Joe Diamond: Insidious Truths.

In this deck, Joe Diamond draws cards to help him investigate, which in turn draws him even more cards. Eventually, he finishes off enemies with Insidious Truths and Vicious Blow.

Background

Some background on me: I am new to Arkham Horror. Looking for a new solo board game, I picked up Chapter 2, and I'm hooked. This deck can consistently beat the Brethren of Ash campaign on Expert difficulty.

While I'm new to this game, I grew up playing competitive Go and poker, so I'm not new to strategic games. Please give me some feedback, as the only campaign I've played is Brethren of Ash, so my ideas might not apply to the game as a whole.

Overview

This deck is built around Insidious Truths being the primary way to deal with large enemies. The rest of the deck is built around drawing cards to pitch to Insidious Truths, as well as providing some ways of getting additional to find clues.

Nearly half of the deck can end up in our hand, which allows us not only to find what we need, but also to deploy our resources as efficiently as possible.

Clue Finding

Joe Diamond and the two copies of Magnifying Glass allow us to investigate at 6 . This allows us to pass 1- and 2-shroud investigations pretty easily, but we'll struggle at higher-shroud locations.

Perception, Unexpected Courage, and Deduction can get us to 8 , which allows us to pass more difficult investigations and gives us some nice bonus actions.

Don't be afraid to pitch a Detective's Intuition to difficult tests, as I find that card to have relatively low impact when played as an event.

Working a Hunch can also be used to get a clue for a free action at a difficult location.

Fighting Enemies

Our primary way of dealing damage is the deck's namesake, Insidious Truths. This card seems to be utterly broken, offering us 4 and 2 damage for 2 resources and 1 action.

Compare that to Machete, which would require 3 resources and 3 actions to deal 2 damage, maybe, and only offers us 2 split across 2 tests, opening us up to bad chaos bag draws.

Insidious Truths and a Vicious Blow allow us to deal 5 damage in one combat and fight at 10 . Add an Overpower or Unexpected Courage, and Joe Diamond can fight at ridiculously high skill values, allowing us to play around most of the nasty chaos tokens.

However, this fighting is kind of all-in, and a poorly timed auto-fail token can be devastating. The odds are in our favor, though, as it's similar to getting two-outed in poker. It's not impossible, but if you play around that, you're going to be losing long-term anyway.

Drawing Cards and Gaining Resources

Now for the stuff that keeps the deck running smoothly and effectively in the first place.

Joe Diamond is great at getting cards into our hand, with his ability drawing us an extra card a turn if we can keep investigating.

Laboratory Assistant is crucial not only for drawing us cards, but also for letting us keep them in our hand. Pair them with a Charisma, and we can have 12 cards in our hand, which is crucial for letting us deploy our resources as optimally as possible.

Gather Intel gives us a free card for one resource. Establish Motive can be used to help out in important skill tests and give us some nice card selection. Even if it finds a Dead Ends, we are still card-neutral.

Unbridled Knowledge or Preposterous Sketches allow us to refill our hand if we ever find it empty.

For economy, we are relying on Emergency Cache and Bounty, as well as the resource we get at the end of each turn and any incidental resources we get from Elder Signs. It's not great, but our deck runs relatively low to the ground and, with some careful management, is usually enough to keep us afloat.

Notable Cards Missing or Included

Dorothy Simmons

The first card I want to mention that was not included is Dorothy Simmons.

Based on other decklists I've seen, people like to pair her with Joe Diamond. Personally, I think she is way too slow and costly.

For 3 resources, 1 action, and taking our ally slot, we get 1 , maybe a rebate or two, and a small way to manage health and sanity.

Compare that to Magnifying Glass, which is free in terms of actions and resources and gives us the same boost to investigating.

We usually want at least one Laboratory Assistant in play at all times, and ideally two. It just seems like Dorothy costs way too much for what she gives.

Endurance

I've also seen people running Endurance with Joe Diamond. This also feels way too slow.

For an action and 2 resources, you're given the ability be able to spend even more resources later. We pretty much never want to evade, and to fight, we have Overpower, Unexpected Courage, and Establish Motive, which allow us to boost our for free in terms of actions and resources while also drawing us cards.

Weapons

The next cards I want to mention that are not included are any weapons.

Maybe someone can help me understand why they are in the game, because they seem really, really bad. For a ton of resources and an action, we get the privilege of spending more actions in the future?

I can't see why we would ever use one when cards like Insidious Truths and Vicious Blow exist.

Resilience

Lastly, let's talk about Resilience.

Yes, this card is not great, probably bad even, but it's a necessary inclusion for keeping Joe Diamond alive.

This deck is horrible at dealing with the Mythos deck. In fact, we don't even try. We are just at the mercy of whatever is thrown at us, meaning we're going to end up taking a lot of damage and horror.

We can pass these onto our Laboratory Assistant when we can, but otherwise, we are pretty squishy and will die pretty quickly.

That's where Resilience comes in, allowing us to manage our health and sanity more effectively when we need to.

Sometimes, we can breeze through a scenario without ever playing one, but sometimes they are the difference between living and dying.

To me, they are like making shape in Go. We never want to make shape, right? We always want to try and play at the big points, but if we don't make shape, our opponent will simply kill our groups.

Same thing here.

As new cards come out, I expect to replace this with something more efficient.

Strategy

Now for some strategy.

Joe Diamond is great at investigating and fighting, but we're going to need the right tools.

Aggressively mulligan for Vicious Blow, Insidious Truths, and some ways to investigate: ideally Magnifying Glass or Perception, to get our engine online.

If we ever find ourselves without a copy of Vicious Blow or Insidious Truths, we want to spend our actions aggressively digging for one.

Luckily, the way the deck is set up, we are overwhelmingly likely to find one once we start looking.

In fact, a large part of this deck is set up to never not have what we are looking for.

With double Laboratory Assistant and Unbridled Knowledge, we are likely to know almost the entire order of our deck and manipulate it accordingly.

If we are close to dying, we can cycle Resilience and Emergency Cache for infinite health and sanity.

We can also use Insidious Truths, then use Unbridled Knowledge to immediately draw it back, so we are never missing a copy.

Basic Weaknesses

This deck can deal with most basic weaknesses pretty easily, except for Amnesia.

If you get Amnesia, it's probably GG.

In one of my four runs, it was my random basic weakness, and that has been the only campaign I lost.

Upgrades

For upgrades, I like to start with Charisma, letting me have both copies of Laboratory Assistant, and Vicious Blow for even better damage output.

Next, we want at least one copy of Unbridled Knowledge so we can combo effectively.

Lastly, I try to go for Studious, Magnifying Glass, and then Deduction, in that order, depending on how much experience I have available.