Joe Diamond, True Carcosa

This deck is for a The Path to Carcosa campaign as an investigative partner to Carolyn Fern, True Carcosa, along with a Patrice Hathaway, True Carcosa support character [1]. This is built against a single core deck, so some card options are constrained or split across the three investigators.

—I’ll tell you about the Yellow King—

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Deck Walkthrough

Joe looks to wield one weapon along with the Fingerprint Kit (or Magnifying Glass ). These are both tools, so he can handle them along with Detective's Colt 1911s . Failing that we have .45 Automatic and Machete .

Both Beat Cop and Guard Dog can generate free (or, ‘testless’) damage. Charles Ross, Esq. has horror soak (useful in Carcosa) and if we get him out, we can reduce the cost all investigators pay to put assets into play. (By the way, it’s not intuitive from his card text, but you can stack resources on Charles over multiple rounds to save up for that all important asset, or wait until investigators are in the same location).

Joe has a good combination of health and damage dealing to be the one to enter locations: Fieldwork will get him up to 6 book, even without the Fingerprint Kit. Handcuffs are here to help with cultist enemies in Carcosa, although we’ll swap that out after The Unspeakable Oath. Physical Training is a guardian go to: if this gets in to play it’s helpful for willlpower tests against the encounter deck and humanoid enemies.

Calling in Favors works well with Beat Cop and Guard Dog. This deck is constrained to 1x core, so bringing Calling in Favors sometimes allows us to emulate having two pairs of allies. Dodge is a guardian staple to help any investigator avoid damage. 2x Emergency Cache another staple gives us plenty of resources at the cost of 2 actions: our hand and ally cards have plenty of 3 and 4 cost lines, so are not cheap to get out.

Deduction is a fine card for seekers (effectively, a free clue gathering action if you make the test, so always worth pitching in on that overskilled investigate action). We mentioned that Joe is happy to enter locations, and Inquiring Mind gets us a bit more leverage. The combination of Fieldwork, Deduction and Inquiring Mind can let us hover up multiple clues. Steadfast is arguably an everyday carry for Joe: it helps his weak 2 willpower stat line and boosts his combat. Especially if he gets out Guard Dog he can go into the later stages of a scenario with 10 total health for +2 and almost certainly above 5 for +1 on both stats. Vicious Blow is another guardian staple and lets us apply 3 punch in one action with all our weapons.

This deck carries 17 insight cards that could be used in the hunch deck, however we always want Crack the Case , Emergency Aid and Shortcut in our hand. These three are too situational to rely on for the hunch deck where we'd like to have cards that work in general. Crack the Case is fast can be a boost on top of the 3 location/2 action combo we mentioned above. Emergency Aid is impressive with Guard Dog’s 3 health statline (and with an upgraded Beat Cop). Without those in the deck, we’d be looking at Second Wind. Shortcut being fast saves an action, but, and this is easy to forget, because it’s fast, it avoids attacks of opportunity, so you can move yourself or someone else with an engaged enemy (technically making it a 2 action compression, a difficult option to pass up in multiplayer).

Speaking of the hunch deck:

• 1x Working a Hunch

• 1x Evidence!

• 2x Scene of the Crime

• 2x No Stone Unturned

• 2x Preposterous Sketches

• 2x Delay the Inevitable

• 1x Unsolved Case

We're constrained with 1 core set on Working a Hunch and Evidence! (it's standard to put 2 of a card in). Written in the Stars would work well in general unless you don't want to make skill checks. But since we're going to Carcosa, Delay the Inevitable's horror and damage swung in its favour, plus it offers a push your luck option for action compression you might not normally take (eg punching an enemy with retaliate, or disregarding attacks of opportunity).

Upgrades

For the hunch deck:

• No Stone Unturned can upgrade to No Stone Unturned (5). Expensive XP cost but one of most powerful search your deck cards in the game. Also, it's fast and can be used on any investigator.

• Preposterous Sketches can be replaced by Cryptic Research. Again not exactly cheap at 4 XP but again can be used on any investigator.

• Evidence! can be replaced by Deciphered Reality. If you can open up multiple locations or play a scenario where locations are already revealed, this card pays for itself very quickly. And when this cards lands, it's arguably one of the best experiences in the game.

That said, these are expensive upgrades and you might want to be selective.

For the main deck:

• Death • XIII occupies an uncontested tarot slot and keeps our hands free while providing +1 book. Nice and cheap at 1 XP.

• Higher Education can upgrade Physical Training to help Joe pay his way against the encounter deck by increasing his willpower, at the cost of losing the option to increase combat on Physical Training. But later in a campaign you'll have other options to increase combat.

• Beat Cop (2)'s 3 damage soak is going to work well with Emergency Aid.

• Pathfinder plays well with Fieldwork and is great value for 1 XP.

• Deduction (2) is interesting for Joe. You'll have lots of options with skill checks and Higher Education to succeed by 2 or more. This can let you clear out 3x clue locations in one action. Now to be clear, 3 is a bit of an unusual location clue number in Arkham, but this deck is running with 2 other investigators so it works for the campaign configuration this deck is built for. So if you're playing with 1 or 2 Investigators, you might pass on this one.

• Joe gets value from allies, so Charisma might well be the first upgrade to pick up.

• Speaking of allies, if the Investigator economy is working well, we could consider losing Charles Ross, Esq. altogether. An interesting upgrade is Michael Leigh from the Edge of the Earth campaign, who can convert successful clues to +1 attacks.

• Timeworn Brand can replace his non signature Machete and .45 Automatic weapons (or just the machete to conserve XP). This thing is insanely powerful, especially when combined with an upgrade to Vicious Blow (2) for up to 6 punch in a single action. And these are single handed, so if you wanted to optimise in a scenario for serious damage dealing, it's a real option to consider if you are working with other clue getters. You can lay down 10 damage in a single round and get up to 14 with a pair of Vicious blows. There's a reason Joe looks like Doom Guy up close.

In summary, there's a lot of expensive XP upgrades that are good for Joe, so you might want to be selective, in particular deciding whether you want to buff the hunch deck or the main deck.

Final Thoughts

One weakness is the encounter deck: the 2 willpower statline make it hard work. In general, joining up with an investigator who has "Let me handle this!" can help. Another is horror damage. This deck will run in Carcosa along with a Carolyn Fern, True Carcosa, who can process horror for fun: without that our allies only soak 7 horror all told, so we’re at risk of being defeated, especially in Carcosa, which loves to dish out horror.

All told, our Joe is an adept clue getter who can clear out locations quickly, and can go toe to toe with most big bads. You can regularly put in 7 punch in a single round without modifiers: 3 times 2 damage from any of our weapons, plus 1 from [Guard Dog](/card/01021) if we go toe to toe. In the extreme case, our combat effect is 16 damage over 2 rounds with this build. Combine him with an investigator bringing Dynamite Blast or Storm of Spirits (which in fact his partner Carolyn Fern, True Carcosa is), and you have a team that can make short work of elites, handle late campaign enemies, as well as clean out location after location’s clues.

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[1] The prelude for this Carcosa campaign starts at the Excelsior Hotel, where Joe Diamond and Carolyn Fern will meet our protagonist and murder suspect, Patrice Hathaway.