Hello readers! With the advent of Chapter 2 comes new cards, a new campaign, and also new players. I’m sure that lots of folks are stepping into the community for the first time and will be starting their journey with the Chapter 2 environment. That being said, as a Day 1 player and a sometimes content creater, I wanted to branch out and write more strategy articles to help people learn! Most of my articles on my site are goofy jokes, but I promise I have good strategy and gameplay thoughts about Arkham Horror as well.
So welcome to my new strategy series, Chapter 2 Deck Guides! In this series, I’m going to be providing guidance on decks I’ve assembled that will bring you success in Chapter 2. Each guide will be a quick overview of the deck, explaining the overall goal of the deck and how the cards in it make that happen. If you wish, you can also make tweaks to the list if you think something else could be better or if you are playing a different campaign with special challenges. My hope is that my descriptions will make it clear enough how the deck functions so that you can make any changes with confidence.
All of that introduction done, let’s start with our first list!
Special note! This deck guide will have spoilers for Brethren of Ash, as it is designed with that campaign in mind. If you want to avoid spoilers for Brethren of Ash, you may scroll down to see the decklist snapshot but you should not read past the photo of the decklist.
Firefighter Izzie
https://arkhamdb.com/deck/view/5902402
Big Idea Overview
Firefighter Izzie is a supportive deck designed particularly with Brethren of Ash in mind. Of course, you may be able to take this into other campaigns and do great things, but I was inspired to make this deck particularly because of the treachery card Fire! in Brethren of Ash and the constant demand to clear it. I believe this list works best in high multiplayer (3 or 4 players), as your contribution is less on winning the game outright through clues or damage and moreso on rescuing your team from the Mythos deck, thereby allowing everyone else to do their jobs much better. In fact, if you pilot effectively, you may find yourself becoming your team’s guardian angel.
When you do not need to be rescuing your team from disaster, you can collect a respectable number of clues using Second Sight, “Look what I found!” and Will of the Cosmos. You have no other hand slot items to compete with your signature guns, so if you have the opportunity to play them, you can. However, be advised that it is expensive to do so and this deck is not designed around using the guns. Also, with skill cards available, you can generally pass most medium difficulty skill tests, which can help you be a bit more flexible when you are not called upon to protect your team from Fire.
If you feel like you got it, you can stop reading there. Otherwise, let’s unpack the deck a little more!
Stop, Drop, & Roll! – Firefighter Izzie Saves The Day
Most conventional Arkham wisdom suggests that there are two major roles in Arkham Horror: The Card Game, the cluever who gets clues and the fighter who deals damage. Every now and again though, you get an oddball deck that is actually more concerned about doing something else entirely. Enter Firefighter Isabelle, a deck whose primary job is to do one thing – reliably clear the Fire! treacheries in Spreading Flames and Queen of Ash in the Brethren of Ash campaign from the Chapter 2 Core set.
Clearing Fire! can be very important. Firstly, this treachery appears prominently in two out of the three scenarios, so having some answer to it on your team is wise as you approach the campaign. Secondly, if you can’t clear it, it can be absolutely detrimental to your team. Fire! will hit all of your cards with health, which cannot only harm your investigators but also wipe out critical assets. Some allies for example only have 1 health, so a single hit from Fire! knocks them out. A second hit from Fire! will defeat many others. These allies can be critical to other investigators’ success. For example, suddenly losing a Dorothy Simmons or an Olivier Bishop can hurt a lot if you needed those skill bonuses. Therefore, you should respect Fire! as effectively another big threat to your team’s survival if left unchecked.
Of course, the answer seems to be just clear Fire! then by passing the Agility test, right? Seems simple enough. However, due to the way the scenarios work, you will also find that clearing Fire! once is usually not the end of it. These scenarios have ways to make Fire! come right back! Both Spreading Flames and Queen of Ash frequently play out with your team of investigators congregated on one spot, alongside a large enemy, clues to gather, and also – you guessed it – Fire! spawning over and over and over again right on top of your team. That Fire! can easily pose a huge danger to your team. In fact, in Queen of Ash, you can’t even damage Elekoss if the Fire! is there with her. So we don’t want to pass this Agility test just once. We want someone who can sit at the Fire! location, not die, and reliably perform the task of clearing Fire! many rounds in a row. And that’s where we bring in Firefighter Izzie.
Isabelle Barnes Versus Literally the Same Treachery Over and Over
Izzie brings one critical tool with her to be able to do this: Levelheaded. Levelheaded is absolutely the linchpin to this deck doing what it wants to do. If you are on Spreading Flames or Queen of Ash, you want to draw this card and you want to play it right away. What this asset does for you is gives you repeatable skill bonuses (also sometimes called pumps) on Agility tests from scenario cards, which includes Fire!, our nemesis. In addition, unlike a stat bonus from an ally, Levelheaded itself has no health value – it cannot possibly die to Fire! Now, it may be vulnerable to being discarded from some other treachery, but since you will likely have other assets out to choose to discard over Levelheaded, this is likely safe from that, too.
A single pump on Levelheaded will put you at 5 Agility against the 3 difficulty of the Fire! test. On Standard, that puts you ahead of most token pulls, even going into Queen of Ash. However, a second pump on Levelheaded will give you 7 Agility against 3. Again on Standard, this puts you ahead of essentially every token pull except the autofail. (There are a couple potential exceptions, but we won’t get too into that.) And since you are gaining a resource every round through upkeep, you should expect to always have at least 1 resource available to pump on Levelheaded every round.
However, that’s not the only tool we have to help us pass these tests. We also have our skill cards. Manual Dexterity is of course brilliant for our Agility tests. If we’ve used one in the past, we can use Izzie’s investigator ability to commit one out of the discard pile to get a repeat use out of it: an amazing benefit when you are performing the same Agility test every round. Timely Intervention is another tool to give Izzie extra Agility. Let’s say you pump once against Fire! but you draw a -4. You don’t have to worry about everything going to waste, as you can commit Timely Intervention after the fact to salvage that test. Holding onto Timely Intervention can also help you conserve resources as you can perform slightly less favoured tests against Fire! with the knowledge that you can just use Timely Intervention if things go poorly. Soul Link is also available to give us a ton of Wild icons if we can manage the horror hit (and we often can with the horror soak in this deck).
Now of course paying for Levelheaded over and over can get expensive, so Emergency Cache is a must. We always want to be mindful of our resources because we would also like to be able to do things other than clear Fire! every round if we can help it, and some of our assets are expensive.
Ward of Protection is here, but surprisingly it isn’t really here for Fire! This is because the whole deck is designed to clear Fire! so warding it isn’t totally necessary (although you could). Ward is really here for anything else that could cause problems to you, such as Cosmic Evils or a treachery which can cause you to drop your clues like Red Herring. But, yes, this also can conceivably block Fire!
Instead of Dying, Don’t
This deck also comes with a huge survivability package. Survivability is important for any investigator, but especially an investigator like Izzie who has only 5 base health plus a signature weakness that deals direct damage to her. So even if we weren’t planning to sit at locations with Fire!, we would want to have at least some of this anyway.
Our ally of choice here is Aleksey Saburov, and not Jim Culver. This is because we actually value survivability much more highly than stats. We are primarily looking to support our team & we know we already have the capacity to pass our most critical tests. Therefore, we really just want to not die. Also, worst case scenario, Jim can die after two hits of Fire!, while Aleksey can tank Fire! basically forever if nothing else hits him for damage.
We are also bringing Bandages to protect people from damage. This is very important as lots of things can hit your team in this game and of course, it’s always possible that you autofail a Fire! test here or there no matter how good of a plan you made. As a support, we really value healing effects and this is a good one.
For horror, we have Aleksey’s soak again, Lucky Charm, and Cloak of Resonance. I put one of each for Lucky Charm and Cloak of Resonance, as neither of them are so critical you must have two copies, but both are very nice to have. In Smoke and Mirrors especially, with Cloak of Resonance, you can help defeat Whippoorwills quite easily. Simply engaging one and then provoking an attack of opportunity will cause them to hit the Cloak, thereby making the Cloak deal damage and defeat the Whippoorwill.
And Don’t Forget About Everything Else
Sometimes, all is quiet. There is no Fire! or other problem you have to be tanking or clearing. What else do you do? First, you can get clues with Second Sight. In fact, in Spreading Flames, we can get clues with Second Sight quite easily. There is no Cultist token at all, and the opening location has only a shroud of 2, putting you quite comfortably ahead by 2. If needed, you can even pump your Willpower with Levelheaded. It won’t be at the bonus rate (such as it would be with Spiritual Intuition), but it is an option. However, for difficult tests, our best potential answer here is our skill cards again, like Guts. I would say though that it’s best to just accept you are not intended to be the main cluever and getting some clues here and there on lower shroud locations is good enough to carry your own weight as a support.
In addition, we have “Look what I found!” and Will of the Cosmos to pick up more clues. “Look what I found!” is of course classic Survivor clue shenanigans that let low Intellect Survivors still get clues. Will of the Cosmos is great in this deck as a lot of our assets discard anyway, making the doom very manageable. For example, if you put it on Lucky Charm, you can just defeat the Lucky Charm by moving horror onto it. Bandages also discards itself when all the supplies on it are used, and we have Premonition as a clever potential target for Will of the Cosmos, should that Premonition still be in play. All of these are fairly easy to set up plays for, so you should be able to contribute a fair amount of clues quite easily.
Another thing to consider is your evasion capabilities. Our whole deck is designed around beating Agility tests, so you should be able to use those same tools to pass basic evades. Of course, we are not as good at passing these as say Trish would be. We are unlikely to be able to reliably both clear Fire! AND evade Elekoss all in the same round. (I have done this with Trish, but that’s a different article entirely.) However, being able to do it sometimes is certainly helpful.
Finally, what about fighting? Well, the answer is you can sort of hit some things one time with basic fights, and maybe do more than that if you play your signature guns. (Again, keep in mind that the guns are expensive and the deck isn’t built around the guns.) You specifically have Overpowers to help you out with this possibility of passing a combat test here and there. Overpowers are also really helpful to rescue yourself from, for example, the Bat Horrors in Smoke and Mirrors which have Elusive. Should you hit them once with even a basic fight, those things will just get off of you and move away. As stated earlier, you can also sometimes ping small enemies like Whippoorwills with Cloak of Resonance.
Could you modify this decklist and replace Second Sight with Cosmic Flame to hit more things more times? You certainly could, but I find contributing more clues preferable to contributing damage. Again, Second Sight also has the advantage of having no Cultist tokens in Spreading Flames at all, so that also counts in its favor. Your mileage may vary of course. Hopefully, your team has fighters on it so you aren’t responsible for doing that much damage.
Upgrading In Core
There are plenty of good Core upgrades with XP. In my opinion, the main ones to look for in Core are Scrape By, On The Brink, and Fearless. Scrape By can help you flip a failure on a critical Test into a win. You can even use this to say have a round where you evade Elekoss by playing Scrape By, & then clear Fire! with your other tools. That can potentially be big for your team. On The Brink is just a good skill card that is like Unexpected Courage but better. And finally, Fearless is another skill card Izzie will love especially as healing horror can allow her to use her investigator ability more times.
This isn’t how I typically play this build, but Old Compass is also an option if you want your Izzie to be trying harder to get clues.
Cards to potentially replace are Overpower, Soul Link, Premonition, and “Look what I found!”.
Starter Deck Replacement
As the starter deck cards are currently not in ArkhamDB, I am going to link DerBK’s excellent visual spoiler blog so you can see what cards I am talking about if you would like a visual reference: https://derbk.com/ancientevils/investigator-decks-visual-spoiler/
With the starter decks coming around the corner, what might you want to switch out? Honestly, I don’t think you need or want to switch out that much. The new Survivor ally does give you a stat bonus that is useful for clearing Fire!, but I honestly still value the survivability of Aleksey more. Same Old Thing offers another way for your deck to support the team by helping you pay for events. This can also help you pay for Wards or “Look what I found!”, which is helpful. I don’t love either of the level 0 Survivor skill cards offered because they don’t give enough icons to be stronger than what is already here. Even with On The Brink level 0, if I am going to take it at all, I’d rather wait for the level 2 version with XP because I would want the extra icon. (Of course, you may disagree!)
On the Mystic side, Favor of Baalshandor can help you pay for your Second Sight. As the deck needs resources to run, economy is very important, and this is a potential big savings. Be advised though that if you do this, there is no other target for it in this deck. It also has no icons, so you can’t commit it to a test either. A better option, if you are set up right, is Offering Bowl. Offering Bowl can combo with Aleksey to give you resources every round with Aleksey just healing the damage. That can also help you pay for what this deck wants to do.
With XP, the clear winner for Survivor is level 3 Levelheaded. This is because you can guarantee having Levelheaded in your starting hand with this upgrade. This is perfect because the whole deck is designed around using Levelheaded. At that point you can also replace the other copy of Levelheaded with a different card. Unless something were to go horrendously wrong with discard treacheries, you should not need the other copy. Another good option here is level 3 Timely Intervention. This deck already wants to use Timely Intervention, so making it even better is amazing. You might also want to consider any of the Survivor healing cards, depending on how much extra help you or your team needs staying alive.
On the Mystic side, Blood Ward and Retribution have some good potential. Blood Ward can help you protect your team, which feeds into your whole goal as a support. Retribution is a very interesting choice as this deck is designed with good tank potential. Therefore, you will often be able to take at least one big hit from a Retribution attack, such as from Servant of Flame which can deal 4 damage back to them with no test needed.
Conclusion
Overall, Firefighter Izzie brings a specialized support role to Arkham Horror Chapter 2. While your main goal is to keep the team alive by clearing out a critical treachery, you will still find yourself capable of handling small jobs here and there, especially collecting clues. Don’t underestimate the value of survivability in this game! The less your team has to worry about dying, the more they can focus on pulling ahead of the game in other ways. And, if you really like this Firefighter deck, this will surely not be the only investigator you will be able to do this with. Stay tuned for the inevitable follow up when I do Chapter 2 Firefighter Miguel (although other Core decks will be coming first!) Thanks for reading and see you next time!
Rite of Seeking 