Joe B(e)low (Solo Return to the Night of the Zealot)

Joe here just faced The Devourer Below and took down Umôrdhoth in Return to the Night of the Zealot on Standard. This is the second iteration of the deck after having failed once before, so I went heavy on specific tech for the campaign on this go-around.

Granted, it was pretty harrowing (since the big boy was +8 base and 13 health due to Vault of Earthly Demise on full blast), but between two Dynamite Blast chucked into his spawn location, Timeworn Brand, Lita Chantler, Ace of Swords, two copies of Dodge and a ton of skill cards, Joe eventually managed to erase his map.

The penultimate turn saw The Thing That Follows and Umôrdhoth attacking me in the enemy phase, killing Lita, and leaving Joe with one sanity left, so the next turn I had to land the final blow. With Lita gone, I was swinging at +7 vs his +8, so I had to pull the +1 token or Elder Sign to win. First two pull were fails, and the last was +1, by some vanishing miracle that typically does not exist in this game.

About the deck:

Assets The usual suspect weapons here for , with Magnifying Glass for clues, and Dr. Milan Christopher for the infinite econ he provides, and solid +1 for . I found that based on this and the testless clue gathering cards in the Hunch deck, Flashlight isn't that necessary, and its slots can go to more skill cards.

Events The event suite here is mainly Umôrdhoth tech, and in the final scenario, I spent most of my time drawing cards and setting up rather than getting clues, which is my usual solo strategy. The designers got wise to this scheme and put in a good counter card in Vault of Earthly Demise, which is pretty brutal. By the time Umôrdhoth spawned at the Ritual Site, I had both Blasts and Dodges in-hand, and got to use both, having enough money saved up.

Skills About half this deck is skill cards, since Joe's abysmal stat needs a lot of help, and he wants to win combat checks, especially against Umôrdhoth. Steadfast and Take the Initiative are both really versatile cards, and help against the encounter deck too.

Hunch Deck Delay the Inevitable is amazing against Umôrdhoth if you can draw it while engaged with him, No Stone Unturned helps you find important setup pieces, Preposterous Sketches is great draw in general, Scene of the Crime and Working a Hunch give you guaranteed testless clues, and Shortcut starts in the regular deck, but is a nice target to put back into the Hunch deck when drawing the Elder Sign. Logical Reasoning was in the first version of this, but I never once had it actually fire, so I cut it. In the last scenario, a good strategy is to fire as many Hunch cards as you can, with the exception of Delay the Inevitable, thinning out the deck so it's more likely to surface while engaged with Umôrdhoth.

Upgrades 7xp in the first scenario went to both Ace of Swords and a Timeworn Brand. 5xp in the second went to another copy of Timeworn Brand, as the plan from the start was to fight Umôrdhoth rather than try to win through investigation.

Let me know if you have any success with the deck!