6 hours ago, Allonym said:

That surprises me, because for my group, Arcane Initiate is the "go-to" Mystic ally, and we even think of Arcane Initiate (3) as one of the most impactful Mystic upgrades available. But then, I have never used Olive McBride, so maybe I should give her a shot!

Now that I have seen the light, I wholeheartedly agree!

As of late, I've been playing strictly survivors, and I'm not saying there aren't interesting investigators in other classes, but I am a survivor first and foremost. However, for the Return campaigns I've decided to try investigators that I never gave a thought towards. For example, I am going into Return To the Forgotten Age with Mihn.

Just now, Turtlefan2082 said:

As of late, I've been playing strictly survivors, and I'm not saying there aren't interesting investigators in other classes, but I am a survivor first and foremost. However, for the Return campaigns I've decided to try investigators that I never gave a thought towards. For example, I am going into Return To the Forgotten Age with Mihn.

She’s great. I love Minh. She may actually be broken with the dream diaries though. Also she’s part survivor so you’re only straying a little.

So is Agnes. I will admit that I am torn between playing proper Silas over another investigator for The Innsmouth Conspiracy. I've already played Replacement Silas before.

I'd love to try out and enjoy Silas, but as he is now he feels incomplete - unless you use Eucatastrophe, at which point he simply breaks the game entirely. Barring some kind of nerf to Eucatastrophe, I'll have to wait and see what cool stuff they print in Innsmouth for him and his replacement signatures, much like how we got a lot of cool Survivor combat cards in Carcosa to co-incide with William Yorick.

I just had a very serendipitous and fulfilling series of combos occur in my Survivor/Guardian deck. Granted, this is a custom character, but the combos are also usable in Yorrick, Zoey, Tommy, and, yes, Lola.

I've been building this character toward running a deck that focuses more on peeling off enemies from my cluevers and tanking damage rather than the typical load-up-on-assets-and-assault-everything monster killer builds. This is partly because my custom character is limited to lvl 2 guardian cards (so no lightning gun, shotgun, etc). In the process I've stumbled upon some excellent and really fulfilling combos.

Central to most of them is Survival Knife (2). I already knew this card was good, but that was before I started look at combo pieces. It becomes excellent when paired with a Heroic Rescue (2), letting you move up to 2 locations away, get a free attack in that may kill the enemy before taking the damage that heroic rescue would result it, and if it is a 3 health enemy, after you take that damage, the enemy would be defeated regardless. Throw in a guard dog, and this can do up to 4 damage.

Another amazing combo is Survival Knife (2) and Stunning Blow. This is my favorite. Since stunning blow is a skill, it can be committed to your attack during the enemy phase, which if successful will exhaust the enemy, and prevent his damage from ever hitting you since your attack occurs prior to the enemy attack. And this can work on elite enemies. Just be sure to engage that nasty elite at the end of your turn.

Throw in a 2nd survival knife and you can get many of these combos to do 4-6 damage if needed. If 4 damage is done before the enemy's attack hits, you've saved at least 2 standard attack actions (up to 2 move actions if you've used heroic rescue).

Add I've had worse to the deck, and now you are hitting this hard and when you finally do take that attack, you're netting resources.

I literally feel like I'm getting back at every retaliate enemy that every hit me. It is so rewarding, and my seeker friends absolutely love the cover.

They are neat combos. I really like Survival Knife(2) as a way of continuing your damage dealing into the enemy phase and am currently using them in my Leo build. I know that it seems to be an unpopular card with many but I find that Bandolier(2) works well with Survival Knife(2) because it gives you space for offensive weapons too (and a useful willpower boost into the bargain).

3 hours ago, Dr Dee said:

They are neat combos. I really like Survival Knife(2) as a way of continuing your damage dealing into the enemy phase and am currently using them in my Leo build. I know that it seems to be an unpopular card with many but I find that Bandolier(2) works well with Survival Knife(2) because it gives you space for offensive weapons too (and a useful willpower boost into the bargain).

That’s my next upgrade. Having 2 survival knives out is just too much fun.

What about Boxing Gloves, Bandolier and Survival Knife? +1 will, Enemy phase is covered and there is the glorious search with Boxing Gloves. My husband is playing William Yorick right now with Boxing Gloves, lots of Spirit cards, Brute Force, Vicious Blow etc. He has been unbelievable! We are doing RttFA and in the second scenario he didn’t leave the starting location for 7 rounds, because he was just whaling away on enemies and finding a new card to use every times he searched. With his Elder Sign ability, he can get stuff back out of his discard pile, so has had no problem having what he needs. He’s thinking about a Bandolier Survival Knife upgrade to complete the set.

21 hours ago, Soakman said:

Central to most of them is Survival Knife (2). I already knew this card was good, but that was before I started look at combo pieces. It becomes excellent when paired with a Heroic Rescue (2), letting you move up to 2 locations away, get a free attack in that may kill the enemy before taking the damage that heroic rescue would result it, and if it is a 3 health enemy, after you take that damage, the enemy would be defeated regardless. Throw in a guard dog, and this can do up to 4 damage.

Another amazing combo is Survival Knife (2) and Stunning Blow. This is my favorite. Since stunning blow is a skill, it can be committed to your attack during the enemy phase, which if successful will exhaust the enemy, and prevent his damage from ever hitting you since your attack occurs prior to the enemy attack. And this can work on elite enemies. Just be sure to engage that nasty elite at the end of your turn.

Survival Knife (2) is certainly an amazing weapon. Also consider the new "Get over here!" (2) - since it is Fast and can be played in any free trigger window, you can wait until an enemy moves in the enemy phase, then pull them to you before the enemy attacks step, get a free hit in on them, and if they're still standing, get to shank them up with your Survival Knife (or Knives). For Yorick, you could also consider Aquinnah for even more "reflect" damage - Yorick + Survival Knife + Aquinnah is amazing. The new version makes me really want to bring out Yorick again.

I absolutely love the idea of Survival Knife (2) + Stunning Blow, that's an amazing combo...but I'm not 100% convinced it works. I think it should work, but since Survival Knife (2) triggers "when" an enemy attacks (i.e. "the moment immediately after the specified timing point or triggering condition initiates, but before its impact upon the game state resolves"), I could see an argument that the enemy has already initiated its attack so it will still go through regardless of exhaustion. Might be worth a rules query, just in case?

1 hour ago, Allonym said:

I absolutely love the idea of Survival Knife (2) + Stunning Blow, that's an amazing combo...but I'm not 100% convinced it works.

Oh no! I hope it works. I haven’t been so excited for a combo in quite some time.

I can see where you are coming from. I was hoping the parenthesis on survival knife (2) would make the difference since it is before resolving the attack. I was under the impression this would imply your entire attack would be before the enemy attack... but perhaps it is only before the resolution, which would be so sad...

But then I looked up some rules about the enemy phase, and during the enemy attacks in the enemy phase, it says this:

Quote

"Each ready, engaged enemy makes an attack against the investigator to which it is engaged. When an enemy attacks, deal its attack (both its damage and its horror, simultaneously) to the engaged investigator ."

I'm not sure 100% so I did submit a rules question. This makes it sound like the damage must be applied to an engaged enemy (maybe) regardless of whether the attack has already started. If Stunning Blow hits, the enemy would no longer be engaged, so although the attack has started already, perhaps it would fail to land.

Get over here would indeed be excellent, but I haven’t broken the starter decks down yet. I’ve had worse is really great if the enemy isn’t dead though, along with guard dog for that sneaky 3rd damage.

25 minutes ago, Soakman said:

Oh no! I hope it works. I haven’t been so excited for a combo in quite some time.

I can see where you are coming from. I was hoping the parenthesis on survival knife (2) would make the difference since it is before resolving the attack. I was under the impression this would imply your entire attack would be before the enemy attack... but perhaps it is only before the resolution, which would be so sad...

But then I looked up some rules about the enemy phase, and during the enemy attacks in the enemy phase, it says this:

I'm not sure 100% so I did submit a rules question. This makes it sound like the damage must be applied to an engaged enemy (maybe) regardless of whether the attack has already started. If Stunning Blow hits, the enemy would no longer be engaged, so although the attack has started already, perhaps it would fail to land.

Get over here would indeed be excellent, but I haven’t broken the starter decks down yet. I’ve had worse is really great if the enemy isn’t dead though, along with guard dog for that sneaky 3rd damage.

Ah that's a really good point about the "Engaged investigator" stipulation. Definitely a strong argument in favour of your combo. If it does indeed work out, I hope you won't mind me making use of it!

On 9/6/2020 at 9:56 PM, Allonym said:

Ah that's a really good point about the "Engaged investigator" stipulation. Definitely a strong argument in favour of your combo. If it does indeed work out, I hope you won't mind me making use of it!

Per Matt, it works! The only caveat being if the enemy could somehow already attack while exhausted.

Per Matt:

In a way, it’s in the same boat as straight up defeating the enemy before its attack gets to occur. If when the attack would resolve it turns out that it shouldn’t resolve, it doesn’t resolve.

Note that this would be different if the attack has already begun. For example if you had a hypothetical ability that said “when you would take damage from an attack, evade the enemy,” by that point the attack has already begun, so evading the enemy would not prevent it. But since Survival Knife (2) is a “when enemy attacks” trigger, it should interrupts the attack in full.

3 minutes ago, Soakman said:

Per Matt, it works! The only caveat being if the enemy could somehow already attack while exhausted.

Per Matt:

In a way, it’s in the same boat as straight up defeating the enemy before its attack gets to occur. If when the attack would resolve it turns out that it shouldn’t resolve, it doesn’t resolve.

Note that this would be different if the attack has already begun. For example if you had a hypothetical ability that said “when you would take damage from an attack, evade the enemy,” by that point the attack has already begun, so evading the enemy would not prevent it. But since Survival Knife (2) is a “when enemy attacks” trigger, it should interrupts the attack in full.

Very cool! Guess I'm building a William Yorick deck for the next time I need to play a fighty investigator.

I'm glad your combo worked out (and just a little jealous that I didn't spot it)!

15 hours ago, Allonym said:

Very cool! Guess I'm building a William Yorick deck for the next time I need to play a fighty investigator.

I'm glad your combo worked out (and just a little jealous that I didn't spot it)!

It's very fun. Especially if you throw in some heroic rescues. It really makes you feel like you are actually making a heroic rescue. I've only played these combos in a deck in a 3 player game though, so in 2 player (or even solo with just the stunning blow) it may not be quite as epic. But it makes for some really great moments when you can run across the jungle and jump in front of a fiendish serpent person and knock them sideways mid-attack against your seeker.