Preston Suffering From Success

Introduction:

Original idea actually started with Rita Young. Idea was to take / to combine pay to succeed strategy of with auto succeed strategy of . Unfortunately I was adamant on using Stealth which quickly brought down my choices to either Lola Hayes or Preston Fairmont. While I would like to see Lola Hayes build with this in mind, I also opted to use Double, Double which set my eyes on Preston Fairmont.

Table of Contents:

• Overview

• Overall Strategy

• Investigation tools

• Enemy management tools

• Card recurring engine

• Ally choices

• Other cards

• Optional cards

• Allies

• Upgrade Path

Overview:

Overall strategy:

• Setup your Double, Double and some reduce difficulty tech, Flashlight, Old Keyring, Gumption, and Stealth get your evade/investigate tests to 0 and fire off Exploit Weakness and Shed a Light
• Recur your level 0 events with Double, Double and Scrounge for Supplies. Also recur Scrounge for Supplies with other Scrounge for Supplies and Resourceful

Investigation tools:

• Like in regular preston Double, Double deck you go with "Look what I found!" and later even better "Look what I found!" to pick up clues after failing. It is great synergy with Old Keyring since you don't lose an use from failing a skill test.
• Next is Intel Report, average to good card in most decks, mostly because of the cost. Excellent card in investigator with big resource gain such as Preston Fairmont. One of the main targets of Scrounge for Supplies + Double, Double combo mentioned later.
• Shed a Light what a card. If you get your test difficulty to 0, you get instead of 1 clue 3, where 2 are from your location and one is from ANY location in the game. Gumption, Old Keyring, Flashlight give you just that. NOTE: As of current date, I'm not sure community is agreed how Shed a Light works with Double, Double. I would say I'm biased but I think you can Double, Double it and pick up 3 clues from your location and 2 clues from any locations.

Enemy management tools:

• Stealth one of the main reasons we go with Preston Fairmont. You pick up this bad boy and together with Gumption and Flashlight + Exploit Weakness you can DISCARD any non-elite enemy from play. So that's 6 evade enemy. In most cases you will need 2-4, so only combination of two of those cards let you discard any enemy from play without any test! NOTE: It is still not 100% clear but if you are using Exploit Weakness on Elite enemies you shouldn't be able to apply Double, Double to it to get 6 damage or 9 damage if you play Double, Double + another copy of Exploit Weakness since effect is replacing existing one. In any case, doing 3 damage + auto evade is already great!

Card recurring engine:

• Double, Double + Scrounge for Supplies work wonders. This is known combo which doesn't take much. If you play Scrounge for Supplies you can pick up any level 0 card from your discard pile with another copy of Scrounge for Supplies already in your discard pile so you are never out of recurring options. Of course as the end of scenario is closer you can just pick up 2 different level 0 events to get you going. You will mostly pick up Shed a Light, Exploit Weakness and Intel Report or Old Keyring
• Resourceful let's you pick up other cards, like leveled up "Look what I found!" or even Shed a Light or Exploit Weakness in the same test you play them! Shed a Light and Exploit Weakness are already in the discard pile by the time you trigger skill commit effects! You can also commit it in tests made by Hope, Zeal, or Augur.

Ally choices:

• Leo De Luca is overall great card, I don't think I need to waste too many words on him. Getting bonus actions always pays off and here is no different. You will need to position yourself, do some arbitrary actions on board for your friends, Leo De Luca is the man for it.
• Miss Doyle is optional, but giving you an option to perform an evade/investigate/fight with 5 base value goes a long way. Discard options on cats give you more chances to commit Momentum and Resourceful to tests.

Other cards:

• "You handle this one!" is your basic encounter protection. If you see something that will stick to your threat area feel free to forward it to someone else. Just remember one resource goes to your Family Inheritance.
• Friends in Low Places is absolutely amazing card IMHO. Pick Trick + Fortune traits. Then pick Clever and Experienced upgrades. As you can see we have 12 cards in total with those traits (unfortunately not one with both). You will get your engine running in no time. And do not skip Clever upgrade. If you hit your main engine cards like Double, Double, Flashlight, or Old Keyring or some Ally you will be able to place them as next few cards that you will draw. So just put them on top and take a draw and get them in no time. This is card which I included instead of Lucky Cigarette Case for the draw and believe me it's more than enough.
• Lucky! and Gumption are your "get out of jail" cards. While you want to save Gumption for your Shed a Light or Exploit Weakness combos, feel free to lower test difficulties for some stupid encounter tests with Lucky! you can mitigate some of the "for each point you failed" tests.
• Hot Streak combined with Double, Double solves all your economy problems if you had any in the first place. Solves your Lodge "Debts" also. As a big plus it's also Fortune traited, so you can pull it with Friends in Low Places
• Momentum is cool card that I wanted to add in the deck. If you auto succeed, you go with your skill value against 0 difficulty test. That means if you use Miss Doyle cats and you discard them you will go 5 vs 0, which means that you can commit Momentum and you will get -3 difficulty for the next test, which saves you Flashlight/Old Keyring/Gumption uses and gives you really high difficulty lowering abilities.

Optional cards:

There is not much space for other cards in this deck, but I will mention few of them.

• Scavenging can be useful with Augur to get back Flashlight and Old Keyring but I think it's a waste of slots. Not many items in this deck to be worth it and I don't think you need that many uses of them over the course of scenario that you will use them all without any option to get them back (either by Resourceful or by reshuffling your deck).
• Counterespionage is a great card which gives you a lot of flexibility and encounter protection, but unfortunately it puts a pressure on your economy (you will not be able to pull resources from Family Inheritance for it) and you lose Trick trait from "You handle this one!" which you will probably upgrade from.
• Miss Doyle is optional, but it gives us some auto succeed options where you can commit cards, if you are in need of more soak feel free to include either Cherished Keepsake or Leather Coat, both of them are empty slots we don't use. Of course in that case Scavenging becomes more useful, but we are losing on Miss Doyle to be able to trigger it more easily with Augur. So it's kind of a catch 22. You could remove some other cards as well instead.
• Dumb Luck if your investigator party needs more enemy management. It works with all evasion tech you have. Slot it instead of some of your investigation tech, i.e. "Look what I found!"
• The Skeleton Key is amazing card, especially for TSK where a lot of expose tests work from shroud. Remember you can't modify the shroud value anymore, but you CAN modify difficulty of tests. So Flashlight and Old Keyring doesn't work but Flashlight works! Gumption and Stealth also!

Allies:

You are flex investigator so you can work with whoever. But cool thing to think about is combining your investigator with Darrell Simmons to get even more options to reduce the difficulty tests and Map the Area, Wither to get easier tests.

Upgrade Path:

Link to the 0xp deck

Upgrade path can vary, depending on your needs, but most important part is to get Gumption, Double, Double ASAP. Afterwards Stealth/Flashlight for more flexibility and Miss Doyle in the middle of it. If you need more soak, get Charisma earlier so you can have your Leo De Luca and Miss Doyle in play. If not go for Hot Streak and Friends in Low Places upgrades. Everything after Momentum is in lux territory, so do as you wish with it.

(View at arkham-starter.com)

Big thanks to Valentin1331! This guide is made with help of his template which you can find here here