Expert-Difficulty Clues and Card Support Daisy

Overview:

This deck is intended to provide clue-gathering and card-draw support to a multiplayer team. The long-term goal of this deck is to be able to gain clues with minimal amounts of token-drawing tests, in order to reduce the amount of painful, painful hard/expert token effects. This primarily relies on cards above level 0, and is discussed below.

This deck has almost no ability to directly defend itself, you will require close cooperation with other investigators who can pull monsters off of Daisy before her turn begins. If your party lacks the ability to protect you, more defensive cards are recommended.

General Plan:

Mulligan for Old Book of Lore or Dr. Milan Christopher. Always keep at least one copy of either. If you can't find Old Book of Lore, keep Research Librarian. Generally you should also keep any Eureka!, as this can be used to get a strong chance to find key cards when used on your first investigate check.

You want to play out either Old Book of Lore or Milan Christopher on turn 1 and immediately begin getting clues to get momentum. Remember that you don't need to use Old Book of Lore on yourself! In fact, on turn 1 or 2, you usually shouldn't. If you have that one card, you're close to being fully set up, but odds are good that at least one of your companions is missing a key card after the mulligan. Ask the other players who needs to see some cards, and take heart that your allies will have the right weapons or spells to keep the monsters off your back while you solve the mysteries.

At higher experience levels, when this deck has all of its key pieces, such as Deciphered Reality and Archaic Glyphs: Guiding Stones you will also slowly accumulate the necessary cards and resources for the big clue-grabbing combination most appropriate to the particular scenario you're in.

Key cards:

Old Book of Lore: This card provides the most basic, brute-force efficiency in the deck. One best-of-three card draw per turn is strong, especially when turned on your allies. Old Book of Lore usually provides the most value when it's used on a member of the team who is lacking a key card, so equipping it on turn one and using it on the Mystic or Guardian on the team who hasn't found their Shrivelling, Machete, or Rite of Seeking is usually your best play. The consistency you can provide to your setup-intensive allies with this card can do a lot to help your team avoid early inefficiencies and create momentum.

Dr. Milan Christopher: Milan provides an excellent one-two punch by granting a critical +1 on all your investigate tests, and also providing a very efficient economic engine. If you get him out on turn 1, it's typically worth it to immediately begin getting clues if possible, and use that money to play other key cards on future turns (usually over even Old Book of Lore, unless one of the other players is extremely desperate for card help).

Useful Cards:

St. Hubert's Key: This provides a useful flat +1 to Lore and the often-handy +1 willpower won't hurt. Ultimately much less efficient than Milan Christopher, but a valuable long-term tool. Using one of these represents 1 committed icon to every investigate test for the remainder of the game, and allows you to become truly cavalier about taking sanity damage.

Ward of Protection: A no-brainer - with Daisy's high sanity, the cost is hardly a problem, and preventing encounter cards is obviously good (even more so on higher difficulties).

Deduction: Deduction turns one successful investigation into two, reducing the number of times you need to reach into the chaos bowl and speeding up your tempo. All that, and it has no resource cost. Easy 2-of for a multiplayer deck, as there will usually be at least four clues per location.

Working a Hunch: A card I normally wouldn't include for most seekers since they can just investigate, but on Expert the ability to avoid a test becomes very precious. Don't hesitate to commit this to a skill test for icons in the early game, as the resource cost is prohibitive if you haven't already set up your Old Book of Lore and Dr. Milan. Once your economy is running strong, this card becomes an excellent way to convert resources into clues with no randomness involved, and finish off areas affected by Locked Door or similar effects.

Shortcut: Shortcut is always helpful, but one especially useful tactic with Shortcut is moving your combat-capable allies into new locations ahead of you, so that they can be the ones to start engaged with monsters and then you can follow them in and investigate for your whole turn (while on the fighter's turn, they will start already engaged with the monster, ready to fight). Also useful if a monster happens to spawn on you, so that you can use Shortcut to move yourself into the same location as a Guardian ally without provoking an attack of opportunity, at which point they can use a Heroic Rescue to pull the enemy off of you and allow you to investigate 3 times.

Fun, but not necessary cards:

Eureka!: This card can provide a great tempo boost in your opening hand, to help you find other key pieces. Also useful to throw in to allies' skill tests in order to grant them the card draw - they'll thank you.

Anatomical Diagrams: The key here is to understand that reducing an enemy's fight or evade value by 2 can be much stronger than just providing a +2. Save this for enemies with a fight value of 1 or 2, so that you reduce them to 0. This makes every token except the auto-fail a success. In a pinch, you can use it on your own turn in order to help you punch a Swarm of Rats without help.

"I've got a plan!": One of the biggest single-action burst damage cards in the game at this level (or in general). Useful for emergencies, but if your team is on the ball you won't need it.

Logical Reasoning: If Agnes is in the team, go up to a 2-of for this card. This is useful to heal horror on your guardian allies, and remove the occasional Frozen in Fear that may pop up (with no skill test, so no need to reach into that bag of terrible token effects).

Astral Travel: Usually useless, occasionally life-saving. On Expert, you'll probably know in advance if you'll need it for a given scenario. For those where you will, hold onto it. For those where you won't, throw it into a skill test.

Plans for the Future:

The long-term goal of this deck is to be able to acquire huge amounts of clues in single, explosive bursts in order to reduce the amount of token pulls required.

The two main tools to this end are Deciphered Reality and Archaic Glyphs: Guiding Stones. Generally, I'd start by acquiring a copy of Guiding Stones and Higher Education. This combination allows you to gain clues from a location extremely efficiently, in a single pull. On more spread-out maps, you will find a use for Deciphered Reality instead, especially if you coordinate with your team to reveal locations but not take all of the clues.

Both of Deciphered Reality and Guiding Stones are excellent in combination with Double or Nothing if one of your fellow investigators can provide it, likewise with Seal of the Elder Sign. You yourself can run Time Warp in order to make these "one big test" strategies less risky.

Note that this focus on single massive tests has one drawback: it makes the The Necronomicon significantly more punishing. You will need to consider devoting a turn to clearing it off your character if you have it before one of these big tests.

Book of Shadows: Normally a fairly underwhelming card, I think this can have a home in this specific deck as a 1-of. This card is used once the Guiding Stones are out, and with Daisy's free action, can provide a charge every turn. This turns every one of Daisy's investigations into a super-Rex hit, allowing you to gobble up large amounts of clues per check infinitely. You'd only want it in the late game to refill an empty or near-empty Archaic Glyphs, so 1 copy is plenty.

Cryptic Research: This card will help provide your fellow investigators with some big improvements to their ability to consistently set up. Look for Mystics who can't find a Shrivelling or Guardians who can't find a weapon.

No Stone Unturned: The ability to get any card on demand is very useful for a deck designed to pull of single big tests - finding your Deciphered Reality, or letting your allies find their Double or Nothing or Seal of the Elder Sign prior to a big test can be invaluable. The 5xp cost, however, makes it lose some luster. I'd add this only once your core engine of Guiding Stones, Deciphered Reality, and Higher Education is well established.

Eidetic Memory: Once you've acquired 2-3 copies of Cryptic Research, Deciphered Reality, or No Stone Unturned, Eidetic Memory becomes a very flexible way to boost your deck's power level.

Bulletproof Vest: As this deck runs very few allies, Daisy is not at all insulated from physical damage. If the campaign you're running includes many encounter cards or enemies that deal physical damage, you'll want to spare a few early XP for this card. If your friends are able to keep the enemies away, and the encounter deck isn't worrying you, then feel free to push your luck a bit and save this purchase for later.

Ward of Protection: The ability to cancel ANY investigator's encounter cards is quite valuable - keeping your Guardians unimpeded so that they can pull enemies off of you is the least you can do.

Forewarned: A handy card to help insulate you from the encounter deck. Unfortunately, it won't do much to protect you when you're at your most vulnerable (in the first few turns, where you may have no clues to spare). Include if you have a good card in mind to cut from your deck to replace with this, or if you're running fewer Ward of Protection.

Cards that might work:

Delve Too Deep: Honestly, the reason this card isn't in the deck is because I assume someone else in the group will run it. If no one else can or will, definitely slot this into the deck.

Pathfinder: Great effect, but expensive. Given the other pricy cards you need at setup (Old Book of Lore, St. Hubert's Key, Dr. Milan Christopher), this great card starts to crowd the lineup a bit. Include with caution that you don't overspend on setup and block assets like your Tomes or Dr. Milan. Shortcut is likely the stronger team-play card for this deck due to its low setup cost.

Various seeker allies: Given how efficient Dr. Milan Christopher is, all of these "disposable" ally cards start to crowd the deck. Charisma costs 3 xp that could be better used to work toward another Eidetic Memory. Daisy does not really need the horror-soaking buffer that these cards provide (unlike Roland Banks), and so these allies are skipped in favor of the more tempo-efficient and affordable skill card selection.

Fieldwork: This is another card I cut because of resource pressure during setup, but I am strongly considering including this. It could provide good synergy with the "one big test per turn" approach this deck builds toward, and with no cost in experience it could be slotted in in place of several of the less crucial cards. Let me know your own experiences with this card, and if it's worth including.

Encyclopedia: Generally I prefer to have Old Book of Lore. This card can be a worthy inclusion as, effectively, a third and fourth copy of Old Book of Lore, but generally I think your experience is better spent on cards which are targets for Eidetic Memory. If you find yourself swimming in XP, this card could be a great capstone to the deck.

Questions, comments and suggestions welcome!