Kōhaku Narukami Theorycrafting | The Blursed Folklorist

"This might be both the best and worst thing I've ever read." - Kōhaku, Probably

Kōhaku Narukami is a new investigator being added in The Feast of Hemlock Vale expansion. He boasts a solid 4/4 /3/1 statline, which means we can basically do whatever we want to unless that test involves . This man is a folklorist, not a runner. His high stat will also let us pretty easily investigate for clues, especially once we get Flashlight in play.

Kōhaku's ability allows you to add either a blessed or cursed token to the chaos bag (whichever has less in the bag) at the start of each of your turns or to remove 2 blessed and cursed tokens to gain an extra action. This ability is powerful enough that it's worth building around (who can say no to the potential of 33% more actions in a game?). As such, this deck looks to push this into overdrive to give us as many turns with an additional action as possible, while still having enough tools to deal with enemies and gather clues as needed. This is very much a flex setup and is designed for use in parties that either have other flexes or already have a designated fighter and cluever.

Note: I am a bit concerned with the amount of health soaking that we have, so the first upgrade will definitely be replacing a Holy Rosary with a second Priest of Two Faiths (1) or potentially swapping in Earthly Serenity (1) for Alchemical Transmutation if Faustian Bargain and Voice of Ra are enough to maintain our resources.

Core Upgrades:

• 2x Alchemical Transmutation -> 2x Earthly Serenity (1) | As mentioned above, this will only be needed if we can sustain resources with Faustian Bargain and Voice of Ra. Kōhaku has access to loads of resource cards so the initial deck may have an over abundance of them.
• 1x Holy Rosary -> 1x Priest of Two Faiths (1) | Priest of Two Faiths helps us maintain our cursed/blessed loop to give us additional actions each turn in addition to being a one cost 2/2 soak. His adding of both Blessed and Cursed tokens to the chaos bag also helps us to get maximum value out of Paradoxical Covenant and to hand out Auto Succeeds to our teammates.
• 1x Occult Reliquary (3) -> | This permanent gives us an additional hand slot that can be used to hold a Cursed asset. (The description looks to be incomplete in Arkham DB, so it may also work for blessed items). Most of our hand items have the Cursed tag, so this will let us hold our Book of Living Myths, Wicked Athame, and Flashlight without issue.

Optional / Higher EXP Upgrades:

• 1x Holy Rosary -> 1x Holy Rosary (2) | It's Holy Rosary but it also can add Blessed Tokens to the Chaos Bag. Easy include.
• 1x Accursed -> Key of Ys (5) | Key of Ys is a phenomenal card, giving us +1 to all stats for EACH HORROR on the card. Ideally, you're floating 2 horror on this card to get +2 and then using cards like Deny Existence to prevent horror from being stacked onto it further. Being that the Taboo made this card Exceptional, it's definitely something that you'll want to wait to add to your deck since that 10 Experience could be better spent early on in the campaign.

Other Cards:

• I really want to find a way to fit Spectral Razor into the deck. 4 and 3 feels like the perfect statline to make this card an auto include, but right now there's just not room for it. Accursed is probably the weakest card in the deck right now, so that may be a good place to fit it in, even if it ends up being a 1 off to allow for the other Accursed to be swapped out for Key of Ys. Another potential swap is Delve Too Deep, though I'd only recommend this if someone else in the group is running that card so as to not lose out on the potential 2 extra experience per scenario. EDIT: After some thought, Spectral Razor won out over Accursed since it will also help us deal with our signature weakness, Weeping Yurei. The damage will be a bit overkill and it is definitely better to have the goon deal the damage to it if possible, but having access to some extra damage in a single action is never a bad thing. I've kept Accursed in the side deck in case I need to swap it back in.

This deck is very much a work in progress. Once the new expansion drops, I'll do some more testing and make adjustments as needed. Once I get some actual testing under my belt, I'll add a section about the general gameplay loop as well as a card priority for mulligans. Any tips or recommendations are welcome.