Daisy's Big Book of Spells

Introduction

Since the core set came out I've been interested to try a spell slinging Daisy, but with a relatively average Willpower of 3 making those Blinding Lights or Shrivellings stick certainly isn't easy. Daisy needed support from cards like Holy Rosary or Arcane Studies, and that involved finding them and playing them, and then finding and playing your spells. Old Book of Lore does make Daisy better at assembling these decks, but...

It was awkward, and ultimately it was usually better to leave fighting and other supporting to characters more specialised in it, and build Daisy herself as a clue gatherer (which, ultimately, you could argue Rex Murphy is better at!).

Which is a shame, as Daisy has access to level 2 Mystic cards, including a ton of cool Spells (though, for some terrible reason, not Book of Shadows... Damn you Matt!).

As of Blood on the Altar, though, I think we can take a second look at spellcasting Daisy.

The Theory

Higher Education allows us to cheaply and easily boost our Willpower; a single resource on a test boosts us to five Willpower, on a par with Agnes Baker the dedicated spellcaster, and still with our natural Intellect of five. Critically, it's a Permanent, so we don't have to find it before using it, meaning as soon as our spells hit the table we're able to fire them reliably.

In fact, it's so good I think we can even afford to ditch our other stat boosters and focus on keeping our hand full to address the requirement on Higher Education. Old Book of Lore gives us a free card every turn with Daisy's ability, and luckily, until we have the experience to pick up Cryptic Research Blood on the Altar also gave us Preposterous Sketches!

The Deck

I ended up throwing together a 'high experience' version of spellcasting Daisy with Higher Education and giving it a couple of test games. After some tweaks, I then worked backwards from that to get to the level 0 version of the deck here for the start of a campaign.

Most of the deck is a standard Daisy/seeker build. You want Old Book of Lore as soon as possible, with Research Librarian to help you grab it early. The book digs for your spells and the skill cards you need; I don't need to tell anyone how strong the effect on that is. It works as a more flexible Arcane Initiate!

You still have a mighty Intellect of 5 so can dominate any Investigate tests you need, and Dr. Milan Christopher gives you money for that (which in turn can fuel your Higher Education). Blinding Light is preferred over something like Hypnotic Gaze to take advantage of our pumpable Willpower, and to deal damage in a pinch (if you don't want to throw down your Shrivelling, or haven't found it yet).

Both of the faction skill test cards are tasty here, you're taking a lot of Intellect and Willpower tests and both of the bonus effects are likely to be useful. I've added Guts and Perception; I can see Unexpected Courage being more useful icons, but ultimately I liked the card draw effect on the other neutrals. I could see swapping Perception for Manual Dexterity, likely personal preference there!

The only hole I think is a lack of additional health. Daisy has such a huge Sanity pool, though, I think that Painkillers along with Fearless should keep you pretty safe?

I'm quite pleased that the deck ended up very thematic; there's pretty much nothing in there I wouldn't consider appropriate for Daisy aside from Emergency Cache. From a flavour point of view, I'd even be tempted to swap that for Forbidden Knowledge, especially as Daisy has a more-than-adaquate pool of Sanity. Maybe we'll even see a resource-related spell at some point that would fit in here!

Upgrade path

Obviously you really want 3xp after the first game to pick up Higher Education. That's the cornerstone of your deck after all! After that, shore up your offensive capabilities with Song of the Dead, and I would recommend looking at upgraded faction skill cards (I'm happy to make the prediction we'll see upgraded skills for most of the factions this cycle, including Fearless!).

Cryptic Research, while a heavy xp investment, really is streets ahead of the sketches, so is worth picking up at some point to keep your hand size healthy.

Here are my suggestions for a rough upgrade path:

• Higher Education (3xp)
• 2 Holy Rosary -> 2 Song of the Dead (4xp) (7xp total)
• 2 Deduction -> 2 Deduction II (4xp) (11xp total)
• 1 Preposterous Sketches -> 1 Cryptic Research (4xp) (15xp total)
• 2 Scrying -> 2 Pathfinder (2xp) (17xp total)
• (2 Fearless -> 2 Fearless II ?)

You should end up with something like this when you're all done!