Card draw simulator
| Derived from |
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| None. Self-made deck here. |
| Inspiration for | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jenny Barnes elite cluever/evader feat Alice Luxley | 22 | 15 | 4 | 1.0 |
Alogon · 1118
Intro
Jenny Barnes and Finn Edwards, the main representatives of the Rogue-cluegatherer archetype, used to exploit Dr. Milan Christopher with Streetwise to achieve the cluegathering excellence normally reserved for seekers. The Taboocalypse targeted this cards and seemed to have nerfed the Rogue-cluegatherer strategy to oblivion. Nevertheless Math Newman, the designer of the game, in his infinite wisdom delivered us during the Circle Undone campaign the assets necessary to accelerate our economy and exploit big stacks of ressources in new interesting ways.
The goal of this deck is to stack as much ressources and skill boosts as possible and to profit from them in this manner:
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Drawing Thin and Another Day, Another Dollar offer us a new options to accelerate our economy or in other words, to get rich quickly and consistently.
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Well Connected and Money Talks allow us to profit from the big stacks of cash in new economical ways since you dont have to expend your cash to get the boosts.
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The accelarated economy and money hoarding strategy also brings back Dario El-Amin from the dusty last pages of the binder, since accumulating the 10 ressources for his skill boosts is a triviality now. His boosts stacked with St. Hubert's Key, Lola Santiago among others will make you very treachery resistent, slippery and of course a master of Lockpicks.
A few words on the 0 Xp version of the deck
This build has hard and expert diffulty in mind. For this reason it starts with a small testless clue gathering engine, namely Art Student, Calling in Favors and Working a Hunch, which you can upgrade or switch out (with Adaptable) after the firsts scenarios of the campaign. If you play on standard though, you can skip this step and begin right away with St. Hubert's Key, Track Shoes and some skill cards or more evasion cards instead of the testless-clue engine.
You may have also noticed that this build uses the replacement cards for Jenny, namely Green Man Medallion and Sacrificial Beast. I do so because this build focuses on cluegathering in th econtext of a multiplayer game. The traditional Jenny's Twin .45s won't help you much with this build and the XP discounts of the Green Man Medallion will allow us to do some naughty nonsense in the late campaign. I know that these replacements are difficult to come by but you can just proxy them or if you are lazy like me just pretend that the standard cards are the replacements :D.
Upgrade path
The upgrades are more or less ordered in priority order.
Basic enablers-permanents (3 XP)
Charon's Obol should help us get the core components of the deck ASAP. Adaptable allows us to adapt the deck as the campaign progresses. If you are scared to die, then run 1 copy of "I'm outta here!". If you are still scared of death then don't run Charon's...just kidding, a true Rogue ALWAYS runs Charon's Obol!
-2 XP Charon's Obol.
-1XP Adaptable.
Cluegathering (11 XP)
Nothing really new here. The same old good stuff we have since The Forgotten Age campaign. Try to get the Lockpicks after the first scenario.
-Think on Your Feet > 2 XP Lockpicks
-3XP Charisma
-Art Student > 6 XP Lola Santiago
-Calling in Favors > Free St. Hubert's Key (after Lola is in deck)
Ressource stacks core build (14 XP)
This upgrades will solidify the backbone of our economy and lead us to unmatched prosperity (vote for me for president :D). I love the new Another Day, Another Dollar, starting with 9 ressources per round accelerates your set up and increases tempo. If you have Lone Wolf and 1 copy of Drawing Thin in play you can be producing up to 5 ressources per round or 1 more stack for Well Connected per round! If you factor in the Hot Streaks and Emergency Caches...then the only true problem with this is that you will run out of ressource tokens very quickly and counting the big pile of tokens in front of you gets annoying. For this reasson I had to use some alternative tokens that counted as 5 ressources each as I playtested this!
-Investments > 4 XP Hot Streak(2)
-6 XP Another Day, Another Dollar
-Hot Streak(2) > 4 XP Hot Streak(4)
-Cunning > Free "Watch this!"
Consistency and support (4 XP)
Track Shoes are great to get free Drawing Thin triggers, increase your mobility and boost , that's why I strongly recommend them. High Roller is there in case you don't have Well Connected yet, it gives you a nice +2 boost, is more flexible than Intel Report and you don't really care that much about losing 3 ressources with this deck. If the Guardian of the team needs more ammo for his Big Bun support him with Contraband, this build might be fueled by greed but don't forget that sharing is caring.
-Working a Hunch > Free Track Shoes
-Intel Report > 4XP High Roller
-"You handle this one!" > Free Double or Nothing or Contraband
Luxus (1-19 XP)
Moxie and Streetwise can help you survive at the beginning of the scenario in case enemies are drawn early and the guardian is not ready to deal with them. I would only get Streetwise if I can get it heavily discounted thanks to Green Man Medallion and only use the costly boosts from this kind of talents in case of emergencies. My favorite expensive card to get is All In since this deck doesn't run any other sort of card draw, in expert it loses some of it's value but it will still get you 2-3 cards consistently. The Gold Pocket Watch is always good to have, as you may alredy know.
-Flashlight or Double or Nothing > 10XP All In
-8XP Streetwise or The Gold Pocket Watch
Jank but fun (9-13 XP)
Somehow less consistent than the other luxus upgrades I recommended but if stacking permanent skill boost is your thing and you don't care expending 10 XP on a card you probably will never see (Key of Ys) then who am I to tell you what to run or not?
-3 XP Relic Hunter
-Money Talks > 6 XP Hemispheric Map or 10 XP Key of Ys
Thanks for reading my guide. If you have any questions or suggestions feel free to comment! I may edit in later some more piloting tips and reasons why other cards didn't make the cut but for now this will do. This deck is ofcourse intended to be played paired with a guardian or guardianesque investigator!
| 7 comments |
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Sep 05, 2019 |
Sep 05, 2019Hey That creep is very annoying indeed, specially if you draw it early when you don't have your big stash of ressources yet. However how bad it actually is depends on many factors:
The Sacrificial Beast is a swingy weakness that can go from irrelevant (often) to devastating (in some rare circumstances). If that is too much risk for you, then running the standard cards also works fine. I use the Green Man Medallion more for fun and late game shenanigans than for consistency. |
Dec 08, 2019This looks a lot like my latest Jenny Barnes deck (unfinished). I have Art Student as a placeholder until I get Lola Santiago but I am dusting off Alice Luxley in the hopes that I can create Jenny the Evader and then chip in a free point of damage after getting a clue. Or in theory I should be able to Investigate or otherwise get a clue (and Alice does a point of damage) taking an attack of opportunity which I cancel with Narrow Escape. I haven't been able to get that card to really work but I think the Alice/NE combo could work. |
Dec 09, 2019Hey I recommend using the small testless clue gathering engine, namely Art Student, Calling in Favors and Working a Hunch only if playing in Hard or Expert difficulty. In standrad I prefer to start right away with St. Hubert's Key, Track Shoes and some skill cards or more evasion cards instead of the testless-clue engine. I didn't consider Alice Luxley for this deck because it is a full cluever multiplayer build. Usually I don't put any damage in my cluever builds because I fully delegate enemy management to the dedicated damage dealer and/or dedicated evader of the team. For this reasons I would only consider Alice Luxley if playing SOLO or if playing with a suboptimal team. Besides in my experience triggering Alice Luxley's ability tends to be difficult and very situational, which means here damage output is more often than not insignificant. For this reasons I would rather play Taboo Dr. Milan Christopher rather than Alice Luxley before I get Lola Santiago. P.D. : A couple of months after I published this deck Drawing Thin was nerfed :C. Since it now costs 6 XP to get a set of Drawing Thin you can't have it at the start of the campaign. For this reason the 0 XP version of this deck may have to be significantly changed. I will update this deck sometime in the future. If you don't play Taboo then ignore this post and always play Dr. Milan Christopher :D |
Dec 10, 2019I am definitely doing Hard difficulty with this and starting out with the Calling in Favors and Art Student combo. That is a touch of genius that I am copying. I think Alice Luxley is perfect for this Jenny Barnes deck. Dr. Milan Christopher is also great for this deck but Jenny can fully utilize Alice Luxley unlike pretty much no other investigator (except Skids for the same reasons). I play two handed solo but always make the cluegetter somewhat self sufficient for enemy management in case they get split up. And chipping in a point of testless damage saves ammo. Jenny's combo of evasion (with Suggestion(1) and actionless/testless clue gathering (Working a Hunch and Lola Santiago) in addition to Narrow Escape make it much easier to activate Alice Luxley than anyone else that can take her. Or at least in theory. Perhaps I also really want to make Alice Luxley work since she is almost unusable by every other investigator. I am not really seeing the benefit of Drawing Thin with this deck even if it wasn't taboo'd. There aren't many tests (except with the Lockpicks upgrade) that I see Jenny wanting to increase the difficulty. And even then it is going to take a few scenarios to get both Dario El-Amin and Lola Santiago or Well Connected in play together that you are killing tests by enough to want to +2 to the difficulty on Hard/Expert. Perhaps I am just too risk averse. |
Dec 10, 2019Hey I agree with what you said about Alice Luxley, maybe she can pull her weight at the beginning of the campaign thanks to the independent and slippery nature of rougues like Jenny. I will never keep her after I get Lola Santiago though because I think Dario El-Amin is better (and more thematic) than Alice Luxley in a ressource-stacking build like this. In regard to Drawing Thin I wrote a review about that card before the nerf and before I made this deck. I said something between this lines: "In conclusion I will say that this card [Drawing Thin] can be awesome in certain circumstances but at least for me it fails to make a big impact more often than not. Using Drawing thin effectively requires good deckbuilding skills and some insight in game tempo and action economy." I was arguing that yes the card is strong but it's not so OP that it has to be nerfed like many people were saying. After using Drawing Thin with this build though, I started to change my mind regarding the power of the card. Yes, you won't be able to trigger it every turn...yes, it's impact decreases exponentially the later you draw it...yes, you have to think wisely and be prudent before you activate it due to the possible price of failure (bs tokens). Nevertheless there will be plenty of opportunities to trigger it, no matter the difficulty and especially in this build. I play tested on expert return to Dunwich and here are some examples of free triggers:
So as you see there are plenty of opportunities to trigger Drawing Thin and it snowballs so well with Well Connected. The more money/skill boost you have, the more opportunities you have to trigger Drawing Thin and the more times you trigger Drawing Thin the more money=skill boost you will get... a vicious circle of endless economical growth and an endless accomulation of capital/skill boosts XD |
Dec 16, 2019I think you are missing a little on just how nice it is to get untested actionless damage in with Alice Luxley and how easy it is to trigger with Suggestion(1) and Lola Santiago (and other combos like Narrow Escape and Cheap Shot and Working a Hunch). I am not sure that there is another investigator (besides Skids - same combos) that can trigger Alice as easily. Alice Luxley and Suggestion were definitely the MVP's of Scenario 7 and 8 of my Carcosa campaign. Alice Luxley was unfortunately not even drawn or drawn in the last 2-3 rounds of 5 scenarios though. That was disappointing but that is how the draw deck works sometimes. Both Lola Santiago cards were in the last 5 cards. My deck definitely doesn't have the same income potential as yours but I could trigger Lola for a clue most rounds when she was out. i hadn't considered the encounter tests for Drawing Thin. That definitely makes it a lot easier to trigger. That really makes it work although spending 6XP now that it is taboo to get it is probably unnecessary. |
I think that playing this deck with the replacement cards is very risky. Sacrificial Beast can totally shut you down and your fighter can't possibly run at the other side of the map to take care of it without some running talents like Pathfinder or Track Shoes.