Counter-Encounter Zoey (19XP)

I love this deck. It has everything you need to soak damage/cards for other players. Big fan of the axe, stand together, and scene of the crime. Consider swapping out something for Kicking the Hornets Nest. One of my friends recently used it in a Mark Harrigan deck and it was Amazing.

Also, do note, On the Hunt says for you to search the encounter deck for an enemy, and not non-Elite. So, dig for the XP monster :)

Here's a deck I made of Zoey a little while ago. The theme is to take damage and return it back.

arkhamdb.com

Great deck!

No Safeguard? Other than that, looks interesting!

@SemiSecretSquirrel: Ah, true - i forgot to mention Kick the Hornet's Nest. I was deliberating between putting either Hornet or DttF into the deck and was planning to mention the other one in the article. Simply forgot to do that. I agree, Kicking the Hornet's Nest is really good, i have been playing that a lot in other decks recently.

@NightgauntTaxiServiceYeah, slots in the deck are tight. Safeguard is one i could see swapping in for something, sure.

With 8 Praticed Skills did you consider Pratice Makes Perfect? I'd take that over Promise of Power.

I mention Practice Makes Perfect in the article as a variant.

Cutting Promise of Power for it makes little sense though, seeing how PoP itself is also Practiced. Defensive Stance doesn't work with PoP, though. If i wanted to put Practice Makes Perfect into this, I'd cut Drawn to the Flame for it and include Leadership(2) instead of Defensive Stance.

I took this deck through Innsmouth and I LOVED it! Super fun. Here's my final version: arkhamdb.com

A few observations based on my experience:

• The deck is VERY xp intensive. I didn't feel like the deck was "online" until around 30xp.
  • In part, it's because it requires 2 or 3 extra accessory slots, which is 6 or 9xp, not counting the cost of the accessories themselves
  • The other issue is that, at the end of the day, you're still a Guardian, and you need to be able to fight, so I ended up putting 10xp into my Runic Axe before i could even start to invest in encounter protection tech
  • Girish is mentioned in the article, and he puts in WORK. But he is expensive. And because of how strong he is, I found it critical to have 2 copies, for a total of 8xp.
• Safeguard was huge in this deck. Both Martyr's Vambrace and Girish Kadakia require you to be at another investigator's location, so it's important to be able to stick to your teammates.
• I went with Practice Makes Perfect instead of Drawn to the Flame. I didn't think DttF would matter, because we play on 4 player. And I stand by that. I thought Practice Makes Perfect was strong, but not strong enough to justify one of your 5 coveted off-class slots. In retrospect, I think Delve Too Deep would've been better. It's definitely cheesy and basic. But this deck a) needs xp, and b) loves to help the team, and DTD does both of those.
• Stick to the Plan + Ever Vigilant is another cheesy and basic combo, but this deck has so many important assets. There were 2 scenarios where it took me like 7-8 turns to get out all my key assets, between play actions, gaining resources (Syzygy did not help in this regard), and also fighting and helping win the scenario. A good turn 1 Ever Vigilant just smooths it all out.

All in all, fantastic deck, and I can see myself running it again in the future. Thanks for publishing this!