Myriad Mandy

Primary Role: Clue Gathering

Secondary Role: Support

Myriad Mandy is an experiment in taking advantage of Mandy's draw power to reliably fetch Segment of Onyx and Three Aces for repeated use, using Astounding Revelation to further thin down the deck. Between Mr. "Rook", Practice Makes Perfect, and Eureka!, a solid third of her deck can either draw or clear cards from her deck. It only gets sillier when you throw in Three Aces as a way to score another few draws, along with the self-mill from Astounding Revelation. Using all of those resources, the goal is to tear through her deck to fetch the most important pieces, use the Pendant of the Queen's ability to pop out and fetch whatever clues she hasn't already grabbed, and reset the deck after using up everything.

Pre-XP Notes:

Since Myriad cards only cost 1 XP for the three copies, you should be getting both Segment of Onyx and Three Aces early on. However, during the first mission, you will want to consider the following substitutes:

• +Quick Thinking: Useful as a general evade.
• +Shortcut: Very versatile card when you just need to get somewhere or away from somewhere.
• +Hatchet Man: Not the most useful card, but it helps fulfill the requirements for Practice Makes Perfect, and the tends to be more useful when Mandy has no real capability to use .

Mulligan Strategy:

Note that the keeps are in order of preference. Pick the first item in the list if possible.

• Always Keep:
  • Mr. "Rook" x1
  • Occult Lexicon/Think on Your Feet/Mind over Matter x1
• Sometimes Keep:
  • 1x Practice Makes Perfect (If Mr. Rook is available.)
  • 1x Dream-Enhancing Serum (If Mr. Rook is available.)

Mulligan hard for your searches and for at least one damage/evade option. Mr. "Rook" is best and will set you up for quite a while, while Eureka! and Practice Makes Perfect will help you find more important combo pieces. Meanwhile, Occult Lexicon and Mind over Matter should help you handle any encounters during the early game. "I've got a plan!" is a bit slower in practice, but it can do in a pinch.

General Strategy:

Try to space yourself out such that you're triggering your ability every turn. You should almost always go for the additional draw - unless you need a specific card here and now, an extra draw will help thin your deck and find you the correct tools longer-term. If possible, try to time the searches such that they come early during your turn - it's better to deal with Shocking Discovery or a weakness earlier on your turn, rather than later when you might not have the actions to react.

The ideal setup involves using Mr. "Rook" to start tearing through your deck. Unless you have a particularly nasty weakness, feel free to dig through 9 cards when drawing. You WILL hit your weaknesses, possibly multiple times - as long as you're prepared for it, that's fine. Doing so with Mr. "Rook" still allows you to get it as a 'bonus' draw rather than as your normal draw for a turn.

Dive on any clues you see. Mandy has plenty of raw stats for investigations. You might have some of the necessary cards already, but Practice Makes Perfect can hit Deduction, Perception, and Three Aces, meaning with it, you'll have a very good chance of grabbing clues, and will thin huge chunks of your deck by doing so.

Note that while it's not as ideal, Practice Makes Perfect still has the capability of grabbing you one or two copies of Three Aces for any generic check. If you succeed, great - Three Aces is a great bonus, and you might even set up a full trio prior to the success. However, the most important thing to remember is that it should be triggered every deck cycle if possible, if only for the effective resources.

Once you have cards in hand for one or two good fights or evades, you can swap your focus to Segment of Onyx when using Mr. "Rook" or Eureka!. Three Aces are one of your limited targets for Practice Makes Perfect, and you should avoid drawing them in other ways unless you already have a couple in hand.

Once you get Pendant of the Queen out, use it when you need it. The strategy for it changes here depending on just how the rules for Bonded cards work. If you can access Pendant of the Queen when it leaves, then Mandy doesn't need to worry too much about using up the changes. The important note is that when it is used up, the Segment of Onyx all get shuffled back into your deck - and Mandy has more than enough draw/search power that you can time it to happen when your deck is particularly small. On the other hand, if the final rulings says that she is not able to the Pendant again, she will want to be particularly careful with her charges.

In general, I consider the effects of the Pendant useful in the order Evade > Move > Discover. Mandy's high and her various discovery-based cards mean a single discover is not as useful, meaning Discovers should only be used when one far-off clue is important. Movement works a bit better for setting up multiple investigate actions, but you should avoid using charges unless the pendant would save you multiple actions getting to the location. An automatic evade is the most important of these, allowing her to avoid trouble or exhaust enemies from anywhere. (This can change once she has reliable combat options.)

Notable Omissions

• Regarding Larger Deck Sizes: Mandy is perfectly playable at large deck sizes. However, this deck attempts to draw through with enough out to make Segment of Onyx and Three Aces repeatedly playable. To do that, the deck has been focused down to its smallest possible form, and will willingly take the horror in order to reshuffle everything, just so you can get right back to fetching those cards again. Note that this also means you can 'reuse' important cards with a large amount of consistency, which helps to make the deck more bearable.
• Perception: This was originally included in the deck, and did a great job in enabling Practice Makes Perfect. However, it was less important than the other Practiced skills, and ended up cut to make room for Dream-Enhancing Serum, which also provides card draw and plays an important role in allowing Mandy to hold on to her incredibly large hands.
• Old Book of Lore: Simply too slow for Mandy. This build focuses on getting things done on a very quick basis, and the Old Book takes too long to play out.
• No Stone Unturned: This is definitely a respectable search, but it takes one action and two resources for a full search. This deck is more focused on pushing through via cheap searches, rather than going for this pricier large search.
• Easy Mark: While this would be fitting for the name, this build already contains a significant amount of draw and resource gain, and holding Three Aces requires enough hand space that it's hard to justify requiring even more.
• Dr. Elli Horowitz: Given the Segment of Onyx that fill your deck, this isn't the worst choice. However, the cost is a bit high for a single search, so this deck prefers to get multiple draws or cheaper draws.
• Decoy/Small Favor: These were both potential options for monster handling. However, I ended up going with Think on Your Feet for its relative versatility and ability to preempt non-hunters until you can build up enough for "I've got a plan!".
• Fingerprint Kit/Magnifying Glass: As odd as it is to say this, you really don't need them. Practice Makes Perfect, combined with Perception, Deduction, or Three Aces will all allow you to do incredibly powerful searches and draws. You have enough in your hands to commit that you don't particularly struggle with investigations. You might warrant adding a Fingerprint Kit in multiplayer, but it's not necessary in solo.

Upgrade Recommendations:

• Higher Education: Between Astounding Revelation and Three Aces, this build can have a surprising amount of extra resources, and with so many searches as draws, it will rarely want for cards. As such, Higher Education can be a great sink for your deck.
• Strange Solution/Strange Solution (Acidic Ichor): Acid is, bar none, one of the best fight options for Seekers, Mandy included. However, it is very expensive, and may be lower on the priority list as a result.
• Ancient Stone/Ancient Stone (Knowledge of the Elders): Mandy does not have many options for dealing with enemies outside of avoiding them. However, she's in a very good position to use this with her ability to resolve additional draws from her searches, meaning this can easily give her access to a shot of damage.

Thanks

Thanks for looking through all of this! If you're interested in my decks, feel free to check out the other decks I've made:

• Testless Infinite Wendy
• Everywhere and Nowhere (Luke Robinson)
• Shallow Gravedigger William
• Minimalist Zoey Samaras
• Minimalist Jenny Barnes
• Minimalist Rex Murphy

Thoughts and comments are appreciated!