Nuke Robinson Optimized [Deck Guide]

Card draw simulator

Odds: 0% – 0% – 0% more
Derived from
None. Self-made deck here.
Inspiration for
None yet

suika · 9254

Note: Crystal Pendulum is here as a proxy for Grounded (3).

Luke Robinson is not easy to play or deck-build for, and not just because understanding how his ability works requires substantial mastery of the rules. It's easy to see where Luke's comparative advantage lies compared to other Mystics: his unique ability, seeker access, and Gate Box. It's also quite plain what his disadvantage is: one less Willpower compared to other mystics, which is a significant especially on Hard or Expert (and why poor Jim Culver can't ever catch a break). For this reason, something like @Cuherdir's Every Mystic Deck Ever won't not work, but you'd wish you were playing played Jacqueline or Akachi instead.

This is a deck that shows why Luke is also a top-tier Mystic by his own merits.

Here, Luke has effectively infinite charges on Pendant of the Queen and his Gate Box as he can guarantee recharges with Favor of the Moon with Recharge. Whitton Greene allows fast setup of said Segments, makes up for your 1 less Willpower, and also jump-starts economy by finding Surprised Rabbi and triggering each time Gate Box is used, finding Scroll of Secrets to add to your draw and the Occult Lexicon. Speaking of said Lexicon, Blood-Rite played on connecting locations is a great way to support your Guardian along with Spectral Razor and Storm of Spirits.

It's important for any event-heavy deck to have draw power and economy; otherwise you'll run out of events to play. Along with the aforementioned Whitton + AR combo and Scrolls, you also have Deep Knowledge (for your curses for FotM), Crack the Case and Blood-Rite. Don't be afraid to use your Blood-Rite for draw and/or resources. With Dream-Enhancing Serum you'll be able to hold most of your deck in your hand and repeatedly cycle through your events like Recharge. Unfortunately, you'll also see Detached from Reality quite a few times as a result — but thanks to the Pendant, escaping from it won't even cost you an action.

Rite of Seeking is almost an afterthought in this deck. It's still an awesome card especially since you can endlessly recharge it, and it's what will set you apart from a Daisy trying the same thing. When you're flush with cash or cards, you can easily support your team with Crack the Case and Deep Knowledge as well.

Piloting

Piloting this will be a bit different from other mystics. DO NOT play Rite of Seeking first. Don't even keep it in your opening hand. Your mulligan priority is purely economy and draw cards to allow you to set up as fast as possible: Whitton Greene, Scroll of Secrets, Deep Knowledge, Occult Lexicon, Crack the Case.You'll want to spend the first 2-3 turns playing through your economy cards and setting up: getting Whitton down is very high priority. Once she's down, you can even waste Gate Box charges to actionlessly trigger Whitton if you haven't used her the same round. The goal is to get Pendant of the Queen out as fast as possible.

It's likely that you won't have resources to play Rite of Seeking the first time you go through your deck. This is fine. With some luck on not drawing Astounding Revelation, or other investigators clearing out locations for your Crack the Case, you'll have Pendant assembled by turn 3-4. From then on, it's smooth sailing. Each turn, you'll use your Pendant, play some events, maybe use Rite of Seeking, maybe use your Gate Box to trigger Whitton and move for free. You support your team with Deep Knowledge and Crack the Case. You're flush with resources and cards, you'll find it hard to run out of charges on Pendant or Rite or Gatebox because of how quickly you cycle through Recharge.

This is peak Luke.

Flex slots

There's a lot of leeway in Luke's event selection, though he's very limited by deck slots as always. Deny Existence, Storm of Spirits and Spectral Razor are replaceable, though it's hard to find cards that have as much impact as those. Because Pendant lets you pick up clues from anywhere, and Rite of Seeking is with Recharge support relatively stronger than Shrivelling or Azure Flame, we'd prefer to use events for combat for flexibility rather than vice-versa. Nevertheless, Ward of Protection, Shortcut, Drawn to the Flame, Extensive Research (1) or Knowledge is Power are strong contenders for events if you want to lean towards a more clue-oriented build or want more support options. Honorable mention as always goes to the very scenario-specific Barricade and Open Gate.

The Gaze of Ouraxsh is a decent choice if your entire team is all aboard the curse train.

Upgrading

This is as good as it gets. There isn't much in the way of upgrade options. Deny Existence (5) or Counterspell, and even the upgrade Scroll of Secrets (3) or Recharge(4) is probably as far as you'll go.

A Blasphemous Covenant won't hurt either, nor would Seal of the Elder Sign over Promise of Power.

Observed gives an unpredictable but usually strong bonus to your deck.

...Yeah, that's really not a lot of upgrade options. In one run I've added the taboo'd Key of Ys and a Relic Hunter to the deck just because I had the excess XP.

Upgrade Priority

A 0xp deck will start something like this.

upgrading Rite of Seeking and Storm of Spirits with your Arcane Researches.

6 comments

Sep 20, 2021 kinzuuu · 2973

Nice deck, I've been trying to find a way to play Luke Robinson and stray away from the conventional Mystic archetypes but never found the time to look into it. This is a great frame of reference.

Whitton Greene and the interaction with Gate Box is super neat, and I like the guaranteed Recharges with Favor of the Moon.

You mention Arcane Research but its not in the list, I'm assuming that's accidental?

It's hard justifying not playing Ward of Protection in a Mystic but I can totally see why you wouldn't be able to in this deck. Depending on the team composition, I'd probably play it over Spectral Razor because Ward of Protection is too good to pass up. I'd rather be able to cancel automatic doom for 3-4 players over 3 damage when I have automatic evades and I can let the fighter handle it.

Mystics are notoriously known for having bad card draw, I'm not sure 2 copies of Deep Knowledge is enough to warrant Extensive Research, but I don't have any experience playing it in this deck, maybe you can afford it at 4 when it's acceptable or maybe even 5 when it's bad.

Keep in mind that Scroll of Secrets is not technically card draw as you mentioned, rather it's just card advantage, so it won't work with Dream-Enhancing Serum.

Preposterous Sketches might be worth mentioning with regards to aggressive deck cycling, something that Mystics aren't usually able to do, but I've never played the deck so I don't know how annoying or hard it is to deal with Luke's weakness over and over. My logic is just being able to see more events like Recharge allowing more up-time on Pendant of the Queen.

Read the Signs is also worth mentioning if you want to go clue heavy and it's good for dealing with his weakness as well, 1 extra skill value over Rite of Seeking, 2 over with Whitton Greene out. Good target for Astounding Revelation commits that get drawn as well outside of discarding them using Blood-Rite.

It would be nice if you could post a list with more experience, something that is around halfway or more in the campaign in which you played this deck to see what your true endgame vision was. With Arcane Research, this current list is a relatively early campaign deck, probably achievable around scenario 3?

Overall, pretty solid deck with unique concepts, I would rather play this than other Mystics because other Mystics are quite boring.

Sep 20, 2021 suika · 9254

@kinzuuu Thanks.

As for your questions on some of the card choices:

  • Read the Signs is generally worse than DttF, considering that enemies can't spawn in the Gate Box. Luke's econ is also weaker at low XP. It's also not generally not worth using it to get out of his weakness. In an emergency, throw Promise of Power and commits at it. After we get Pendant, the weakness is no longer something to worry about.
  • Extensive Research (1) can be played for near free if you take it since you have DES and it's quite common to sit at 9+ cards in hand. You'd only play it after properly setting up, never before.
  • Preposterous Sketches (2) will come at the expense of one of three useful events and costs XP to boot. Your draw is already good enough that you can activate Pendant every single round without it running out of charges, and still be able to use Recharge on Gate Box and/or Rite of Seeking once or thrice.

Sep 20, 2021 suika · 9254

@kinzuuu Forgot to answer the question on endgame...I generally don't build decks with endgame visions. For the majority of your campaign you're playing at the 20-30 XP range, so that's when your deck needs to start working. For me, everything after 25 XP is usually luxury and not part of the "core" of your deck. In practice, this also means that there's room to adapt to the team's and the scenario's needs.

It's the same with this deck, it is mostly complete at this XP point. Optionally, Ward of Protection (2) over Spectral Razor, depending on campaign and team. I would get Blasphemous Covenant in a curse-heavy team, maybe a single Recharge (4), followed by Deny (5) or Seal of the Elder Sign again depending on scenario and campaign. Then just finish off with Scroll of Secrets (3) with leftover XP if any.

Sep 20, 2021 kinzuuu · 2973

@suika I missed the fact that you can just teleport out of Dream Gate, wow. It almost makes the weakness irrelevant once you get Pendant of the Queen. Read the Signs becomes notably worse as a result.

Ah if you can maintain big hand with just those cards, then my questions are answered. It's just that my knee-jerk reaction upon viewing the cards is that there wasn't enough card draw for Dream-Enhancing Serum or to maintain big hand because you have to be playing events as well turn to turn, but I have no experience actually playing it. Same goes for cycling Recharge and wondering if you have 100% uptime on Pendant of the Queen.

If this deck runs as smooth as you describe, then I'm definitely going to try Luke Robinson for the first time in another Return To campaign or even Edge of The Earth.

The endgame question is sort of a personal thing because my play group is "competitive" which is kind of cringe to say because this is such a casual game. What I mean is that we come from some form of competitive TCG or card game background so trying to get as much experience as possible and playing completely optimally and building optimal decks is how we try and have fun with the game. It's very common for us to run 40+ exp decks for the last 3 scenarios in an expert campaign which is why I'm asking about an endgame list. Hell, my first playthrough of TFA on Hard ended up with like 100 total experience on a Mystic with Arcane Research.

I also like when upgrades are straightforward like you mention with upgrading cards to the higher level version as an upgrade path. Super easy to build, thanks for the guide. I was always perplexed at how to build Luke Robinson optimally but now I know.

Sep 25, 2021 Lord Triloth · 1890

I really like this. I've always had a small problem with Luke, because I had the feeling I couldn't pack enough "power" while also having enough resource/card draw economy. This deck solves that.

@kinzuuu With Whitton, Srcoll, Lexicon offer allot of card draw. It may seem surprsing, but I think that should be more than enough.

Feb 21, 2022 Renraku · 1

I have a question about the interaction between Favor of the Moon and Recharge. Since you're revealing the token but not as part of a skill test and Curse tokens have no effect effect outside of skill tests, what happens to the token after you reveal it? Does it get removed from the game, go back the the chaos bag, or just stay under FotM?