Vincent Lee: Experimental Treatments

A flex deck for Vincent Lee. Not even a little bit taboo-compliant!

For gathering clues the deck uses simple and familiar seeker tools: Dr. Milan Christopher, plus Magnifying Glass. That lets him test at 6 , which can be further raised by Higher Education later in a scenario, when he's had time to build a surplus of cards and resources. Eventually, Empirical Hypothesis will allow some double-clue pickup (it's good for card draw right from the start).

For self-defense the emphasis is on testless damage (other than his signature Bonesaw), because his 3 is fundamentally a weak foundation for fight tests. Occult Lexicon (by way of Blood-Rite), Dynamite Blast, and Toe to Toe let him do damage testlessly. Bonesaw, Dynamite Blast and Toe to Toe can all cause him to damage himself, but Vincent is A-OK with that: it gives him an opportunity to heal himself and generate copies of On the Mend.

The deck includes extra card draw via Empirical Hypothesis and Surgical Kit. He needs card draw both to enable Higher Education and to allow free use of Occult Invocation for burst damage. Remember that Vincent's goal here is not to be the primary enemy manager for a team, but merely to be able to defend himself against lesser enemies.

Vincent's stats are not great, so he'd really like to be able to play an On the Mend every turn, which means he'd like to heal some damage on himself (or one of his allies) every single turn. He packs these cards for that purpose: Bandages, Bonesaw, Hallowed Mirror (by way of Soothing Melody), Second Wind, Surgical Kit, and Jessica Hyde. The upgrade plan includes Soul Sanctification, which turns excess healing into even more +2 icons for passing any kind of test despite his mediocre stats.

Of course, healing abilities only give him copies of On the Mend if he has damage available to be healed in the first place!. The encounter deck will eventually provide some of that, but only in an erratic and whimsical way; it knows when Vincent wants damage and so will provide only horror /evil-laugh. Hence he starts with In the Thick of It, giving him two physical trauma at the start of every scenario. Jessica Hyde comes in with 2 damage on her which self-heals, meaning she's a guaranteed 2 copies of On the Mend right out of the box. The Smoking Pipe can convert his horror into damage, which is doubly useful: his sanity pool is not high, and it's more damage to be healed. Finally, he can choose to damage himself with Bonesaw, Dynamite Blast and Toe to Toe. If all goes as planned, Vincent will have a reliable stream of On the Mend throughout the scenario.

In addition to requiring lots of cards in hand, Higher Education can tempt you into spending a huge amount of resources. Plus, Dynamite Blast is expensive as hell to play (5!! resources), and it's positively tragic to be unable to afford it when the perfect moment to play it arrives. The deck relies on Dr. Milan Christopher and Crack the Case for resources. If some dedicated seeker was on the team and they wanted to use our esteemed entomologist, the deck would probably still work OK if you replaced Milan with two copies of Burning the Midnight Oil... but I'd probably rather just play a different character in that case.

Upgrade plan is these cards in this order:

• 1x In the Thick of It (before the first scenario). Take two physical trauma, so Vincent has something to heal right from the start of the game.
• 1x Charisma (before the first scenario)
• 2x Jessica Hyde (replace 2x Medical Student) (2xp)
• 2x Pathfinder (2xp) (replace 2x Shortcut) (2xp)
• 1x Higher Education (3xp)
• 2x Surgical Kit (replace 2x Bizarre Diagnosis) (6xp)
• 1x Soul Sanctification, (6xp)
• Six checkboxes on Empirical Hypothesis. Check these boxes: Trial And Error (1), Research Grant (2), Irrefutable Proof (3). That makes it a level 3 card, and Vincent is limited to Seeker cards level 0-3. (6xp)
• 1x Occult Lexicon (3xp)
• 2x Studious (6xp)
• 2x Mind over Matter (4xp)

That's 41xp, which is more than you'll see in most full campaigns. For a standalone scenario, I assume the 3xp from In the Thick of It doesn't count towards your total, so you could take the fully-upgraded version if you were willing to take three (3!!) extra weaknesses... but I'd probably stop at 19xp, which gets you to Soul Sanctification and only requires one extra weakness.