Black Coffee

This Zoey Samaras deck was designed for a run-through of Dunwich with Rex Murphy. Pretty old-hat at this point obviously, but hey it's a classic and my friend hasn't done Dunwich yet (and they're only playing with cards up to Dunwich too).

My main idea with this was just to keep it pretty straight down the line. Being able to chop stuff into small pieces is absolutely essential of course, and I decided to take lots of healing and protection related bits and bobs as well. Nothing fancy, no mega-combos, just solid stuff.

Themes

Fast Healing

First Aid is often included, but it's just so slow these days. So I went for Emergency Aid and "If it bleeds..." went in instead. More card slots yes, but hopefully more useful. Dodge is also essentially healing as well ultimately in my view. Liquid Courage isn't fast as such, but with her strong willpower and weak sanity it seemed like a good option.

Stepping-in

Not a major theme, but a couple of cards got chucked in to help out my team-mate - "Let me handle this!" and Heroic Rescue. Taunt is obviously a standard for Zoey Samaras as well, and Dodge kind of sits in this theme too.

Notes

• Stunning Blow adds some nice potential emergency evade without needing agility, and as guardians often have a lot of costly assets it's nice that it's free. Of course Zoey will normally be chopping them into pieces, but sometimes you just need that evade.
• Delve Too Deep - yeah, it's full cheese and I umm'd and I ahh'd about it because I feel like it's a pretty lame include, but ultimately I remembered that Dunwich can be pretty stingy with the XP, and XP is how you get to try out all those cards you bought, so in the end it made it. The alternatives were Premonition just because I kind of like it, and Drawn to the Flame which is also cheesy unfortunately. I wanted a way to utilise her high willpower in a way that didn't cost much, didn't require lots of support and maybe use those unused arcane slots, but I didn't really find one. (I've actually left Premonition in the card-list by mistake, but whatever.)
• Prepared for the Worst - just making super sure that I get one of those weapons I've included.
• Take the Initiative I just wanted to try out really.

Upgrades

• It goes without saying, but Flamethrower is just bonkers and needs to be done. I've been hosing down enemies with flame for greater justice for a few scenarios and it's predictably awesome
• Instead of just doubling down on the OP Flamethrower, I went for the M1918 BAR just to try it out, even though it's probably sub-optimal. Sometimes you just gotta have fun though, right?
• Upgraded First Aid is actually good and can save me a bunch of slots, so I'm getting a couple of those.
• Well Prepared is great in Zoey, especially with Flamethrower and also upgraded First Aid. [Dr. Henry Armitage](/card/02040, which went into my deck, synergizes with this really well too, so this card has been solid. I might get another actually.
• Charisma has been picked up to help with the copious Dunwich allies as well as the standard Guard Dogs and Beat Cops.

How It's Gone So Far

• Money has been a problem. Probably should've slotted an Emergency Cache. I thought about it, but just didn't want to get rid of anything to make it fit.
• The stalwart .45 Automatic .... just doesn't cut it. It's just a backup, has never been played and has since been replaced by ze big guns.
• "If it bleeds..." might be good, but I've never had the chance to use this so it's getting chopped. Liquid Courage has provided much more value so far (5 scenarios in).
• Emergency Aid has been solid, but I think the upgraded First Aid will be a solid and efficient replacement.
• "Let me handle this!" has been totally awesome. The fact that it's not location specific is just turbo-great, and then it's also a +2 on top if it's not an enemy - amazing.
• Taunt - not used this at all yet so I cut it out in scenario 3 or 4. However, now that I have the Flamethrower I realise that I might need to get it back (upgraded version of course).
• Take the Initiative - really good. There's always encounters that you really don't want to fail and this really helps.