"I start the turn my playing Cryptic Research, drawing three cards. Next I'll use my additional tome action on Scroll of Prophecies, drawing three cards and discarding one. Then I'll play two copies of Knowledge is Power on the scroll, drawing three and discarding one each time, reshuffling my library. Then I'll play my second Cryptic Research. Then I'll play the first one again. Now for my first normal action..."

This is a big hand deck that uses some broken seeker cards to draw a silly amount of cards and then tries to turn those cards into clues and a win. It can fight some smaller enemies but is intended to stick close to a primary fighter. I've played it through TCU on expert and it felt very strong. This list represents how I'd build it now, but obviously it'd depend on what my teammates are doing. At 15 exp the core engine is complete, but there's plenty of room for whatever toys you want to add later.

I thoroughly enjoyed playing this deck, but it's mentally taxing since you make so many choices each turn, and your turns take much longer than normal decks which can be frustrating for your friends. This is the first deck where I've routinely avoided pursuing the optimal lines to keep the game fun for the party.

Big hand pros and cons

Big hand decks aim to keep an unusually large amount of cards in hand. This has a number of implications. The main upsides are:

• We can use big-hand payoff cards like [Extensive Research](/card/06198).
• We will usually have access to situational cards like [Deny Existence](/card/05032) and [Shortcut](/card/02022) when we need them.
• Since we draw from a smaller deck consisting of cards we've previously played we can control what we draw. Most importantly this means that during scenarios [Cryptic Research](/card/01043) and [Knowledge is Power](/card/05231) will make up significantly more of the cards we draw than the 12% you'd expect from the deck size.

Of course, it's not all upsides. The main drawbacks are:

• Comparatively slow setup. You want to play two low-impact assets to boost your hand size and draw a bunch of cards before you're ready to go. This pain is especially bad if you can't find your tomes after mulligan.
• Cards in hand are unspent resources. Holding them back to build hand size effectively means that you are delaying helping your team.

The engine

If you don't have a tome in your opening hand, mulligan everything except Cryptic Research and maybe a Laboratory Assistant.

Laboratory Assistant and Dream-Enhancing Serum boost our hand size.

We use our additional action on Scroll of Prophecies and Old Book of Lore to draw cards. Old Book of Lore can also give us some much needed help setting up our engine. The tomes let us rush through the deck at start of the scenario and achieve liftoff by playing Cryptic Research and Knowledge is Power many, many times.

Picking your payoffs

Once you are drawing a ton of cards, you can do basically whatever you want. This core finds guaranteed clues via Extensive Research, moves Daisy and teammates with Shortcut, defends itself with Deny Existence and so on.

What payoffs you pick will have to depend on what your team needs. Either covenant supported by Tempt Fate, and Favor of the Sun/Favor of the Moon/Fey gives you a lot of power on skill checks. Logical Reasoning can handle horror for the entire team. Occult Lexicon lets you take a significant part in enemy management. With Farsight it also becomes another card engine in its own right. Ward of Protection keeps everyone safe but requires some tool to handle horror. Deduction is solid if you just want to clue faster. Forbidden Tome gives Knowledge is Power another useful mode.

You can really do whatever you want, but generally I'd focus on cheap events, this deck is already slow to setup without adding more assets to it.