Card draw simulator
| Derived from |
|---|
| None. Self-made deck here. |
| Inspiration for | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rex Murphy - Enquêteur de l'Annonceur d'Arkham - Deck Final | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1.0 |
HungryColquhoun · 4037
Dusting and Cleaning
I'm continuing my series with a deck each Sunday and using the new Hemlock Vale cards. This deck uses Cleaning Kit to keep Fingerprint Kit •••• well supplied, allowing for BIG investigate actions...
Overview
-
With Fingerprint Kit •••• or Deduction •• you can get 4 clues in a single action with Rex's tabooed once per round ability, which will clear a lot of locations in two player and is generally useful in larger multiplayer. Cleaning Kit and Emergency Cache ••• are taken to make Fingerprint Kit's supplies last. You investigate at a 9 with Fingerprint Kit plus Dr. Milan Christopher, a Magnifying Glass and Death • XIII.
-
Enemy management is Strange Solution Acidic Ichor. Even with the taboo, 2 damage at a base 6 is still great for smoking weaker enemies. Strange Solution is of course slot-less, and benefits from the same supply tech that Fingerprint Kit does.
-
This deck uses the nuclear option to card draw - with Thorough Inquiry and Search for the Truth (in addition to Rex's ability) easily providing the big hands needed for Higher Education. Otherwise this deck has very strong tutoring with No Stone Unturned ••••• and Backpack ••. Extravagant upgrades like No Stone Unturned are paid for by Down the Rabbit Hole, providing significant XP cost breaks over a campaign. No Stone Unturned is also great party support if you don't need it yourself, as you can use it on any investigator at your location.
-
Economy is Crack the Case, Emergency Cache •••, Dr. Milan Christopher, Astounding Revelation and the superb "I'll take that!". "I'll take that!" in particular provides a sizeable benefit for what you do naturally (investigating) and can get Fingerprint Kit •••• into play at very little cost, which is some tasty tempo alongside cards like Pathfinder.
-
The last thing to mention is encounter deck management and healing, which is handled tidily by Bizarre Diagnosis, Mouse Mask and pay-to-win from Higher Education. This makes the deck very well-rounded!
Campaign starter and planned progression
To briefly discuss side deck, Wolf Mask can be used if you want Strange Solution Acidic Ichor to be more punchy - especially if playing on a higher difficulty than standard. In this case swapping out both Mouse Mask and one "I'll take that!" makes the most sense, and then adding a second Thorough Inquiry can be useful to help draw up Wolf Mask if you're struggling with tutor cards (plus are good symbols). Generally though, the deck as it stands sets up more quickly with two "I'll take that!" and gets to big clue-finding faster, so I wouldn't recommend the Wolf Mask route for most campaigns.
With In the Thick of It and Down the Rabbit Hole, expecting on average 8 scenarios in a campaign with 7 upgrade points, this is a 29 XP deck. 0 XP deck is directly below (and link here):
Upgrades below are listed in priority order, but with Down the Rabbit Hole you have to be more loosey-goosey with what you upgrade when (normally pairing a big upgrade to a smaller one to make best use of the XP cost break - unless a scenario really paid out and you have enough XP for two big cards). Additionally you need to 'identify the solution' before upgrading Strange Solution, so try and do this in your first scenario/prelude.
With the above caveat, a recommended order of upgrades is as follows:
Final thoughts
This deck worked extremely well! Fingerprint Kit picks up four clues per action with ease, and you can often get it into play cheaply with "I'll take that!". Meanwhile Strange Solution Acidic Ichor allows you to moonlight as a Guardian; there were quite a few times where my main enemy management character drew or -4 in a row against an Elite boss and Rex had to come in and save the day (with Pathfinder giving an extra action to get over there). Effective 6 isn't earthshattering, but on standard you can use it in a pinch against bosses - especially if there is another investigator at your location with cards to commit. No Stone Unturned ties this all together, playing fast and for free with Astounding Revelation, and it ensures even if you have a single copy of a card in the deck (like Pathfinder) these aren't too troublesome to get into play.
Honestly I've wanted to make a supplies-centric Rex deck for a while, but Contraband was the previous way to get this working and it was too situational and expensive. Cleaning Kit fixes this problem perfectly, I never saw Fingerprint Kit or Strange Solution run out of supplies while this was out. Personally I think Fingerprint Kit may be one of the best ways to run Rex, as it doesn't require dramatic over-success to get a load of clues like Archaic Glyphs Guiding Stones, and with the recent Scavenging taboo Ice Pick is less appealing now too. To sum up this is very satisfying high-consistency deck, which wouldn't have worked nearly as well before Hemlock Vale and Cleaning Kit. Let me know your thoughts!
| 9 comments |
|---|
Apr 29, 2024 |
Apr 29, 2024...and maybe adding a copy of lone wolf instead of I'll take that...its less situational and drawing it early nets more resources to feed higher edutation... |
Apr 29, 2024
I found "I'll take that!" to not really be situational, as if you flubbed one test and only got a meagre over-success then there's always the next investigate action (and this deck has 30 icons to commit). It's also excellent in terms of opportunity cost, essentially allowing you to play an asset fast as well as at a discount (which amounts to receiving resources fast too). Comparing to Lone Wolf, you're essentially adding two actions into your play (one to play Lone Wolf, one to play Fingerprint Kit/Cleaning Kit/whatever) that you wouldn't be with "I'll take that!". This deck also needs cash up front more to get to bigger clue-finding faster than it does the steady drip-feed of resources (and Dr. Milan Christopher has you covered there as well). With resource cards, a big part of picking one is selecting those where the benefits are timely as opposed to those which have the potential to provide more cash overall. In terms of things I might consider including (other than Wolf Mask which I already covered), Fine Tuning could be a consideration for In the Thick of It of XP to get more uses out of the Fingerprint Kits in a turn. However even when thinking 4 player you could just run both of your Fingerprint Kits at once and get 8 clues (4 for an over-success on your first Kit, 3 from your second Kit, one as a basic test) so it still seems less necessary than Pathfinder. |
Apr 29, 2024I can see Your point. Still thinking about running only one copy of strange solution though, since all these tutor cards could be quite enough to fish it out, when needed and refuelling its charges...another idea is to make room for Kirby and buy Charisma for him (more soak and more tutoring, maybe replacing him with Genè at the very end) and other strong allies in the campaign. |
Apr 29, 2024Personally I'd always include two copies of key assets where possible. The more likely you are to hit on Strange Solution and Fingerprint Kit then the more often you can use No Stone Unturned on stuff like Pathfinder instead. On the side of getting Charisma for Jeremiah Kirby, Charisma is more costly with Down the Rabbit Hole so I wasn't keen - the odd Bizarre Diagnosis seemed to do the trick (particularly as you can kill the things which would damage you with Strange Solution). Obviously it's not too bad if you trigger Down the Rabbit Hole's penalty some of the time, however all the stuff here is so beneficial I didn't see a need. For excess XP, stuff like Studious is a reasonable pick for even more consistency (it does trigger the XP penalty, but by the end of a campaign you don't care). As with all things do make it your own though and these are just my opinions! For me this deck never missed over a Hemlock Vale campaign (paired to my previous Tony deck) so I'm biased ;-p |
Apr 29, 2024Thank You very much for your valuable feedback and opinion! I personally priorize (cheap) tutoring cards over a second copy of an expensive key asset, and this great deck has 2 Backpack2 and 2x No stone turned5 which covers all. I've never bought the second copy of the cyclopean hammer for my guardian decks either (untill the very end) for the same reason, with 2 perpared for the worst and 2 backpack2 I've always managed to fish out mine, and paying another 5xp for a dead card is way too expensive for me. So for this deck I' upgrade the first copies of the fingerprint kit, and the strange solution, then buy the 2 no stone unturned cards, then upgrade the another fingerprint kit and the strange solution (in this order), but thats just me...By the way I really appreciate your awesome decks and just cannot wait for Patrice... |
Apr 29, 2024I get what you're saying, that new functionality can sometimes be better than more copies, however another way of looking at it is those extra copies give you the best odds of getting your tech out - and even if that means you get it out a turn earlier than you otherwise would that's still pretty big (especially in lower player counts where more heavy lifting sits on your shoulders). I think part of what makes this deck good is that consistency element, it's very dependable! No plans for Patrice, next week will be my last for the series - I thought 12 decks with at least 2 per class was enough! |
Apr 30, 2024Agreed I try to fit as much new elements and functionality in my decks as I can (like trying to fit practice makes perfect fot the deductions) so I forgot that the first priority is to make the engine run smoothly. Sorry about Patrice I always wanted to play her though she seemed week, especially in two played games, never find a spot for her. Anyway thanks for all these powerful decks! |
May 01, 2024No problem, glad you like them! |
Another wonderful deck! The first idea come to mind when I saw it was changing Strange solution for I've got a plan...Its a much cheaper solution, even though its not rechargable, only a burst 4 dmg/card, but Rex ain't the main fighter anyway, and he doesn't need to outshine the dedicated guardian.