Minh Thi Phan plays with Cats and Stones

Card draw simulator

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MinhFinity Stones (Hard Mode) 223 186 17 1.0
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matt88 · 2968

Hey guys! I pulled together this fantastic Minh deck that I will be eager to play once the Dream Eaters expansion gets released. It is based on @StartWithTheName's Minhfinity Stones deck that was published several months ago and uses elements of a variation a tried a while ago. The main difference between @StartWithTheName's deck and this one is that it uses the about-to-be-released Miss Doyle and it relies heavily on that asset (and Ancient Stone of course) to handle enemies! I'm not sure how effiecent it will be but I expect it be very fun, because, truth be told, those cats are simply awsome!

I 'd first like to mention some core elements of the deck that don't have big difference between the 2 decks:

The deck does the classic Seeker stuff (ie. get clues, advance the act, etc.), but has the ability to deal with some enemies on its own. For that we rely on Miss Doyle and the 3 cats that you get with her, along with Ancient Stone: Knowledge of the Elders and can either evade enemies or kill them using the Stone's auto-damage mechanic by drawing cards while engaged with the enemy without getting attacks of opportunity. Sometimes we can do both. In order to be able to deal with enemies with the Stone consistently we need big charges, which you can get by using Drawing Thin(s) during the identification of Ancient Stone (1) (allows you to get 8-11 charges on it) and that should generally be relatively easy to do with Higher Education. One big downside of the deck is that it requires a lot of setup, which means you will be sitting idle for most of the early game, but in order to cover that weakness we run Deduction and Winging It (which is expected to be played multiple times during the scenario) for a lot of bonus clues and we try not to lose too much tempo from enemies by dealing with them using no more than 1 action (when possible). We also run Pathfinder and Track Shoes, both of which can save us a lot of actions on the long run. Another element is that we run a lot of cards of which there is only 1 copy in the deck. This shouldn't worry you because we can dig for them with Mr. "Rook" and we have very high card draw. We are expected to draw our whole deck at least once (sometimes twice) through the scenario, so we are going to see all our assets. A major weakness this deck has over @StartWithTheName's is that we rely almost solely on the Cats for enemy handling (the Stone simply supports THEM) and another downside is that the deck is probably not good for higher difficulties due to lack of sufficient boosters for regular investigations. Luckily for us, we 're packing Higher Education.

Upgrades

Core

  1. Higher Education (skip if you 're playing with the Taboo list or buy it later)

  2. 1x "I've got a plan!", 1x Mind over Matter --> 2x Ancient Stone (1)

  3. 2x Ancient Stone (1) --> 2x Ancient Stone: Knowledge of the Elders

  4. 1x Fire Axe --> 1x Pathfinder

  5. Charisma

  6. 1x Mind over Matter --> 1x Miss Doyle

  7. 2x Rabbit's Foot --> 2x Grisly Totem (3)

Essential

  1. 2x Deduction --> 2x Deduction (2)

  2. 1x Overpower --> 1x Cryptic Research

Luxury

  1. Relic Hunter

  2. 2x Studious

  3. 2x Magnifying Glass --> 2x Magnifying Glass (1)

One issue this deck has is that it may have trouble dealing with The King in Yellow early in the campaign, before you upgrade into Grisly Totem (3). I originally had Working a Hunch instead of Live and Learn, but I favoured Live and Learn, mostly because of its icon. The problem here is that you may have to commit more than 3 cards to clear it in order to get enough skill icons (Grisly Totem gives more icons, so it solves that problem). I figured that Grisly Totem (0) might be the solution, but the card draw from Rabbit's Foot is really necessary to keep the deck going, so I favoured that instead. I believe the high card draw of the deck can make up for this disadvantage.

Playing the Deck

So, even though I haven't actually played the deck yet, I have tested it several times in the card draw simulator, so I 've gotten the feel of how it rolls. Hence, I can give small guide:

Mulligan for Magnifying Glass, Mr. "Rook", Drawing Thin, Rabbit's Foot/Grisly Totem (3), Analytical Mind and Ancient Stone (4), in that order. Even though Miss Doyle is really necessary for the deck to function properly, your high card draw and searching capabilities will guarantee you 'll get her later so you can throw her away, but if you happen to have a lot of those cards in your opening hand, you can consider keeping her.

Draw hard and make money with Drawing Thin and Rabbit's Foot/Grisly Totem. Use Track Shoes and Drawing Thin together for free resources and cards. At the early game, you will usually want to save your cards for The King in Yellow, but using some to fuel Grisly Totem and Analytical Mind is ok, especially if you don't have Mr. "Rook". If you have Scavenging you can juggle your Magnifying Glasses and Ancient Stones. This helps a lot for The King in Yellow.

Don't play Miss Doyle, unless you also have Ancient Stone on the table. She's not very useful on her own. For maximum efficiency, you need all your assets on the table. Miss Doyle will usually be one of the last assets you play. After you 're setup, you 're good to go and you are able to deal with almost anything. This is where the fun begins:

The 3 Cats: Hope, Zeal and Augur

The 3 Cats are all awsome. They are very strong, because all of them have very powerful effects. Of those cats, though, we actually need 2: Hope and Zeal. Augur is almost useless in this deck, because (obviously) you 're playing Minh Thi Phan. Well, to be honest, 1 guarranteed clue for an action every now and then is not too bad, but not a big deal either. The best value she can have in this deck, actually, is to save you from a when you try to clear The King in Yellow.

So, the other 2 Cats are what we want. If you 're fully set-up when you play Miss Doyle, you have 66% chance to get a useful cat by default. With these cats, we can evade enemies and in combination with Ancient Stone and the other assets we can deal a lot of damage to one or more enemies and sometimes, we can do it with guarranteed success!! How we do it:

Dealing with enemies using Zeal and Hope combined with Ancient Stone

(and finally, the big stuff:)

  • Use the discard action on Zeal or Hope and commit Resourceful. Trigger Grisly Totem + Analytical Mind + 2x Drawing Thin (again -you don't care about the difficulty of the test) and draw 4 cards. With Zeal, you deal 5 damage (+1 from attacking) and with Hope you deal 4 and get an evade, but the best part here is that you get your Cat back after the test ends (with Resourceful), for later use. Again, all of that 100% success rate!!

Note that this list doesn't fully cover all possible combinations of cards and abilities you can use, but is more of a general guideline on how these cards can be used. Also note that if you have the second Totem down (with Relic Hunter), damage count goes up by 1 in almost all cases and it is doubled if you have the second Ancient Stone out, so you can be a real boss-killer!!

Don't miss the and icons on Zeal, Hope and Augur! They can be used to fuel Analytical Mind and Grisly Totem when you 're using one of your other Cats and you can get them back by shuffling the one you used into your deck. Shuffling, by the way, a Cat into your deck to get another Cat from your discard is totally ok. Except for the fact that this is what these Cats are supposed to do anyway, your high card draw and Mr. "Rook" can get them back for you easily.

Other Stuff

Early in the campaign, before you get Grisly Totem (3) you will have Rabbit's Foot. This card can not only help you with card draw, but it can also trigger Ancient Stone while you are engaged with the enemy: Take a Fight or Evade action, pop Drawing Thin and after the attack or evasion attempt fails, pop Rabbit's Foot for an additional card draw. This way, you can deal 2-3 damage to enemies without expending any cards.

The Cats will also have diminished value until you upgrade to Grisly Totem (3). They can still do some work, but their real power will be displayed after you get it. At least, with Rabbit's Foot, you can deal with some enemies without them. Besides, Hope will always be useful for her evade action.

We also bring Cryptic Research later on, which is a good boost to the deck's setup and of course it can be combined with the Stone for more auto-damage. We do cut 1 copy of Overpower which is important, but it's good to speed things up. I 've also found (in a similar deck that I have played) that second Cryptic Research is somewhat superfluous -we are drawing hard, so we don't need to spend more XP on card draw, we can spend it on other stuff.

Use Scavenging to refill the Stones! Obvious one, but worth pointing out that when your Stone starts to run out of charges, you should play your second Stone or a second Magnifying Glass to push it into the discard and get it back with Scavenging. Don't wait until the Stones run out of charges completely. When they are at 2-3 charges, you should aim to refill them.

15 comments

Sep 22, 2019 Bez · 1

Awesome man. Im playing through Return to Carc with my local group using a variant of the Stones deck in an all seeker "everyone bring their own fight" team and we've been having a absolute blast. Theres so much nonsense to be had.

Not played with the Cat set yet, but ive got my eye on it for a skill card spam deck of some sort playing off the fact both cats and skill like lots of draw, and the cats offer the option to automatically pass a test (ie trigger any skill card committed`s "if you succeed" stuff). Minh ofc is great for both!

Sep 23, 2019 matt88 · 2968

@Bez Yeah Minh is great for such a kind of deck I think she has the highest drawing capabilities among other seekers and the Cats just seem to fit naturally in this kind of deck. This Ancient Stone + Miss Doyle deck also seems like the best way to take advantage of them and I can't wait for the Dream Eaters to get released in order to try it out! :)

Sep 24, 2019 StartWithTheName · 63539

Not found time to read the write up, but i had a quick skim. Nice one! Love the cat & skill cards combo stuff. I`ll try to read it some time next week. Just been a bit run off my feet of late

Sep 24, 2019 matt88 · 2968

@StartWithTheName Thanks man! Really nice to get a thumbs up from you! I appreciate it a lot!

Just a quick assessment: The deck doesn't differ a lot from the original one, it only adds the Cat twist and relies mostly on that for enemy management.

Sep 24, 2019 StartWithTheName · 63539

@matt88 - yeah a lot of these things are of an archtype. a few key card combos, then sort of sets of other things applying a sort of "role" in the deck. Like say just lots of pips on from skill cards could be from a different combination of skill cards and do a similar job. I would actually read the deck as being able to use the stones the way the old version did, but with the extra option of cats in due time. All the components are there still. The cats just give you a new and what looks like quite effective facet to trigger them with.

Sep 24, 2019 matt88 · 2968

@StartWithTheName I'm not sure it can do that, as the deck is missing key cards like Rise to the Occasion, Manual Dexterity and Cornered.

Sep 24, 2019 StartWithTheName · 63539

Oh, the version i published a while ago wasnt the finished thing. It was an early draft. I dropped the cornered completely. Rise is good but not essential (any big pip card will do), and man dex is a flex slot skill card. I liked Man dex over say percenption as i enjoy the track shoes, drive by shoeing combos mainly for giggles. at some point you have to fill the gaps with toys. its a game at the end of the day and you remember the big/silly plays and for get the minor stuff :)

Sep 24, 2019 matt88 · 2968

@StartWithTheName I see. I'm still not sure though the deck can handle enemies without the Cats as I'm lacking sufficient ways of triggering the Stones without getting AoOs. But, whatever, trying out the deck will possibly give me all the answers I want. I'll probably be paired with a fighter anyway, so I guess I shouldn't worry too much about enemy handling...

Sep 24, 2019 StartWithTheName · 63539

@matt88. It looks like you have as many tools as the other one. and if it works like that one, it can handle one small enemy early (1 or 2 damage) a turn or 2 small/1 big around mid game then a 5 to 6 thing late on. Unless you get both stones down early, then each instant trigger lets you deal up to 2 damage, this can then be quite heavy duty. It takes a little construction but its a great little rude goldberg machine that slowly builds up. The trick is getting the parts together early. Basically using rook to focus on more draw cards or simply spamming through the deck wrecklessly using whatever draw card came up first. 2x Studious and hard muliganning for stones and draw cards makes a huge difference. The other thing to note is that if you evade, you can also deal 1 damage from your upkeep draw (or 2 with 2 stones). Someone on another thread was saying they had been using the Evadey Glyphs in the deck and basically ignoring enemies as they slowly chip away. ive not tried it but they seemed to be enjoying themselves.

On the other hand if you have a fighter, then twin stones might be overkill and your probably wanting to go harder on clues so you can likely build the gauntlet over a longer game.

Sep 24, 2019 StartWithTheName · 63539

Oh the AoO thing is easy to work around. if they dont have alert attempt an evade action, use Drawing Thin/Analytical Mind/Mr. "Rook" mid test. deal the damage even if you fail the test. same works for attacking without retaliate, and if i recall correctly some of these kill things before the test takes effect (i lack rules foo. someone told me it works) so you can even skip the retaliates etc. Track Shoes triggers before the enemy even engages you for example. with the exception of Grisly Totem or skill card triggers like Eureka!, you dont actually have to pass the tests.

Sep 24, 2019 matt88 · 2968

@StartWithTheName I am quite amazed. These are little things that are quite potent and didn't consider. Seems like this deck has a lot more potential than I originally thought. Thanks for pointing these things out! Now I'm even more eager to try this one out! Seems like the main disadvantage I thought this deck had (which was not being able to deal with enemies without the Cats) doesn't even exist!! :) I'm quite happy with how things turned out!

And, by the way, I assure you: Twin Stones is still good even if you 're paired with a fighter. Sometimes, you get swarmed, or enemies pile up and you need to clear them, or there's a big boss that (why not?) you can kill on a single turn. Your partner will also probably not be a pure fighter, as you can generally handle yourself, but it could be someone like Roland or Leo (or perhaps Tony Morgan?)...

Sep 28, 2019 Sassenach · 173

Have you considered running Occult Lexicon as a further offensive option ? Each time you play Blood Rite you'd be triggering the Stones for 2 damage with the option of then discarding the cards you draw for a further 2, all testless.

Sep 28, 2019 matt88 · 2968

Yes, I have considered the Occult Lexicon but I have kind of dismissed from this kind of deck. While the option for more testless damage looks nice, it can cause some problems regarding the consistency and damage potential of the deck. The main problem is that it takes up our second handslot and given that we need one handslot for the Stone, that means no Magnifying Glass and no second Stone. That, in turn, means I have to turn to other means of Intellect boost, namely via Death • XIII, which means that if I don't draw it in my opening hand, it basically acts as a 3-cost non-fast Magnifying Glass, which is terrible. The no-second stone part is also big. Not having it means you can't take down bosses, you can't deal with big enemies that easily, etc. While I was pretty much eager to include the Lexicon in such a deck when it was first announced, thinking about all of these actually makes it rather unappealing, especially since the deck can work around AoOs by itself.

Sep 28, 2019 Sassenach · 173

Ah yes, these are good points. I tend to forget that the Stones take up a hand slot because I don't own any of the TFA cards and consequently never play them.

Of course, Mag Glass(1) would offset this handicap to some extent, but if you don't need the Lexicon then I guess it doesn't matter.

Sep 28, 2019 matt88 · 2968

@Sassenach I'm not saying I don't want it. I was dying to use it in a Stone deck; the 4 damage potential is very nice, it just causes problems that are hard to work around and in the end, the deck can do without it.