Blursed Frat Bro "Cold Narly" Trips Through Life

Lore:

After a messed up childhood tug-of-war between his harsh religious upbringing and his frequent encounters with the horrifically supernatural, Kohaku left Tokyo to study abroad in Arkham. He embraced the teachings of his new frosh friends and set out on a mission to forget the nightmarish sights of his past by getting royally fucked up on any and all manner of psychotropics, psychedelics, pills and liquids: if you can name it, odds are 'Cold Narly' (as his compatriots started calling him) has done it, and done it hardcore. Naturally this lead to pursuit of an anthro major to allow for maximum frattitude with the local collegiate cults. Now he wanders, adrift in a world of acid flashbacks and staring into space. What is real? What is the meaning of reality? Will he have to donate blood again to get lunch money? Cold Narly seeks these answers and the path to them through any occult nicknack or drug that can make the curtain of reality draw back slightly. Hearing of strange or unnatural occurrences draws him like a moth to free-base vapor. He slaps his knees and groans upright with a 'whelllpp' before putting on his trusty old book-bag from university and walking out the door on his latest adventure...

Overview:

This deck seeks to take advantage of Paradoxical covenant by flooding the bag with curse and bless tokens via Kohaku's investigator ability, increase the likelihood of encountering both token types with cards like Favor of the Sun/Moon and Book of Living Myths, and passively get bonuses for having curses in the bag to counteract their negative effects. It always has options for dealing with his signature weakness via Occult Lexicon (and later Gaze of Ouraxsh).

While I could make a long write-up here, i think just reading through the upgrade discussion below should give an idea of how the deck plays and the idea behind how it develops.

Is this deck good? Haven't played it enough times to say for sure. But goddamn it's fun, and you can't beat that theme that will hit your ribs as you watch poor Cold Narly trip the fuck out in front of some monsters. Is that magic he's using in the middle of day on a crowded Arkham street? Is it the acid starting to hit? Guess it's in the eye of the beer-holder.

Setup upgrades [10 XP]:

• Scrimshaw Charm x 2 -> Prismatic Spectacles x 2
• Occult Reliquary
• Delve Too Deep -> Favor of the Moon
• Dark Prophecy x 2 -> Favor of the Sun x 2

Prismatic Spectacles are quite important as they give you a consistent and cheap glue engine. You still have other options for economy with Faustian Bargain and Rite of Sanctification.

Occult Reliquary allows for flexibility based on what you draw for hand, accessory, and spells, all of which you have multiple options for.

The Sun/Moon Favors are going to be important for reliably allowing Paradoxical Covenant to trigger for key tests (e.g. double clue Prismatic Spectacles investigation at high shroud locations). Favor of the Moon is additionally important because it allows conditional recharge of your curse-triggered spells.

Important upgrades [15 XP]:

• Backpack -> The Key of Solomon
• Backpack -> Backpack
• Relic Hunter
• Rite of Sanctification x 2 -> Spirit of Humanity x 2
• Olive McBride x 2 -> Priest of Two Faiths x 2

The Key of Solomon is super important because it starts allowing for passive benefits from having a lot of curses, and will take off a load of resource generation allowing us to get rid of Rite of Sanctification.

Backpack pretty self-explanatory, but there are a couple key things you want including The Key of Solomon, Prismatic Spectacles, and Occult Lexicon.

Relic Hunter allows Occult Reliquary to be used for spells or hands only.

Spirit of Humanity is an important flex option to even out the bag and heal if necessary.

Olive McBride is initially in the deck to facilitate hitting Paradoxical Covenant consistently, but isn't needed once we get the Sun/Moon Favors. I have Priest of Two Faiths listed here because a) its cheap, and b) it's an injection of Bless tokens. You don't have to upgrade McBride here if you don't want: the Priests are a stepping stone to Either Nephthys or Tristan later and you could just go to them directly.

Shoring-Up upgrades [16-20 XP]:

• Holy Rosary x 2 -> Holy Rosary x 2
• Guided by Faith x 2 -> Gaze of Ouraxsh x 2
• Olive McBride / Priest of Two Faiths x 2 -> Nephthys / Tristan Botley x 2
• Cryptic Grimoire -> Cryptic Grimoire

Holy Rosary gives a nice added bless injection prior to getting rid of Guided by Faith and Priest of Two Faiths.

Gaze of Ouraxsh is a really good card in this deck: it can help out with Kōhaku's signature weakness, ice a billion swarmers, or be a boss killer. Campaign depending, you may want to upgrade this much earlier.

Returning to the Olive McBride discussion, the end goal is to either get Nephthys, who is a great passive bonus generator for having bless floating around and excellent for testless damage, or Tristan Botley, who should be easy to play for free and will pump up willpower and book to help with Prismatic Spectacles. Which you pick depends on the campaign and party composition (if playing multiplayer).

Cryptic Grimoire is a bit of a weirdo. Once you get it upgraded it provides an excellent passive bonus to offset the constant presence of curse. But it isn't necessary to run the deck day-to-day. It may sit as a single wild commit for a while before you even get the stars align to unlock the upgrade. But its a fun card to run which is rarely played. Upgrade it whenever you get around to it, not necessarily after the other upgrades in this section. If you don't want to wait around, or don't like the idea of Cryptic Grimoire, change it for something in the initial deck and then upgrade it here to Eye of the Djinn, which is of course ballin but much more commonly used.

Slam Dunk upgrades [8 XP]:

• Promise of Power x 2 -> Fey x 2
• Tempt Fate x 2 -> Rite of Equilibrium x 2

Promise of Power is pretty good as is, but you may run into times where you are maxed on curses. Fey gives you almost the same benefit and will likely be used more than twice. You could argue adding this in earlier because it is cheap, but this deck doesn't rely on recursive spaghetti.

Rite of Equilibrium is a straight upgrade from Tempt Fate, and is more affordable now at 3 XP. It is by no means necessary to make the deck work, but its definitely great to have.

Swimming in XP upgrades [16 XP]:

• Armageddon x 2 -> Armageddon x 2
• Eye of Chaos x 2 -> Eye of Chaos x 2

You dont really need either of these upgrades: you can use these spells at their base level, replenishing them if you hit a curse and fail or using the souped up version if you also hit a blessed. But hey if you are made of MonEXP then why not.