Zoey Samaras: The Stabbing Chef

Lovely write-up, @Heyenzzz. I like how you explained the role of the deck at the start, great context for considering your choices.

All bladed weapons seems tasty, pretty focused. The leo-kukri combination is also quite nice. For card draw, to file under 'future adaptations', you might consider Stand Together. 0 cost for 2 cards and 2 resources for 2 investigators seems very favourable to me!

I completely agree with you about Shortcut too. That looks to be a very flexible, useful card.

@zozo Thx! I agree on Stand Together. It seems that card wil be the first in-faction card draw for guardian and I will certainly include it in this deck once it comes out. It isn't THE card draw I was hoping for though. Ideally, I'm looking for repeatable or tutoring card draw and Stand Together does neither. And there's the Xp investment of 3 (6 for 2 copies).

Oops, forgot to mention that Leo De Luca and Shortcut are nice to deal with Zoe's signature weakness Smite the Wicked, since they get you to your target faster

Just wanted to mention that Beat Cop and Leo De Luca each take up 1 ally slot. You only have 1 ally slot to work with, so you could only have one or the other in play at a time, but not both.

@chubber911 Yup. I'm aware of that. That's why i mention some upcoming cards to work around that ally slot restriction in my write-up. Ideally you want both permanent action advantage and a permanent non-weapon strength boost to maximise damage output and the mentioned cards (Charisma and Keen Eye) make that possible.

I included 2 copies of both Beat Cop and Leo De Luca in the current version of this deck to increase the reliability of the deck (increase chanches of getter either one of both boosts as soon as possible.)

Normally, In games where you see Leo De Luca first, Beat Cop wont enter play and is just used for his attack icon to burn in attack skill challenges. When I see a Beat Cop first and there is a pressing need for a strength boost, I play him and when Leo De Luca eventually finds his way to my hand, I sack the Beat Cop, using his ability to damage an opponent when he leaves play. I realise getting both in play after oneanother requires 10 resources, but the rest of the decks resource costs are rather low so it's manageable.

I have a somewhat similar Zoe deck for pairing with Daisy. I would definitely lose the knives for 45s. WIth her engagement power gaining resources you should have plenty of resources for that.

I've found First Aid to be a trap; if I'm spending that many actions to gain health, I'm already losing.

I've also got 2x Flashlight because while searching isn't her primary role I don't find I can just completely punt it in a 2P game.

@cferejohn I agree on First Aid not being the ideal healing option. At the time I built this deck it was the only in-faction option for healing physical damage here was. I still think this build needs a self sustaining healing option and I rather have a not so great one instead of none at all ( unless you're paired up with a Daisy Walker with Medical Texts.)

Now with 2 more mythos packs released, we've found some new healing options, but they all have their pros and cons. Painkillers are nice (cheap and action efficient), but do sanity damage, wich sucks because of Zoey's mediocre sanity. The deck has an option (Liquid Courage) to deal with the sanity damage Painkillers cause, but you dont'always have both Painkillers and Liquid Courage in play at the same time.

Emergency Aid might be a replacement for First Aid worth considering (I wrote a little review om Emergency Aid btw), but I'm still not sure about wich one I prefer.

@HeyenzzzHmm, I've just never had damage be a problem for Zoe (or at least I've never had it be the biggest problem). In fact I put a smoking pipe in my deck because I've had several times I'm willing to trade off damage for sanity.

Great writeup and discussion. I've found Taunt to be an amazing card for Zoey, especially with Zoey's Cross out. It's the mythos phase and Rex pulls a 2hp monster while Zoey pulls one with 3. Zoey plays Taunt (it's fast!), engages Rex's monster, and does a 'free' damage with the cross. Use Beat Cop (fast!) for another and kill it. She now pulls out her Machete and, with the help of Vicious Blow, deals 3 damage, killing it. Zoey stands amidst the carnage, wondering what to do with her remaining 2 actions! (Not to mention Rex is now free to do whatever he wants!)

Actually, that example is more impressive if you consider Rex (cursed as he is) being engaged with two enemies. You'd accomplish the same thing, having done with one action what would otherwise have taken all 3 (and actually be a resource richer in this case.)

Card draw (or the lack thereof) seems a weak spot with Zoey. Stand Together looks like it could be decent, especially if she's acting as bodyguard, but at 3xp it's a bit pricey.

Looks solid. Any upgrade on this deck?

@Fuzer Been away from AH for a while (L5R), but I actually was thinking of making a comeback lol. Think I'll start with updating this deck, so an upgrade is on It's way.

Liquide Courage and Léo De Luca are not 0 cost cards so they should not be included in a Zoey deck following the deck rule : not more than 5 0 cost cards from other class. Or is it Ok to include >0 cards from other class?

@Telgaryour confusing cost to play a card with The (Xp) lvl of a card. Both the cards you mention have an lvl of 0 (no stars in the top corner beneath the cost to play a card), so it's perfectly fine to add them.

Rhaaaaa of course yes! I will then use this deck for Dunwich :) thx!

For people who are interested in playing Zoey Samaras solo, I recently posted a nice solo Zoey deck here;

arkhamdb.com

Just tried this deck, just replacing 2x Kukri for the .45, as I felt she would not be able to have a decent damage output. From my playthrough, this hypothesis was kind of confirmed - I didn't have a problem succeeding attacks, but I wasn't able to dish out damage fast enough.

1 question! how can you use De Luca if has 6 and creation rules deck says guardian 0-5, neutral 0-5 and other classes 0...?¿

@Mr.Bottle

The 6 you are referring to is the actual cost to play Leo, not his level. Deckbuilding restrictions on Zoey refer to the level of the card (number of stars in tbe upper left corner), not the cost to play. Or at least it used to be that way back when I built the deck, I haven't played AH lcg for quite some time.

De Luca has a star before his name which I thought meant you could only have 1 copy in your deck or does the star mean something else?

@northfrith The star means he is unique. It a special rule for assets (allies and items mostly) that prevents you to put one into play if another is already in play.

It means there can be no more than 1 Leo De Luca in play, controled by any investigator.

BUT you can put, like all the cards that don't say otherwise (Myriad, Limit one in deck), up to 2 per deck, in as many decks as you wish. Even if it's less efficient that way !

Thank you for clarifying that for me : )

Just found out the ^ utility (link to the rules). Unique

Hello ! A bit late to the party, but I love your Zoey build, can't wait to try her, along with a powerful clue gatherer. I have a question : it says that in order to build this deck you need 3 packs : core, Dunwich and Nathaniel Cho. I haven't found any Nathaniel reference so far. Which cards are you using from his deck ?

@JayF

I think ArkhamDB added the automatic 'packs required' feature after i posted the deck a long time ago. I never manually entered any text about Nathaniel Cho, heck i don't even know who that guy is. That being said, I built the deck with only cards from the old core set and the first big box expansion (dunwich legacy), which were the only sets released back then.

The cards to add which i mentioned in the description are all from the chapter packs of the first cycle.

Hope that helped. Btw, I think its really cool that this old Zoey still gets some love from you guys!

Just started Dunwich campaign using this "guide" :)

Noob here but would like to try this deck with Taunt thrown in. Is it reasonable to switch out both Evidence cards for 2 Taunts if pairing with a clue hound like Rex or Daisy if she's more geared for clue gathering vs witchcraft?

@Heyenzzz late reply but I want to add this comment anyways. In the Nathaniel Cho deck they reprinted a few cards, e.g. vicious blow. So I guess arkhamdb just assumes you are using this version of the deck since they updated it, instead the core one.