The Great Fire Drake

The Great Drake is a fighting mystic, carrying 8 attacks (Shrivelling, Spectral Razor, Enchanted Blade and mundane .41 Derringer. His speciality is Doom Control, for which he can load up heavy on David Renfield secure in the knowledge that he can discard him with his own innate power, no card required.

Unlike my friend Jim Jim Culver who plays tricks with the chaos bag, Dexter Drake overpowers it. His base will of 5, plus the Holy Rosary, David Renfield means that his Shrivelling V has a Will of 10, enough to face down any token bar the tentacle itself.

Why do we run Dexter Drake? Because he is the best goddam mystic in the whole game, he has style Fine Clothes, he can crush any will power test and he can even fight with a tiny bit Enchanted Blade of help. And his basic weakness Yaztaroth, while slightly inconvenient is one of the mildest that there is. This is a replacement, and probably the main line one will be much worse, but hopefully this will be made up for by a very special asset, perhaps a sword cane...

His special friend Molly Maxwell can pull any asset she desires, and in this deck, all of his assets have unique traits:

Derringer: Illicit or Firearm

Haste: Ritual

Shrivelling: Spell, yes spell! All of his other spells are Events, this is the only one that is an Asset, so Molly can search the WHOLE deck for it even though the keyword is generic.

Holy Rosary: Charm

Fine Clothes: Clothing

Arcane Initiate: Sorcerer

David Renfield: Patron

Enchanted Blade: Relic or Melee

Summoned Hound: Summon

Most Mystics are broke since their assets are expensive, and although Dexter gets some cheap with his replacement power, David Renfield will bring in the big money, whenever there is a long Doom window.

Eldritch Inspiration is in there to control the horrific Shrivelling downside, although we can also throw in the Holy Rosary if need be.

Open Gate serves two purposes, as an emergency exit should everything go wrong, but more importantly as a shortcut for the other players to skip around the map. So many scenarios force you to walk around a lot, and this could make all the difference.

You’ll notice, and how could you miss it, that this deck is something of a cheat, having been built with 19 experience, this is for a stand alone adventure with two friends, but a very similar 0xp build would still be quite good, it would have to drop the Summoned Hound and Haste, but apart from that you can still have the Enchanted Blade and basic Shrivelling, and slip in a couple of Clueing cards, which this Dexter is notably short of. In multiplayer, as a campaign develops going very specialised makes sense. Dexter does have a Read the Signs and the Summoned Hound for Investigations. How do I feel about the Hound, well it is the ability to punch like Mark Harrigan or search like Daisy Walker once per turn as an extra action which is pretty nice, and should it all go wrong, well we’ll face down the damned Unbound Beast and send it back to hell.