Preston - The Favoured Sun Over Succeeds

Why is there no bless generation in here? Two copies of Tempt Fate is not enough to ensure these combos. This deck looks like it just falls apart completely if you don't open with both Tempt Fate and Favour of the Sun.

I guess it could work if it's paired with a Sister Mary or something? But why would you not run Signum Crucis or Keep Faith anyway? At least that way you aren't completely dependant on a 2-3 card combo to be able to do anything.

@SSW Short answer is that so far in testing I haven't found it to be necessary.

Either:

1. Tempt Fate + Favor of the Sun for a guaranteed success vs up to a shroud 3 location (or more if you commit) or:
2. Eye of the Djinn by itself for the base 5 skill test

is enough to get the deck moving quickly. Once you have them all in play you become a powerhouse but you don't need them both in play to be impactful.

Even without any of these pieces are in play you have Flashlight for 1/2 shroud locations. Intel Report to buy your way through locations with your Family Inheritance or commit skills aggressively on a Pilfer.

Draw is important for the deck though so you should be utilizing Lucky Cigarette Case and Manual Dexterity for draw, and extra actions from Leo De Luca and Quick Thinking for draw as well if required.

Tempt Fate is included because it's a cantrip and effectively shrinks your deck by 2. Once you get your first Tempt Fate the bless generation is more than enough to keep them up for the rest of the game. Like you mention there are loads of great generation cards in Survivor and these are easily subbable in or included in addition if preferred.

Consistency getting your power pieces does increase as you get more xp, especially with the search from Lucky Cigarette Case (3) but I have run test scenarios with this 8xp deck on Expert with great success.

I've been testing a similar concept with William Yorick (2-handed with Trish Scarborough), with his ability to put Favor of the Sun back into play after offing a beast. What I've found is that even with Tempt Fate, Predestined and Keep Faith, it doesn't generate enough tokens for Favor of the Sun consistently.

Perhaps you play with a different team, or that you're just that Lucky!
Ultimately, you only have 2 (Tempt Fate) in your deck that generates tokens, 2 (Lucky Cigarette Case) that generates consistent draw and 2 (Manual Dexterity) that replaces itself (of 34 cards). Odds not great.
Not to mention the chances of getting your key piece Eye of the Djinn (2) on setup is not high!

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed your concept, though with doubts over the consistency of your application. Personally, I would place more emphasis on card draw (e.g. Lucky Cigarette Case (3)) and transition in the tech later with Adaptable (1).

Why is Well Connected in this deck? You pretty much have no way to actually get a big resource pool except using "Watch this!" once you have a Favor of the Sun in play. Also, why is "Watch this!" in here? It seems like your natural resource drip should be enough to play everything as you draw it, so there's not much point in resource generation unless you get your 1x Well Connected. Also, why Track Shoes You don't seem to have any failure-based effects. Finally: why Opportunist?

I'd suggest cutting all that to make room for Keep Faith, Take Heart, Predestined, and maybe Cornered or Level 0 Streetwise.

@unrembInteresting! Was it the consistency of setup or were you running out of tokens later?

You can only have 1 x Favor of the Sun out a time so you can only use up its charges 1 per round, so once setup you only need to be generating a single per turn.

Based on the comments I've gotten I've now tried a 2 man expert The Midnight Masks run with a for purely enemy management where I removed all the combo pieces (Tempt Fate, Favor of the Sun, Eye of the Djinn) from my initial hand / mulligan draws and then stacked tham all on the bottom of my deck.

It definitely upped the challenge a lot as succeeding tests on Expert with Preston Fairmont isn't easy, so I had to rely upon Flashlight, Intel Report in my early turns and aggressively draw to get through the deck, but still successfully went 6/6.

I agree that Lucky Cigarette Case (3) is a high priority upgrade and any further card draw is great on top of that. Can also see argument the for including any of the great generation tools, though once setup I've never run out of tokens in the bag they would aid in consistency with setup.

So think the challenges on deck consistency are fair and you suggestion to prioritise draw or other tools for consistency before speccing into this combo very reasonable. However, I wanted to show the core deck pieces in action at an 8xp entry and I think the deck manages decently even if incredibly un-Lucky!

@OrionJA Thanks for the feedback. Fair challenges to those cards.

Well Connected is the worst card in the deck, especially at this xp but does pick up with Hot Streak but I do end up swapping out at higher xp. Your Streetwise (0) suggestion could well be a better alternative, I'll give it a try!

Track Shoes are there to have a guaranteed test to trigger success effects rather than failure ones. All the skill cards in the deck are themed and if you don't have a Pilfer or an evade action you can commit skill cards for their effects to this test. The +1 and potential extra move action are also sometime relevant. It's another card that I swap out of at higher xp and I think any of your suggested alternatives are reasonable.

Opportunist is there as another deck thinner. Once you're setup you can commit it, and it stays in your hand, thinning your draw and discard pile for faster cycling. At higher xp it also helps trigger bigger Lucky Cigarette Case (3) searches, All In draws and Pilfer (3) returns. Perhaps it would be better swapped in later with Adaptable, or by later purchasing Opportunist (2)

"Watch this!" I do find useful at all xp levels. Your assets can be paid with your natural resource generation and Family Inheritance but Pilfer and Intel Report are expensive and you're aiming to play them a lot. Commiting "Watch this!" on a guaranteed Pilfer to then fund Intel Report for a guaranteed 5 clues for 2 actions on a single turn is the pinnacle of this deck.

As to your alternative suggestions I think they're all good. Particularly Take Heart which I have used in an alternative version of this deck with success and can definitely see it helping out with some of the consistency concerns.

@bobblenator
How exactly did you aggressively draw though?
Taking draw actions?

What do you mean when you say you can only have 1x Favor of the Sun out at a time? AFAIK there's no such restriction (though probably not a good idea).
I also don't see how you can consistently generate 1x each turn, given that you only run 2x Tempt Fate as your generation.

@unremb Favor of the Sun is unique bruh

`@bobblenator

Thanks a lot, I will be checking this out!

@endoviking
Huh, good point, did not notice that.
Regardless, my points still stand.

@unremb Yes, I took plenty of draw actions. With Leo De Luca out it's usually possible to spare at least 1 a turn.

I also tried to trigger Lucky Cigarette Case every turn also. On Expert this was challenging to do reliably, Flashlight was great for this but I also took gambles on other tests with plenty of skill cards commited, though still ended with a couple of big fails. On standard this would be much easier.

Still each turn, 1 card from upkeep, 1 from Lucky Cigarette Case and 1+ from your base actions, Leo De Luca, and Quick Thinking and I was able to dig through my deck quickly while still able to grab clues with Intel Report and Flashlight.

I'll admit it was far from ideal, and it was behind the curve early game, but it did manage to catch up in the later game.

Consistency will certainly improve dramatically with higher xp cards but I'm going to experiment with some of the suggestions in the comments as to how to improve the starting deck to get to the combo pieces faster.

@bobblenator
I'd also go with Rabbit's Foot instead of Lucky Cigarette Case and Old Keyring instead of Flashlight.
I find that I can more consistently trigger Rabbit's Foot with Preston's low stats and not feel as bummed with investigative fails, but YMMV.

@unremb

Regards quantity of generation. This deck starts with 32 non permenant cards.

Once you're setup by playing 1 of each of your assets (7 of them), either have Lodge "Debts" in hand or cleared, and removed 2 x Beloved from the game have 22 cards that are in your hand/draw/discard.

Each cycle of these card will:

• Generate 6 from 2 x Tempt Fate
• Seal 6 from 2 x Favor of the Sun

And those 6 sealed will last 6 rounds if we exhaust Favor of the Sun every round.

So, depends whether we can cycle our deck in 6 rounds:

of those:

• 2 x Opportunist stays in your hand (as they're always returned)
• 2 x Tempt Fate are cantrips so they replace themselves
• 2 x Manual Dexterity also replace themselves

That leaves you with 16 cards that don't draw.

Every turn you draw at least 2 cards, 1 from upkeep and 1 from Lucky Cigarette Case. So over 6 rounds you draw 12 cards.

Close, we have 16 non-drawing cards and draw 12 over the course of the 6 rounds. However, in practice you'll be keeping cards in hands or (depending on what it is) have your basic weakness in play then you'll have even less to cycle through.

e.g. If you keep a hand of 5 cards each turn (3 random non-drawing cards + 2 opportunist) and have your weakness in play you'll draw through your deck every 6 rounds for a perfect 6 generated and 6 used. That's assuming you use Favor of the Sun every round and take no draw actions.

Not saying more generation is bad, either for more consistency in setup or because you or your teammates are using it for other things but in my testing I've not found it necessary for maintaining after setup.

At higher xp with more card draw, deck thinning, and card returning you'll be cycling your deck much faster.

@unremb Rabbit's Foot is certainly an option if you want to start out with a more fail orientated deck and move toward this deck direction at higher xp.

However this deck is built around success mechanics. Once you have the combo pieces Eye of the Djinn and Favor of the Sun you will be able to succeed almost any test.

Lucky Cigarette Case (0) and Lucky Cigarette Case (3) are far superior as a success gets you:

• The benefits of the successful test
• Other over success benefits Quick Thinking, "Watch this!", Manual Dexterity, Pilfer (3), All In (5) etc
• Helps avoid the fail effects from the bad tokens in the bag, especially relevant on hard/expert.

For Lucky Cigarette Case (3) that also means deep deck searches.

@bobblenator
Once you're setup, draw is much less of an issue - the main question is getting to that state.

Success mechanics definitely has a higher ceiling than failure oriented for Preston, my concern is getting to that state.
Early campaign/scenario, I hardly see any use for over-success mechanics especially before Eye of the Djinn - especially since you don't play Streetwise, Trial by Fire, or Fight or Flight.
In fact, other than throwing the kitchen sink at a test, I hardly see enough boosts to reliably hit the 1-over for "Watch this!", 2-over for Lucky Cigarette Case, and the 3-over for Opportunist.

Sometimes it's worth playing a new Favor of the Sun on top of an exhausted one even if it still has tokens on just to refresh it.

This is actually not legal, as Favor of the Sun is unique, and under the rules for unique cards players cannot bring into play a unique card if a copy of that card (by title) is already in play.

Apart from that there's a few things I don't quite understand:

• Why Beloved when you already have Ancient Covenant? Just for the RFG deck thin effect?
• How does opportunist staying in hand even help you, more than just keeping two random cards in hand? It's not like you're using the increased success margin for anything, and if you're guaranteeing the success anyway why not take Resourceful, or just Take Heart for draw?
• Do you do actually perform enough evade checks that Manual Dexterity and Train Tracks become worth it? I would think that Perception and oversucceeding on Flashlight/Old Key Ring investigates would be easier.

I think, in multiplayer, the failed-by suit would be better used by a partner, as he would take more tests, and thus be more likely to draw .

Such a cool deck. Very clever to figure this out. Thanks for posting it! Just a minor point, Chuck Fergus doesn't work with Intel report or hot streak as they are not trick or tactic events. Doesn't change the core mechanic, so not that important, but just a note.

@squidIncThanks, much appreciated! Well pointed out regarding Chuck Fergus, I've now corrected the guide. Definitely some good ideas in the comments if you'd like to tinker with or optimize the deck.

Sharpvision should be good here?