Underworld Actioneer

This deck is trying to get going reasonably fast and peak at a stupid high power level.

Action budget

8 play actions to come fully online.
I consider any asset that immediately or quickly pays back it's action cost fast. With that the total amount of play actions needed to get this deck online is fairly modest.

Magnifying Glass, and Moxie are actually fast.

The Black Fan, Blur, Haste, The Red Clock, Leo De Luca, and Pathfinder are effectively fast.

In the events "I'll take that!" is actually negative actions required, and beyond that only Pay Day and Preposterous Sketches out of all the events require an action to play.

Tally up everything remaining and the deck needs to take 8 actions to play assets in the first cycle of the deck. When fully operational this deck runs at an average of around 8 actions per turn, most of them basic investigations.

Resource budget

Before considering The Black Fan and Damning Testimony the deck needs to spend 33 resources on the other assets and events in the first cycle.

Therefore Dr. Milan Christopher and The Red Clock are the absolute top mulligan hits to make this work.

Between your 7 starting resources, Unscrupulous Loan(10), Crack the Case(3), "I'll take that!"(2) and Cheat the System(4) your total resource deficit gets reduced by 26 to a deficit 7 resources in the first cycle.

Then we get to Pay Day. This will be highly variable, however according to the FAQ 2.0 clarifications the moves granted by The Red Clock, Shortcut, or Pathfinder do indeed add to the Pay Day counter, as does "I'll take that!"(not playing "I'll take that!" but playing the asset). Meaning you can essentially expect to get a situation where you get at least 6 resources almost every time, and frequently 10+ resources won't be out of the question. I'll count it at a generous 7. Which puts us at a final resource count of around 0 by the end of the first cycle through the deck.

At this point we haven't counted the passive income from upkeep or anything gained by Dr. Milan Christopher and The Red Clock. In the calculation these resources are for playing Damning Testimony and eventually getting The Black Fan online. But actually as I wrote earlier, these are the top mulligan hits, because they are needed to make resources flow early.

Card budget

First cycle first.

28 card deck with the two weaknesses and In the Shadows. 5 cards in the opening hand, 3 cards drawn by Manual Dexterity and Perception, and 3 by Preposterous Sketches.

This still leaves 17 cards in the deck to be drawn in the first cycle. The only remaining tools to fill that gap is upkeep, Lucky Cigarette Case and Empirical Hypothesis. For that reason they also have to be considered top mulligan targets. This isn't the fastest first cycle, but it also isn't slow by any means.

After first cycle

For this we will count cards that will need to be re-drawn after having been played.

Of all the assets only Moxie is likely to end in the discard pile with any amount of regularity.

Of the events "I'll take that!", and Shortcut will attach, removing them from the cycle. Breaking and Entering also won't have to be re-drawn since it puts itself back in your hand most of the time.

This means the deck ends up having a cycle set of 12 cards including the 2 weaknesses. Most of these cards are fast so the deck becomes limited mostly by how fast it can draw them. Pay Day becomes fairly obsolete after the second play, but Preposterous Sketches is almost guaranteed to draw 2 or 3 fast cards. Similarly Lucky Cigarette Case and Empirical Hypothesis will also mostly draw fast cards that are almost immediately playable.

Dealing with weaknesses, encounter cards and damage.

Cycling the deck as fast as this does is a lot of horror. Call for Backup needs to be played every cycle for this reason. It can heal both Dr. Milan Christopher and Leo De Luca. So Moxie is fairly well protected from this. Moxie needs to take all other damage and horror, but you are likely to get it back quickly enough to not make this an issue. And obviously Forewarned can help with anything seriously dangerous

Shadow Agents can be dealt with by Breaking and Entering, Money Talks, In the Shadows, Trish's own ability while tanking an attack of opportunity on Moxie or even by pumping resources into Moxie in a pinch. That weakness is essentially irrelevant.

Upgrade path

The side deck includes the full list of replacements for the lvl 0 version of the deck. I would recommend using In the Thick of It to get Death • XIII and Charon's Obol.

Phase 1: Essentials

Charisma
Pathfinder
The Red Clock -> Relic Hunter
Surveil on Damning Testimony.
Haste
Pay Day
Forewarned

Phase 2: Getting to Fan

Unscrupulous Loan + Blur
Cheat the System + Call for Backup
The Black Fan

Phase 3: Polish the Engine

Manual Dexterity+Perception
Moxie+Magnifying Glass
Shortcut
Blackmail+Fabricated Evidence on Damning Testimony

Depending on which campaign and how high difficulty I'd seriously consider replacing Manual Dexterity with a Counterespionage.