The Shadow Ace - permanently ethereal, 6 actions/turn

Overview

The core idea of this deck is to enter a state of being In the Shadows at all times with an Ace in the Hole active every turn. You will enter this state after the first time you cycle your deck, and the deck itself is designed with very high draw to achieve this as quickly as possible. This is maintained by keeping a loop going where every turn you draw back exactly every card you played while dumping the sanity loss from cycling your deck onto a revolving Laboratory Assistant.

One neat thing is that once you are in this state, your Shadow Agents are now working for you. They follow you around everywhere you go while doing no damage and allowing you to get extra clues with Trish's ability.

This is built at 12xp so as not to require any additional basic weaknesses when used as a standalone.

Looping state setup

This is the looping state you are aiming to set up.

• 5 hand slots (2 + 2 arcane enlightenment + 1 hidden pocket)
  • Celaeno Fragments
  • Magnifying Glass
  • Magnifying Glass (illicit from "I'll take that!")
  • Scroll of Secrets with The Raven Quill
  • Reserved to play Scroll of Secrets or Grim Memoir with Sleight of Hand
• 2 arcane slots
  • Arcane Enlightenment
  • Arcane Enlightenment
• 2 accessories (1 + 1 hidden pocket)
  • Lucky Cigarette Case
  • Lucky Cigarette Case (illicit from "I'll take that!")
• 1 body slot
  • Leather Jacket
• 2 ally slots
  • Laboratory Assistant
  • Reserved to play Laboratory Assistant with Hit and Run
• Talents
  • Empirical Hypothesis
  • Lone Wolf

At the start of each turn, your discard pile should contain

• Cheat the System (may also be in hand depending on draw order)
• Hit and Run
• Sleight of Hand

your deck should be empty, and your hand (which is size 12 from the 2x Arcane Enlightenment and one Laboratory Assistant consistently in play) should contain

• Grim Memoir
• Grim Memoir
• Scroll of Secrets
• Leather Jacket
• Laboratory Assistant
• Medical Student
• Ace in the Hole
• Cheat the System (may already be in discard depending on draw order)
• Faustian Bargain
• Hit and Run
• In the Shadows
• Sleight of Hand

Maintaining the Loop

Now play In the Shadows and Ace in the Hole, and they wil go into your discard pile. You may have a Cheat the System still in hand depending on how the last turn went, if so play it for free and it goes into the discard as well.

There are now 5 cards in the discard pile, play Hit and Run with Laboratory Assistant and immediately draw two cards from your empty deck. The sanity loss from reshuffling all the cards you just played will be assigned to that Laboratory Assistant (which is going to return to your hand at the end of your turn anyway). After these draws resolve, the Hit and Run you just played will go into the discard pile for the next turn. There are now three cards left in the draw pile, you need to draw two of them before the end of the turn, and the final one will draw during your upkeep.

If you have investigation to do, play Sleight of Hand with Grim Memoir and use it to get two more draws (do not draw more than is necessary). If necessary, you can guarantee one of the draws by activating The Raven Quill to pull a secret onto your standing Scroll of Secrets and using it to draw one card from the bottom.

If you're going to be busy doing something other than investigation, then Sleight of Hand your other Scroll of Secrets instead. Between the charge you pull off of it with The Raven Quill and its own activation, you can get your other two draws from these.

If at some point you draw Cheat the System, play it right away, otherwise if it comes out during upkeep you can play it at the start of the next turn. Either way, you are now set up to take the rest of your turn with 6 actions while being In the Shadows.

Adding to the turn

You have draw to spare, in the form of your 2x Lucky Cigarette Case, and evidence building up on your Empirical Hypothesis. On turns where you are using Grim Memoir, you should have a lot of excess draw to work with. You can use these to optionally add in extra upgrades to the turn, any of which should be played just before Hit and Run.

• Medical Student to heal yourself or someone else, this will get discarded when Laboratory Assistant comes out.
• Faustian Bargain if you need to stock up some extra resources.

Using any of these options means those cards will be put back into your deck when Laboratory Assistant plays, so you will need to draw them back in to your hand before the end of the turn. It's preferable to do this when you have evidence on Empirical Hypothesis to guarantee you can draw enough back in case Lucky Cigarette Case doesn't work out.

If you're playing campaign and get some more XP, there's a lot of interesting additions you can make here, for example Priest of Two Faiths to rack up some bless for the group, etc.

Getting set up

Mulligan aggressively towards cards that will help you get more draw, especially ones that do so while simultaneously doing your job, like Grim Memoir, Lucky Cigarette Case, and Empirical Hypothesis. After that, it's also good to get cards that expand your handsize, especially Laboratory Assistant.

This is because your biggest challenge early on is avoiding having to discard cards when you're drawing so fast. Anything you discard will need to be drawn a second time before you are set up. That being said, do not hesitate to play cards like Grim Memoir and discard them when done, the benefit of getting your draw engine going outweighs the con of having to draw it again, because your draw engine picks up momentum and once it's really going you will get set up very quickly.

Do remember that you have 2x Sleight of Hand and 2x Hit and Run, so you can effectively get 4 uses each of Grim Memoir and Laboratory Assistant while getting set up. 4x Grim Memoir in particular is a huge contributor to getting your cards out fast.

Troubleshooting

Where possible, try to stack up and keep as much evidence on Empirical Hypothesis as you can, to get back on track in case something disrupts the loop. If you have extra draw, you can also save up extra secrets on Scroll of Secrets to save having to play Sleight of Hand in future turns. If resources become a problem, you still have Faustian Bargain in your pocket to catch up.

Most of your unpredictability comes from dealing with your Random Basic Weakness, with luck the extra healing from Medical Student and extra draws will allow you to deal with it. Fortunately a huge amount of options can be ignored entirely (for example all enemies that hunt you). The worst are probably ones that take up a slot, as the cards that get ejected from that slot now will get auto discarded during your upkeep phase, and need to be drawn every turn. This for the most part can be handled by your Lucky Cigarette Case or just spending an extra action.

If you are very concerned about the weakness, you can take out Charisma and one of the Laboratory Assistant, and in return upgrade Empirical Hypothesis to get an evidence whenever you take horror, and replace the lost card with Black Market. Since the Empirical Hypothesis is now a guaranteed draw every turn, you can use that extra draw to play Black Market at the start of every turn. Once you can manipulate your weakness into the set aside cards, that weakness will now always be set aside, and always return to your draw deck just in time to be played into Black Market again, effectively sealing it off forever. Since your hand size is reduced to 10, you should let your excess fat fall into this cycle as well (one Leather Jacket and one Grim Memoir). The other two Black Market openings you can let the rest of your table use, I'm sure it'll be appreciated.

This ensures the deck is viable no matter what weakness you draw. In exchange, the reduced hand size and one less Laboratory Assistant makes it a little less fast/reliable to set up. If you're in campaign mode, you can decide which way to build after seeing your weakness in the first scenario.