to heal horror. You then get the bonuses of getting to drop "I've got a plan!" and Explosive Ward for Radiant Smite.
• It runs Book of Psalms over Grimm's Fairy Tales and Hallowed Chalice as bless generation, with Purified as backup bless generation.
• Adds Blessing of Isis and Sacred Covenant as ways to keep bless in the bag.
• Absolution as a big heal that will trigger your passive multiple times.
• Because it is then freeing up so many seeker/mystic slots it gets to run Preposterous Sketches for card draw.
• Finally Occult Reliquary is a neat way to get a free hand slots as 4/6 of our hand options are now blessed.

Overall this is maybe a slightly stronger build but I'm not entirely convinced that it's able to support itself with bless generation, if someone else was playing a bless build then I think this would be good to run as a way to piggyback off that. It's also a lot more XP hungry as the linked version is 34xp and doesn't have Soul Sanctification or Charisma. If there's enough interest I could write up an upgrade order for it and show what a full deck would look like for this archtype.

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