Throw anything at Diana Stanley

Card draw simulator

Odds: 0% – 0% – 0% more
Derived from
None. Self-made deck here.
Inspiration for
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Arioch80 · 58

This is a pure support deck to be used in a 4 investigators group, possibly with very focused companions.

The idea is to intercept all of (or most of) the bad things the encounter deck will throw to the group, and let the others investigate/kill enemies freely.

Olive McBride stands for Ikiaq (2)

Blinding Light stands for Read the Signs

I have thrown in a Shrivelling to deal damage and a Sixth Sense and a couple events to get some clues, but she won't be doing much on her own. The deck can be adjusted to lean more towards clue gathering or damage dealer by changing these cards.

Cards to search during mulligan are definitely Twilight Blade which will allow to use all cancel effects twice, Ikiaq, which allows to defend others and yourself from weaknesses, and any card that you can put under Diana, to start rolling the deck.

Dayana Esperence is best used with Deny Existence or Soothing Melody (if Hallowed Mirror is in play) but I used it easily with Hypnotic Gaze or Storm of Spirits too, since resources aren't usually a problem after a few turns cancelling all you can.

You can place Grotesque Statue or Ikiaq under Diana after you use them, <and if you have Twilight Blade then play them again with full health/charges> [EDIT: you can't actually do that, only events and skills can be played/invested from under Diana with Twilight Blade. You may take them back to hand though if you draw a ]. When you place Ikiaq under Diana you'll have to withstand all the weaknesses under her too, but at times it might be worth it.

3 comments

Nov 10, 2019 zshoness · 1

Diana is one of my favorite characters in many of the games in the Arkham files. I am often afraid of not being able to play a central role in clue getting or fighting so this deck is definitely intimating for me. It does seem like a very powerful take on being a superior support character. Definitely a deck I would like to try in a campaign, but it might take some work to whittle down the experience required for this deck.

I never thought of the combination of Ikiaq & the Grotesque Statue going back into play because of the Twilight Blade. I do not know how that would work only because those cards, as well as cards like Olive McBride which can ignore/cancel, are assets, not skills or events as stated on the Twilight Blade.

It would be helpful for one of your companions with access to rogue cards to include one or two "You handle this ones" for additional chaos for Diana to handle. As far as general weaknesses, overzealous has to be one of the worst. However, when I last played with Diana, I discovered it is probably "best" on her.

Nov 11, 2019 unremb · 251

Actually, you can't use Twilight Blade to bring Ikiaq and Grotesque Statue back to play - it specifies Events and Skills only. You could use Diana's ability to bring it back to hand though.

Nov 14, 2019 Arioch80 · 58

Thanks for the correction @unremb, you're both right, I missed the part where only skills and events can be played from under Diana. I used this deck three times so far, and in the end I never replayed Grotesque Statue with Twilight Blade so far, nor did I ever put Ikiaq under the investigator card, so maybe I won't miss this options. Anyway I should probably correct the text above, clarifying that there is just a random chance to pick those assets back with (which is nice, but it's random).

@zshoness I understand your concerns in terms of spotlight, I was afraid too she could have turned out useless in the team, but after every game I had positive feedbacks from the other players. The thing is, sometimes in the investigator phase you won't do very powerful stuff, but in the mythos phase, while everyone is drawing encounter cards, Diana is often in the spotlight.

I didn't think about campaign play, this is really a single scenario deck, but with some work the concept can be switched to campaign mode I believe. She will contribute less at the beginning, but you don't need all the tons of xp used in this deck to support the group.

The first cards I'd buy are probably "I've had worse…" and the upgrade for Ward of Protection. With these you can start to withstand encounter cards and bad stuff almost as good as with full xp. After that, I'd buy maybe one Stargazing (I never played it more than once in any game), Four of Cups, Dayana Esperence, Ikiaq and Grotesque Statue, in any given order.

Once you have spent 19 xp the deck works almost as this one I believe, all the other cards are just improvements and fancy tricks. To be honest, building with single scenario rules I didn't limit myself on the xp spent, because I figured out she could withstand a lot of weaknesses in the deck.

Both in campaign or single scenario, the other players should consider building decks more focused on clues and damage, because they need to worry less about defence ("You handle this one!" is a good idea)

Anyway thanks for your feedbacks, if you try something similar let me know how it works out