Good Morning, Angels! (Command Center Deck Guide)

Spoiler Warning! Pnakotic Manuscripts is a stand-in for one of the new cards previewed for The Scarlet Keys by Drawn to the Flame, Damning Testimony. Check it out here and here.

Also as a disclaimer for the following vignette, I know that Arkham predates handheld radio communication, but let's just say the Agency is...ahead of their time.

Amanda thudded up against the wall, breathing heavily. She'd been running through the ruined old house for far longer than made any kind of rational sense, but she'd long since abandoned reason and let adrenaline and the woman on the radio take over.

The radio crackled. "You're doing great, Amanda. You're almost there. Head down that hallway, past the intersection, and up the stairs. Quickly now."

Amanda's heart felt like it was trying to throw itself through her ribcage, and every breathe wheezed painfully through exhausted lungs, but the radio lady hadn't led her astray yet. She launched into another sprint. The intersection loomed closer...closer...

"STOP! Get into that alcove, now!" The radio spat. There was no time for thought. Amanda's body moved on its own, pressing up behind the pillar and praying whatever was stalking her couldn't hear her insides screaming. The radio fell silent.

And in the silence, slowly growing loud enough to supersede the sound of blood pumping through her veins, Amanda heard a disjointed dragging sound, and something that might have been breathing, pass across the hall. It paused...

...and somewhere down the hall, a phone rang. There was a displacement of air as something massive turned and raced towards the sound. As soon as it was gone, the radio crackled back to life.

"I've bought you a few minutes! Go! Go now!"

So Amanda went. Across the hall, up the stairs, through the door on the other side, slamming it behind her and throwing the bolt. But when she turned around, she wasn't out of the house. She was in some kind of attic. And a moment later, two shapes started moving in the shadows.

"Help! I need help!" She hissed into the radio as she backed against the door.

But when the radio lady spoke, it wasn't from her radio. One of the shadowy figures resolved itself into the shape of a well-dressed person holding up their own radio. A moment later, the other stepped into the light and Amanda saw he was a police officer.

"This is Kymani, and that's Tommy. My name is Trish, and with any luck I'll be able to meet you in person before long. All three of you were trapped here alone, but together, you may be able to make it out alive. Now, here's what you're going to do."

Introduction

Welcome everyone to another thematic deckbuild with yours truly! I'm particularly excited about this one, as it represents an evolution of a style I've been playing with for a very long time but never quite gotten to work how I wanted it–until now!

That style is what the Mythos Busters community typically refers to as "Command Center", and it's a concept originally built around two specific cards: Barricade and In the Know.

A Command Center deck functions primarily by setting up shop in a single location, letting their team go on ahead, and then playing Barricade. Now no enemies can enter their location or spawn there, making the (typically frail) Seeker safe from bodily harm at the cost of being unable to move from their current location. In and of itself this can absolutely neuter or transform certain scenarios, but what makes a deck Command Center is the ability to continue interacting with other locations even after Barricading themselves in. Historically this was done with In the Know, which investigates a different location and also creates several fast windows, during which fast triggers and events can be played as if you were at the location you're investigating.

There is also a variation of Command Center using the Guardian sniper suite to set up camp somewhere and kill enemies from across the entire map, but it's rarely considered to overlap with this strategy due to all the cards (except the occasional Barricade include) being different.

As time has gone on, In the Know has remained the most consistent enabler for a Command Center strategy, even in a field of powerful but less consistent enablers like Seeking Answers, Pendant of the Queen, Professor William Webb, and the classic choice for the strategy, Minh Thi Phan (who came out simultaneously with In the Know and whose signature enables her to perform test support across the entire map).

But now it's time for Seeker to step aside, there's a new Command Center enabler in town and it is powerful enough to justify losing access to Barricade (3)!

The Deck

So, the core of Trish's strategy is to set up a useful Barricade early in the game after her allies have set out to explore, and then begin remotely evading and gathering clues across the entire map using Damning Testimony!

Although Damning Testimony requires an enemy, making it narrower than In The Know as far as targeting goes, it more than makes up for the restriction by adding in unlimited uses, powerful compression, and a range of upgrades that TOTALLY kick ass. Any Rogue can use Testimony to do a Trish impression, taking the Extort upgrade to evade enemies as you investigate–but with Trish adding her own ability into the mix, things get even crazier.

For this deck, my preferred customizations on Testimony are:

• Surveil - arguably the most important upgrade, this is what turns Damning Testimony into a better version of In The Know, allowing us to investigate from a distance every turn for the entire game. Be warned, if the enemy is unengaged you'll have to use Narrow Escape to avoid an attack of opportunity!

• Extort - doubling up on Trish's ability gives us a lot more flexibility between compression and evasion, since we get up to three such choices per round (each Testimony investigate plus Trish's innate ability, which can be stacked with one of the other two to evade multiple enemies, get a ton of clues, or evade and clue at once).

• Fabricated Evidence & Blackmail - these two are less important luxury purchases, but now that we're spending evidence to evade as well as compress clues, more can't hurt, and stat value is ALWAYS valuable. In certain campaigns you may want to switch one of these out for Search Warrant (cough cough TCU), or trade in Extort and Blackmail for Expose to kill those nasty Whippoorwills and cultists.

The result is that you can investigate any enemy-populated location on the board, getting 1-3 clues there and evading up to two enemies, all without moving from your starting space! The rest of the deck is designed to strengthen this strategy. In the Know (it's a classic that's earned its place) stays on as a backup for locations without enemies, while Professor Webb and his Magnifying Glass allow us to discard and replay an emptied Testimony as well as expanding our range even further. The Segments of Onyx can offer us more long-distance evasion or investigation in a pinch, but they're chiefly here for those cheeky moments when a scenario requires all players to be at a certain location and we are forced to leave our haven behind. But teleporting directly to our target with the Pendant of the Queen or Shortcut (played during a ranged investigate) makes even those hurdles minimal to overcome.

Unfortunately, since we aren't a Seeker, we lack Barricade (3), meaning enemies could in theory spawn on our space...and we are not well-equipped to handle them. Fortunately "You handle this one!" can offload the responsibility onto our friendly neighborhood Guardian, while Narrow Escape and Working a Hunch both serve double duty enabling long-distance shenanigans and keeping us safe here at home until help can arrive...or indefinitely!

Variations

This is the most basic form of Command Center Trish that I've built, but I was struck by how incredibly elegant (and strong) it is! That being said, if you'd like to get spicy, there are certainly some options available to you...

• Chuck Fergus - while Trish sits back and plans, her loyal operative Chuck can get his hands dirty anywhere on the field! By playing events fast during the fast windows of your ranged investigates, they will finish resolving (if they include tests, after the investigate is all done) still on the remote location, allowing you to damage, investigate, evade, and more anywhere you like just by sending Chuck out.

• Quickdraw Holster - with a suitable one-handed gun, Trish can pull the same gimmick as Chuck and queue up a fight test to resolve after her ranged investigate is finished. Obviously her weak Strength means that you either need to find ways to boost it or run Sharpshooter, but the prospect of popping out of the woodwork to unload a shotgun into someone at fast speed is pretty badass.

• Knowledge is Power - a classic tool for shenanigans of all sorts, KiP can be played during the fast window to either resolve a tome effect fast or, you get the picture by now, queue up a test on the remote location. Some cool options include Old Book of Lore to support your friends remotely or Suggestion to make your evade potential even better (not to mention adding more AoO blocking beyond Narrow Escape).

• Lola Santiago & Delilah O'Rourke - with enough resource generation, these lovely ladies can pluck clues and deal damage wherever your remote investigates might find you.

• Hiking Boots - if you choose to abandon Barricades and set out bravely into the world, Hiking Boots can trigger off one of your remote investigates to launch you far across the map, just like Shortcut, while also boosting your evasion potential.

And last but not least, to minimize confusion I didn't include any other new cards from The Scarlet Keys beyond Damning Testimony, but the amazing I'll Take That can help considerably with economy and setup speed, and other interesting cards like Map the Area could lead to cool variants.

Conclusion

If you've made it to the end of this veritable dossier, thank you so much for reading, and I hope you give CC Rogues a try! Damning Testimony offers a wide range of incredible potential for the archetype and the class in general, and I can't wait to puppeteer an entire game board with my remote evasion and clue-gathering!