You're secretly a Mandy main. You resulted in Whinging-It being a thing so that you can keep Mandy relevant in everyone's minds who you secretly wanted to hype all this time. You say you hate how broken Mandy is, yet you jump to the opportunity to 'demonstrate' her for everyone to see.

Does it ever get tiring trying to start this conversation everyday?

banthebook?

@josephmeleca Cuherdir gets some enjoyment out of exploiting the game to its fullest. That also happens to coincide with showcasing the the bonkers things Seekers can do. Every community has someone like Cuherdir, and I think he's being a good sport about it and not just showing off.

It's also pretty unfair to pin Whinging-It on Cuherdir alone, or to insinuate that Whinging-It is necessarily a bad thing. In fact, Whinging-It was created specifically to accommodate people who don't want to constantly hear about how Seekers are apparently broken; if that description fits you, then you are free not to comment, mute whinging it, and otherwise ignore it.

There's a massive disconnect between "showcasing" Mandy's strengths and then spamming those custom card memes about Mandy at the end of the deck guide. Its very "Look at how good my build it, but if you attempt the build, you just like to play the game ez-mode like a scrub."

I think that's why @josephmeleca is so annoyed. Its the fact that those memes strike up such strong resentment towards the cyclical whining about Mandy/Seekers that was supposed to be hidden away in Whinging-It, yet are being blasted in deck guides on arkhamdb. Cut the custom memes, keep your personal Seeker-shaming opinions to private discord channels, and people will be less upset.

@josephmeleca Nah, I'm good. I have the stamina, don't worry :D

@gowonnie I don't think posting a deck once is spamming anything.

I've got the question so many times, it's literally the name of the deck. And I think it conveys the gist of the description well enough so you shouldn't be blindsided. I don't want to brag and I don't think it's imposing or berating. The humour obviously is either shared and liked or not your type, but I wouldn't want to cut it completely just because of that ;)

Ah, and I should've looked at the front page, I absolutely didn't realize it's the third Necronomicon deck on there right now, I just spontaniously posted it after another repeat of the question. The video itself is over 2,5 months old.

"you should keep this deck in #whinging-it" is exactly as dumb of a take as "you should keep this deck in #deck-tech"

The channel divisions set up on Discord servers only apply to those specific discord servers, that seems like a pretty basic "how do websites work 101" rule.

@EktheleonNobody said to keep the deck to himself or to keep in #whinging-it. Don't be a Seeker shamer who plays Seekers.

The more you post the longer this stays on the front page!

@Cuherdir LOL it is the 3rd Necro Seeker build on the front page xD but that's really my fault for putting 2 up around the same time. Minh Scavenging Necronomicon was too busted... so I wanted to tone it down with a Daisy one that was recently and tried to keep the reuse of Necro a little more finite and thematic.

I really really shouldn't add another unneeded opinion regarding the whole comment section debacle, but I did feel like a lot of us people who liked seekers were afraid to speak up on the Mythosbusters discord because a vocal few liked to denounce various things regarding certain cards/abilities the class had access to. It was really nice that they created a separate channel so that not everyone had to partake in that discussion.

However, the hate comments are really uncalled for. While I can understand where they were coming from, with older members posting the custom cards (they really shut down any seeker appreciation), don't be rude to other people sharing decks @josephmeleca.

@chirubime I mean to be fair, it's the single most impactful card of the whole bunch of 168 new cards we got! (read impactful as you want. Could read broken, overpowered, problematic etc)

It's absolutely unsurprising people post decks centered around it. And your decks look pretty neat.

In before lock.

What follows is my personal opinion

Ok, I kept hearing about this legendary deck in the MB Discord and now that I know it's a 45 xp deck that uses pretty much all your deck space on slamming all the fast/free draw tech in Seeker in the same deck at the same time, with DoN/Three Aces and cycling KIP/Necro, I'm not as impressed as I imagined I would be. Obviously, if you put all the fast/free draw tech in at the same time you will draw through your whole deck - the way it was described, I thought it was more than that. For the kind of play experiences that I enjoy, this just doesn't sound super fun to me. And, based on the way previous conversations had gone, I thought that this sort of deck tech could still be reconciled with the kind of play experiences I would want to be having. The reason I thought that is because this deck keeps getting compared to other ideas or points brought up people in a way that eclipses those ideas, and the fact they get compared makes me presume they must also exist in the same lane. And, I don't think this level of card pool exploitation where you trivialize a lot of the difficulty of the game exists in the same lane as these other decks/card interactions I alluded to earlier.

I know people enjoy pushing the boundaries of things, but this level of deck interaction definitely reads as being game-breaking on purpose and that verges into un-fun territory for me. I know in the olden times there was that Infinite Jenny deck, and that sounded un-fun to me too (as I understand the engine of that deck was also promptly Taboo'd). Again, what has bothered me is that when other investigators, including other Seekers are brought up, this type of deck gets brought up as something to overshadow those other investigators' strengths. Like saying "Harvey can use this or that to draw 3 or 4 cards", and then to get a response like "well, Mandy can draw her entire deck in comparison", was always a non-starter for me and even moreso now that I know what this deck actually is.

Anyway, I think it's cool that you did this and I'm glad I have actually seen what it is. It's just not the kind of deck I would enjoy playing personally. Thank you for sharing, Cuherdir. (This is Bryan by the way, in case you don't know my ArkhamDB name.)

The more you post the longer this stays on the front page!

I'm helping!

this level of deck interaction definitely reads as being game-breaking on purpose

No worries, it 100% is. @Soloclue

This is the 45 xp version of cramming all the things into one deck disregarding any consideration about wanting to take a balanced approach to the game, it literally crams in several different broken engines into the same deck. The 9 xp version can easily get to "draw 22+" as well, this is pretty much the worst case in the 45 xp version. One 9 xp version that also is a solo deck is the beginning of the playthrough that ended with this monstrosity if you want to see that on video.

Obviously that's something many wouldn't enjoy playing and that's no problem at all.

And btw, not only is Jenny infinity still viable, any rogue can theoretically go infinite and even this deck probably can, probably not to true infinity. I'm just not interested in mapping it out as indeed I dislike playing infinite degeneracy myself as well. I happily play something like this once in a while to get to the limits of the game, but at least you're still playing, not saying "setup done, I win".

Oh and lastly: Heya Bryan, keep the memes going! Or make an article about any of your frustrations :D

Aaand I just realized I should've added Mag Glasses (1) to this deck for infinite Necronomicon Sleighting within the same turn...

It's kind of impressive, how much gravy is on this train. A lot of that 45XP isn't really necessary to get this deck out of the station.

Also... any objections to #banthebook?

"Ban the Book & Nerf Rook" sounds like a good slogan :)

"Ban the Book and nerf the Rook" has a better ring to it. It's missing like 10 other cards though :P

How is Hallowed Mirror in the deck with Rogue as secondary class? Also, is there a 0 xp version of the deck?

@Kristian 1) Versatile 2) not of this one, I started with this 9 XP deck due to the rules I was playing alongside with

I wouldn’t consider this a good deck in multiplayer. I’m sure, if you’re playing with real people, they want to also do their turn someday.

But seriously,
I agree with @Soloclue, that this definitely isn’t a playstyle everyone enjoys, maybe because its also very complicated, and not at all casual. And at this point I’m happy that this game is cooperative, and not competitive. Because this in competitive ... I don’t want to think about it.
In the history of this game there has surely been a few decks that can definitely be considered OP. Decks like: Keys of Ys Yorick, Skeiths Infinte Jenny deck, and the straightforward Higher Ed Rex Milan. And like all of these, I think MJ will literally whack it with Taboo (like he did with Skeiths deck, through nerfing QT, Donut and Streetwise and every part of the Rex combo).
This deck also has a few weaknesses that just completely kill it. Things like Doomed, Sell Your Soul and Through the Gates (@Cuherdir will fight me on every of those, but they’ll sure cause more brain wrinkling then the normal play of this deck).

I’m sure the 50-Card option is also a possibility, if you’re looking for a more casual approach to this deck.

Infinite Jenny is as viable as ever

And no, I'm not fighting you, I just forgot to mention Doomed and Through the gates in the description. Sell your soul can be another headache, but it's possible to be built around, just really annoyingly so and if you screw up even once...

Yeah, all the weaknesses I hate :P To be clear, I do hate those in non-degenerate decks, I dislike massively swingy weaknesses and non-interactive ones

@Lord Triloth infinite jenny if anything has got better thanks to the new investigator decks, and Wini is just as capable of doing it thanks to Versatile.

New toys:

Pilfer

Manual dex 2

Will to survive 0

Nimble

I'll give you that on Jenny. I quess it just costs more xp now to get the combo running. I haven't looked into her in a while.

I'm still a bit sceptic on Sell Your Soul, though. With the asterix that I haven't played it yet, I think that Sell your Soul can still be very dangerous, if you cycle your deck (how often per scenario is it, I stopped counting while watching) often. Allot of scenarios have encounter cards/game effects that can suddenly discard your hand. This not mentioning also having Paranoia in your deck. You have Forewarned, ok, but I think this game can always find a way to suck up your resources.

Thinking more about Forewarned though, I quess this will handle most non-weakness treacheries. So the only real possiblity to harm it effectively is some wierd Weakness combos, that only appears if you become really unlucky.

Another option is a annoying card from Shocking Discovery, when Forewarned is already used for this turn, but then you'd need to still draw into Sell Your Soul.

I have a similar Mandy deck that is tooled up for multiplayer that is running through Carcosa at the moment. She is so monstrously overpowered that the group have started calling her the Queen in Yellow, though she isn't doing any nonsense with the book.

We just finished the pallid mask she lost all her resources multiple times in a row thanks to treacheries, every time she was back to double digits resources by the end of the round.

@Cuherdir Thanks for your reply. I'm glad we had this interaction because I feel like I understand your comments much better, now that I have more context for them.

Happy to help and to answer questions :D

Hi I havent played for a few years, but I have a question. How is it that we can now post 3 copies of cards ? I cant find reference to any rule. What allows you to run three copies ? Thanks in advance.

@Ark1 it's the new "Myriad" keyword, those cards can be used thrice in a deck.

@Cuherdir i just realized since you're running 2 Sleight of Hand, i wonder if you should find a slot for a Backpack(2). Cuz then you can Sleight of hand down the backpack, search for all 3 segments of onyx within 12-15 cards as Mandy. play the segments out and return the Backpack to your hand. Your first Sleight of Hand of course goes to the Necronomicon

Wait! You can Sleight non-handslot Items?
Oh, it’s the Taboo that specifies Items that take up “less then two handslots”
I never noticed that.

a2cuherdir Thank you for the reply

Got no time for haters 모두 다 집어치워 버려

Stan Everglow

Just don't look behind curtains

I'm going to try this for TCU Ironman now.

So you don't like your teammates then? :P

You're a good son.

I have the feeling that we have a few more `@Cuherdir’s here then there should be.
A bit like in TDE with all those cats, Randolphs and Crawling Chaoses

A friend built a deck that was similar to this but it didn't bother with Versatile, and it was before the starter decks so no Necro/upgraded Perceptions.

Instead of taking multiple actions in a single turn and trying to Three Aces every one of them, it just used Decipher Reality or Guiding Stones to discover an obscene amount of clues at once, and handle the clue gathering duties of an entire 4 player group alone.

We completely farmed Return to TFA on Hard as a result of it.

Since you have already added Versatile to your deck, have you thought about using Premonition to avoid putting all your eggs in one basket and pulling the Auto Fail?

It's not necessary when you have 3 aces. Besides, most of the important broken stuff is testless.

If anything, it'd be either Pnakotic or Will to Survive. You Brute force through the autofail because the Donut strategy already is only one of your eggs in addition to all the free triggered or fast testless draw you're fielding.

The more interesting addition would be Magnifying Glass (2) to kick the Necronomicon into your discard pile and re-sleight it as much as you want on your turn or take YOMO (and likely Charisma) to get someone else's Joey (3) and profit of the book. Or include something like Inspiring Presence if you really want that other Versatile and keep Mirror like this version. That let's you re-use Rook easier during your turn

I'm Cuherdir and so's my wife!

I'm Makima on the MB discord and I just wanted to bump this deck up (yet again) due to how hilarious it is.

Fun deck! A couple of questions:

• Why shrewd Analysis and Relic Hunter?
• I am trying to make it work at 30 cards (without versatile): do you think it could combo reliably with only one double or nothing, sleight of hand and quick thinking? I don't mind if it's not as game-breaking.
• Do you think Abigail (with Charisma of course) could work ? She's a free use of the Necronomicon and maybe some soak. Also comboes with Knowledge is power I believe.

Relic hunter is so you can equip pendant of the queen and hallowed mirror.

Versatile is definitely worth it. Once your draw density gets high enough you don't notice the extra 5 cards and you don't bother including it until you need it.

Abigail is not worth it. She doesn't bypass fast action costs.

Buy I have no idea why shrewd analysis.

Ah the pendant of course, thanks :)

Good catch on Abigail, that's too bad...

One last thing: OP says you can use 3 aces or the pendant + quick thinking + double or nothing to get 2 actions back. I though that was not possible since "automatically succredding" prevents the triggering of the "success by 2" mechanic?

I quess Shrewd is only there, because it can be. It alwyas looks good to have more things in the permanent section.

Automatic Success, means you succeed “as if” the test difficulty is zero. So if your skil value is at least 2, you trigger Quicky Thinkings.

Three aces doesn't subvert succeed by 2. There is a difference between doing something without a test, and automatically succeeding a test. The former doesn't allow any skill commits or calculate a check outcome. The latter allows skill commits, generates a check outcome and critically sets the difficulty of the test to zero. This is particularly relevant if you are doing three aces nonsense with archaic glyphs: guiding stones. It let me, for example, use knowledge is power + three aces + higher education to pick up 9 clues without taking an action or drawing a token.

Thanks, I was confused because an "auto-evade" for example is not considered a success as there is no skill test... But an auto-success is :)

@Oriflam sooo just to clarify it as well:

• Shrewd analasys is free, I just include it anywhere I can without wasting offclass slots. In this deck no, it does nothing for you.
• indeed, Abigail does absolutely nothing for you apart from holding your book without the handslot
• yes, it works without Versatile, I just wouldn't cut on Sleight unless you play it at least once per turn reliably anyways. But as you say you don't mind it not being as game-breaking: yes, of course it works beautifully anyways, it's a deck with several different degenerate combos, you can cut some slack and it'll still outperform normal decks easily. Tbf, I wouldn't bring something like this to multiplayer myself unless bringing op crazyness is our goal.

When you automatically succeed at a test, the test difficulty is considered 0. This means that you succeed by an amount equal to your modified skill value.

For example: I'm playing as Sefina who has combat 2. I use the Sawed-Off Shotgun (previewed here, it's a weapon with no combat boost), commit three copies of Three Aces and a copy of Quick Thinking (each of these skills has a single Wild icon).

Because I do not reveal a chaos token and automatically succeed, I count up my skill value (2 + 4 = 6, in this instance) and compare to the difficulty of 0. So I succeed by 6.

This deck just got absolutely destroyed by the new taboo list update.

Yeah, and I love it.

I only count +20 XP though, +14 if you count Donut as being 3 cheaper :P

(that and a direct hit to 2 combos in the deck that just don't work anymore + Quick Thinking only once per round. It's glorious)

I think the challenge with the new taboo is the campaign aspect.

The first 8 xp will probably go to Rook, which is probably the first two-three scenarios. Scenarios that you need to win without Pendant, Necronomicon and all the other good stuff. And in my experience you struggle to win and gain loads of xp in scenarios without Rook.

I think you should feel proud that your deck was the main target of the new Taboo list.

Tbf, 8 XP more often than not should be 1-2 scenarios but I get what you're saying.

I think all the taboo entries are well deserved so I really like the list. I do think some other cards like Cryptic Writings (2), Crack the Case, Perception (2), Practice Makes Perfect, Astounding Revelation or Dream Diary upgrades could still use some +1 XP chaining to bring them in line with non-Seeker counterparts but the worst offenders got hit so that's good. And damage stones got spared.

Not if you're playing Dunwich lol

You can get some XP in the first two, it's just already less than in other campaigns on average and it only gets worse. Idk, play mystic Mandy and Delve?

Yes. It's just beautiful how almost every target of the new list targets something in your deck. You created a monster I guess lol.

And I agree, it's very nice that now we all have to play Mandy completely different.

You know this is an illegal deck right? You can't have Rogue and Guarding cards at the same time in this deck. You can choose only 1 of the 3.

Mandy doesn't even have access to the guardian off-class.

It's Versatile that let's you have an additional card from any class. Her off-class in this deck is Rouge. Saddly it's legal, even though the newest Taboo-List completely broke it's knees.

I for one prefer @Telon84s explanation, I was woefully unaware, thanks for noticing :D

(Triloth already gave the serious answer)

I'd like to say that many of these decks still abuse The Necronomicon. While you can no longer sleight the book into play, it's still a banned card for me.

Honestly, I'd even go a step further and ban all the new investigator decks altogether. There's too many cards that work as a drop-in, 0-thought replacements for existing cards. Did we really need the ability to add 4x Shrivelling into a mystic deck with Azure Flame? DId we really need Perception 2, a card that requires 0 setup to be abused by draw-focused seekers? Did we really need a rite of seeking card without any drawbacks? That's just too much power creep.

These kinds of decks also raise a problem that taboo-list doesn't resolve. There's a number of cards that are broken in decks that look to break the game, but just good in merely good decks. Dream-Enhancing Serum is a prime example. If this card is to be nerfed heavily, you'll no longer be able to include it in decks that just have good card draw, you need to have broken card draw.

Though it might be that I'm bitter since Knowledge is Power is on the taboo-list just because The Necronomicon exists.

Hot take: allowing mystics to have consistency is Good Actually, Clairvoyance does have a drawback, and Knowledge is Power is restricted because of Knowledge is Power, not because of any other specific spell/tome.

Put Clairvoyance next to Rite of Seeking and tell me with a straight face that Clairvoyance has a drawback.

Yeah, absolutely it has a drawback. Arguably more of one than Rite, since you can pretty easily just build your turn to never lose actions even if you draw the tokens, but you can't dodge Clairvoyance in the same way.

It's worth adding that horror is a finite resource. Plenty of investigators lack the health to pack azure flame, so need to rely on shriv, and you really don't want to double up on shrivelling and clairvoyance, particularly if you run arcane research, like 90% of mystics do. The new mystic stuff enabled mystics to be more consistent, which is really good. It lets you be either a fighter or a cluever or somewhere in between, which is a great development.

I don't really get your main problem, the cards you mention above either let you diversify your decks so they aren't all the same or let you improve on existing cards in incremental ways. Very few of the cards in the starter decks are flat out broken.

@Ektheleonagree to disagree then. I'd personally replace Rite of Seeking in most of my decks with Clairvoyance. The freedom of being able to investigate not just on your final action is big. Not to mention the backslash from Clairvoyance doesn't trigger nearly as often as Rite's.

@DAAAN my issue is with cards that are so close to existing cards, that they don't really bring anything new to deckbuilding, they just make your decks stronger.

The great majority of cards from last 2 cycles introduce cards that are strong in the right deck, but very few of them work as a drop-in replacement on their own. That diversifies deckbuilding. Many of the starter deck cards just make your existing decks objectively stronger. To me, there's no choice between Clairvoyance and Rite of Seeking. Clairvoyance is better in 99% of the cases.

I think you may have missed the point with the starter decks. If we focus on the mystic cards you object to, Shrivelling is in the core set, of which you need two copies, something that new players are resistant to. Rite of seeking is in Dunwich (base, return to, U&U). Mists of R'lyeh is in TFA (base, return to, Yoth). That's 6 expansions + 2 core sets to get a full set of mystic spells. Or one starter deck.

Stop looking at these products as if they were marketed to you. They weren't, the primary target was people who are starting the game as this helps them to build functional decks without being obliged to buy often out of stock expansions.

I kinda agree with @flamebreak that most of the starter deck cards are quite high tier and don’t really introduce any new deck concepts and archetypes, but that is exactly the idea of those decks. Introducing new players to the ‘main’ archetypes of the game plus giving new cards for veteran players. And you can’t just give a new player a bad deck can you, if it’s a potential buyer?

I also agree that some of the new cards have become auto-includes, because all of them are pretty lean cards and lean usually means good in this game. But just because a card is better then another card, doesn’t mean the better card should be taboo’ed. Who would play Storm of Spirits, after Spectral Razor was released? Who would play Lightning Gun, after Flamethrower? That’s no reason to nerf cards those cards imo. There’s also someone who would rather play the ‘badder’ card for some reason. Mary likes the Lightning Gun, because of it’s plus five. Storm of Spirits can really give you value in TDE. Even in your example, a Empty Vessel deck would always playe ROS instead of Clairvoyance. In a game were every deck can only have 30 cards and new cards release on a monthly basis, some cards will often replace others, just because they are more broadly applicable .

Want I want to say is that every card has its niche or could get one. The starter decks brought allot of new and powerful cards to the game, but I think only Necro really deserved the nerf. In my opinion it should have been exeptional to begin with.