Card draw simulator
| Derived from |
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| None. Self-made deck here. |
| Inspiration for |
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| None yet |
Susumu · 338
Preface
As a follow up to my Desperate Diana, I want to showcase here, how I built her into a deck focusing on the card Well Prepared. This was my deck in the middle of my (victorious at standard difficulty) recent 3 to 4 players TCU campaign, after "The Wages of Sin" and also including "Murder at the Excelsior" hotel. While my experience in this build is limited to this single run, unlike the Desperate type I tested a lot, I'm quite happy about the upgrade path I took so far.
There are six cards, which provide valuable 2 pips boosts to various tests to be seen:
- 1x The Black Book (story asset from TCU):
- 1x Twilight Blade (signature card):
- 2x Rite of Seeking (4):
- 2x Dayana Esperence:
Soon to come with the next upgrade would be an additional due to upgrading the two Azure Flame (3) to Azure Flame (5) and I had a special idea what to do with the two slots for Delve Too Deep late in the campaign. This will be covered in the "Spoiler" paragraph further down below. It covers specifics from the campaign, so don't read it, if you haven't played TCU yet. But even without these, you get 3x , 3x and 4x with 8 cards, that's a good spread for Diana!
Allies
Dayana Esperence has a competitive rival for her slot in Twila Katherine Price. I chose her instead in my TCU blind run (also with Diana), and I still can't tell, whose powers I like more. Dayana is great with Deny Existence and really shines, once you upgrade it to level 5, what you should! But can it compete with almost unlimited charges on your high level charged spell? What gave the edge to Dayana was the comparably lousy icons from Twila and the fact, that I was keeping my Arcane Initiate all campaign and not planning to take Charisma. In a perfect game, you find the initiate early, collect your spells, then replace her with Twila or Dayana. But in Arkham, you sometimes find your high level ally before the initiate. With Dayana you happily use her soak after her secrets, then play the initiate. Twila you want to keep in play all game, once you played her. That makes her less flexible.
What I won't do again
In the second half of the campaign, I substituted St. Hubert's Key with Shining Trapezohedron. Well prepared I did not need the extra will and book any more and I thought it was good to aim at a cheaper accessory with some economy boost, but I played it twice and used it only once each time to stare at some monsters. This was successful and fun, it even hit both times, thanks to the lot of cultist tokens we had in the bag. (Naturally with Preston and me on the team.) And it also was safe. I both times had a Dodge in hand, in case I wiff. But given the opportunity cost of one resource, one action, one card to "save" two resources, this card did not deliver at all.
To make things worse, there was a discussion on BGG shortly after I purchased the second copy, whether you can play a spell with this card, if you can't cover the resource cost otherwise. I still think, you can, and in this case, I would still consider this card for somebody like Akachi or Agnes to get their Shrivelling and Rite of Seeking out early and fast. (Otherwise, if you can't, this card is plain garbage.) But for Diana this could work only mid to late game, and other than desperate Diana, well prepared, she likes to have them out early as well, if she doesn't have yet their icons in her tableau. If I try her out again (which I think will take a while, I really enjoy playing her, but there are so many other investigators yet to play for me!), I would probably purchase Ever Vigilant instead. Much cheaper in XP and resources, and it should save some play actions as well. On top of that, it fits the "Well Prepared" theme, if there is any.
Major Spoiler! (for "Union and Disillusion")
Before this scenario, I upgraded my two copies of Delve Too Deep into one each of Physical Training (2) and Arcane Studies (4). These would have been fine picks in any campaign. I increased my "value targets"
- from 3x , 3x and 4x on 8 cards
- to 4x , 4x and 6x on 10 cards.
Not sure, if I would do it in another campaign, though. In this scenario, there are tests of two different attributes, like + or +. The final test was +++ (20). I had both Well Prepared and Arcane Studies out. With 5 cards below Diana, I was at 25 without committing a single card. (Just using up the two resources, that replenish on Arcane Studies each round.) Well prepared for the test indeed!
| 3 comments |
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Mar 21, 2021 |
Mar 21, 2021Thank you a lot for the nice words and also great recommendations. I appreciate them a lot! We played the campaign around the time of the release of the "Investigator Starter Decks", and some cards, like the phenomenal Safeguard needed to sink first for me. I used it in several other characters and would have definitely slotted it in Diana nowadays, too. Dark Prophecy is a card, I never considered, because it appeared only after my most recent play of Diana to me, that it indeed has an "ignore" effect. I agree, Eldritch Inspiration won't reliably give her an early buff. That's why I gave advice to mulligan it away in my Level 0 deck. Substituting it with Dark Prophecy seems like a great advice to me! The one thing, I won't agree with you here is on St. Hubert's Key. This was "the" key card for my deck at lower level. Because, as soon as you played it, you can commit the desperate skills. And I wanted to use them preferable from turn 1, before Diana is set up with and it actually worked really well for me in most scenarios, I had this combo. This would not have worked with Holy Rosary, which is of course my first pick for characters like Agnes or Akachi. |
Mar 22, 2021That said, I think, I will indeed skip the .45 Automatic in a future run with Diana. It was underperforming, even with Well Prepared. But I would still keep Daring, as it also works great with spells. |
Hi Susumu,
This looks like a great Diana build to me! Of course, I would say that, since it's very similar to how I build her. The core strategy of playing a lot of cancels early and then dominating the mid-to-late game with big spells is the same. And you have the double Arcane Research/Delve Too Deep which is the name of the game for Diana.
I generally skip St. Hubert's Key (opting for Holy Rosary instead), and also skip the .45 Automatic/Daring combo. But I think these choices are justifiable in your deck because of Well Prepared. Which is a good choice here--it makes a lot of sense with Dayana Esperence, The Black Book, and so on.
Personally, I prefer Twila Katherine Price to Dayana Esperence, but both are strong. You can't go wrong. I agree that in either case you also want Arcane Initiate. I would probably just buy Charisma.
I would find room for Safeguard, which is just a broken card. I think Dark Prophecy is much better for her than Eldritch Inspiration, since it's so much easier to play it and get it under Diana. I like a little bit more resource generation as I think two Uncage the Souls is just a touch light. With the right chaos bag you could run Voice of Ra (to play well with the Prophecy and the Initiate), or Stand Together, or Ever Vigilant. The taboo'd Scroll of Secrets is a really good choice, though if you do want to take weapons I can see skipping it for hand slot considerations. Finally, Promise of Power is a newer card that can slot into these decks nicely.
For the early scenarios, Spectral Razor is a card that can make it easier to get by without a weapon, while working well with your Initiate. Though I would cut it once I upgraded my combat spells to deal 3 damage per hit.