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Darrell's editor is none too happy that he's using his time gallivanting around the world, when the biggest menace they should be worried about is in Queens the forests of Arkham.

This is my planned Darrell deck for the upcoming Scarlet Keys campaign. It is built to be a primary cluer for a 4 player table on hard.

Overview

The strategy is to play Shed a Light as many times as possible. To this extent, we're packing a lot of shroud reduction. We will be making extensive use of Darrell's ability, Old Keyring (which doubles as clue acceleration) and Flashlight, to push Shrouds to zero as much as possible. Gumption comes in as a backup to make the difference on 5+ shroud locations. In such as case, make use of as much clue acceleration as possible so you dont have to pour a million resources in to those places. You can actually reduce a Shroud of up to 8 down to zero with all the combined effects, and by making creative use of Tool Belt still get an evidence on your Hawk Eye Camera

Speaking of which, we need to generate some evidence for Darrell to use. It is actually surprisingly easy to generate evidence with Darrell's Kodak in 4p, as each turn youll have at least 4 cards to choose from to place an evidence on. Did your guardian grab an enemy with "I'll take that"? Tell them to pose with their new friend and snap a pic! You also shouldnt have trouble succeeding a test by 2 or more every turn for Empirical Hypothesis, which you could treat as a slotless Lucky Cig Case, in a pinch, but ultimately you want that evidence to fuel your ability. Finally we have Hawk eye camera. Unlike most people that use this camera, we only want one out, as our other hand will either be holding our keys or a flashlight. The stats are nice, but it also generates evidence to feed our ability (side note, you can still use the evidence even when the camera is tucked away in your Tool belt).

Now, I hear you, youre probably thinking "Sure, this deck can get clues like a boss, but how does it not die to Mythos?" Well, luckily, Darrell can reduce the difficulty of any test. 3 agility to evade feels a lot higher when your average enemy has 0-1 evade after being shown some evidence. Gumption can help you push a really nasty test down to zero.

Mulligan Guide

Your most important piece to mulligan for is Empirical Hypothesis. Every other piece can be fished out of the trash fairly easily. The only way to recur Hypothesis is Scrounge for Supplies, and if you upgrade the Hypothesis you cant even do that. Second priority is Scavenging. Its the only other asset that cant be played out of the trash (with scavenging itself). Luckily it can get fished for with Resourceful. Speaking of which, your last two priorities are Resourceful and True Survivor. These two cards are going to form the basis of the loop that allows you to play Shed a Light over and over. You also have a lot of innate skills that will most likely end up in the discard after your Short Supply. An early True Survivor will really help speed things along.

The Loop

Long time survivor players will be well familiar with this loop, but it's worth revisiting here for just a moment. You need to have available in hand 2 Resourcefuls, and, in the discard, 1 True Survivor, 1 Shed a Light, and 1 other innate skill of your choice (usually Gumption or Sharp Vision. Use the resourcefuls to get back Shed a Light and True Survivor. Use a shroud reduction combo to use Shed a Light. Play True Survivor to get back the resourcefuls and an extra innate skill. Then do it again, ad nauseum, until you have all the Pictures of Spiderman clues that you could want.

Conclusion

This deck gets online insanely quickly, due to the power of Short Supply and recursion. Dont be surprised when youre getting full locations of clues from turn 2-3 onward. At 32 experience it's also pretty close to being standalone ready. I would be tempted to just take 2 trauma with ITTOI and call it a day, but you could also roll back the sharp vision's into Lucky and perhaps turn a Gumption in to an Exploit Weakness for some more monster handling. Or you can just downgrade a flashlight and be done with it.

When you start moving past the core upgrades in to luxury upgrades, be careful when upgrading the Hypothesis. even 1 exp spent on the upgrade card makes both copies ineligible for Scrounge, and thus unable to ever be recurred. If you lose them to Short Supply your evidence generation will be severely hampered.

Thanks for reading my crazy long write up! Darrell feels very strong and I hope you all enjoy this take on him!

(View at arkham-starter.com)