4 minutes ago, Jaync said:

How's phantom (please tell me it's worth it)? Also, did you go doubt or conviction?

Well so far it's kicking my ***! I think it's going to be the first one where we (and by "we" I mean Wendy and Jim) fail the scenario (and are probably also defeated). But I guess some kind of miracle is still possible so I'll keep you posted.

I went Doubt but I'm sorry about it. I had a couple of marks in each and then got a choice and felt like I needed to pick one track and try to stick to it rather than going back and forth, so since I had one more doubt I went with the doubt option. Immediately I regretted it — I didn't really think it was the choice the characters would have made and I was mad at myself for metagaming (especially on the blind run when I don't even know what the consequences of any of the choices are) and I wanted to change it. But I'm using the ArkhamCards app and there wasn't a way to undo what I'd just clicked, so I'm stuck with that choice.

Even if it kills me though it's worth it mainly because it makes you able to play the campaign but also there are some really strong player cards that I'd been proxying until now. Pickpocketing (2)! Logical Reasoning! Recharge! Madame Labranche! And Quantum Flux saved Sefina from Beyond the Veil.

1 hour ago, coldt0es said:

Even if it kills me though it's worth it mainly because it makes you able to play the campaign but also there are some really strong player cards that I'd been proxying until now. Pickpocketing (2)! Logical Reasoning! Recharge! Madame Labranche! And Quantum Flux saved Sefina from Beyond the Veil.

Actually in ArkhamDB I had set my collection to include phantom because I was planning on getting it with Carcosa (before I realized how hard it was to get). So now I'll make a deck in ArkhamDB and finish and then realize that all of the crucial pieces are in bleeping phantom of truth so now I have to proxy them!

Also how is the Arkham Cards app, I've heard a little about it but not tried it myself. It's kind of a campaign log/tracker right?

Just now, Jaync said:

Also how is the Arkham Cards app, I've heard a little about it but not tried it myself. It's kind of a campaign log/tracker right?

I love it! (With the exception of this most recent lack-of-undo discovery.) I like having everything on paper in theory (and I still print out the campaign logs and track everything there as well), but with the way the scenario sheets are designed it's really hard not to accidentally see part of another resolution, or the consequences if you'd made a different choice. With the app, you only see the text for the choice you made, or resolution you earned, so it maintains more surprise for subsequent games.

2 hours ago, Jaync said:

Also how is the Arkham Cards app, I've heard a little about it but not tried it myself. It's kind of a campaign log/tracker right?

The AC App is excellent. It is great for tracking your campaign, navigating setup, hiding options and text that are not part of the path or resolution you took and remembering which tokens are in the chaos bag. It also integrates well with Arckhamdb to track your investigator XP. Highly recommended.

Oh that's really cool that it does everything that the scenario sheet does (right?), it would be nice to not have to always be keeping track of those annoying booklets. I always end up "accidentally" reading an additional resolution or two and then am angry at myself afterwards. I am definitely going to download it, thanks for telling me about it!

Yes. It is essentially all of the content of the scenario sheet but also remembers things for you like, for example, how much doubt vs convistion you have in Carcosa or how many damage you've done to that boss in TFA or who has which assets in TFA etc. I'm not a big fan of mixing apps with games but this is really useful.

On 1/3/2021 at 1:23 PM, coldt0es said:

Yes! My decks felt pretty lousy at first but feel slightly better the last two games. Even though the XP is dismal compared to TFA! In the first 4 scenarios I've gotten 4, 2.5 (5 to split two ways), 0(!!! and another reason to be down on Echoes), and 4. It's also my first time with Delve in a deck and I've drawn it 3 times but haven't been able to play it once. So my upgrade choices are pretty dismal. (Currently deciding between 1x Ornate Bow and 1x Rabbit's Foot (3) for Wendy and I don't know what for Jim — a single Grotesque Statue? I guess it's between that, 1x Shrivelling (3) and 1x Crystalline Elder Sign.) I think I got spoiled by TFA, getting like 7XP per scenario. But I haven't played Jim before (I'm assuming you have!) so it's fun to get used to his playstyle.

I have noticed that the first few campaigns are a lot more penurious with XP than later ones. Dunwich is the worst, on average 4 or 5 XP per scenario.
Carcosa was the 2nd expansion, so suffers a little that way too. It is still my favorite though, even still.
I love how The Phantom of Truth and The Man In Pallid Mask connect to each other, partly because I’m familiar with the locations day or night and can visualize it all so clearly.
Dim Carcosa is one of the best scenarios in the game, in my opinion. If you know the story, it’s just so well executed and the art is awesome!

Do you already have Olive McBride for Jim? If not, she is cheaper XP than grotesque statue, with a similar ability and no charges. Another good Ally for Jim is Arcane Initiate(3). Any time you can search your deck, is powerful. Jewel of Aurelios is another good card to help you get through your deck and find cards and/or pay for what you have. And depending on what cards you have in your deck, Eldritch Inspiration 1XP is a fantastic card. Any spells or events that you have with the trigger words “when” “if” or “after”, can immediately be resolved again. So if you do damage, or find clues, or move, or evade or get resources or extra charges from one of those trigger words, you duplicate it with no action or test. That can be a game changer in certain situations.

10 hours ago, Mimi61 said:

Do you already have Olive McBride for Jim? If not, she is cheaper XP than grotesque statue, with a similar ability and no charges. Another good Ally for Jim is Arcane Initiate(3). Any time you can search your deck, is powerful. Jewel of Aurelios is another good card to help you get through your deck and find cards and/or pay for what you have. And depending on what cards you have in your deck, Eldritch Inspiration 1XP is a fantastic card. Any spells or events that you have with the trigger words “when” “if” or “after”, can immediately be resolved again. So if you do damage, or find clues, or move, or evade or get resources or extra charges from one of those trigger words, you duplicate it with no action or test. That can be a game changer in certain situations.

Eldritch Inspiration (0) has been great with Song of the Dead for 3 damage when you need it. But I hadn't realized there was an upgrade (oh, because I'm not playing with the starter decks yet. I own everything but I'm doling it out slowly, in release order) so I will keep that in mind for the future! The only tutor card I have for Jim is Elli Horowitz, which is obviously limited, but I did have Jewel on my upgrade list. I'd just need Relic Hunter so he can keep Crystalline Elder Sign if Elli doesn't tutor one of those. (Or go with Charisma and Arcane Initiate.)

I do have Olive McBride (first time playing with her) and my intent had been that she would be a big part of his strategy, but I've felt like I haven't been able to get his stats enough above goal to feel comfortable drawing an extra token. The bag is ~44% things that are -2 or worse for Jim, so the odds of having Olive tank your whole effort seems high. So in practice I have been too chicken to use her. I need an Olive McBride clinic, or perhaps an Olive McBride pep talk.

2 hours ago, coldt0es said:

Eldritch Inspiration (0) has been great with Song of the Dead for 3 damage when you need it. But I hadn't realized there was an upgrade (oh, because I'm not playing with the starter decks yet. I own everything but I'm doling it out slowly, in release order) so I will keep that in mind for the future! The only tutor card I have for Jim is Elli Horowitz, which is obviously limited, but I did have Jewel on my upgrade list. I'd just need Relic Hunter so he can keep Crystalline Elder Sign if Elli doesn't tutor one of those. (Or go with Charisma and Arcane Initiate.)

I do have Olive McBride (first time playing with her) and my intent had been that she would be a big part of his strategy, but I've felt like I haven't been able to get his stats enough above goal to feel comfortable drawing an extra token. The bag is ~44% things that are -2 or worse for Jim, so the odds of having Olive tank your whole effort seems high. So in practice I have been too chicken to use her. I need an Olive McBride clinic, or perhaps an Olive McBride pep talk.

Eldritch Inspiration(1) is a Jaquelinen Fine card. But you could totally use your 0 levels and pay for the upgrade and write the new text somewhere. It is a fantastic upgrade and way more powerful than 0 level. One of the best upgraded spell events in the game, because it is so versatile and not expensive. The test icons add one more book. It costs 0 and the text reads:

Fast. Play when you would resolve an effect on a mystic card that triggers “when”, “if”, or “after” a chaos token is revealed. Either cancel that effect, or resolve it another time.

It suddenly opens up a whole world of uses. Most spells use one of those three words. Wether they take up slots or are events. So resolving it again saves an action, along with maybe a charge, or resources. And it doesn’t matter what chaos token you draw as long as you succeed. There are a host of spells now too, where drawing one of the symbols doesn’t trigger something bad.

With Olive McBride, I get where you are coming from. Olive McBride is a high risk, high reward kind of card, and maybe not for every investigator, but the risk goes down with Jim because of his ability. If any of those chaos tokens is a skull, it’s a 0, so chances are good resolving one of the other two will be a success. It doesn’t always work in your favor, but consider the skulls in the bag effectively as 0’s. It’s also one of the few cards that can ignore an Auto Fail. So you can’t automatically fail... Another benefit, is that even if you pulled 3 tokens and resolving two would cause you to fail, but your first one, (which you would have pulled anyway), was a token with more than a negative modifier which has added text like “if you fail this test, take a horror” or “if this test was an attack or evasion the enemy makes an immediate attack” or “if you fail this test, put another doom on the agenda” or something equally as awful, you can ignore that token. You may still fail the test, but it’s can be like the difference between tripping, getting up and dusting yourself off and tripping and falling off the curb into oncoming traffic.

However you decide to go, have fun with Carcosa and remember, it’s just “Mr H” to you! 😉

24 minutes ago, Mimi61 said:

Fast. Play when you would resolve an effect on a mystic card that triggers “when”, “if”, or “after” a chaos token is revealed. Either cancel that effect, or resolve it another time.

I saw something on ArkhamDB where some people were saying that this could be used to double Elder Sign effects on mystic investigators (for example Akachi could add 2 charges). I don't think that sounds right but I'm not sure and there was no one on ArkhamDB saying that it didn't work. What are yall's takes on that?

3 minutes ago, Mimi61 said:

Eldritch Inspiration(1) is a Jaqueline Fine card. But you could totally use your 0 levels and pay for the upgrade and write the new text somewhere.

Well yes and I could also just open up my Jacqueline Fine pack and pull it out of there, but I'm unlocking cards slowly, in release order, so I keep getting fun new things periodically and get more of the experience of people who've been playing since the early days. (Except that I get a whole new campaign every month instead of every 9 months!) So I'm forcing delayed gratification on the new investigators and not allowing myself to have them yet.

10 minutes ago, Mimi61 said:

I get where you are coming from. Olive McBride is a high risk, high reward kind of card, and maybe not for every investigator, but the risk goes down with Jim because of his ability. If any of those chaos tokens is a skull, it’s a 0, so chances are good resolving one of the other two will be a success. It doesn’t always work in your favor, but consider the skulls in the bag effectively as 0’s. It’s also one of the few cards that can ignore an Auto Fail. So you may fail with her, but you can’t automatically fail. The other benefit, is that even if you pulled tokens that would cause you to fail, but your first one, (which you would have pulled anyway), was a token with more than a negative modifier which has added text like “if you fail this test, take a horror” or “if this test was an attack or evasion the enemy makes an immediate attack” or “if you fail this test, put another doom on the agenda” or something equally as awful, you can ignore that token. You may still fail the test, but that’s all that happens. I don’t know how helpful that is.

Good pep talk. Also I probably need to look at some of the actual math again. I mentioned earlier that I had been afraid of Crystalline Elder Sign until I actually looked at the statistics and saw that it only made a few percentage points of difference for the other players, not nearly as big as what I was imagining. I'm guessing Olive is the same — that my gut is not taking into account the fact that you will have eliminated the worst of the three tokens. Okay, so I'm actually going to do this rather than just talk about it. Using StartWithTheName's Olive Maths spreadsheet and the chaos bag as it stood for me on Standard as of Phantom of Truth, I can see that Olive is bad for Jim at -1 (but I wouldn't use her on a hail mary test anyway!), and roughly break even as you're more prepared for the test. Jim's odds of passing testing without vs. with Olive at 0: 38% without/35% with; +1 56%/59%; +2 81%/80%; +3 88%/91%. So you're not actually hurting your chances of passing (much) and even in those cases it's probably worth it for the skulls. Particularly with Song of the Dead.

So I will try to be braver and do it.

35 minutes ago, Mimi61 said:

Have fun with Carcosa and remember, it’s just “Mr. H.” 😉

Haha you make him sound so friendly!

Now I'm off to see what all the comments were that got posted while I was typing this...

42 minutes ago, Jaync said:

I saw something on ArkhamDB where some people were saying that this could be used to double Elder Sign effects on mystic investigators (for example Akachi could add 2 charges). I don't think that sounds right but I'm not sure and there was no one on ArkhamDB saying that it didn't work. What are yall's takes on that?

It says on a mystic card, or a card with the mystic symbol. Akachi’s investigator card does not use the words “when” “ if” or “after” in regards to her Elder sign ability, so no.

I just checked the FAQ on that card and a errata was posted today. It has been clarified that this occurs only after drawing one of the symbols. Which totally changes everything.

9 minutes ago, Mimi61 said:

It says on a mystic card, or a card with the mystic symbol. Akachi’s investigator card does not use the words “when” “ if” or “after” in regards to her Elder sign ability, so no.

I just checked the FAQ on that card and a errata was posted today. It has been clarified that this occurs only after drawing one of the symbols. Which totally changes everything.

Oh ok, that's what I was assuming. Just curious what kind of things does it change? I'm having a hard time understanding the FAQ's effect.

54 minutes ago, coldt0es said:

can see that Olive is bad for Jim at -1 (but I wouldn't use her on a hail mary test anyway!), and roughly break even as you're more prepared for the test. Jim's odds of passing testing without vs. with Olive at 0: 38% without/35% with; +1 56%/59%; +2 81%/80%; +3 88%/91%. So you're not actually hurting your chances of passing (much) and even in those cases it's probably worth it for the skulls.

Here's a more visual representation that I found , it shows Olive vs. regular token draw. Also if you look in the top right there is a bunch of other options for combinations of olive and grotesque statue.

Accidentally posted this.

21 minutes ago, Jaync said:

27 minutes ago, Mimi61 said:

Oh ok, that's what I was assuming. Just curious what kind of things does it change? I'm having a hard time understanding the FAQ's effect.

It greatly limits the number cards you can use with it to only mystic cards which have an effect that triggers when you pull a symbol. It also limits the times you could play it with those cards, because you have to have drawn one of those symbols to play it.
The way it was originally written, meant that it could be used with practically any Mystic spell card and any token that was a success.
The errata doesn’t make sense though, in that this card was released in Jacqueline Fine’s deck and she has new investigate, fight and evade spells which all use Elder Sign, +1 or 0 to trigger effects. Doing pretty much the same thing as Rite of Seeking, Shriveling and Mists of R’lyeh. So if you were to play her now with just the cards she came with, she is way less strong and that upgrade makes no real sense. My guess is they created the upgrade text with Jaquelinen’s spells in mind and didn’t realize how powerful it would be set loose on the whole collection.

OK. STOP THE PRESSES! ALL IS RIGHT WITH THE WORLD.
They just took the errata down for Eldritch Inspiration (1). It made no sense anyway, because it made it the same as 0 level.

So get that card. It is awesome!

1 hour ago, coldt0es said:

Haha you make him sound so friendly!

Now I'm off to see what all the comments were that got posted while I was typing this..

The errata was obviously a mistake. Someone messed up, it’s been removed. So go with Eldritch Inspiration (1) and let it change your life!! (I like making dramatic claims) Let it change your scenario!!

15 minutes ago, Mimi61 said:

OK. STOP THE PRESSES!

So I went to check out the FAQ and noticed that, allegedly, all the investigator starter packs are in stock at FFG! So anyone who doesn't have them, run get them now! They'll undoubtedly be sold out in 30 seconds.

Update: apparently this is old news, posted on Reddit 3 hours ago. But still might be news to someone.

15 minutes ago, coldt0es said:

So I went to check out the FAQ and noticed that, allegedly, all the investigator starter packs are in stock at FFG! So anyone who doesn't have them, run get them now! They'll undoubtedly be sold out in 30 seconds.

Update: apparently this is old news, posted on Reddit 3 hours ago. But still might be news to someone.

They have been up for a couple of hours and I know a lot of people have seen them so that makes me think that this is the big "February" reprint. There were some other packs that have gone in and out of stock throughout the day but these have been in stock all day so that's probably good news.

EDIT: Literally the second after I posted this 2 of the starter decks went OOS so maybe it's not the big reprint.

38 minutes ago, Mimi61 said:

The way it was originally written, meant that it could be used with practically any Mystic spell card and any token that was a success.

Oh I didn't understand about that so I was kinda confused why you guys said it was so good. Now that I know that it will be pretty much an auto-include for me, but I bet they will errata it somehow it just seems too strong.

1 hour ago, Jaync said:

Here's a more visual representation that I found , it shows Olive vs. regular token draw. Also if you look in the top right there is a bunch of other options for combinations of olive and grotesque statue.

That's a good one. It reinforces the spreadsheet math that for Jim + this particular chaos bag composition, Olive is pretty break even, so the reason to use her would be to get more skulls for their other benefits. Grotesque Statue, as I would have expected, improves your general odds a lot more, which is why it's on my upgrade list. But as Mimi points out, you only have 4 (or 8 ) shots with the statue, whereas you can use Olive once a turn. That chart also shows that with this mix of tokens, no benefit in choosing the "Statue into Olive" route (which beats "Olive into Statue"), as it's not any better than Statue by itself. So you'd be better off using them independently and manipulating the bag twice in your turn instead of once.

28 minutes ago, Jaync said:

They have been up for a couple of hours and I know a lot of people have seen them so that makes me think that this is the big "February" reprint. There were some other packs that have gone in and out of stock throughout the day but these have been in stock all day so that's probably good news.

Oh that's a good theory! That things sped up and they came early. I wonder what that means for other things though — I feel like there have to be more Phantoms coming and I hope it's sooner rather than later.

34 minutes ago, Jaync said:

There were some other packs that have gone in and out of stock throughout the day but these have been in stock all day so that's probably good news.

Spoke too soon. Harvey and Stella are now sold out.

On 1/4/2021 at 11:16 AM, Jaync said:

How's phantom (please tell me it's worth it)?

On 1/4/2021 at 11:40 AM, coldt0es said:

Well so far it's kicking my ***! I think it's going to be the first one where we (and by "we" I mean Wendy and Jim) fail the scenario (and are probably also defeated). But I guess some kind of miracle is still possible so I'll keep you posted.

Indeed a miracle occurred and not only did we not die, but it was a 6XP scenario, beating all previous Carcosa efforts. So now I have 7 each (counting one left over from last time.) Wendy needs stats and horror soak, so I think I'm going with two Peter Sylvestre (2)s and Charisma. (I was trying not to play him this time because I always do, but he's so good!)

For Jim, I can do one Grotesque Statue and save 3XP for next time, or two Shrivelling (3)s, or one of each and nothing left over. Or I could do two Jewels of Aureolus or one and a Relic Hunter, because Elli might grab one of the hand items instead of one of the accessories. I'm leaning towards 1x Statue + 1x Shrivelling because that's the least stressful — I won't have to decide what cards to remove, which I always find agonizing.

.

8 hours ago, coldt0es said:

Indeed a miracle occurred and not only did we not die, but it was a 6XP scenario, beating all previous Carcosa efforts. So now I have 7 each (counting one left over from last time.) Wendy needs stats and horror soak, so I think I'm going with two Peter Sylvestre (2)s and Charisma. (I was trying not to play him this time because I always do, but he's so good!)

For Jim, I can do one Grotesque Statue and save 3XP for next time, or two Shrivelling (3)s, or one of each and nothing left over. Or I could do two Jewels of Aureolus or one and a Relic Hunter, because Elli might grab one of the hand items instead of one of the accessories. I'm leaning towards 1x Statue + 1x Shrivelling because that's the least stressful — I won't have to decide what cards to remove, which I always find agonizing.

Wow well that's very surprising, I was not expecting you to pull out a win (and a great one at that)! Part of the reason that I love mystics so much is almost all of their upgrades are just leveled-up versions of previous cards so there's no stressing about what cards to remove. I've heard that Pete is especially good for Carcosa so I think in this case you're justified. Imo Shriv and the statue are pretty crucial early upgrades whereas the Jewel is more of a it-would-be-nice-to-have-it later upgrade. Also I love being able to spend the exact amount of xp leaving none left over.

On 1/4/2021 at 11:40 AM, coldt0es said:

there wasn't a way to undo what I'd just clicked, so I'm stuck with that choice.

So I downloaded the app and it's really nice, but I just want to let you know that there appears to be a way to undo choices. After you click the choice and click proceed you can click the reload-arrow in the top right, next to the menu button. This takes you back to the choice and lets you redo it. This was in TCU so maybe it isn't supported for Carcosa but just thought I should let you know so you aren't stuck regretting a decision!