Mandy Thompson has Far Too Many Friends, No Seriously, Pleas

NOTE: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS. SPOILERS INCLUDING FFG STUFF.

Note: the Art Students are a placeholder for the new Ally we're getting in the starter decks. It's a 4 cost 2/2 with "if you have a relic/tome, get +1 int," when a location is revealed / added, exhaust to search top 6 for a relic / tome and put it into hand.

This is a 5 Ally Mandy build: Now that miskatonic archaeology funding is spoiled (4 xp permanant, +2 ally slots for Miskatonic allies, some other stuff that doesn't matter), we can start stacking allies like no tomorrow. This, naturally, means that we can start choosing "resolve an additional search target" with Calling in Favors and Flare, and that's when things start getting completely ridiculous.

First, let's consider allies:

Mr. "Rook": The bester of the best. Mandy makes the ability absolutely absurd.

That New Ally: Searching: I like! You're probably going to be searching 3 deeper because this build will only have 5 relics, but it's quite good at getting you cards and int.

Dr. Milan Christopher: The best of the best. Even post-taboo, he gets you a resource a turn and boosts your int for some nice Expert investigating.

Charles Ross, Esq: Still quite good. This build is made for 4p, so allowing your Guardian friend to ditch their economy and rely on you is quite useful. His ability is essentially always a resource a turn, since it persists across turns and stacks with itself.

Dr. Elli Horowitz: The mediocre. This is probably the worst ally in the deck, and one that I would happily evict if a better option came up.

Art Student: Absent. "discover one clue" is an extremely weak effect on a Seeker card that costs an action. Just investigate it! Additionally, the permanent prevents you from assigning more than one damage or horror at a time to university assets, so Art student can't tank very well.

Laboratory Assistant: Absent. "draw two cards" can be good for Minh or other search-lacking seekers, but Mandy is the queen of search. The expanded hand size doesn't matter much with the way you'll be playing and committing.

Research Librarian: Absent. I initially tried a build with Tomes, but Daisy has completely ruined tomes for literally every seeker other than her: comparing even the best to Pendant of the Queen and Ancient Stone is just embarrassing. Besides, the main draw to these tomes is Sleight of Hand, which we don't have access to because Survivor is much more fun with Allies.

Secondary Stuff: I feel that there are two ways to go with this deck. You can either grab Elli and 5-6 relics, or grab Laboratory Assistant and a few Tomes. Even though Lab Assistant is more powerful, I found that Tomes are too action intensive (very bad for a Seeker because they always have stuff to do) and way too balanced around Daisy's ability.

Regardless, Elli is pretty awful with fragments, so I'm limiting her to a one of. Ideally she'll get an ancient stone or something later.

Notable exclusions:

Chance encounter: This card seems great on the surface, but looking at the actual effects of allies I have, I'd prefer to have ways to get all of my allies up rather than get a fleeting couple of resources and a bit of tank. Only really good with Rook in this deck. I think it gets a LOT better in the tome version of the deck. I also really wish that Chance Encounter (II) was a thing Mandy could take, but alas.

Upgrades:

Your deck is almost completely dead in the water first scenario, so just investigate with Milan and commit all of your other investigators. You need to rush Archaeology Funding, probably followed by 1 charisma. Then go 2x Stone, 3x Pendant to get relics online, and from there you can spec relatively normally.