Norman Withers and his Ablative Students

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The stars are going out, and Norman Withers is the only one who can stop it. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that trillions of lives are at stake. Therefore, it's absolutely morally correct to sacrifice a few students to terrestrial demons in the name of getting grant funding so that he can continue his field research into saving the universe.

As the name suggests, this deck plays undergrads (and Research Librarian) and then kills them. Notable sources of damage/horror to ablate with students include Offering Bowl, failed rolls on Medical Texts, and Shrivelling - but ideally, you want them to absorb both damage and horror, and the main way to do that is to fight enemies.

Going 1/1 on In the Thick of It prevents Medical Student and Psychology Student from being dead draws on turn 1 of game 1. This may not be necessary.

This deck has a couple clear upgrade options.
:: Obviously, one big thing is upgrading Shrivelling. This is why we have Arcane Research. It can potentially save us 4 XP if the campaign goes long enough! :: Protecting the Anirniq lets you profit even more off the deaths of your RAs, or bring them back for another round.
:: Charisma makes it easier to get your money's worth out of every student. Basically, you don't have to wait for Student A to die so that you don't waste its value.
:: Anything that tutors a spell can be useful, since the deck heavily relies on Shrivelling for combat, with Anirniq as a backup if you already have Shrivelling.
:: A second copy of Astronomical Atlas helps consistency. I know that the deck that goes all-in on Astronomical Atlas is probably better than this one, but accidentally killing your student while trying to practice medicine on yourself is way funnier than anything that that deck can do.

May want:
:: More draw.
:: To not start with trauma? In particular, there's a version of this deck that doesn't use Arcane Research, and once it has one copy of Shrivelling at 5, it invests its next 5 points into Eldritch Brand. That version probably puts In the Thick of It at 0/2, so that Norman isn't as physically fragile and because Offering Bowl is already a good source of damage to heal with Med Student.