Harvey Dents High Shroud Locations|RC+Starter|Always Current

Harvey Dents High Shroud Locations

In this mini-series I'm looking at balanced, somewhat flexy decks which are "always current". These use just the revised core (RC) and standalone starter packs. Here, Harvey works his Farsight magic to get up to 10 clues in a single turn. Is this the dumbest deck title I've ever come up with? You tell me!

Overview

• Thy Tempo Befits A Crown: The reason I love Harvey is because he's a tempo machine. Unlike Daisy with her Tomes, Harvey can play two Magnifying Glasses fast which helps him do what he needs to do - i.e. use high to find clues. As he has innate card draw, once you achieve big hand mode then Farsight rewards you with an extra action once a turn as long as you have an appropriate event, quickly refunding its setup cost. Deduction, Working a Hunch and Extensive Research can provide 10 clues in a turn if you play all of them, using two basic investigates to commit Deduction and playing one of the two Extensive Research through Farsight.

• Card Draw: On top of Harvey's ability there is Vault of Knowledge, Laboratory Assistant, Cryptic Research, Glimpse the Unthinkable, Perception •• and a Guts. Glimpse the Unthinkable is especially good as it both draws a card plus activates Harvey's ability to draw a second, and then it allows you to mulligan your hand (helping to source combat cards, Guts or key assets like Dr. Milan Christopher and Farsight). Given you can have 8 assets in play and a hand size of 14 you can cycle a lot with this deck, accessing your clue compression events continuously. In your early turns it's best to play assets or events before drawing cards with Cryptic Research or Glimpse the Unthinkable, in order to minimize Thrice-Damned Curiosity before you're ready for it.

• Resource Economy: Resource economy is decent, with Burning the Midnight Oil, Cryptic Writings and Dr. Milan Christopher's drip feed (two copies of the good doctor are included to help you find him early). This gives you money to keep spamming clue compression events like Extensive Research and Working a Hunch. For Cryptic Writings, if it doesn't play via its effect, an additional option is to shuffle it back into your deck with Glimpse the Unthinkable.

• Combat & Signature Weakness: Combat is "I've got a plan!" •• and Occult Invocation with a copy of Mind over Matter. Using Farsight it's possible to deal up to 14 damage by playing all of the former four cards. To mitigate against enemy damage there's Bulletproof Vest, which additionally serves as soak against Thrice-Damned Curiosity. If Thrice-Damned Curiosity has taken out your vest, you can consciously play and commit your hand down to a small size until you've cycled and have your vest in play again.

• Encounter Deck & Soak: Further soak on the horror side are your Laboratory Assistants and Dr. Milan Christopher. As your deck will cycle often, fodder like Lab Assistants is helpful. For the encounter deck, one copy of Guts helps with especially difficult treacheries while Bulletproof Vest soaks damage from treacheries (and Mind over Matter deals with persistent or treacheries during your turn).

Campaign starter and planned progression

0 XP deck is as follows (and link here):

A recommended order of purchases/upgrades is:

• Miskatonic Archaeology Funding

• 1 x Guts → 1 x Bulletproof Vest

• Preposterous Sketches → Cryptic Research

• 1 x Barricade → 1 x Farsight (19 XP here for standalones)

• 1 x Barricade → 1 x "I've got a plan!" ••

• 1 x Mind over Matter → 1 x "I've got a plan!" ••

• Emergency Cache → Glimpse the Unthinkable

• Perception → Perception ••

Final thoughts

This deck goes to show that, even with this limited pool, it's still possible to make a high tempo deck which gets up and running fast. Harvey really is the master of not needing enemy management options outside of events, as his card draw is such that you will find these easily (though inevitably you'll draw a Relentless Dark Young or similar in your first Mythos phase before you've had a chance to set up, so pairing with a more combat-ready investigator is advisable). His high Intellect and the way you can run a deck stacked with icons without much downside exemplifies what it is to be a Seeker. Yellow gang unite!

Ultimately, I guess what I'm saying is... I believe in Harvey dent-ing high shroud locations. Someone should make a fan Batman-themed scenario called Harvey Dent's High Shroud Locations, so you can play Harvey Dents High Shroud Locations in Harvey Dent's High Shroud Locations...