The Butler Did It!

Deckbuilding Carson as a four-player powerhouse

Carson's reception in the Arkham community has been mixed at best and completely negative at worst. His stats are so bad! He's got terrible health and sanity on top of that! And even worse - he doesn't really get to play the game!

This criticism is misguided. Carson is strong. He passes every test that matters. He's fun. He gets to play a whole other game of Arkham along with the base game, a game of team dispatch. And he's powerful. He flat-out wins games.

You finish a scenario, and it just feels... really easy. Everyone was in the right place at the right time, and there were no moments of crisis. And you did really well. And no one knows why, because nothing flashy happened. Carson's turns didn't look like power turns; often, he just moved people around. But the butler knows why it was easy... The butler did it!

So here's a guide to building Carson Sinclair as a four-player-game powerhouse.

How to think about multiplayer Carson deckbuilding:

Carson's own actions are inherently worse than other investigators. His stats are bad. He's at risk of failing at most of what he does. And he has no superpowers other than action delegation.

So avoid tests? You could throw together a bunch of cards that buy testless clues and testless damage, and you might have something. Now Carson's actions are effective, and his giveaway action is effective. But does this work better in Carson than in literally any other blue investigator? Probably not.

Instead: as with any investigator, build for his super power. Lean into action delegation.

When you do this well, Carson is the world's best flex investigator. He's not the standard Survivor flex, who at best gets one or two damage or clues a turn, but gets them reliably. He's a mega-flex. He fights as well as your best fighter, clues as well as your best cluever, and mystics as well as your highest-will mystic.

Don't think of it as "giving your actions away." Instead, it's "take an action as though you were any investigator at your location." That's pretty good! You don't need any setup, and you're pretty powerful already. Now, add to that: "You have 33% more actions than a standard investigator." This is an incredibly potent combo.

Carson is a super strong flex. Here's his ideal investigator turn:

• Make Zoey fight a monster and do a ton of damage
• Make Daisy investigate. Get a ton of clues
• Make Preston play an event that gets him a bajillion resources
• Move. Or heal somebody. Or pass a test on your own.

So what's the biggest deckbuilding puzzle to solve to do this? Carson can only delegate one action per investigator per round. And your team is going to split up. Unless you're planning to all pile up like a big inefficient Katamari, the most important thing Carson needs to be able to do is to move around.

What it takes to build a delegation Carson is, in order of importance:

• Mobility
• Powerful teammates
• A reliably useful fourth action for him to take by himself
• A way to mitigate mythos phase failures

How to solve the deckbuilding puzzle

Mobility:

• Runic Axe: This is one of the two most important cards in the deck. It's not a weapon! It's a variable amount of Pathfinders, with a weapon attached.

  The upgrades are the key to this. For each charge you spend, you get a free move, plus either +2 fight or +1 damage.

  This is how you'll get from where you started your turn (hopefully on top of your cluever), to where you plan on ending your turn (hopefully on top of your fighter).

  It's situational. You need an enemy engaged with someone somewhere other than your location. But the axe turns your one personal action into two (or three, or four): an arbitrary amount of moves, and a fight. Don't worry too much about burning through charges. You won't be doing this every turn, so you usually have time to recharge before you need it again.

• Safeguard: This is the second most important card in the deck. At a bare minimum, it should keep you from starting your turn alone, making you much more likely to have a target for your free delegation.

  But there are some fun tricks, too. Delegate a move action to another investigator, and safeguard them on their way. Suddenly your free action has become two free actions! Get two of them out, and you can chain your movement between two of your buddies.

  Don't upgrade to Safeguard(2)! The most common action to give away as Carson is a Move. With Safeguard(2), you're no longer able to tag along during your own turn.

Powerful teammates:

• Girish Kadakia: Deal with your own squishiness and your team's in one card, and get a free Unexpected Courage every turn on top of it. So much value! This deck draws so many cards that you could might be able to run him as just a singleton to save XP. You'll probably see him every game anyway.

• Stand Together: An outstanding econ card. Emergency Cache can be upgraded to get your team 3 resources and a card. This gets your team four resources and four cards. Maths! And the cards are going directly to your minions (er, um, teammates)!

• A bunch of self-replacing skills: These help with Selfless to a Fault, and they make your delegated actions even better. Almost all the skills here draw you replacement cards, so you always have a full hand of options to commit.

• Vicious Blow: It feels really good to give away!

• Teamwork: Maybe Teamwork has finally found a home! I've slotted it here for two reasons. Primarily, it's a souped-up economy card that I use to steal my Rogue's extra resources. It can provide potential other team benefits when it goes off. It also helps when I've had to equip my Sledgehammer, if I drew it before drawing the Runic Axe; I don't need it any more, but someone else might! This card is heavily dependent on team comp. It should probably be an Emergency Cache if you don't have a rich buddy to mooch off of.

A reliably useful fourth action, and a way to mitigate mythos phase failures

• Runic Axe, along with Sledgehammer as a backup, make you a surprisingly effective fighter even with 2 strength. You've probably got some skill cards in hand that can boost your attack.

• Second Wind and Hallowed Mirror heal you and your friends when there's nothing better to do and patch up your losses.

• Fine Clothes is just some cheap soak, but the real reason it's in the deck is to deal with asset hate from the encounter deck.

• And in a pinch, you've got some Dynamite.

Unexpected Carson boons

It's not obvious on paper, but Carson has two great things going for him: minimal setup, and just a ton of card draw. It doesn't take many assets to get going, since you're mostly working through other people's assets anyway. And the Elder Sign ability triggers way more often than you'd expect. When you combine that with the cantrip skills, you are just flooded with cards.

And on top of that, he's the most consistently useful Guardian. Mark and Zoey often stall out after everything has been killed, left with nothing to do but draw cards or pick up resources. But Carson? No monsters on the board? No problem!

Give clueing actions to your cluever. Give setup actions to your fighter. Someone, somewhere has something that needs doing. You're just the butler to do it.

Potential problem areas

One of the worst situations you'll come across is when an enemy spawns directly on you. You can't delegate an action without an attack of opportunity, and you're not great at evading. I've chosen String of Curses to get around the problem. There are good options in any of Carson's off classes, but this one seemed like the best and most reliable.

Another problem is card draw. You have so much, so you start having to discard cards from hand. To mitigate this, I've limited the deck to as few "keep around just in case" cards as possible. You'll draw your one-ofs; don't worry. They're better off in your deck than they are sitting in your hand, taking up valuable space that could be skill commits. Use your cards as you get them! They'll cycle through quick.

Lastly, be sure to consider your teammates when using this deck. If they rely on assets with ammo or charges, they may be burning through them much more quickly than they would otherwise. Carson pairs well with melee investigators.

Where to go from here

As with any guardian, you'll be able to get some mileage from Stick to the Plan. It can keep your Dynamite Blast, Teamwork, and First Watch from clogging up useful hand space that could be devoted to skills.

First Aid may be good. It's another reliably useful action, and you don't have a lot of health or sanity to spare.

And there's probably a Bestow Resolve build, where you slot Inspiring Presence as three wild icons that really make Girish Kadakia pop off. I've thought about it, but haven't figured out which cards I'd cut to make it shine.

That's it. Good luck Carsoning!