Backed by the Miskatonic Museum, Mandy sets out to plumb the depths of The Drowned City for some new relics to add to its collection

• About two weeks ago, I posted the Wendy deck I was planning to take to The Drowned City. Since I prefer playing 3-Handed Solo, and I'm still waiting for the Campaign expansion, I though I would just post the other two.

• Since then, I also took all 3 decks for a test run of A Light in the Fog (a tough but fair scenario that challenges investigators in multiple ways) to see how they perform, and whether they could complete the tasks I had planned for them. Things went well save for a big mistake on my end that could have cost me the game.

• I find Mandy Thompson to be difficult to innovate with : The amount of cards she uniquely interacts with is rather low, and whatever plan you have needs to be consistent enough to work despite her 50 card deck size.

• I noticed there weren't many decks with Dr. Elli Horowitz around here since Mandy's taboo, and wanted to build the deck around her : By using expendable relics with limited uses (or self discard like Disc of Itzamna), we can use them up freely before bouncing her back with Calling in Favors and fetching some more relics.

• Overview

• Main Strategy

• The People

• The Exhibits

• After Hours

• Upgrade Path

• Notable Omissions

• The Drowned City : The Tasks

• Conclusion

• Use the museum crew and their skills to search through your deck and find your key cards.

• Dr. Elli Horowitz, "I'll take that!" and Unearth the Ancients are all here to get the exhibits on display at little to no cost.

• Throw away Occult Evidence, drawn Astounding Revelation, duplicate relics / allies that you can't afford to play, all in order to reload Artistic Inspiration and pass key tests.

• Whitton Greene : Elli may be the assistant curator, but Whitton is just as valuable to the musum, as their lead explorer in charge of digging up old Tomes and Relics during expeditions.

  • The +1 is invaluable for your main cluever role (I find reaching a skill value of 6 to be a bit of a magic number (3 up on tests of difficulty 3)), the +1 is appreciated, and the repeated searches help find your key assets and trigger Mandy's Research cards.

• Dr. Elli Horowitz : Whitton Greene may be an expert at unearthing relics, but Elli is the one in charge of putting them on display at the museum !

  • The two allies can have a bit of an Antisynergy : The relics drawn by Whitton cannot be fetched by Elli. Try and use Whitton to fetch Grim Memoir if able to maximise the potential of both, unless you already have Unearth the Ancients to pair with the relics.

• Research Librarian : An intellectual and avid reader, who brought some revelant books on the trip. He may not be ready for what this expedition may uncover

  • This guy will often just pull Shocking Discovery, which is fine (One of Mr. "Rook" greatest lessons is that control over your weakness is really good). Better him than Dr. Elli Horowitz.
  • It is the best early target for Calling in Favors, searching for the 2 aforementioned allies after removing Shocking Discovery, before playing it once more to find Grim Memoir and Prophesiae Profana.

• Medical Student : Do you know how many people die in Museums every Year ? That's right : A lot ! And even more than that during Miskatonic Expeditions ! Unfortunately, they couldn't hire a real doctor, so Mandy is stuck with some students instead.

  • Efficient healing is generally always nice to have if you can fit it in, and with a 50 card deck, there really is no excuse. In this instance, Medical Student helps with consistently getting targets for Calling in Favors, and the deck has a perfect use for him if healing isn't unnecessary : Artistic Inspiration.

• Since Harold Walsted left her in charge of leading them, all of them will answer the call when Mandy needs them to permorm their specific duties.

  • Generally, you'll never want Whitton leaving play, because playing her again is too expensive. This leaves the other 3 to be cycled in and out when given the opportunity.

• This crew is very skilled at what they do, and have had a lot of practice : Whitton's sharp eye, Elli's planning skills, the librarian's quick thinking, the medical students' scientific knowledge are all valuable things to bring on a dangerous expedition into the unknown. And with Practice Makes Perfect, Mandy can benefit from the crew's expertise many times over the course of the scenario.

  ---

• Disc of Itzamna : A protective amulet dug up in Mexico. Without further testing, no one has been able to figure out if it is some kind of mystical protection or a really deadly frisbee. And now, Mandy is going to find out !

• Dial of Ancients : Its cyclopean origin has led Mandy to bring it on her expedition, hoping to decipher its true meaning and purpose.

  • I'm hoping Wendy and the handful of tech cards from Mandy (Breaking and Entering, Transmogrify) will be enough to identify the Dial.

• Hyperphysical Shotcaster : An anonymous gift to the museum. Looks to be very ancient, but its origin remains unknown. learning more about the sunken city may advance Mandy's understanding of this device and how to use it.

  • Since you can end up with it in play on turn 1 without further setup (fetching it with Elli), I find that the Empowered Configuration is an important addition to hit at an impressive skill value of 7, rather than an okayish 5.

Along the way, Mandy could potentially discover archeological treasures such as :

• Eon Chart : As Mandy delves deeper down the depths, she should be able to understand more about the layout of the sunken city and map out the place.

• Prophesiae Profana : This legendary book was thougt to be lost eons ago. Maybe this sunken city is where it disapeared...

  • This acts a backup +1 that can replace Whitton for a while. The boost is quite nice, and paired with Artistic Inspiration bumps Mandy's agility to a respectable 5.
  • This Relic has a different 'expiration date' than the others : When you find and Play Whitton, you can afford to lose Prophesiae Profana (if it is attached to Elli / if you need the hand slot) and still stay at 6 .
  • The biggest appeal of the card for me is actually its Tome trait, which allows Research Librarian to fetch it alongside a Grim Memoir once Shocking Discovery has been dealt with, which offer a lot more variety compared to just drawing 2 Memoirs.

But most important of all, are the kinds of things that Mandy won't be able to bring back :

• Art ! : Cyclopean sculptures, architecture, unique feats of engineering, strange wildlife... These things that will change how you percieve the entire world around you, and every card in your deck !
  • Between the large amout of assets you couldn't ever all afford to play, the Occult Evidence gathered by searches, Duplicates of Allies you don't need, late game Search cards that don't have much left to do, there is plenty of fodder to keep Artistic Inspiration loaded up. And with Mandy's fantastic card draw, finding said fodder should be fairly easy as well.

Something to remember is that, as much as these shiny relics look appealing, it is the Museum crew that allows them to shine ! The deck's goal is to cheat what you can into play (Unearth the Ancients, "I'll take that!" and Dr. Elli Horowitz, with Whitton Greene drawing the cards for the first 2), pay for what you need (e.g Hyperphysical Shotcaster before a boss fight), and toss away the rest to Artistic Inspiration.

• The accounting books : Is there anything more grim than finances ? Maybe taking a look at all the money this expedition costs will motivate Mandy to learn more about R'lyeh and find other ways around the problems she will inevitably encounter. The Museum has a lot riding on this !

• "I'll take that!" : Mandy has refused to publicly comment on this card, nor on the fact that it pairs extremely well with the accounting books.

  • It's somewhat impressive that this is only the deck's third best economy option behind Unearth the Ancients and Astounding Revelation. Note that it can put Hyperphysical Shotcaster in play where Unearth the Ancients cannot.

• Breaking and Entering : Mandy has refused to publicly comment on this card, nor on the fact that it shares the same name with an act card from The Miskatonic Museum.

• Scout Ahead / Shortcut : Movement is always useful. I like having the variety of both, and the of Scout Ahead can be quite useful for a crucial evade or treachery.

• No Stone Unturned : Some extra Search is useful to get off to a good start or get Shocking Discovery out of the way. In the late game, just chuck it to Artistic Inspiration or use it on a teammate to find an appropriate tech card (e.g Dynamite Blast, Cunning Distraction, Astral Travel ...).

• Transmogrify : A nice tech card for evasion purposes that disbles the enemy forever without slowing down the clue-gathering process.

• Guts / Eureka! : Staple skill cards. Eureka! is silently one of the best cards in the deck, and Guts is easy to make use of, especially backed by Artistic Inspiration and Whitton Greene to make the test even more likley to succeed.

Link to the level 0 deck

(View at arkham-starter.com)

• Magnifying Glass / Celaeno Fragments : In the interest of making the deck stronger, one or the other probably should be included (likely Celaeno Fragments, for Whitton Greene / Research Librarian). However, they both suffer from the same problem of being very boring, and locking hand slots from more interesting options.

• Dream Diary : A really good shout, and one that fit this deck and the team very well. Ultimately I've played the Diary a lot recently and wanted to try something different.

• Antikythera : This is a powerhouse card that probably belongs in a museum as well. However, the choice I made was to lean on Relics with limited uses to make Dr. Elli Horowitz easier to bounce back, as opposed to have her holding Antikythera all game.

• Ancient Stone : For the longest time this deck ran 2 Ancient Stone and an Occult Lexicon. I gave up on this package to fit Dial of Revelation and Prophesiae Profana, but I'm confident that package can perfom well too.

• Segment of Onyx : One of the earlier versions of the deck had Professor William Webb to fetch back potential discarded segments (as those that would inevitably leave with Dr. Elli Horowitz). I found it made the deck too slow and reliant on drawing "in order", as both the Segemnts and Webb make up 5 dead draws until late game, which are important to avoid given Mandy's huge deck size.

• Relic Hunter : Generally, your accessory relics tend to not conflict with each other too much, since they are all on some kind of timer before they either leave play themselves, or are able to be ditched. The main appeal would be to gain the ability to play two of them at once using Unearth the Ancients and draw 2, but i think it's too niche of a scenario to warrant the 3 experience.

• This deck's task of choice is Plumb the Depths (Daring today, aren't we ?). The objective is to discover the last clue of a location, 5 times every scenario. Since Mandy Thompson acts as a primary cluever, this should be fairly easy, even with Wendy and the third deck all pitching in for clues as well.

• During the aforementioned test run through A Light in the Fog, I tried to keep track of the tasks progress. Mandy only cleared 4 "real" locations. She was barely able to complete the task by dropping a clue using Analysis and picking it back up with Breaking and Entering in the same action. (For anyone interested, the Wendy deck only lost 1 chance from Prove Your Worth, from the test on Kiss of Brine)

• The Task reward is everything Mandy wants : More , more draw. I don't quite know how the finale is going to play out, but I can't imagine this reward being unhelpful.

• Since Whitton Greene already incentivises you to reveal locations, No Place Like Home is also a good choice, and the reward is consistently useful. However, if someone else is interested in this task, the two may end up conflicting.

• Phew, glad that's done. It only took 50 or so versions on arkham.db to arrive at the version you're seeing here, with about half of them going back and forth between Ancient Stone, Microscope, Cryptographic Cipher and Dream Diary for her hand slots. All of that to arrive at a version which holds neither...

• I think Artistic Inspiration is one of the best cards of the latest expansion, and offers an extremely powerful way to use the drawn Occult Evidence, certainly different from the Farsight/ Guided by the Unseen combo to keep cycling them.

• Dr. Elli Horowitz is a card i'd never played before despite many moments of me considering her for a deck. I think it was worth the wait, as I'm very proud of this one. Looking forward to putting it to the test of The Drowned City !