Vincent Lee: Doctor of Synergy (21 XP: Guide)

This is a 21 XP version. The 0 XP version is here.

Vincent and his buddies roam the streets bludgoning boses and digging out clues. This is a jack-of-all trades deck that can do almost anything except evade.

Assembling your Gang

Vincent's deckbuilding suits him perfectly to a synergy deck. He can take Short Supply and Geared Up, giving him three classes at the start of the game. Enchanted Blade is a Guardian / Mystic card and Lonnie Ritter a Rogue card with those magic words "heal damage". That means you have all five classes in your deck at the start of the game without sacrificing much in the way of card quality. Enchanted Blade is a great fit for a secondary weapon for Vincent and the Lonnie / Heavy Furs combo is a reusable horror soak that gives some control over the Chaos Bag.

At your first upgrade you'll be taking Eon Chart as a 1XP Rouge card that can be fetched with Backpack. Once you upgrade to Backpack(2) you'll be reliably getting all five classes out on turn 1. Which brings us nicely to...

Gearing Up

Geared up, Vincent decks are nothing new and I can't claim credit for the idea. Spend your first turn dumping a shed load of assets into play by using Backpack to draw them and Schoffner's Catalogue to pay for them. This deck is lighter on assets than others, but the payoff of getting your five classes out early and reliably is more than worth it.

Your muligan is all about maximising Geared Up. Throw away anything that isn't an item. Ideally you want to get a weapon, a Magnifying Glass, at least one extra class card into play and Schoffner's Catalogue by the end of your first turn. You won't always get that, but three out of four is pretty usual. Don't forget Backpack can find a Backpack which you can then play in place of your now empty Backpack.

What's the payoff?

So you've committed to this rainbow collection of cards. What's in it for you? Well a deck that has some absolutely absurd power spikes and, as a result, can deal with pretty much any crunch point in a scenario.

First and foremost it's about Gang Up. At minimum Gang Up is a +3 fight action that deals 4 damage in this deck. Most of the time it's +5 fight, dealing 6 damage. Thats enough to kill almost anything in solo and put a massive dent in most things in multiplayer. Not bad for a Seeker. It's so good you take In the Thick of It to be able to get them from the off (and get an On the Mend when you heal the trauma).

Secondly you get Strength in Numbers. At worst it's four wild icons. At best you get two copies of Wini's Anything You Can Do, Better to pass any crucial test.

Then you get Join the Caravan and Call for Backup. These are a bit more situational, and I can see in some campaigns you might not take a full complement of them. But Call is potentially up to five actions in one and works especially well with Vincent, giving On the Mend to an investigator anywhere on the map, whilst giving him a much needed horror heal. Join the Caravan is only really useful on big maps, but then it's a Fast move to any revealed location for between 2 and 0 resources? Yes please.

Ok that's all well and good, but what else can you do?

Setting aside the Synergy package, you've still got a decent all-rounder who can investgate fine, put up a decent fight against basic enemies, hands out healing and reusable Unexpected Courage whilst having access to some powerful upgrade options.

In due course you'll be able to take out Lonnie for Girish Kadakia, whose power in Vincent is described elsewhere and/or find space for Scientific Theory which gives you a base +1 to both your most important stats and the ability to boost them with resources.

If you need to go more into clues then Sharp Vision and Deduction are easy skill cards to speed up your investigating whilst Divination gives you a Mystic card as well.

What can go wrong?

Your weakness are resources if you don't see Schoffner's early and card draw. You'll be ending your first turn with few resources and only a card or two in hand. Take Heart addresses both of these points and there are circumstances where throwing a hopeless evasion attempt to get the money and cards is worth it. If you get a basic weakness that punishes either of these things though you can get stuck.

Six sanity and 3 will isn't brilliant, though it isn't terrible either. You have reusable horror soak in Lonnie Ritter and then Girish Kadakia. With Inquiring Mind and Strength in Numbers you should be able to beat the worst Will checks but in a horror or discard from your deck-heavy campaign you might want Flare to make sure you get one of your allies (and hope they don't get hit by Short Supply) or look at Surgical Kit.

Short Supply isn't a big problem. Occasionally you'll lose a bunch of key cards, but statistically you aren't going to draw at least ten cards of your deck, anyway so just think of it as additional information. You could lean into it with some Survivor discard-based cards, but personally I think you've enough mechanics to be juggling. I've never had decking been an issue in any normal scenario, but you might want to take some extra horror soak to Dunwich...

Finally, you aren't passing evasion checks, without Strength in Numbers and possibly not even then. There's nothing to be done about that except play Take Heart, heal up the damage and hope they don't hit at a bad time.