Flex Rex Pulls The Thread

Core Concept

This is a deck I have been wanting to try out for years, and I have finally managed to bring it to the table as part of a three-person team through The Innsmouth Conspiracy on Hard difficulty. I am someone who really likes weird and janky decks, and as such I've always avoided Rex. Even with the taboo, he seemed like the most straightforward Seeker - nothing but clues, all day long. But Dunwich investigators can do interesting things with their off-class slots, Ornate Bow with Venturer (and later Cleaning Kit) to increase its action efficiency and avoid Attacks of Opportunity for reloading has done admirable work for Skids, and Edge of the Earth added all that Agility support for Seekers. After all, Rex only has one less agility than Skids...

So this deck is designed to make Rex Murphy into a flex character, with substantial fighting (and evasion) abilities alongside his clue gathering. Emphasising Ornate Bow and Cleaning Kit forces a different build direction than the conventional Intellect boosts (e.g. Magnifying Glass) in hand slots and Lucky Cigarette Case in the accessory slot. He can still get clues with the best of them, but doing so takes limited boosts and card commits rather than simply strolling up to a new location with enough flat Intellect boosts to see through walls. At the same time, the emphasis on Agility also enables him to evade enemies and better survive encounter cards.

Build and Upgrade Priority

The core cards in this deck are Ornate Bow, Cleaning Kit, Hyperawareness, and Hiking Boots. In the Thick of It to start with a copy of Ornate Bow is ideal, as otherwise the first scenario will be rough. I'd recommend taking 2 Mental Trauma, since Rex has so much sanity.

Depending on how much exp we get in the first scenario, we should take a second copy of Ornate Bow right away. Unless we're completely flush with experience (depending on how generous the first scenario is), it's worth considering Hyperawareness (2) and upgrading to Hyperawareness (4) later on. Use any spare exp for Hiking Boots and Steady-Handed. We cut Occult Invocation, The Truth Beckons and Plan of Action to make room for those six cards.

Once we have those cards, we can tailor our approach to our team and campaign. If we need better economy, Cryptic Research is still an all-star card, replacing Preposterous Sketches (we want to keep Thorough Inquiry if we can, because it has amazing icons for us and it can also be used to support our team-mates). Ancestral Knowledge is excellent, adding back in Plan of Action as well as Unexpected Courage, giving us resilience against encounter cards and a bit of extra card draw and boosts to get up and running early in the scenario. Finally, we should take Emergency Cache to fill the remaining slot opened up by increasing our deck size, and upgrade it to Emergency Cache (3) when we get the chance - providing resources for early game setup or late-game Hyperawareness boosts, and/or extra arrows in our quiver.

At this point, the deck is fully up and running. The next upgrades are luxuries to further increase our efficiency. Divination (4) (replacing Working a Hunch) means a bit more time spent playing assets, but it gives us more Intellect boosts and clue acceleration to make up for our lack of hand-slot cards. Upgrading our skills is also a good idea - Perception (2) is a great way to ensure early consistency with extra card draw, and Survey the Area (replacing Plan of Action) is a huge boost to our two main skills to overcome high Shroud, Fight and Evade values.

Join the Caravan is a more niche option, replacing Cryptic Writings - I took it early, because it's amazing in Innsmouth, but since we're taking assets from all five classes anyway, it's worth considering eventually even if we only use it to skip a couple of locations, since it's great action compression and we may need to jump back to the rest of the team if they are ambushed or we go off on our own. Lastly, a copy of Mind over Matter lets us boost our archery and evasion skills to incredible levels - it's overkill for most situations, but a good choice going into the final scenario of a campaign, where there is typically an extremely hard boss (or several) to overcome - we can replace a copy of Bandages or Burning the Midnight Oil to make room.

The final version of this deck at the end of Innsmouth can be seen here.

Mulligan Priority

We definitely want to keep Ornate Bow, Dr. Milan Christopher, Hyperawareness and Cryptic Research. We probably also keep Hiking Boots, Fox Mask, Divination and maybe Steady-Handed. If we otherwise don't get a good starting hand, we should also keep Thorough Inquiry and spend the first turn playing it if the mulligan doesn't improve things. We probably don't want to keep Cleaning Kit unless we also drew Ornate Bow and the rest of the team hasn't had much luck with combat options in their opening hands.

Because Thorough Inquiry and Cryptic Research can be used to help other investigators if their own opening hands aren't great, and the usefulness of an early Cleaning Kit depends on how well the team is ready to fight, it's typically a good idea for us to be last in player order so that other players mulligan before us and we can decide on that basis.

Playstyle

Ornate Bow packs a big punch, particularly since Cleaning Kit means we don't need to reload it every time. But until we draw and play it, we're a bit vulnerable, particularly with the high resource cost, and it's less efficient against smaller enemies. This deck fills a flex role but naturally leans more towards gathering clues - we are still a single-class Seeker with one of the best clue-gathering abilities in the game, after all.

The overall playstyle depends on the rest of the team. If there's a dedicated fighter on the team, we are best off leaving the majority of combat to them - our archery skills mainly come into play if the group gets overwhelmed or we're caught out of position, or for dealing with bosses or odd-numbered health totals. In this case we would mainly lean into clueing.

If the rest of the team can cover all the bases - either a dedicated cluer and a dedicated fighter, or one or more other flexes - we can head off on our own once we have our bow ready and not worry about getting jumped by enemies. With our efficient cluing, we can clean out a substantial part of the scenario by ourselves, and emptying locations one after another maximises the efficiency of Hiking Boots.

The main weakness of this deck is its reliance on setup. If we don't get a good opening hand, and particularly if we don't see Milan, we might have to choose between being able to handle enemies or being able to gather clues for the first few rounds of the scenario. We have loads of card draw and solid resource economy, so we will stabilise quite quickly, but we may need to stick with the pack to begin with. The nature of the scenario and campaign is also a consideration. Some scenarios have a constant stream of enemies or early threats, and others require the team to gather lots of clues very quickly. Both of these considerations can be substantially mitigated with Ancestral Knowledge, using skills to draw cards and pass initial Investigate tests regardless of opening hand or resources, and if worse comes to worst we can evade an enemy and leave to buy enough time to get set up.

Variations on a Theme

It may have become apparent that a lot of Seeker staples are curiously absent. This is mainly because this deck was built with a house-ruled variant of the chapter 1 beta "Limited Environment" rules, which I have called "3-2-1". The houserule is effectively Limited pool (take cards from Core and Investigator packs, as well as three other cycles), plus up to two copies of one other card, and a single copy of a further other card, to give access to a key build-around card without having to take the entire cycle. I chose to take cards from The Innsmouth Conspiracy, Edge of the Earth, and Feast of Hemlock Vale, as well as two copies of Ornate Bow and one copy of Emergency Cache.

When building with a full card pool, you could easily take cards like Shortcut in place of The Truth Beckons, Eureka! in place of Plan of Action, "I've got a plan!" in place of Occult Invocation, or Captivating Discovery in place of Preposterous Sketches. Empirical Hypothesis, Pathfinder, and Crack the Case are likewise excellent options. You don't need me to point out every good Seeker card that can slot into a deck! That said, I found this deck to have an interesting and efficient play pattern. There's plenty of scope for changes - outside of the core build of Ornate Bow, Cleaning Kit, Hyperawareness and Hiking Boots, the rest of the deck can be adjusted to suit your preferences.

Bandages was taken to cover Rex's relatively low health - you can use Cleaning Kit to get extra uses in a pinch, and it provides Survivor access to reduce Join the Caravan and even enable Call for Backup if leaning into support. However, you could just as easily take Second Wind for a potentially more efficient damage healing option, or take Bizarre Diagnosis or risk going without a damage solution to open up two off-class slots, which could be used for a second copy of Fox Mask, as well as Breaking and Entering, Ward of Protection, or any number of other useful off-class options.

Limited Environment

This deck is also very viable with strict adherence to the "Limited Environment" rules ("Current Environment" does not work, as neither Ornate Bow nor Rex Murphy himself are available in Current). Limited Environment allows us to take investigators outside of the pool, so Rex is fine. We need to take Forgotten Age as one of our three cycles, to get Ornate Bow. Then we need to choose which two of Innsmouth, Edge of the Earth and Feast of Hemlock Vale to keep - and I don't think there's a truly wrong answer there.

Innsmouth gives us Hyperawareness, Ancestral Knowledge, Plan of Action and The Truth Beckons. If we don't take Innsmouth, skill tests can become problematic particularly on higher difficulties - I'd consider taking Hyperawareness (2) and maybe Gené Beauregard to compensate.

Edge of the Earth gives us In the Thick of It Hiking Boots, Divination, Join the Caravan, Bandages and Survey the Area. If we don't take Edge of the Earth, we lose out on mobility and survivability, so I'd consider taking Safeguard, Leather Coat or Nimble in place of Bandages. Without Divination, we don't have as much potential for huge clue compression, so the deck becomes more flex. Without In the Thick of It, scenario 1 will be tough - if there's a dedicated fighter on the team we might be OK, and we should take Flashlight to have a use for Cleaning Kit and maybe Mind over Matter to have a little more combat ability. If our campaign has a combat-heavy first scenario or requires us to split up - like Innsmouth or TCU - we absolutely should take Edge of the Earth as part of our pool, just to have Ornate Bow.

Feast of Hemlock Vale gives us Cleaning Kit, Fox Mask, Thorough Inquiry and Steady-Handed. If we don't take Hemlock Vale, we need to take Venturer from TFA to efficiently reload our bow, which in turn means either no Dr. Milan Christopher or an early Charisma. The silver lining is that the soak from Venturer increases survivability.

Conclusion

I loved playing this deck. It can get loads of clues, but it feels a lot more interesting than a "typical" Rex deck because it uses limited resources to do so, and has plenty of flexibility and ways to handle threats. The mental image of the reporter scoring bullseyes with a magic bow is excellent. And since I had previously written off Rex as an investigator who just wasn't my style, it's great to bring him into my personal 'roster'. If you like janky, unusual builds or you've become a bit bored of Seeker decks that boil down to "Play static boost assets, spend 3 actions investigating", I suggest giving it a try. And if you do, let me know what you think!

Whether you're lining up headshots or writing up headlines - stay safe out there.