The Evening Star

Deck Concept

This is a relatively straightforward "Parity" deck (meaning that every card in the deck has an even resource cost) using Jeremiah Kirby. It is designed to have exceptional draw power and hit the ground running, handling investigation with plenty of Intellect and enemy management with Brand of Cthugha and events.

Mulligan priority and setup

To put it simply, mulligan hard for Jeremiah Kirby. I probably wouldn't mulligan away Arcane Studies or Brand of Cthugha, but that's honestly about it - once Jeremiah hits the table, you'll have more than enough tools to be getting on with.

Piloting

This deck hits the ground running if you can get Jeremiah Kirby out early. Once his beautiful visage graces your ally slot, you'll essentially draw 5 cards, which will mainly consist of events, giving you a huge toolbox to respond to whatever the scenario throws at you. If you don't see him in your starting hand (or on top of your deck) even after mulligan, you should be parsimonious with your resources - you want to end your turn with at least 2 left, so that you can play him immediately if he appears on top of your deck (with the extra resource from upkeep).

Since the deck naturally uses no Skills, you should feel free to throw events into skill tests - plenty of events in this deck have double matching icons for this exact reason.

Don't take unnecessary risks. This deck has excellent economy and can afford to blow tests out of the water, and conversely can be somewhat vulnerable if things get out of control. Fittingly enough, its playstyle straddles the line between Mystic and Seeker, so you'll probably spend the majority of your time gathering clues, but you have enough magical ability to not need babysitting as you do so.

Upgrade Priority

The deck as shown here has its core upgrades in place. The level 0 deck has Persuasion and Higher Education in place of Brand of Cthugha and Arcane Studies, though feel free to swap Persuasion out for Deep Knowledge, Guidance or a second Connect the Dots and a copy of Occult Lexicon, particularly if you're in a campaign without many Humanoid enemies in the first scenario.

Your first purchase should absolutely be Brand of Cthugha (1), and once you have Brand of Cthugha (4) and Arcane Studies (4) as suggested here, Foresight is an obvious next option since it's incredibly strong with Norman - you always know what you're about to draw from your deck, and you can even cancel your basic weakness with Foresight (shame about The Harbinger). From there, the remaining suggestions shown in the Side Deck are incremental improvements - but if you want to branch out, see the next section.

Variations on a Theme

This deck is designed to be lean and require minimal setup, but if you want a slightly more potent board state, you could do worse than Occult Lexicon - the Blood-Rite cards it adds to your deck are still even-costed so no problems there. You can simply use Norman's Novella signatures if you have them (Vengeful Hound and Split the Angle) to avoid the slot pressure - the relatively weak nature of Split the Angle is countered by the significantly less problematic Vengeful Hound, which you can generally kill in one action and which can be countered with Foresight. You could also take Arcane Enlightenment to avoid the slot pressure, but if you're going that route, you could take it one step further and grab an early Charisma alongside Laboratory Assistant, since this deck has absolutely no trouble filling its hand to capacity.

This deck is designed to be completely even-costed, but you can get away with one or two odd-costed cards if you need to - starting with "I've got a plan!" is a nice way to have a bit more enemy management, and if you are going for the "big hand" approach with Laboratory Assistant, taking Arcane Enlightenment to be able to hold Celaeno Fragments isn't the worst idea. This does come with a substantial trade-off in terms of speed, but if you don't mind a slower setup and you want something a bit different, that could be the approach for you. Alternatively, you can add some skills - while they can't be found with Jeremiah Kirby, Deduction and Enraptured are both very solid choices for this deck

This deck is a little fragile. Feel free to throw Jeremiah Kirby under the bus to soak up damage, since that just frees you up to play a second copy and draw another 5 cards, but depending on the campaign, you may find yourself suffering a death by inches as your health and sanity are slowly chipped away. If that does happen (a particular hazard of The Innsmouth Conspiracy and The Forgotten Age), the most straightforward solution is one copy each of Bulletproof Vest and Elder Sign Amulet (with optional Relic Hunter), though there are other choices, such as Earthly Serenity or Robes of Endless Night (2).

This fragility is one reason that I haven't included In the Thick of It, but if you're confident in survival - or just a bit of a daredevil - taking the two trauma in order to start with 2x Brand of Cthugha (1) and a copy of Foresight will make the first scenario a lot smoother sailing.

As said above, the upgrades shown in the Side Deck are sort of generic, incremental increases in effectiveness, but this deck has excellent economy and can support lots of different approaches as you gain exp, and has a spare arcane slot – you have a lot of options to choose from in terms of even-costed levelled Mystic cards, so you can leverage the excellent card economy of this deck to fill a number of niches. For example, Blur is just a solid card and very useful in campaigns like TFA or TCU, and using Rite of Seeking once per round is a nice way to boost your clue gathering to match or beat dedicated seekers. If you're part of a team using Curse synergy, take Deep Knowledge and swap in Armageddon (4) instead of Brand of Cthugha.

Finally, you can really emphasise the power of Foresight and control of the Encounter Deck by taking Alyssa Graham. You'll need to grab Charisma right away (or even take In the Thick of It to do so) to avoid the slot conflict with our boy Jeremiah, but knowing the top card of the Encounter deck means that you can cancel it with Foresight (if you're lead investigator) or discard it with Split the Angle (if you're using the Replacement signature cards).

Conclusion

This deck is fun, effective and a bit different. If you like toolbox approaches, or you're not such a fan of the Astronomical Atlas approach to Norman, I recommend you try it out. I used this deck in my first playthrough of Edge of the Earth (on Hard) and it worked out very well. If you do try this out, I'd love to hear how it goes for you!

Stay safe out there; the night is dark, but all the better for seeing the stars!

– Dai