Akachical Transmutation (DttF competition)

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acotgreave · 782

Akachi

My starting point: Do the upgraded cards in Return to Path to Carcosa transform a card from binder fodder to must-have?

To answer, I needed to know: "How popular are the Carcosa Deluxe edition cards?"

AT is 14th in Carcosa

Of those cards, the least popular cards that are upgraded in RtPtC are Alchemical Transmutation (233 decks) and Stealth (154 decks). I prefer mystics, so chose to build a deck around Alchemical Transmutation.

How unpopular is alchemical transmutation?

AT is 37th Mystic card

The chart above shows "decks published per day" on ArkhamDB for all 40 Level 0 Mystic cards, AT is 37th out of 40 (FWIW, Ward of Protection, Shrivelling and Holy Rosary are top 3). It's definitely binder fodder for many people. So...

Does the upgrade make this a good card?

In RtPtC we have a new Alchemical Transmutation (2): lower cost, more charges, easier test, and a higher maximum return. On the face of it, this looks amazing: 4 super-powered Emergency Cache? Yes please. Is the cost of actions and the risk on injury now mitigated?

The deck: get 20 resources from Alchemical Trasnmutation

And thus the idea was born: build an Alchemical Transmutation deck that maximises those resources, and minimizes the risk of the bad chaos tokens. Akachi Onyele is our 'gator, because right away she gets a 5th charge on the card. Let's build a combat deck!

Deck choices

  • Boosting Willpower will help maximise resources every time you use AT. Akachi is already at 5, which is great, but we can boost with St. Hubert's Key, Holy Rosary, and Four of Cups. There are 27 Willpower skill icons in this deck, too, so you have lots of pips to commit.
  • Arcane Initiate helps you find the Transmutation card if it's not in your opening hand.
  • Akachi’s only got 6 health, so I need to minimise the risk of drawing the bad chaos tokens. For that we have Fearless and Eldritch Inspiration, and Deny Existence. Deny won't work directly on AT, but will heal us when we get hit by enemies and encounter cards.
  • Dayana Esperence helps soak damage, and lets you replay Deny Existence for massive power.

Playing the deck

I took this deck through Clutches of Chaos, alongside Rita. In that playthrough, card draw was great: Ackachi got fully setup in a couple of turns, and got super rich. It made playing assets a breeze. I enjoyed the simplicity of the deck's purpose: get rich...play assets...fight. My second play (Threads of Fate, 4 player), was with a slightly tweaked version. More success but less dramatic.

Enjoy!

My conclusion? For Akachi, you can get 20 resources out of 6 actions, if everything goes to plan. Alchemical Transmutation kicks ass!

6 comments

Nov 08, 2019 SolarJ · 470

Great deck! I want to love Transmutation and this deck gives me reason to. Thanks!

Nov 08, 2019 acotgreave · 782

Have fun SolarJ! To make it a little more playable, you might want to drop one either Holy Rosary or St hubert's key, in favour of a card that gives you a bit more flexibility. I included them both in this version of the deck to maximise the Alchemical Transmutation, but in genuine gameplay, it's overkill.

Also, Counterspell, Premonition and Dark Prophecy would be great additions to this deck if you widen the cardpool to all cards (note to others: the competition was to use a restricted card pool)

Nov 09, 2019 TheBlackHorror · 16086

I echo SolarJ's comment. Thank you for this gem @acotgreave!

Nov 11, 2019 The Lynx · 952

Did you mean to put Sixth Sense into the deck instead of Wither? I don't see any cluegetting cards but maybe I am missing something.

I like the deck overall and used Alchemical Transmutation in my Akachi deck. It worked fairly well and I would do it again, especially if I get the Grotesque Statue again. The 2XP Alchemical Transmutation is even better for her.

Nov 23, 2019 acotgreave · 782

@TWWaterfallsI built this purely for combat and highly optimized it for boosting Alchemical Transmutation. For more flexbility is real play, yes, you should swap out a few cards to enable some sort of clue-getting! Wither certainly got included in the deck when I played it for real.

Nov 23, 2019 The Lynx · 952

I guess I don't see how Rita and Akachi could get through a scenario with the deck as shown but I haven't played the two scenarios listed.

I took Akachi and Finn through Carcosa on Hard Mode and about the only thing I used Alchemical Transmutation (L0) was to feed the Angered Spirits weakness. I wanted to use it for economy but I was usually only able to get one of the spell cards and one of the combat cards into play. I usually couldn't get both the third Arcane slot Sign Magick and Alchemical Transmutation into play after those. And I didn't need much economy beyond Uncage the Soul tbh.

I setup my deck with 4 combat spells/weapons (Shrivelling - Wither - Enchanted Blade) and 4 cluefinding spells (Rite of Seeking - Sixth Sense). I make sure that I can find at least one of them early.