Green Seeker Best Seeker

I really like this! I feel like a lot of the cards and abilities are so so good that it's easy to think of them as the last word in cluttering, but you've laid out so nicely how that isn't the case.

I'm especially interested in decks at the moment, because as a little challenge for myself, I've been trying to play through as much of the published material as I can with a party consisting of Skids, Jenny, Sefina and Finn. After a bit of trial and error, I came to a pretty similar place with Finn :) The only thing I wonder about is Winging It. It's slow and can't be combined with Lockpicks, but you can use it several times over and when there are so few cards that get more than one clue/action in Finn's card pool, I feel like there could be a place for one you can use repeatedly.

Thank-you for a very interesting and enjoyable read !

@bee123 Thanks so much! Yeah, I hadn't considered Winging It, but it could totally find a home in here. What do you think - maybe in lieu of Deduction? With the static boosts from your allies, landing Winging It should be easy peezy! Its reusability definitely warrants a look at it.

`@PureFlight Yes, I think if it's taking the place of any card, it's got to be Deduction. I think there are cases where Deduction would be better, but I think Winging It really does have a lot to recommend it even beyond the reusability. -1 shroud has some nice synergy with Double or Nothing, and being played from the discard makes it very resilient to effects that interfere with your hand or deck. For example, it doesn't care about (Return to the) Dunwich Legacy effects that discard cards from the top of your deck.

I suppose you could give up Logical Reasoning if you knew there wasn't going to be Frozen in Fear in the next scenario, and maybe if you had Adaptable to get it back for free? You'd really have to be sure about the encounter cards though :)

Quick question: when you say Finn is "the third-best investigator in the game", do you mean the third best clue-getter in the game or the third strongest investigator total?

Do you have a decent solo Finn list?

@wern212 So when I wrote it, I meant third best overall because he can get clues very easily and evade or eliminate enemies using evasion and rogue tricks. But this deck is full-on Cluever and doesn't have much in the way of enemy management. So...maybe this isn't a great example?

I did play Minh alongside an unoptimized Finn and it was crazy how much Finn outclassed her. So I really do stand by that statement. With some tweaks this Finn list could be the powerhouse all-rounder that I think he is.

@coyotemoon722 I don't have one drafted, but if I were to make one I would start with this list and make the following changes:

• 5 off-class cards => 2x Logical Reasoning, 2x Take Heart, 1x Waylay
• Burglary => Lone Wolf
• Flashlight => Switchblade[2]
• "You Handle This One" => Leo De Luca
• Double or Nothing => Overpower

The idea here is that it is so incredibly expensive to beat "must-pass" tests that you can't afford to do it consistently, so you simply try to win before those WP tests would make you lose. Evasion is really easy for Finn, so you'll evade the majority of enemies. Waylay kills you a Victory enemy, and your switchblades/.38 can help you in the event that you need to clear doom-toting cultists or otherwise get too bogged down.

Your skills have lots of draw, so you hopefully can find what you need consistently. You also stay at a comfortable 13 assets, most of which you only will play one of in a scenario, so that keeps your turns pretty active.

If you happen to throw together a similar list and try it out, let me know how it goes!

@PureFlightinteresting. I don't necessarily disagree with Finn being high up that list, though I disagree with Ursula? Unless I'm missing something, she's a good investigator, but not like Rex. Wonder if you could tell me why you think Ursula is so good?

@wern212First, my opinion of Rex is insanely high. Then there's a big gap to #2. I also think Seekers are pretty bonkers relative to everyone else, so I'd look to a yellow gator next. I'd rank the Ursula, Daisy, Minh, Norman, and I'd put Minh in the top half of all investigators.

Ursula's engine is wildly strong, where you can Pathfinder, Fieldwork1, Ursula Investigate, Fieldwork 2, Investigate and get two clues as a single action. Double Pathfinder makes it pretty funny too. Then, she has Seeker's normal color-pie-bending tricks like "I've got a plan!" and Acidic Ichor plus Evasion to handle enemies. And if you go Grotesque Statue she's very consistent.

Overall I think Daisy is very good because of her filtered draw and Encyclopedia. I'm picking Ursula over her because Ursula can handle enemies through evasion from turn 1.

There's several non-yellow gators that are extremely good, like Mark, Wendy, and Agnes, but I don't think they can defend from all angles as early/consistently as Ursula can. This is all subjective, of course. :-)

What are your thoughts on the top 3ish investigators?

@PureFlightI agree that Rex is really good.

I'm less high on Ursula because I think she's rather vulnerable to enemies. She can get clues pretty reliably but with access to only cards she can't deal with most enemies. I get that the same could be said for Rex, but where Rex can easily get two clues per investigate action without other cards, the same can't be said for Ursula.

For my top three... mhhmm... well, Rex is in first place... Finn might be second? I think both "Ashcan" Pete and Wendy are at least contenders... Sefina can be bonkers as well...

• Rex Murphy
• Finn Edwards
• I want to say "Ashcan" Pete, but I think it should probably be Wendy Adams. I just haven't played Wendy recently and I have played Pete.

@wern212 Good points. Wendy especially makes up for her low strength with lots of rogue tricks like Backstab and Sneak Attack. Ashcan is also incredibly strong right out of the gate.

Something I'm really impressed with is how hard it is to choose who is next-best after Rex. :-D

@wern212 Ursula's card pool isn't great, but I feel like she has some tricks available to her that no-one else does. The Gold Pocket Watch is a big investment of XP, but it's absolutely game-changing when you get it out especially at higher player counts. And she has access to various seeker tutoring things for it that make it less unreliable. And aside from the solutions and stones and what-have-you, Grotesque Statue and Pnakotic Manuscripts are really good bits of chaos bag manipulation. So, I dunno, maybe the "best after Rex" tier is relative to XP level?

@bee123that would make sense. Also, for the record, I do not consider myself an expert on Arkham Horror or even Ursula. It's just that I recently experienced her having a lot of trouble in TFA with enemies.

Though, honestly, that might just be TFA. I don't think she's bad either way, but I wouldn't put her above Finn?

It's also worth pointing out that I think Finn's flexibility is a big point in his favor. He can go full-on evade and investigation, or he can grab some beefy rogue weapons like Lupara and Chicago Typewriter, even the .41 Derringer is good. But on the other hand, he has weaknesses, like his of 1 and the fact that level 0 weapons are mostly very bad.

Point is, if you just want an investigator that has the most impact on the scenario, Ursula could be better. But I like the fact that Finn encourages the player to try things and experiment.

Regardless, I think we all agree that both Finn Edwards and Ursula Downs are great investigators. And honestly, what @PureFlight mentioned, after Rex there isn't an easy choice for who is the "best" investigator, because the investigators for this game are almost all really well-designed and fun.

@PureFlight Your article about the 4 roles of investigator was nice and well-written, but I was really keen on reading more about the support role and I was kind of displeased that there wasn't a "Tell me more about their strategy" section for them. I must admit that the support role wasn't really an existing role in my mind until I read your article and I really wanted to know more about their game plan and strategy.

@matt88Thanks! That's an excellent point, as was probably a bit of an oversight on my part. I'll try to add that into the article in short order here. I'm curious to see if anything in The Circle Undone adds to our pool of support options.

@PureFlightYeah, I guess the Circle Undone may add some more interesting options. We 'll wait and see. I was actually really curious about how a Guardian and Seeker can play a support role, while the main job of each is naturally different than being a support.

Any idea of how this deck would look today (after Scarlet Keys)?

Dirty Fighting and Breaking and Entering (2) as pocket lockpicks sounds fun,