For a thematic breakdown of the deck and a little insight into the design process, as well as a list of other ideas to use the Dual/Bestow combo with, check out the companion article here: https://strengthinnumbersarkham.wordpress.com/2023/01/13/character-concept-enhance-ability/

The Combo

Hey everyone! We're back with more weird and wacky thematic combos, and I'm really excited for today's concept!

This particular deck started with me wanting to build a Bestow Resolve deck. But in typical me fashion, the idea of running out of charges on Bestow–ever–was distasteful. So I started looking for a character who could indefinitely recharge the Ritual and promptly returned to my favorite Mystic, Akachi.

But as I was trying to figure out what Mystic skills were good enough to run alongside the neutral suite, I stumbled across Occult Theory–and had a sudden moment of inspiration.

The Dual Skills (Occult Theory, Defensive Stance, Survey the Area, and Dauntless Spirit) are already famous for not working with basically any skill synergies, and as a result being...pretty not great.

But when you commit them using Bestow Resolve, all their icons suddenly become wilds, meaning instead of adding (for example) your Will to Intellect tests or your Intellect to Will tests, Occult Theory adds BOTH your Will AND your Intellect to any test at all. Including ally tests up to a full location away.

Now, huge stat values are fun, but on their own they probably won't win you the game, especially at 4p (where I usually play). You need compression, oversuccess, or both for that. And as it happens, Akachi has access to the best oversuccess-based clue compression card in the game, a card I have wanted to play in her for AGES and never been able to figure out how to get her stats high enough.

Enter Guiding Stones, one of my favorite cards, period, and it looks like we have a deck.

The Deck

In a bit of an unusual choice for me, this deck was originally conceived of as a support deck, and that is still true. Its primary goal is to use Astronomical Atlas and Bestow Resolve to rapidly burn through a wide suite of skills, most of which (being the neutral skill suite) cantrip (and cantrip twice if hit with Atlas.

These can be committed to yourself to pass single-shot tests, or (more frequently) to your allies to maximize whatever cool stuff they're doing. Independent of the stat-support plan, your Intellect should be high enough thanks to Living Ink and St. Hubert's Key to investigate normally, and high basic-test passing power makes anyone into a strong evader, so Akachi can backup either your cluever or enemy management as needed.

Of course, twice per deck cycle she can do a little bit more than just back up your cluever, as by committing Occult Theory to a Guiding Stones investigation, she can get around 7 to 18 icons, thus EASILY clearing an 8-clue location in a single action.

The rest of the deck is pretty simple. Enraptured and your all-powerful signature Spirit-Speaker keep your various spells recharged as needed. Markings of Isis mitigates both the ridiculous cost and the action burn of setting up your spread and then replaying the assets you've bounced with Spirit-Speaker. Parallel Fates and Scrying keep you from accidentally attaching The Hierophant • V or Occult Theory to Astronomical Atlas–if you do, you can't get it off except by discarding the Atlas, and that would really suck. And Grounded lets Akachi mind-over-matter any damage or horror that would come her way, while further increasing her Glyphs performance. Plus, they're double wilds for the Atlas!

Variants

There are a lot of directions you could take this deck, as with most of the ones I build. I'm a big fan of customization. For example...

• If you're not partial to the Dual Bestow combo, you could switch to a much more classic skill setup and grab Desperate Search and maybe other Desperate skills, which are all a curse-free Promise of Power thanks to Bestow. St. Hubert's Key was actually originally included because I thought I'd be going Desperate here, but it ended up working just as well with Occult Theory so I kept it in.

• If support flex isn't your style, you can add in combat like Shrivelling to slaughter enemies, or improved evasion like Suggestion or Blur to keep them under control.

• If support flex isn't your style and neither is enemy management, then you can consolidate your Glyphs and add Word of Command to focus especially hard on the huge surges of clues that Guiding Stones provides. You will need more resource generation to help afford your spread, but the result will be very worth it.

• If you'd rather save Bestow for the right moment rather than spamming it like a lunatic and cycling your deck, the Atlases can probably be sacrificed in favor of Sign Magick for extra actions or True Magick to save on setup costs.

• More variations, such as leaning into Akachi's dibia abilities or building entirely different decks around the Dual Bestow combo, can be found at the link above!

Conclusion

That's all for today! I'm excited to look for more permutations of this combo–and if we're lucky, maybe we'll get a damage-based equivalent to Guiding Stones, and I can build a deck to one-shot bosses like in the good old days of Double or Nothing/Sawed-Off!

I hope you enjoyed this write-up. I love coming back to Akachi and finding new ways she can make charge cards shine!