Carolyn's Top Student | Ch2 Combo Cult

Carolyn's Top Student

In this mini-series I'm delving deeper in the Ch2 card pool for interesting combos. Here Trish takes horror (gasp!) to find clues with Dreamer's Chronicle, which she readily recharges with Prestidigitation.

If you want to support my work, give it a like ❤︎ and a favorite ★ on here!

Series Decks

At a Glance

Stats
Clue-finding:	★★★★★+
Consistency:	★★★★★
Enemy Management:	★★★☆☆
Encounter Defense:	★★★☆☆
Survivability:	★★★★★
Simplicity:	★★★★☆

Overview

• Combos: Dreamer's Chronicle pairs to cards which heal two horror (upgraded Unflappable, Psychology Student and Psychoanalysis) netting you 4 clues for 3 actions. Unflappable and Psychoanalysis double as boosts for investigates, and Unflappable can be played in your free evade action. Psychology Student yields soak after their healing effect, providing a net benefit. Dreamer's Chronicle itself provides a +1 boost when you have a card committed, allowing you to often investigate at a 7 (there's 13 cards with two matching symbols) or an 8 with Magnifying Glass. Prestidigitation forms an additional combo where you can return an out of juice Chronicle to replay it again, making Trish currently the best Ch2 investigator at recharging this asset (especially with Literary Analysis).

• Complimentary Cards: Dreamer's Chronicle needs cards committed to its skill test, so strong card draw is a must. Lucky Cigarette Case is a perfect pairing due to high test values from using the Chronicle. Covert Ops and Perception also help to maintain card advantage. Upgraded Magnifying Glass pairs very nicely with Prestidigitation, giving you an asset you can pull back and then play fast and for no resources on your next turn (i.e. in cases where you don't yet need to pull back a depleted Chronicle). Mag Glass also shores up your for clue-finding without the Chronicle, with its inclusion being the reason I gave the deck a 5 ★ Consistency rating - you should always be able to find clues easily.

• Staples: Out the Door and Emergency Cache provide resources, while Olivier Bishop provides movement and a +1 boost (assisting your evades, which get you back to clue-finding faster). Deduction and Working a Hunch give even more clues, while Another Day, Another Dollar gives action-free money. Polished Cane can make short work of Black Chamber Operative, and generally I think it's a huge value-add for Rogue decks. In a single card it makes exhausting enemies even easier, while allowing for chip damage on bosses.

_{Thank you: 5argon and their thumbnail tool; Valentin1331 for his support over the years; the community creators of Arkham.Build (Felix), Arkham Cards (zzorba) and ArkhamDB (kamalisk) - linking their Patreons!}

Starting deck and planned progression

In terms of side deck, upgraded Silver Tongue is a possibility (dropping one Another Day, Another Dollar for the XP, and likely removing one Literary Analysis or Perception for the deck space). However, Unflappable already allows for a strong evade action, and Olivier plus committing one icon to a test is usually good enough for 3 evade value enemies on standard difficulty (and you can also bring out Polished Cane to exhaust enemies). Even on Hard difficulty, for me it's over-compensating and far too much of a resource drain when you want to be spending said resources to support clue compression (use the Cane more on Hard is my advice!).

0 XP starting deck is below (and link here):

A recommended order of purchases/upgrades is:

• Out the Door → Out the Door •

• 1 x Charisma

• Unflappable → Unflappable •

• 1 x Another Day, Another Dollar

• Deduction → Deduction ••

• 1 x Another Day, Another Dollar

• Magnifying Glass → Magnifying Glass •

Post-19 XP suggestions are:*

• 1 x Literary Analysis → The Red Clock

• 1 x Relic Hunter

_{* You can forgo the final Another Day, Another Dollar to make this a 29 XP deck.}

Playtesting Notes

I did a lot of tinkering with this deck before I started playtesting. Most notably, Thieves' Kit became Magnifying Glass - which really made the deck click. Magnifying Glass makes you stronger at basic investigates, reducing the reliance on Dreamer's Chronicle. It also means that you often investigate at an 8 with both it and the Chronicle in hand, making this deck appropriate for Hard difficulty.

I played this deck through two standalones: Fortune and Folly, and Traces to Nowhere. For the former, I'd only played it the once as part of TSK, so I thought it was high time to give it a refresh. I played on Standard, which still has a fairly challenging bag (down to -5, and with several harsh symbol tokens).

Fortune and Folly: For the first short half of the scenario (it's split down the middle between casing the casino and the heist itself - more or less two separate scenarios in some respects), we didn't get Dreamer's Chronicle into play. There's only 8 turns before Agenda advancement and we wanted to resign before that. However, as suspected, there is enough here even without Dreamer's Chronicle for you to still be a strong cluever - with Magnifying Glass putting a shift in with Deduction.

For the second half, we did get Dreamer's Chronicle - and it worked exactly as planned, giving huge tempo and getting 4 clues off locations in a couple of actions (with Literary Analysis recharging it). Psychology Student was the horror healing that presented itself (twice, no less) - neatly healing off the horror that was incurred from the Chronicle. If you feel like you have time to find clues (e.g. there's two clues on location, and you have two actions left, and nothing you want to spend a third action on) then you don't have to use Chronicle in these cases, but Fortune and Folly presented a couple of locations where you have to clear 4 clues before activating the location for a story effect - and this is where the tempo was really felt. We had Lucky Cigarette Case out at the same time, which benefited from easy over-success with the Chronicle.

Polished Cane worked as planned, bashing in Black Chamber Operative at a 7 test with Olivier. At the end of the scenario when you're racing to resign (and a lot of Aloof enemies switch to Hunters), you can 'teleport' at a certain location with unreliable results. This plus an enemy drawn during the encounter phase ensured that Trish ended up engaged with four enemies. Fortunately with her Cane, she killed a 1 health enemy, and then the rest had evade values of 2 and 3 - so Trish pulled off three evades and got out of there with Olivier to successfully resign. Overall the deck worked very well, and Another Day, Another Dollar was especially nice in front-loading the deck with the cash to play a lot of assets quickly.

Traces to Nowhere: We played two player on standard. It can be a tough scenario so two player on standard is still a difficult experience. I'll aim to keep spoilers minimal! Play time was 2 and a half hours (there's randomness in the scenario, and we got some of the worst possible randomness). However it does mean the deck was more thoroughly playtested! The eagle-eyed among you will notice this is the same paragraph I used for my Izzie and Daniela deck guides - that's because we had awful luck a second time around as well haha!

Trish was a great fit for Traces to Nowhere. In my opening hand I had Olivier, Magnifying Glass and Covert Ops, so I was off to a good start, and then I got Dreamer's Chronicle in turn 3. Over the standalone I spent 5 secrets from Chronicle taking 4 horror for double clues (Literary Analysis replenished Chronicle, so there was no need to use Prestidigitation in the finish). Working a Hunch also made an appearance - overall this deck was very rich throughout so having money to play it was no issue. I healed 8 horror over the scenario, using two Psychology Students and two upgraded Unflappable. Olivier was tremendously helpful, Traces is action-heavy so the move was really helpful (and his agility boost helped with evades).

Later in the scenario I played Polished Cane, using it to beat Black Chamber Operative to a pulp when he reared his ugly head. It also came in handy as a high skill value fight action against a certain recurring enemy. The exhausting effect of the Cane is super useful, especially vs. enemies which have a much higher evade than fight value (which came up). It also provided chip damage on the final boss, allowing the other investigator (Dexter) to secure a kill in a single turn which he wouldn't have been able to otherwise.

Our rather cursed luck meant we had to finish the scenario by killing a person we were meant to save (due to an enemy which adds doom spawning at an inaccessible location, cutting the game rather short). But I suppose it's better than no resolution at all (and this time we did earn the reward card)! Overall the deck worked perfectly - I was really pleased with how it handled and it's definitely a good match to some of the challenges posed in Traces to Nowhere.

Final thoughts

This deck plays like a Seeker with reasonable enemy management - which for me is the dream haha! I think if Trish had five sanity instead of six I would have never built this deck - it's weird how that slight difference would have completely changed my view of the risk. However, given she does have six, the risk is well worth it! Honestly, one of the biggest downsides to Trish is her middling sanity and low stat - so stacking a deck with horror healing, even if you're also using that horror as currency, makes sense. You can make informed decisions about how much to push your luck with taking horror, and if pushing your luck isn't part of the Rogue archetype then I don't know what is!