Calling in the army [19xp Taboo, optimized]

Q: Where did Napoleon keep his armies?
A: In his sleevies!

This is a no-skill deck in which Trish calls in the backup over and over and over and over again.

A medium-speed, resilient clue-focused deck that keeps your entire team healthy while picking up clues. Shines in longer scenarios but fast enough for shorter ones.

As a bonus, it's resilient to most weaknesses because of the amount of healing and bonus actions it generates.

The core idea

Trish is one of my favorite investigators to play. A no-nonsense, self-reliant cluing machine.

Since the last time I did a deck for her, she's lost quite a few toys to the taboo, but gained several more. This is a deck showing some of them off.

There's nothing too fancy here. It's the same idea as always: cycle your deck incredibly fast to play all your best cards repeatedly, round after round.

At the 19xp (+3 from In the Thick of It, more from Charon's Obol in a campaign), you can already fit in Ace in the Hole alongside Call for Backup.

Once set up, you repeatedly take 6 action turns where you play at least 2 Call for Backup each time, to move, get 2 clues, heal 2 horror from any card, and heal 2 damage from any card. With a bit more XP you can even Double, Double them. Spread the healing around so your teammates don't feel left out.

You also get tons of resources to fuel Well Connected to pass any test you need to pass. With a bit more XP you'll upgrade it and use it twice a turn, and/or throw some at Streetwise.

Card choices & combos

• Scroll of Secrets + Unscrupulous Loan gives us 4 classes, which enables Synergy, giving us access to Call for Backup and Cheat the System.
• Call for Backup to heal, move, and discover clues without losing any tempo
• "I'll take that!" saving play actions for playing and replaying Scroll of Secrets and Grim Memoir over and over again.
• Whitton Greene remains as the best way to draw out the 5 tomes in your deck.
• Black Market for a deck with no skills, where every card is playable
• Existential Riddle to permanently trigger your ability, with a big hand to reduce that DC as low as possible.
• Embezzled Treasure and Well Connected to act as a sink for the enormous amounts of resources you'll generate.

Piloting tips

A deck this asset-heavy always has its focus on setup. Fortunately, more than half your deck is capable of drawing other cards.

Mulligan priority is always Whitton Greene and Grim Memoir, which gives you enough stats to kick-start your investigation career.

You'll always want to be in a situation where you can draw cards after investigating. This will come from Grim Memoir, Lucky Cigarette Case, and Empirical Hypothesis. You should have one of them in play before investigating.

Whenever you succeed on an investigation check, you want to trigger all your draw effects first. You're hoping that you can draw Shadow Agents during the draw effect, so that when you discover clue, you can use Trish's ability to immediately discard the weakness (or get another clue, if your fighter is twiddling their thumbs nearby).

Existential Riddle turns an enemy into a pet that follows you around and gives you extra clues as you listen in on their mid-life crisis.

Black Market can lock up your weakness. When you get to a deck state where Market can be played every round, play Black Market when your deck has 5 cards left and the weakness is in it. Play out every card from the Black Market, and draw enough cards such that your deck has 5 cards before upkeep phase. Next round, your weakness is shuffled back into your deck, and you immediately play Black Market again.

Upgrading and flex slots

Sample 0xp deck: https://arkhamdb.com/deck/view/3406475

This is a tight deck that's a little tricky to upgrade.

What can be removed:

• Celaeno Fragments and Arcane Enlightenment can be swapped out for cards of your choice. On Standard, you'll probably not even take them in the first place, but on Hard/Expert you'll want all the static boosts you you can get your hands on until you can buy Streetwise.
• 1x Whitton Greene can be swapped out, potentially for another ally once you have XP for Charisma
• Embezzled Treasure is superfluous once you have XP for Another Day, Another Dollar, though you can always give the money to another investigator and make their day.
• Or you can take Underworld Market and put it in the market along with "I'll take that!" for extra deck slots.
• Dream-Enhancing Serum once you need the arcane slot for something more useful
• Cheat the System one or both copies. Will slow down your money accumulation and set up, so you may want to remove Well Connected at the same time.

There are too many good cards that didn't make the cut here to list. A few of my favorites include:

What can be added (0xp):

• Lone Wolf
• Sleight of Hand
• Honed Instinct
• Working a Hunch

What can be added (w/ xp):

• Knowledge is Power
• Seeking Answers
• Extensive Research
• Counterespionage / Forewarned
• Double, Double
• Friends in Low Places with Prompt (fast) + Swift (play card immediately)
• Mind over Matter
• The Gold Pocket Watch
• The Red Clock
• The Red-Gloved Man + Charisma
• Lola Santiago + Charisma
• Leo De Luca + Charisma (+ Haste)

Straightforward upgrades

• Well Connected (3)
• Lucky Cigarette Case (3)
• Whitton Greene (2)
• Celaeno Fragments The Black Fan
• Empirical Hypothesis upgrades (preferably Peer Review so others can benefit, maybe Research Grant for other investigators)
• Permanents: Streetwise, Another Day, Another Dollar, Observed
• Soul Sanctification is actually viable since you heal enough to accumulate extra healing.
• Underworld Market to get more deck slots for your favorite cards.

Afterword

This deck turned out incredibly strong for its XP level and can get stronger and faster with some XP. Some might say too strong broken OP.

I think that's fine for the game. As we get more experienced, there's always going to be better strategies and card combos discovered, even in the absence of power creep from new cards. If you've played the game for a while, it'll be odd if you can't get good enough at deck building and playing to reliably win scenarios, or even full-clear scenarios. Even when playing blind. Even when playing on Expert.

If you consider yourself experienced, chances are you've solved the game several times over already. I don't think it's the job of the taboo list to fix that, because it's not a really a problem in the first place. Search for alternative solutions. Search for new and novel solutions. Search for the best solution. There's a huge cardpool already and it's getting even larger. If you find yourself keep returning to the same few cards, just...don't?

I think it's good enough that if you play with taboo, gone are the days of trivially going infinite, or accidentally trivializing the scenario with a single card. Now, when you trivialize a scenario, it'll be mostly deliberate!