Working a Hunch

Shotgun is cool. Shotgun costs 8XP. Cyclopean Hammer is, too. It costs 10XP. You know what costs zero XP? And can shred enemies from scenario one?

Here’s the concept: we deck out Dragon Pole to be firing unlimited +2, two-damage swings by turn two. That takes some luck in scenario one, but past that, it’s close to guaranteed. Here’s the setup.

So, You Bought Yourself a Dragon Pole: 3XP

Our goal here: find a Dragon Pole and as many batteries (cheap arcane slot filler) as possible. But really, the goal is actually to play as many assets as possible turn one, even if they aren’t very good. For that reason, we’re using our mulligan on everything except Ever Vigilant and the Dragon Pole itself.

4/30: The Dragon Poles
Dragon Pole x2
Prepared for the Worst x2

Prepared for the Worst acts like Dragon Poles three and four. There’s a nightmare scenario where we don’t get either of these in our mulligan, but honestly, that’s okay—we’ll be drawing into them soon enough.

8/30: The Batteries
Mists of R’lyeh x2
Scrying x2
Clarity of Mind x2
Alchemical Transmutation x1
Brand of Cthugha x1

Dragon Pole gets a +1 combat boost for every filled arcane slot, and we’re not taking Prescience of Fate any time soon, so we’re stacking the deck with no fewer than eight cheap arcane slot fillers. We’re taking In The Think of It and will have a spare point of experience, so the weakest here (Alchemical Transmutation) is swapped with a Brand of Cthugha. The rest get two spaces apiece.

4/30: Finding and Playing the Batteries
Arcane Initiate x2
Ever Vigilant x2
In the Thick of It x1

Setting up a fully functional Dragon Pole requires a lot of money and actions. Or just Ever Vigilant. We’ll use In the Think of It to get two of those, and add a few Arcane Initiates to grab batteries for us.

The first 16/30 cards—more than half the deck—gets us online. Because there’s so much redundancy, we can hard mulligan for Ever Vigilant, which is by far the most important tempo boost in the early game. There’s a reason:

Yup: we’re rolling with Quiescence of Thought. Don’t worry, we’re not touching Lily’s intellect. This has exactly one purpose: after a (hopefully successful) mulligan for Ever Vigilant, we’re playing four cards for a single action, and then drawing back up to five. Here’s the best-case scenario opening turn:

1. Action: Play Ever Vigilant, drop three assets, including Arcane Initiate.
2. Action: Trigger Quiescence of Thought, draw up to five cards.
3. Fast: Exhaust Arcane Initiate, get a sixth card.
4. Action: Play a fourth asset.

This is remarkably consistent, and highlights a clear first upgrade: Stick to the Plan, which guarantees the most inconsistent part of a perfect Dragon Pole Lily open. But that’s jumping ahead. How do we make the most of our new-found power?

4/30 (10 slots remain): Cards That Somehow Now Rock?
Torrent of Power x2
Meditative Trace x2

You know what’s pretty cool? Having two cards that leverage your copious unused charges. Enter: Torrent of Power, which lets us protect ourselves and our buddies from the mythos. We’ll also splash some healing with Meditative Trance, which should be healing us 2-3 points of health and damage by the time we need it (or right away, thanks to In the Thick of It).

5/30 (5 slots remain): Events That Always Rocked
Ward of Protection x2
Delve Too Deep x2
Toe to Toe x1

There’s nothing wrong with adding a super powerful card we can tutor with Arcane Initiate, especially if it helps us kill Initiate before the doom becomes an issue. We’ll add another one of the best mystic cards to the fire: Delve Too Deep, which should guarantee Stick to the Plan by scenario two. And while it won’t be as helpful right away, Toe to Toe will eventually go on Stick to the Plan as our third tactic/supply card.

5/10 (0 slots remain): Basic Fightin’ Skills
Vicious Blow x2
Guts x2
Overpower x1

Oh right, we haven’t added Vicious Blow. To be clear, we don’t need Vicious Blow, but there’s absolutely action compression there. The Overpower will shrink our deck, and give us an occasional boost; Guts will help us leverage our willpower for when we actually want to use our spells.

By now you’re probably balking at how brutally asset-heavy this deck is. And you wouldn’t be wrong; it’s nearly half the deck! There are some other weird bits: very little economy, and very few skills (a classic combination, I know). Who needs econ when you have but a single card worth more than two resources? Who needs skills when you have a battery-powered Dragon Pole? Anyway, here are some cool things we can do in scenario one:

• use spare actions on Scrying. Turns out stacking the encounter deck in your spare time is pretty sick.
• use spare actions on Clarity of Mind. Less useful, but possibly necessary for team healing.
• use spare actions on Alchemical Transmutation. Don’t do this. This is a joke. Alchemical Transmutation is in there because it’s dirt cheap arcane slot filler. Using it as intended is never a good idea. If you need a resource, just click for one. Seriously, never, ever use this as Lily.

Basic Training: 9XP

Because we can already kill things with impunity, our first 6XP goes to Stick to the Plan. Hopefully we get that by the end of scenario one. I should mention: this alone is a totally valid standalone deck, because it shores up virtually every weakness of the base deck. Here’s why:

• Ever Vigilant is the most important tempo card in our deck. This guarantees it on turn one, so we can exclusively mulligan for assets.
• Prepared for the Worst is insurance, and doesn’t really belong in the deck at all once we have our Dragon Pole. Taking it out, and getting the benefit, rocks.
• Trimming our deck from 32 to 29 cards is very nice.

You’re also adding Toe to Toe, which gives you some insurance against an early, hard-to-handle enemy. This works. But it can work better.

Software Boost: 19XP

Welcome, Alignment of Spirit! Besides more Lin Hsiang art, which, we’ll be getting even more soon (and enjoying every part of it), we get a boost to our willpower and near-infinite tank potential. The reason for this over Balance of Body (the agility one; we’ll get there at 30XP) is because the condition to flip this back is trivial, and we should be able to trigger it every other round, if we want. It’s also the easiest way to deal with Arcane Initiate’s doom.

This shores up our initial fighting in case all goes wrong, namely, our mulligan doesn’t get us a Dragon Pole, and Prepared for the Worst whiffs. Here’s why: along with our passive willpower boost, we’ve ditched the single Alchemical Transmutation and upgraded into Brand of Cthugha (4), giving us a frankly disgusting off-hand weapon.

Our battery loadout is now: Brand of Cthugha (4) x2, Clarity of Mind x2, Mists of R’lyeh x2, and Scrying x2. Still some chaff, but nothing more than two resources, and only one relatively useless card (Mists).

There’s another option here (featured in Dragon Pole 2.0: 29XP), if we want to make Dragon Pole especially stupid, but it’s a less consistent option overall. I’d rather have four legitimate weapons in our deck as early as possible. Brand (1) only fights at a 4, even with Alignment of Spirit, so it’s not really an option without our willpower-boosting skill cards.

We’ve also added Strong-Armed (1), ditching Overpower (and its slightly unnecessary card draw) for a third and fourth damage booster. Take damage with impunity to redraw those tokens, baby. We’ve got all the healing we need.

Our skill cards are now: Strong-Armed (1) x2, Vicious Blow x2, Guts x2, and Torrent of Power x2. But frankly, those willpower boosters are for our teammates and especially nasty treacheries.

In case things get messy right away, we’ve also swapped Toe to Toe for Sweeping Kick (1), which is a great third card on Stick to the Plan. The loadout on Stick to the Plan is now very tight: we have the key the the entire deck for turn one (Ever Vigilant), some insurance in case we can’t mulligan into our Dragon Pole right away (Prepared for the Worst), and some insurance if we need time against an enemy (Sweeping Kick). Here’s what that looks like:

With the Dragon Poles and another Ever Vigilant in the deck, that’s a full 22/30 cards. The rest are: Arcane Initiate x2, Meditative Trance x2, Ward of Protection x2, and Delve too Deep x2.

Our mulligan is all about Dragon Pole and, secondarily, Arcane Initiate. We’ll be fighting at a combat 7 for two damage a swing basically all game long, with near-infinite tank potential. There are obvious upgrades, but the core of this deck is done. Well, almost done. There’s one other sick piece that we probably want.

Dragon Pole 2.0: 29XP

The next 10XP is all about ditching underwhelming cards and making our Dragon Pole absolutely disgusting. Here are the main offenders right now:

Honestly, the last two are still pretty good in our deck. Clarity of Mind and Meditative Trance are a bit redundant with our Alignment of Spirit discipline, but in the case of Trance, “spend two resources, heal three horror or damage” still goes pretty hard. What spells do Guardians have, exactly?

. . . unless you’re running bless tech, turns out, not a lot. We’ll toss Clarity of Mind and spend 4XP on Bestow Resolve, which turns Torrent of Power into “spend charges pass any test unless you draw the autofail.” I’m reluctant to add Flesh Ward because, well, we’re gaming the system pretty hard by avoiding anything that costs real money outside Dragon Pole itself. But that’s about to change, because even before those 4XP, we’re dropping Meditative Trance and adding Enchant Weapon (3). This is where things get stupid.

So yes, Enchant Weapon is pretty expensive, and for the first time it’s a little awkward to manage the resource cost of our deck . . . but this allows us to swing at a combat 11, once a turn, for three damage. And it’s spell traited, so Arcane Initiate can find it. And it comes with a built-in Arcane slot, which actually makes our deck more reliable.

Listen: there’s a totally valid argument for adding this before Brand of Cthugha (4), and I went back and forth on it. In the end: this version of Lily doesn’t struggle to kill things at all, unless she’s missing her Dragon Pole. Brand of Cthugha (4) adds insurance and power. This is more fun, though.

The ideal starting turn is now basically:

1. Action: Play Ever Vigilant, drop three assets. Ideally, Dragon Pole, Arcane Initiate, and Enchant Weapon. This leaves us with one resource.
2. Action: trigger Quiescence of Thought, draw four cards.
3. Free Action: Exhaust Arcane Initiate, get a sixth card to hand.
4. Action: drop Scrying for our last resource. We’re fully set up.

A version of that is guaranteed almost every single scenario. For 29XP we’re disappointed to only be uncorking unlimited high combat, two-damage attacks from turn two. And the crazy thing is, we have room to grow. Still.

Stronger. Faster: 39XP

Welcome, Balance of Body! This is unnecessary, but does give us a ridiculous kill switch and some vague mythos protection. We also just, sincerely, do not need the combat boost from Prescience of Fate.

We can also safely drop Delve too Deep now, because the deck is done. Like, we can make this better, but there’s really no need. This kills things extremely good. Let’s just fix a few things around the margins and be done with it.

The new cast of characters is mostly for fun and vibes. We’re adding Safeguard (2) and dropping the Mists of R’lyeh because ten arcane slot assets (with Enchant Weapon) is admittedly a lot, and it’d be nice to never, ever have to spend actions on movement. And then, because the goal is to really get stupid with this, we’re going to add a second Sweeping Kick to our deck and a single Flurry of Blows to go on our Stick to the Plan (pushing the other Sweeping Kick into the deck).

We’re not even going to take the taboo version of Furry of Blows which was created for weak-minded players (this is a joke, the taboo is pretty necessary), because we’re already allowed to do this while fully set up:

1. Action: Trigger Balance of Body to swing with the Dragon Pole three times. With Enchanted Weapon equipped, we do seven damage.
2. Action: Play Flurry of Blows to swing four more times, for eight more damage. We’re up to 15 damage in one turn, before playing Vicious Blow or Strong-Armed on any actions.

There are decks that are built to break Arkham Horror. This isn’t one of those. The above is relatively simple, relatively repeatable, and super customizable. Here’s the final loadout:

3/30 = Stick to the Plan: Ever Vigilant (1), Prepared for the Worst, Furry of Blows (5)

4/30 = Weapons: Dragon Pole x2, Brand of Cthugha (4) x2

6/30 = Batteries: Scrying x2, Bestow Resolve (2) x2, Enchant Weapon (3) x2

6/30 = Damage Boosters and Events: Sweeping Kick (1) x2, Strong-Armed (1) x2, Vicious Blow x2

6/30 = Mythos protection: Ward of Protection x2, Guts x2, Torrent of Power x2

5/30 = Role cards: Arcane Initiate x2, Safeguard (2) x2, Ever Vigilant (1)

As always, any ideas or suggestions can be left in the comments. Before you do, though, I want to be clear: this isn’t a fully optimized killin’ stuff deck. It is pretty darned powerful, though, and importantly, fun as hell.