Shadow Ace Trish - 6 actions, always invisible

Overview

The core idea of this deck is to enter a state of being In the Shadows at all times with an Ace in the Hole active every turn. You will enter this state after the first time you cycle your deck, and the deck itself is designed with very high draw to achieve this as quickly as possible. This is maintained by keeping a loop going where every turn you draw back exactly every card you played while dumping the sanity loss from cycling your deck onto a revolving Laboratory Assistant.

One neat thing is that once you are in this state, your Shadow Agents are now working for you. They follow you around everywhere you go while doing no damage and allowing you to get extra clues with Trish's ability.

This is built at 12xp so as not to require any additional basic weaknesses when used as a standalone.

Looping state setup

This is the looping state you are aiming to set up.

• 5 hand slots (2 + 2 arcane enlightenment + 1 hidden pocket)
  • Celaeno Fragments
  • Magnifying Glass
  • Magnifying Glass (illicit from "I'll take that!")
  • Scroll of Secrets with The Raven Quill
  • Reserved to play Scroll of Secrets with Sleight of Hand
• 2 arcane slots
  • Arcane Enlightenment
  • Arcane Enlightenment
• 2 accessories (1 + 1 hidden pocket)
  • Lucky Cigarette Case
  • Lucky Cigarette Case (illicit from "I'll take that!")
• 1 body slot
  • Stylish Coat
• 1 ally slot
  • Reserved to play Laboratory Assistant with Hit and Run
• 1 tarot slot
  • Death • XIII
• 4 slot-less talents all in play

At the start of each turn, your discard pile should contain

• Cheat the System
• Hit and Run

your deck should be empty, and your hand (which is size 10 from the 2x Arcane Enlightenment) should contain

• Scroll of Secrets
• Laboratory Assistant
• Medical Student
• Ace in the Hole
• Cheat the System
• Hit and Run
• In the Shadows
• Sleight of Hand
• Thorough Inquiry
• Thorough Inquiry

Maintaining the Loop

Your most basic turn begins with playing In the Shadows, Ace in the Hole, Sleight of Hand with Scroll of Secrets, then activating The Raven Quill to move a charge from the temporary Scroll of Secrets to the permanent one (do not spend these just yet). Combined with the two cards that were in the discard at the start, your discard pile is now 5 cards, which will become your draw deck shortly.

Now play Hit and Run with Laboratory Assistant and immediately draw two cards from your empty deck. The sanity loss from reshuffling all the cards you just played will be assigned to that Laboratory Assistant (which is going to return to your hand at the end of your turn anyway). After these draws resolve, the Hit and Run you just played will go into the discard pile for the next turn. Now play Cheat the System and it too will go into the discard pile for next turn.

You can then use both of your Scroll of Secrets to fetch two more cards, this makes a total of 4 cards returned out of 5 shuffled into the deck, the last will be pulled during upkeep. You are now set up to take the rest of your turn with 6 actions while being In the Shadows.

Adding to the turn

You have draw to spare, in the form of your 2x Lucky Cigarette Case, and evidence building up on your Empirical Hypothesis. You can use these to optionally add in extra upgrades to the turn, any of which should be played just before Hit and Run.

• Medical Student to heal yourself or someone else, this will get discarded when Laboratory Assistant comes out.
• Cheat the System, play the second one to help build up more of a resource bank to spend on Higher Education
• Thorough Inquiry to convert some of your actions into helping any teammates that are struggling to get out a key card.

Using any of these options means those cards will be put back into your deck when Laboratory Assistant plays, so you will need to draw them back in to your hand before the end of the turn. It's preferable to do this when you have evidence on Empirical Hypothesis to guarantee you can draw enough back in case Lucky Cigarette Case doesn't work out.

If you're playing campaign and get some more XP, there's a lot of interesting additions you can make here, for example Priest of Two Faiths to rack up some bless for the group, etc.

Troubleshooting

Where possible, try to stack up and keep as much evidence on Empirical Hypothesis as you can, to get back on track in case something disrupts the loop. If you have extra draw, you can also save up extra secrets on Scroll of Secrets to save having to play Sleight of Hand in future turns. You can always spend some of your numerous actions on Burglary or extra draws if something needs to be fixed.

If you really fall behind on draw for some reason, you can alwayse use Thorough Inquiry to bolster a turn and fix your cycle.

Most of your unpredictability comes from dealing with your Random Basic Weakness, with luck the extra healing from Medical Student and extra draws will allow you to deal with it. Fortunately a huge amount of options can be ignored entirely (for example all enemies that hunt you). The worst are probably ones that take up a slot, as the cards that get ejected from that slot now will get auto discarded during your upkeep phase, and need to be drawn every turn. This for the most part can be handled by your Lucky Cigarette Case or just spending an extra action.