Here is my take on a pure cluever Charlie Deck for those who cannot wait for the Investigator Expansion.

Introduction:

After the looong review that I made on the dedicated ArkhamDB page of Charlie, which was really well received, I thought that it'd be nice to give a little Deck Guide of my most successful and fun Deck so far.

This Deck is ready for a 29xp Standalone. Here are the Decks for the 9xp declination, and the 19xp declination.

Table of Contents:

• Overview

• Main Strategy

• Play your Allies rapidly/Short Supply

• Succeed every test by 2 or more

• Buy your clues

• Scavenging Cycle

• Other Cards

• Upgrade Path

• Make your own Deck!

Overview:

Main Strategy:

• Get your Allies on the board rapidly.

• Get a lot of icons from your Allies to test high at your investigation tests.

• Get a lot of resources that you spend setting up and then buying clues with Lola Santiago.

• Use Scavenging (2) to cycle Flashlights and Old Keyrings that help succeed and to reduce the price of Lola Santiago's clues. Add Schoffner's Catalogue and Newspaper (2) to the loop for maximum benefits.

Play your Allies rapidly/Short Supply:

This Deck is packed with many ways to increase the speed of Ally onboarding:

• Calling in Favors is a tutor draw that will see play in probably 90% of the Charlie Kane Decks. To take the best out of it, use it to replace a David Renfield full of Doom once he made you rich.

• Flare comes at the end of the campaign since it makes some Allies cheaper, plays them immediately (against replacing an Ally for Calling in Favors), and is a panic button in case you have to deal with the Unbound Beast or a final boss.

• Short Supply is the centrepiece for the setup acceleration. It helps with:

•• Increasing the odds of finding the cards that you search with Flare and Calling in Favors since there are fewer cards in your Deck.

•• Throwing some Allies in your discard pile so that you can play them immediately with A Chance Encounter (2).
••• If A Chance Encounter (2) is discarded, Resourceful can help.

•• The only way for you to be screwed would be if you do not have any access to the two A Chance Encounter (2), both Resourceful, and either 2 of the same Ally (especially Lola Santiago), or the 1 copy of Bonnie Walsh/Miss Doyle. The odds are very small but if a thousand people play this Deck, it will happen, and I apologise to those who will have this situation. For all the others, enjoy the ride!

•• The trickiest for Short Supply is the first 1-2 scenarios before you get A Chance Encounter (2). But to be fair, with 5 Allies for 4 slots, even if you lose Bonnie Walsh, with the Scavenging of Old Keyring and Flashlight loop, you should be ok.

• Speaking of A Chance Encounter (2), it has an interaction with Summoned Hound, as many know, in the way that it doesn't mention "play", and directly puts the Ally into play. This prevents the Unbound Beast from joining the party. So when you get it in your Deck, you'll pray for it to be a "victim" of short supply.

•• Warning, though, if Summoned Hound is the only Ally that you find with Flare/Calling in Favors, you will be forced to play it and add the Unbound Beast to your Deck.

Succeed every by 2 or more:

This test comes with a plethora of icons. Actually, every card in this Deck commit either for or for .

The Allies:

• Lola Santiago and Bonnie Walsh are the MVPs of this Deck. Lola Santiago brings 2 icons and buys clues, and Bonnie Walsh 2 and readies another Ally for another use.

• You can use Bonnie Walsh to ready an Ally and exhaust it again during the same test. For example during an evade action, you can exhaust Miss Doyle to get +2 , Bonnie Walsh for +3 and use her ability to ready and exhaust Miss Doyle again for +2 , resulting in +7 .
•• Good targets for this are the ones that do now have an exhaust ability like Miss Doyle or Gregory Gry, or ones that come with a stat boost like Summoned Hound (especially as it gives another action), or Augur.

• David Renfield and Gregory Gry are cash machines, that also bring an icon if needed.

• Summoned Hound gives an additional investigate action, 2 if you ready it with Bonnie Walsh, with a base of 5 . That is great to compensate for your low stat.

• Miss Doyle is great since she does not exhaust, brings an icon to the table, decreasing the risk during Encounter Tests, as well as 3 bonded cats that are Allies, boosting one stat to 5 during a test, and bring icons. Let's dive a bit deeper into these:
•• Augur is obviously the preferred target. Investigating with 5 decreases the number of Allies that you need to exhaust to boost your stat, allowing you to investigate during more turns, or use their abilities. He also comes with a and icon, which paired with Miss Doyle bring you to +4 which is enough to manage the risk of the treacheries tests, or to evade an enemy.
•• Hope is more a defensive choice, allowing you to evade enemies with good chances of success, while coming with a icon. It is a fine second option if you didn't find Augur.
•• Zeal is unfortunately not so good here. Dealing only 1 damage is ok against a Swarm of Rats, or to give a little push against a boss, but that's pretty much it. On the bright side, he commits for and so it's still fine if he is the random pick when you played Miss Doyle, while you wait for the others.

The boost from the other cards:

• Dr. Milan Christopher and later Lola Santiago also bring a static +1 .

• The Flashlight/Old Keyring loop gives you virtually +2 to your for every test.

• Every Item can be committed to an test, bringing a boost, and making it possible to play fast with Scavenging (2).

With all of this, and knowing that you can commit multiple Allies to the same test, it is common to test above 10 and activate Scavenging (2) literally every single turn.

Buy your clues:

Buying clues allows you to compensate for the lack of ways for Charlie Kane to grab multiple clues in a single action.

• Lola Santiago allows you to buy clues. She exhausts to do so, but Bonnie Walsh can ready her, making it possible to use her icons and her in the same turn, or her ability twice if you do not need the extra icons.

• To buy clues, you need to generate a steady income:

•• David Renfield comes with a icon, and brings a high reward with medium risk. Only play him when you are sure that you can get rid of him at any moment. Unless you play solo, do not take any risk with him.
••• The main ways to get rid of him are: defeating him (you suck at encounter tests, so it should happen quite often), replacing him with the second copy, or with another Ally if you are already at the limit. The last resort is generating an Attack of Opportunity. (Today I learned that you cannot replace a Unique card like David Renfield with another copy of himself according to the rules.)

•• Gregory Gry also has a icon and does not exhaust to spend the 3 resources!
••• Miss Doyle's cats give you an auto success on discard. That is great to exploit to secure the 3 resources. The rounds when you have only 1 action to spend in an investigation and you can commit 2-3 Allies for their icons will also make you test around 10 , which is enough for at least 2 resources.

• Schoffner's Catalogue plays fast with Scavenging (2) and pays for the items, so your resources are not sucked by the Item recursion.

Scavenging cycle:

Since buying clues with Lola Santiago (2) is a big part of this Deck, decreasing the location Shroud consistently and buying the clue during the test with the lower shroud saves a lot of resources. This is done by using the Scavenging (2) cycle:

• Old Keyrings and Flashlights are natural targets, especially Old Keyring that can be scavenged straight when you use the last key. This helps to investigate of course, making 2-shroud locations almost auto-success (or magnets), but most importantly decreases the price of clues if you use Lola Santiago's ability during the investigation! With this in mind, we want to make sure that every test is happening while using either a Old Keyring or a Flashlight.

• Schoffner's Catalogue is great here since it commits for a and then Scavenged to pay for the item recursion, so that you leave all the resources to play your Allies and buy clues with Lola Santiago.

• Newspaper commits for 2 and then can be scavenged at the moment when you spend the last clue to advance something. That's another clue acceleration tech, that goes from meh to bonkers based on the scenario.

• Eon Chart (1) is also a perfect target since it adds 1 net action per turn and is paid by the Schoffner's Catalogue.

•• Eon Chart can be exhausted for an additional action that you spend investigating, and if you succeed by 2 or more, you can scavenge the 2nd copy that replaces the empty one and you can exhaust it for a second extra action during the same turn. Sounds weird but it's actually rather easy.

Short Supply is also a strong accelerator for this loop, since the chances to have some of these in your discard pile by turn 1 are significant, and if not, you are more likely to draw them fast since your remaining Deck is now smaller.

Other Cards:

• Deduction and Sharp Vision are here to increase the tempo.

• Take Heart is here because there are some tests that you will fail, especially during the Mythos Phase, with 1 base stat. It then turns them into a fast 2-resource-2-card card. It is possible to upgrade it into Unrelenting for the +2 cards.

• Rise to the Occasion and Inquiring Mind are good to have a chance to succeed at any hard test, especially before your Allies are online or during treachery tests. With the Deck improving, so does the set-up speed, and you need less treachery management since you can soak.

Upgrade Path:

Link to the 0xp Deck

• Scavenging x2 Scavenging (2) x2 - 4xp - Total 4xp

•• Launch the item recursion loop!

• Crack the Case x2 A Chance Encounter x2 - 4xp - Total 8xp

•• No more Bonnie Walsh trashed during turn one that spoils the whole scenario.

• Leo De Luca x1 Miss Doyle x1 - 1xp - Total 9xp

•• Gain a lot of flexibility with the cats.

• Dr. Milan Christopher x2 Lola Santiago x2 - 6xp - Total 15xp

•• Keep the +1 and unlock the way to spend your resources.

• Leo De Luca x1 Summoned Hound x1 - 1xp - Total 16xp

•• An extra action with base 5, and no downside.

Charisma x1 - 3xp - Total 19xp

•• Harder to manage David Renfield, but besides that, it's just more icons for your tests.

• Inquiring Mind x2 Sharp Vision x2 - 2xp - Total 21xp

•• The same amount of , with an extra clue if you succeed. You lose the encounter protection part though.

• Flashlight x2 Newspaper (2) x2 - 4xp - Total 25xp

•• Increase the tempo with a boost that adds up to Old Keyring when you have no clues.

• Calling in Favors x2 Flare x2 - 2xp - Total 27xp

•• Better tempo.

• Rise to the Occasion x2 Eon Chart x2 - 2xp - Total 29xp

•• Since you are already into the recursion game, why not add an extra action that can be used for anything you'll be doing.

Make your own Deck!:

For plenty more info regarding Charlie and the possible cards, class choices, and alternate decks, check the extensive review that I wrote for him!