Daisy Walker Research Notes Taboo | Deck Guide

Credit: Aleksander Karcz

I wanted to build around Research Notes and the clue dropping mecanics. Daisy seemed a good choice with her base 5 and free action on Tome abilities.

The taboo on Research Notes actually drove a lot of decisions in this build. With the "max 3 evidence spent per round" limit on a (0) test, Daisy can get the maximum effect (discover 3 clues) quite easily. In other words, there is no point in being able to oversucceed tests by large amounts. I decided I would extend the "no need to oversucceed" idea to the whole deck: I ignored cards that rely heavily on oversucceeding such as Archaic Glyphs (Guiding Stones) and I did not worry much about boosting my base statline with + assets.

Finally, it is worth mentionning that I am planning to play this deck in a 2 player game with a combat focused friend (possibly Nathaniel Cho).

• Overview

• Main Strategy

• Economy & Card Drawing

• Encounter and Enemy management

• Other Cards

• Upgrade Path

• Investigate low/medium shroud locations, drop clues to fill Research Notes, empty high shroud locations using Research notes. Our investigator ability and later Press Pass will give us enough actions to repeat this cycle over and over.

• Cards that support the Research Notes and clue dropping mecanic are: Bizarre Diagnosis, Captivating Discovery, Analysis (at 0 Xp) and Quick Study, Press Pass, Forewarned (with Xp). I did not choose Dr. William T. Maleson because his ability seemed underwhelming and I needed Allies with search abilities.

• I chose Astounding Revelation myriad as a source of economy. I like its concept (bad if drawn, good if revealed during a search), and I was going to put search cards in this deck anyway as it is highly dependent on getting Research Notes in play. So here are the cards that work with Astounding Revelation:
  • Research Librarian searches the whole deck i.e. guarantees you will draw Research Notes and trigger one copy of Astounding Revelation.
  • Once the Librarian has done his job he can be replaced with Mr. "Rook" for more searches.
  • Captivating Discovery supports the Research Notes mecanic in addition to the search.
  • Practice Makes Perfect is a nice 9 cards search that doubles the use of a Practiced skill card.
• Note: I ignored cards that make you draw "blind" (such as Preposterous Sketches) to avoid drawing Astounding Revelation by accident.
• To complement the myriad I included a single copy of Crack the Case for additional economy.

At 0 Xp, there is not much we can do except:

• Ward of Protection to cancel a treachery. This feels like an auto-include for any investigator with access to card pool and decent horror soak.
• Mind over Matter can help for and tests.
• Mr. "Rook" provides a decent 2/2 soak.
• Bizarre Diagnosis is a very effective 3-damage heal (which can save us considering Daisy's low health) and supports the Research notes mecanic.

With some Xp it gets better:

• Quick Study will boost any skill test by 3 in addition to supporting the Research Notes mechanic.
• Archaic Glyphs (Prophecy Foretold) lets us automatically evade enemies while investigating which is our job in the first place. As explained in the introduction I chose this upgrade over Archaic Glyphs (Guiding Stones) because this deck is not made for oversucceeding, and Archaic Glyphs (Prophecy Foretold) is just an awesome enemy management card.
• Forewarned can eventually replace Ward of Protection although this is not a priority in the upgrade path.

• The Raven Quill with Spectral Binding upgrade is here to free a hand slot so that when our two copies of Research Notes are out, we don't have to discard one if we draw The Necronomicon. Later we will upgrade it with Supernatural Record so we can dump Research Librarian but still search our entire deck.
• Skill cards in this deck are all Practiced, so that we may trigger them with Practice Makes Perfect:
  • Analysis supports the Research Notes mechanic in addition to increasing the chances of passing a test
  • Deduction for more clues
  • Enraptured to help translate Archaic Glyphs and get more uses of Mr. "Rook" or Archaic Glyphs (Prophecy Foretold)

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Core upgrades

Luxury upgrades

Use https://arkham-starter.com/tool/upgrade

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