Dexter Drake - Can you introduce me as Sorcerer?

In a bleak Arkham City, Dexter Drake, an aspiring magician, struggles to make ends meet. Frustrated by constant rejection and ridicule, he delves into the underworld to acquire a gun, intending to confront the famous magician, Mr. Houdin, who belittled his talents. During a live performance, Dexter, consumed by his inner turmoil, impulsively shoots Houdin in the face before disappearing into the night. This violent act sparks a spiral into darkness, leading Dexter to embrace a chaotic persona: the Sorcerer.

This is my attempt at building a flexible Dirty Fighting Dexter Drake.

I've seen several deck guides that use hand slots to evade and arcane slots to fight, but not many where it is the other way round so I though I would give it a try.

For evading we use 2 spells. Ineffable Truth provides 1 additional damage which can be handy against enemies with odd health. Blur is preferred over Mists of R'lyeh, as I find the free movement from Mists to be antisynergic in a Dirty Fighting deck. We want to defeat the evaded enemy, not runaway from it.

For combat we rely on Underworld Market mostly filled with guns (side deck = market deck). I though it was thematically funny that when Dexter would fail to impress his audience with magic, he would then proceed to buy a gun from low places and get attention with tangible bullets instead.

Using the market frees up some space in the deck, allowing us to include investigate options as well with Clairvoyance and Divination.

With a total of 9 spell cards using arcane slots, even with Dexter's playstyle (abusing his ability to replace assets in play) I felt that I could use some extra arcane slots so I added Binder's Jar. I kept Holy Rosary in the deck so we can situationally swap fast from one accessory to the other.

There are no skill cards in the upgraded deck but Blood Pact is here to boost the 2 stats that we will be using the most, and we can plan to discard it with Dexter's ability during witching hour.

Economy and card drawing are ensured by a bunch of cards (Arcane Initiate, David Renfield, Uncage the Soul, "I'll take that!", Easy Mark, Sacrifice, Pickpocketing), which may seem like a lot but I expect that Dexter's playstyle and having to pay for market cards will be quite heavy on economy.

For defense, our 2 disposable allies provide some soak and we have one healing spell that can be used on teammates as well. Then I chose Deny Existence over Ward of Protection because we are already having 2 mental traumas and using Clairvoyance so that's enough self induced horror.

For upgrade path, essential cards to get are Underworld Market and Dirty Fighting. I consider Pickpocketing and Binder's Jar priorities as well.

Then it's all about replacing spells with the more efficient alternatives from EotE, getting more economy & card drawing, and upgrading spells using the discount from Arcane Research. These can be done in any order depending on what you consider prorities after experiencing the first scenarios of a campaign.

Core upgrades

Replace spells

Economy & card draw

Arcane Research upgrades

(View at arkham-starter.com)