The Fast and the Furious - a HungryColquhoun deck

The Fast and the Furious Dexter Drake

Overview

This deck is designed to provide top-tier action economy by allowing frictionless fast play of standard assets through Dexter's ability + 10 fast assets, and then also giving more actions with Sign Magick and Leo De Luca. While fast play of spells is a common strategy for Dexter, this deck doubles down on this by adding disposable yet useful and Composure assets into the mix, which provide the means to boost skills or spell actions with resources as well.

Additionally this the deck packs decent card draw (Easy Mark, Emergency Cache, Arcane Initiate), great soak (Leather Jacket, Grounded, Leo De Luca), rapid advancement (Arcane Research) and the means to heal off sanity drops from Shrivelling (Liquid Courage). Grounded ••• allows all your upgraded spells to hit a bare minimum of 7 factoring their on-card boosts, and as the deck has a high burn rate Quantum Flux provides a convenient discard reshuffle for longer scenarios.

That's really all there is to it, this deck hits the ground running and never stops! Getting assets out quickly on a Mystic has always been a pet-peeve of mine, if you have similar woes you should play this deck!

Advanced Strategies

• Prest-O Change-O. You have 10 assets which play normally, and 10 assets which play fast. With Dexter's ability once per turn you can ditch fast assets you don't need (Switchblade, Moxie, Grounded) and put into play key spells (Shrivelling, Sixth Sense) with a fast action. As a lot of your fast assets only cost 1 resource or less, their cost is refunded on using Dexter's ability (Grounded ••• even allows you to play an asset at a discount). Showmanship also allows for situational boosts on your spells played this way too. With this combo, you can get stuck in as soon as turn 1!

• Fast Recharge. Ever played a Mystic who has run out of charges mid-combat? Well never fear! Ditch an out of charge fight spell for a fully charged one mid-combat using your ability. As it plays fast you don't have to worry about those pesky attacks of opportunity!

• Shrivel Shrivelling. Shrivelling is a sexy combat spell, but that horror penalty on bad chaos bag draws can hurt. Fortunately for Dexter he can take Liquid Courage, easily healing his sanity as well as mental trauma from Arcane Research.

What didn't make the cut

• Molly Maxwell. Molly comes with Yaztaroth, who stops you playing assets and requires actions to get rid of - so it's a no to poor Molly.

• Lucky Cigarette Case. This deck has Arcane Initiate as a cheaper, non-conditional draw option for your key spell assets so having another option doesn't feel necessary.

Campaign starter and planned progression

While 40 XP may look steep with Arcane Research this is significantly less, and so I didn't find it behind the curve compared to the 30 XP decks I usually make. Starter deck is directly below (and link here):

Between campaign scenarios use Arcane Research (and a few XP as needed) to upgrade:

• Shrivelling → Shrivelling ••• → Shrivelling •••••

• Sixth Sense → Sixth Sense ••••

Otherwise, a recommended order of XP purchases/upgrades is as follows:

• 2 x David Renfield, 1 x Clairvoyance → Easy Mark

• 2 x Wither → 2 x Brand of Cthugha

• Clairvoyance → Divination

• 2 x Voice of Ra → 2 x Moxie

• 2 x Emergency Cache → 2 x Emergency Cache ••

• 2 x Guts → 2 x Grounded •

• 2 x Grounded • → 2 x Grounded •••

• 2 x Sign Magick → 2 x Sign Magick •••

Further upgrades and side deck

Brand of Cthugha •••• and Divination •••• make for great back-up spells if the campaign goes on long enough for the cheaper Arcane Research upgrades, while Leo De Luca • gives a further 1 resource discount to what is already a cheap deck. In terms of a side deck, Guts is nice just to strengthen the card draw on this deck a little bit. David Renfield is also a good option, but I didn't find myself hurting for resources too much to need him in the end game. Edit: A good suggestion from Reddit was to include Geas in the deck, as boosting is normally bought with resources through the Composure assets and not through committing cards anyway. Definitely a great idea and one to consider in the side deck/as a further upgrade.

Final thoughts

Overall I found it a solid performer with very few drawbacks when I piloted it in a TCU campaign. Personally I like more actions in addition to not wasting actions on playing assets - which this deck does perfectly. Give it a try and let me know what you think!