Hi friends,

Just a little post from me to say, first and most importantly: thank you if you've taken the time to listen to Drawn to the Flame, or gone further and subscribed, commented, rated us on iTunes or whatever else. We've been really flattered by the comments and the response - thank you for taking the time!

And, hopefully as a way of saying thank you: here's episode 5, the first of the ones not recorded when I could hardly work out how to do it. In this episode Peter and I do something a little different: we're focusing on a specific investigator, talking about strategies and challenges with that investigator. And she is.... Zoey Samaras!

Here's a link: http://drawntotheflamepodcast.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/episode-5-zoey-samaras.html you can find links to iTunes, the RSS feed and the direct download all there. As ever, thank you for listening, and of course hit me up with a message if it takes your fancy.

F

You better do Jim next. I've been reading every strategy piece I can on him, because I desperately want him to work better than I think he does, and I'd love to hear your opinion on it!

3 minutes ago, Network57 said:

You better do Jim next. I've been reading every strategy piece I can on him, because I desperately want him to work better than I think he does, and I'd love to hear your opinion on it!

I take it 'you better do' is an 'I'd love it if you did' rather than an 'or I'll beat you up' sort of request? Hehe. We've actually recorded one more investigator-specific episode and I'm afraid it's not Jim yet. I'm playing two campaigns in which he's involved and he's done plenty of great work (even if he suffers a bit from being not-Agnes) and I'd definitely love to talk about him soon. We'll probably do some other trait-specific episodes after the next investigator-specific episode, and then come back to another pair of investigators for episodes 9 & 10 (or something like that). Thank you for listening!

1 minute ago, zooeyglass said:

I take it 'you better do' is an 'I'd love it if you did' rather than an 'or I'll beat you up' sort of request? Hehe. We've actually recorded one more investigator-specific episode and I'm afraid it's not Jim yet. I'm playing two campaigns in which he's involved and he's done plenty of great work (even if he suffers a bit from being not-Agnes) and I'd definitely love to talk about him soon. We'll probably do some other trait-specific episodes after the next investigator-specific episode, and then come back to another pair of investigators for episodes 9 & 10 (or something like that). Thank you for listening!

I've got 2 campaigns with him and still can't seem to make him work. I think all the static Willpower boosts except the Rosary are out-of-class and XP for him, so his spell casting isn't powerful enough. I want to start a 3rd but need some inspiration for a deck.

I think that's definitely one of the challenges for Jim, and it personally leads me to thinking: does he want to be boosting willpower then? Sure, he has access to all the mystic good stuff, but maybe he also wants to draw on his reasonable intellect and combat of 3 to be more of a generalist. That's where things like Song of the Dead really sing. Ignore the damage ability; enjoy the fact it's a willpower boost for more reliable damage. With machete in hand, too, he can become quite competent. Anyway: totally agree, he is tricky, and I've yet to see an utterly compelling Jim build.

@Network57 I've had a fair amount of success with Jim, so I feel kind of compelled to defend him. I use arcane studies to boost his knowledge and will, 2x hard knocks to boost his fight and agility, and 2x burglary to keep his resources high enough to use them. I give him Machete or Kukri in one hand, ritual candle in the other. You can now pass just about any test and deflect anything you're not ready for with Ward of Protection. He's really good to keep monsters permanently locked down with Bind Monster (as he's great to consistently pass tests).

Jim is not Agnes. He's not a warcaster, he's a solid all arounder with access to support spells. Depending on what the rest of my group looks like when I play Jim I either have a Leo De Luca (to maximize his already more efficient actions), a Machete (if the group is light on fight), or Medical Texts (if the group is light on support). Pair Jim's trumpet with Clarity of Mind and he's a walking sanity booster.

I know when I play Jim, he's home base to the rest of the team. He's not the main fighting character, but he can pull a monster off of a Seeker if need be. He's not always the best support, but he can keep characters from dropping from sanity loss in a pinch (or from dying from health if you brought medical texts). He's not the lead investigator of the group, but if there's an isolated or dangerous spot with clues he's often the best equipped to go in while the other investigators are doing more important things. He's also one of the few characters I'd feel completely confident walking to the other side of a large map by himself with no support.

I think for Jim, he uses spells best on an as needed basis rather than Agnes who uses them all the time. I'll keep in Shriveling or Right of Seeking when I need to hit hard with my hands full or get a bunch of clues on a single action. However they're not going to necessarily be my first choice. Jim's big advantage is that if you set him up right, there's no test he can't pass. So throw in all those cards that were suspect with Agnes. Fearless? Free sanity. Drawn to the Flame? Just another test you'll pass for 2 free clues. Use Mind Wipe on any enemy causing you an issue that you can't immediately deal with. Though I would make sure the rest of the table is as prepared as you before running Delve too Deep. For added hilarity use Grotesque Statues to make sure you can't fail on an Auto Fail token. If you've boosted your stats appropriately, the card may as well read "Spend 1 token to pass this test".

I think Jim can be confusing because he is so well rounded. He seems to struggle to fit a good role. Well that's the thing, he makes a hell of a solo. On a team it means you need to identify where the rest of your team is struggling, and do whatever thing they can't seem to do (or need more of). But, that's just my 2 cents. Sorry for hijacking your thread a bit zooeyglass.

9 minutes ago, VermillionDe said:

I've had a fair amount of success with Jim, so I feel kind of compelled to defend him. I use arcane studies to boost his knowledge and will, 2x hard knocks to boost his fight and agility, and 2x burglary to keep his resources high enough to use them. I give him Machete or Kukri in one hand, ritual candle in the other. You can now pass just about any test and deflect anything you're not ready for with Ward of Protection. He's really good to keep monsters permanently locked down with Bind Monster (as he's great to consistently pass tests).

Jim is not Agnes. He's not a warcaster, he's a solid all arounder with access to support spells. Depending on what the rest of my group looks like when I play Jim I either have a Leo De Luca (to maximize his already more efficient actions), a Machete (if the group is light on fight), or Medical Texts (if the group is light on support). Pair Jim's trumpet with Clarity of Mind and he's a walking sanity booster.

I know when I play Jim, he's home base to the rest of the team. He's not the main fighting character, but he can pull a monster off of a Seeker if need be. He's not always the best support, but he can keep characters from dropping from sanity loss in a pinch (or from dying from health if you brought medical texts). He's not the lead investigator of the group, but if there's an isolated or dangerous spot with clues he's often the best equipped to go in while the other investigators are doing more important things. He's also one of the few characters I'd feel completely confident walking to the other side of a large map by himself with no support.

I think for Jim, he uses spells best on an as needed basis rather than Agnes who uses them all the time. I'll keep in Shriveling or Right of Seeking when I need to hit hard with my hands full or get a bunch of clues on a single action. However they're not going to necessarily be my first choice. Jim's big advantage is that if you set him up right, there's no test he can't pass. So throw in all those cards that were suspect with Agnes. Fearless? Free sanity. Drawn to the Flame? Just another test you'll pass for 2 free clues. Use Mind Wipe on any enemy causing you an issue that you can't immediately deal with. Though I would make sure the rest of the table is as prepared as you before running Delve too Deep. For added hilarity use Grotesque Statues to make sure you can't fail on an Auto Fail token. If you've boosted your stats appropriately, the card may as well read "Spend 1 token to pass this test".

I think Jim can be confusing because he is so well rounded. He seems to struggle to fit a good role. Well that's the thing, he makes a hell of a solo. On a team it means you need to identify where the rest of your team is struggling, and do whatever thing they can't seem to do (or need more of). But, that's just my 2 cents. Sorry for hijacking your thread a bit zooeyglass.

Can't speak for zooey, but no hijack at all! This is exactly what I wanted - a defense of Jim. Do you have a link to a build?

No, I completely agree - not a hijack one bit. Hopefully we'll get to do a Jim episode soon and then you can both listen and report back if what our impressions are chime with your experiences. VermillionDe, I thought your write-up of Jim there was really illuminating and went into more detail on how I felt he played: a jack of all trades, master of none who has an inbuilt reliability that's quite hard to quantify. Hope you've got a decklist on arkhamdb we can all look at.

Thank you for sharing!

@Network57I had one written up previously and I never ended up sharing it on Arkham DB. I just updated a few points and published it so you guys could get a look. I'm pretty sure this is 90% similar to the build I've been using, though I think I'm using Fearless in place of blinding Light and swapping out Leo De Luca for Medical Texts or Machete as necessary: https://arkhamdb.com/decklist/view/661/jim-culver-luckiest-cat-in-town-1.0

Just wanted to say the podcast is excellent, please keep it up!

The big thing with Jim in my experience is that playing him well means changing your thinking on how you pilot the deck (and to a lesser extent, build). His probability curve is flatter than other investigators thanks to his ability, so whether you're going combat, investigation, or support, he plays more predictably. It's a subtle advantage, but key. Leaning into it with card choice is great, but piloting Jim well is vital.

13 hours ago, Goseki1 said:

Just wanted to say the podcast is excellent, please keep it up!

Thank you so much, Goseki1! You're very welcome!

12 hours ago, BD Flory said:

The big thing with Jim in my experience is that playing him well means changing your thinking on how you pilot the deck (and to a lesser extent, build). His probability curve is flatter than other investigators thanks to his ability, so whether you're going combat, investigation, or support, he plays more predictably. It's a subtle advantage, but key. Leaning into it with card choice is great, but piloting Jim well is vital.

This is very intriguing indeed. I think I'm inclined to agree. I'm building up to a bigger discussion (either an article or a podcast episode) about pilot skill, because I think it's pretty vital to this game and hasn't been talked about too much. Do you have any tips or thoughts on 'best practice for piloting Jim'? I suppose knowing one's own deck and knowing one's role are the broad tenets of getting things right, but I wondered if you had any more specific examples.

I'm formulating an article on skill tests, commitment and the action economy right now that should address a lot of Jim stuff, at least by implication.

For now, I would say he highlights the need to know the chaos bag better than just having the mean result for a scenario on the tip of your tongue (with props to Lockewood for his excellent blog on average chaos bag results). Knowing the population of successes and failures, and how many you can flip from one to the other with a given commitment, is key.

For example, on normal difficulty with the Zealot bag, a Jim player always knows that there are four 0s in the bag (five if you want to treat the elder sign as a skull, such as when you want to fail for "Look What I Found," or hit a skull for Song of the Dead).

So if Jim's skill is -1 compared to difficulty, committing a single icon to bring you even changes failure to success on 4 out of 16 tokens. Pushing to +1 only adds 3 successes, and pushing to +2 only adds 2. The point of diminishing returns on commitment is lower than the conventional wisdom of +2 over the difficulty.

Depending on where the skull variable is at any given moment, Jim inverts that model. If skulls are at -2 for a non-Jim gator, then pushing even flips only two tokens to successes, pushing to +1 still flips 3, and pushing to +2 flips 4 (two skulls and two -2s) -- the inverse of Jim's curve.

So, while it's still not ideal to waste an action with failed checks, you can attempt higher difficulties with Jim at a reasonable success rate, and get more value out of committing fewer icons, which saves you actions in the long run.

Jim's core skill centres on probability manipulation. If you combine this with his build rules he can run Hard Knocks, Arcane Studies, Scavenging, and Grotesque Statue for a deck that cannot fail skill tests (and literally cannot resolve the auto-fail unless you want to). Agnes has a similar option, but Jim does it better. The fact that mystics have been given spells that lets you collect multiple clues/deal multiple damage per action means that any test-passing combo is even better with them.

I've not had a whole lot of success with Jim but I'll hold my tongue until the Jim podcast.

So I'll stick to Zoey. I do enjoy her, but I don't know if I can say I prefer her to Roland. Zoey is more of a pure fighter where Roland is this sort of hybrid fighter and investigator at the same time. Roland is very strong at really the two main components of the game; getting clues and fighting monsters, so he is tough to beat.

So the question for me is: Is Zoey significantly better than Roland at fighting monsters (so that we can forgive her for not having the clue finding Seeker cards)? And to me... not really? Their fight values are the same. Zoey does have an edge on Willpower which is I think very interesting for the hybrid caster/warrior zoey, and certainly useful elsewhere.... but... is it as useful as Roland's ability to get clues?

Signature cards I think that both Smite the Wicked and Cover Up are pretty annoying, and with similar consequences. So for me a lot of it is Zoey's Cross vs. Roland's .38 Special. I just think I like the .38 special more. Cross is very handy for dispatching weak enemies, or finishing off something the Guard Dog or Beat Cop has weakened, so it's a very good card. .... but so is the .38 Special.

It's close, it's very close. Maybe Zoey does have just a slight edge over Roland in terms of combat, but Roland has a massive edge over Zoey in terms of solving the mystery, so for me it's hard to justify playing her over Roland.

I like the idea of a magic-ish Zoey though, and the ability to pack another Ward of Protection or two should not be underestimated.

@VermillionDe @BD Flory @crowdedmind

So either you all are lying or I'm forced to admit I'm not a good pilot. I've tried all your suggestions on Jim multiple times and haven't come close to "success". He either gets swamped by enemies or goes insane. And every time I have Delve Too Deep in hand, I'm terrified to play it.

It seems like you're saying he's phenomenal after 3-4 turns of setup and 8-12 XP. But by the time he gets set up, he's sunk, and can't succeed with enough XP to get those cards he needs. So I'm seeking further advice because I'm stubborn and want it to work. Given a level 0 deck, what am I mulliganing for? What's an ideal first turn play look like? What are a good 5 cards for splashing that are consistent with each other? Burglary, Hard Knocks, Machete?

My solo Jim deck for Dunwich started off with the following splash cards

• Fire Axe x 1
• Think on your Feet x 2
• Elusive x 1
• Survival Instinct x 1

Fire axe is the backup for when your don't have Shrivelling (or are out of charges). Holy Rosary is in the deck to boost will power. The other splash cards are all about getting away from enemies you don't want to deal with. if you are really worried about being able to fight, then I'd bump it to two copies and mulligan to make sure it's in the deck.

Overall he did well, managing to do well on Extracurricular as well as Miskatonic Musem (though I did "cheat" and play it twice since on my first blind play through he never managed to get through). Not so well on the House Always wins due to high number of enemies plus fewer clues.

@Network57, are you playing Jim solo? I don't think I've ever played Jim that way, but it would definitely change some things.

31 minutes ago, BD Flory said:

@Network57, are you playing Jim solo? I don't think I've ever played Jim that way, but it would definitely change some things.

Correct. I already have a campaign pairing him with Jenny that's holding its own pretty decently.

Great job with the podcast! Peter's mic sounds great. I did, however, have some trouble hearing Frank at times. I'm not sure whether it was volume, pitch, or just speaking style, but I found myself having to adjust the volume every time you switched who was talking. One good example is from 14:30 to 15:10. There is some significant contrast between the two of you. Either way, keep up the good work!

Loving all the Jim conversation on this thread - thank you for sharing. @Network57 - definitely tricksy to run Jim solo, because he is such a generalist already. But I think it's all about knowing your outs. I like the idea of fire axe, guard dog, and maybe low cost events, because fire axe is such a resource drain and spells can get expensive too (here's looking at you, rite of seeking).

16 hours ago, Teamjimby said:

Great job with the podcast! Peter's mic sounds great. I did, however, have some trouble hearing Frank at times. I'm not sure whether it was volume, pitch, or just speaking style, but I found myself having to adjust the volume every time you switched who was talking. One good example is from 14:30 to 15:10. There is some significant contrast between the two of you. Either way, keep up the good work!

Thank you very much for these comments, @teamjimby. Really glad you're enjoying it, and thanks to others who've said as much too. It's interesting you note the volume issue - I spotted that too. I think my mic is much more sensitive than Peter's, so we have this tricky situation where I'm trying to get our levels the same, and we're recording separately. I'll get better at the editing; to be honest there are so many options and ways to do it, and I'm trying my best just to keep it simple. I've noticed two things: 1) when I start speaking, it seems to spike the volume 2) sometimes there's scratchiness on the mic when I am sitting still. I am a bit of a wriggler generally and do a lot of gesturing, so maybe I can work on being more statuesque in my recording technique. Anyway, I'll look into it and see what I can do. Just finished editing ep 6 so am ready to clean up ep 7. Oh other possible reason is that in the edit some of the shifts in talking get pulled closer together which makes the contrast starker. Anyway, will keep an eye on it. Thank you for the comment!

On 10/03/2017 at 7:10 PM, awp832 said:

So the question for me is: Is Zoey significantly better than Roland at fighting monsters

Yes. She has the same fight, a better willpower (protects against encounters that might strip assets), and has access to better combat cards (seeker has essentially 0, so the 5 out-of-class cards Zoey can only provide more combat punch). Whether this advantage is so great as to counter Roland's clue gaining effects depends on the number of players. In a 1-investigator team I'd say no, in 2 maybe, and in 3-4 I would say yes.

13 hours ago, crowdedmind said:

Yes. She has the same fight, a better willpower (protects against encounters that might strip assets), and has access to better combat cards (seeker has essentially 0, so the 5 out-of-class cards Zoey can only provide more combat punch). Whether this advantage is so great as to counter Roland's clue gaining effects depends on the number of players. In a 1-investigator team I'd say no, in 2 maybe, and in 3-4 I would say yes.

I probably don't have much insight, then. I haven't solo'd with Jim at all, so I haven't really thought about him in that context yet.

On 12/03/2017 at 2:16 PM, Network57 said:

So I'm seeking further advice because I'm stubborn and want it to work. Given a level 0 deck, what am I mulliganing for? What's an ideal first turn play look like? What are a good 5 cards for splashing that are consistent with each other? Burglary, Hard Knocks, Machete?

I've not picked an ideal 5th card, but my Jim deck is running 2x Lucky and 2x Peter Syvestre: the former further boosts your test consistency, and the latter provides some horror soak (especially as mystics are running Forbidden Knowledge and Ward of Protection) plus an extra boost for some evasion tests (there's an argument for Stray Cat instead).

The mystics can run hot or cold depending upon whether they see the correct spell, so work out what you need to focus on in the adventure (investigating or damage) and hard mulligan for the appropriate spell. Flashlights and Machetes can act as back-up assets to help with consistency here, and if you're desperate you can use Scrying on your own deck. I find that this dependency on certain spells for super-efficient plays is highlighted in solo games, whereas in larger teams other investigators can help cover your slower start. I suppose that this is to balance out the efficient actions on the spells and your ability to focus on one stat (willpower) to improve as you can make sure that all your action tests use it.

Whilst the deck does want a lot of XP, starting with the core campaign you can collect quite a lot quite quickly - always aim for 8XP from the first adventure, for example

EDIT

I forgot to add, you can run Leo in a solo deck as the extra actions are more valuable, but you have to be very clever with your economy as you will be running a lot of more pricey cards.

A tiny bump of sorts to say.... episode 6 is now out and it's here: http://drawntotheflamepodcast.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/episode-6-rex-murphy.html (and winging its way to podcast apps around the globe). Hope you like it, friends!