Lucius uses his nickname Tim Beige to String his fans Along and Filch from them.

Credit: Aleksander Karcz

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Continuing this series of 6 investigator decks (all but Gloria), released one week apart, to help people who have little time to deckbuild, or are still getting familiar with the new cards. May these serve as a base for you to build your own decks and adapt to any other campaign or group size.

Disclaimer These decks have been play-tested in 2 teams, yet not through The Drowned City Campaign since they are published before its release. Enjoy the reading, and I hope you'll have fun with these!

Today, we are looking at Lucius Galloway, the last investigator with a 5-2 deckbuilding! I didn't know what to expect after the preview season, but building and playing him has proven to be extremely fun, and it only gets better as we start adding Memories of Another Life.

So even though he seems to be the least hyped-up investigator in this expansion, according to Reddit, I hope this deck guide will make you want to try him because I swear you won't regret it!

• Overview

• Main Strategy

• Engage Your Community – Dodge Responsibility

• Writing a Meticulous Line – For Deals that Shine

• Other Cards

• Upgrade Path

• Final Thoughts

• String an Annoying Fan Along with you, allowing you to trigger your ability and Purloin from them every turn.

• Craft precise scams thanks to your Visionary Masterstroke, using your Elite Handwriting, on the Book of Verse. Use it to promote your bogus Antikythera with your con man Alton O'Connell.

• Use your mental to keep pesky groupies at bay, and practice the mantra: Ki-ts and Kite.

The most important part of engaging your community is to Stringing them Along so you can continuously Rip them off.

Your ability wants you to evade. If you are engaged with an enemy, it is, in fact, the same as Rex, rewarding you for succeeding by 2 or more by giving you an extra clue. Of course Rex is better because he can let others deal with his enemy and focus on clues. To compensate for this, we need to see if there is a way to turn an evade action into more value than an investigation.

• Using String Along every turn will give you an additional card to continue your dirty business.

  • While keeping enemies engaged usually sounds like a bad idea, it means that we can drag along our pet for the duration of the scenario, making it possible to evade it every turn.

  • If you String someone Along for too long, they will become more Alert to your lies. So you better choose your victim accordingly, either by choosing someone with a low Evade number or a low damage/horror attack. And well... you'll get a few inevitable attacks when you pull and push it too far.

• The next payoff is the old trusty Pickpocketing (2). There is nothing easier than getting a few bucks from your groupies.

  • Since the deck is very asset-heavy, being fast to play is highly satisfying.

From there onward, every turn, your first evasion will give you a clue, 3 cards and 2 resources. Not bad, even compared to Rex.

Deceiving fans is a Form of art. With your surgical Verse written with Sharp Calligraphy you and your shill Alton can sell dropshipped Antikytheras like hot cakes.

Your Precision Enablers

• Book of Verse, Artistic Inspiration and Steady-Handed all modify your test value to help you achieve any desired skill number in a range of 5 token values with 2 on the table. Even though only one precision tool is often enough to have good results, we are packing more than one in the same deck for the following reasons:

  • Redundancy helps achieve your ideal board state with both precision enablers and payoffs.

  • When you have 2 enablers on the table, you can either achieve a target number on a higher range of tokens or use them during multiple tests, leading to more payoffs. I wouldn't recommend playing all 3 as it would be an overkill.

  • Artistic Inspiration does the same job as Steady-Handed and uses your second copies of your assets to fuel its ability. Because it also brings +1 Skill value to a test, it is better to discard a card with a single pip to Artistic Inspiration rather than committing it to a test, because it is reactive and can even save you from a failed test!

  • Note that due to the timing sequence of the replenishing on Book of Verse, you can use it to modify the value of your first evade/investigate, and if it leads to discovering your first clue, it will replenish on the same test.

• The Book of Verse also offers the advantage of turning a fail by 1 into a succeed by 0. This is invaluable because it means that you can test at 4 above even if there is a -5 in the bag, decreasing the likelihood of needing more than 1 precision tool to achieve the expected outcome.

Succeed by 3 to win the game

• The Antikythera and Alton O'Connell both reward you the most for succeeding by 3

  • The Antikythera will give you a clue, which is the equivalent of a Deduction each turn.

  • Since it is Science, it can be Fine Tuned for another trigger each turn!

  • Alton O'Connell will then reward you with another fraction of a clue. Note that you don't have to exhaust him for his so you can get more than one Evidence on him each turn.

• Sometimes, because there are not enough clues on your location, you will prefer succeeding by 2 for the Antikythera to give you a card and a resource.

  • This will also allow you to heal 1 horror thanks to Steady-Handed, which is a fantastic way to offset Dreams of the Flood. Note that this only happens if you used Steady-Handed to change your skill value, leading to this result.

• In any case, succeeding by 2 or more, you also trigger your other payoffs:

  • Your ability for a clue
  • Pickpocketing (2) for both the card and the resource
  • Based on which asset you used, a resource, 1 horror heal or a card.

• Hiking Boots and Alton O'Connell both help increase your base .

  • Because you will have an enemy engaged with you most of the scenario, it can be awkward to move because of Attacks of Opportunity. And evading it on a location with no clues can feel like a waste. Hiking Boots solves this situation rather elegantly by moving you fast as soon as you empty your current location.

• Forensic Kit and Thieves' Kit are your investigation tools.

  • Thieves' Kit is great early in the scenario since it comes with a built-in Emergency Cache, allowing you to pay for your early asset surge.

  • Forensic Kit on the other hand is more helpful later in the scenario, once you have found your pet, and you need healing because of your Personal Weakness.

• "I'll take that!", Crack the Case and "Watch this!" are your resource spike supplements. They all shine by being fast, speeding up your early game tremendously.

• Higher Education is here to convert your fast resources into skill value, mainly to pass scenario tests. It kicks off in the second half of the scenario once you have achieved your desired setup.

• Because of Dreams of the Flood, we cannot go insane (got it?) on card draw and go infinite, or cycle once or more every turn. Otherwise, we'd suffer 1 Horror for almost every clue we'd find. However, this deck achieves a satisfactory cruising speed with Pickpocketing (2), String Along and the Antikythera when you don't need the clue. And once you are fully set up, if your sanity becomes concerning, you can also choose not to trigger Pickpocketing (2) anymore. Eureka! is the cherry on the cake, helping you find your combo pieces earlier and dodge your weakness.

• Transmogrify is an insane card, but it shines even more in this deck. Since you'll have an enemy engaged with you at all times, you are always taking the risk of being overwhelmed when drawing an enemy during the Mythos Phase. By using Transmogrify on the one you don't want to keep with you, you basically get rid of it in one action while getting 2 clues in the process plus potentially another one with the Antikythera.

  • If you empty the location, you trigger the Hiking Boots and move on. Otherwise, you'll easily get another 2 clues in one action in the next turn! If you are playing with a competent fighter, you could easily replace Backstab with a second copy of Transmogrify.

• Finally, if you want a more flexy investigator that can also achieve a few kills, you could easily replace Transmogrify with a second copy of Backstab and Quick Thinking with 2 copies of British Bull Dog.

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Early Deck

The deck is pretty similar in the way it functions.

• Lucky Cigarette Case and Empirical Hypothesis bring more draw to compensate for the absence of the Antikythera.

• Working a Hunch also uses your late-game resources for a bit of acceleration.

Late Campaign

There are many ways this deck can go, though my favourite is probably Memories of Another Life.

• The Card Review from @therebrae gives a lot of ideas. However, some noteworthy for this specific deck are missing there:

  • I find Peter Sylvestre to be a fantastic fit for this deck, giving you a passive and also solving Dreams of the Flood all at once.

  • To continue with Allies, I also find Alice Luxley interesting to do chip damage to your groupie as you go along.

  • If you don't want to get Charisma, Track Shoes is also good value, though it competes with the Hiking Boots, and we still don't have a Quadrobics Permanent for additional footwear slots.

  • If you're like me and don't like slot overlap, we also have Drawing Thin to modulate the difficulty of the tests you are passing to increase, preventing you from being too high on a skill value! Even if tabooed, this card is still officially level 0, though many would agree that this is a bit overfetched.

  • Extensive Research or Task Force based on how many clues you need at your location.

  • I love the idea of using Waylay to get rid of a non-elite enemy.

  • Otherwise, the Double events help with whatever you need most between An absurd number of resources for your team, or An offensive number of cards.

• If you want to find your Memories of Another Life as early as possible, you can invest in Ancestral Knowledge.

  • When refilling your deck with 5 new level 0 cards, I suggest adding back "Watch this!" and Quick Thinking, and add a single copy of True Understanding.

  • You can then upgrade one of your skills into The Eye of Truth because the art is sick, and so you can permanently disable scary treachery late in the campaign.

• Black Market and Studious are great ways to increase your consistency with almost no downsides.

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Link to the 0xp deck

(View at arkham-starter.com)

Link to the full xp deck

My thoughts have been fluctuating with Lucius Galloway.

First, this is the last 5-2 deckbuilding, and we've been waiting a long time to have it. I suppose that it has been hard to balance since there is outright broken stuff to do with it before you even read his ability. But I think the game designers have done a great job with a weakness that punishes cycling your deck too fast without being crippling, either.

Then, I got a bit unsure during the preview season because his ability is a bit too straightforward and didn't spark a lot of ideas. We already had some evasion focused investigators at least since Finn and it was unclear what new he was adding.
But when they revealed his very surprising Signature, which doesn't directly focus on evasion, I got hooked as it opens different avenues for deckbuilding. So I decided to go with what the designers seemed to want out of him and gave the precision archetype a try.

Finally, I ended up having a lot of fun with him, both building the deck and playing it. It was interesting to find the sweet spot between the different archetypes, precision (enablers and payoffs), evade-to-win, and for all, without bloating the deck with assets completely. I'm also happy that the deck is really good but without dipping into and 's most broken territories.

So, even though, according to Reddit, Lucius Galloway seems to be the least hyped investigator of the new set, I hope you find this guide a fun read and that it will make you want to play the Poet!

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