Overview

This is a deck for George Barnaby that is all-in on getting as many clues as possible for your team. George can be built in a variety of ways, but his access to Seeker cards and large deck size made me prefer to build a deck with a focus on cluing for consistency.

This is a Dark Horse deck. George is rewarded for committing skills, so most of the cards in the deck are skills, which don't have a resource cost. Lawrence Carlisle also rewards us for committing skills, so Lawrence or Madame Labranche (or both, once we get Charisma) will allow us to still play our key assets while spending most of the game at 0 resources to enable Dark Horse.

The 'endgame' of the deck is to get Lawrence Carlisle, Mariner's Compass, and Magnifying Glass in play. By itself, this lets you do the following once per round: Commit a card to the Compass skill test, triggering Lawrence Carlisle, which gives you a resource. Since there is a player window after committing cards, you have a window to spend this resource on the Mariner's Compass before drawing a token. Overall, you'll be investigating at at least 7 Intellect and getting 2 clues if you succeed. Once you get Dark Horse this can become 8 Intellect, and Charisma plus Madame Labranche gives you another resource to pay into Mariner's Compass which will put you at 9 Intellect. This is disregarding any icons or bonus clues or actions from the card you committed. This also leaves you with 2 actions to still investigate at a base 6 Intellect (7 with Dark Horse).

Why play (or not play) this deck?

• Thanks to the above 'endgame' state and the ability to reuse skills which offer action compression, this deck has a high throughput on gathering clues once it gets going, and even in a 4 player party can be responsible for gathering almost all the clues needed.
• The hand management game is much more complicated for this deck, especially since we are also using cards under George as a second hand, and our discard pile as a third hand. This can be fun for some players, but might add unnecessary complexity to others.
• This deck requires good knowledge of the Arkham rules in order to not accidentally cheat while maximizing the potential of the deck. For example:
  1. If you commit a card during a skill check, you do not get to trigger George's ability until you are done committing cards, i.e. you do not get to draw the card before deciding what else to commit, or commit the card you drew.
  2. However, if you use an effect like Cornered in the player window before committing cards, you can trigger George's during the player window and then commit the card you draw.
  3. You get to draw a card during upkeep before deciding whether to gain the resource or not due to Dark Horse. This can be important if you draw a key asset and need to start building the resources to play it.
• We're playing a 50 card deck! This can be kind of a pain to shuffle, sleeve, sort, etc. compared to the standard investigator deck. Of course, less of an issue if playing on Tabletop Simulator.
• We get to draw a lot of cards per turn. This makes the deck pretty consistent in spite of the large deck size, and is also fun if you like drawing cards (and who doesn't?).

Starting Card Choices

Due to the sheer number of cards we are running, I won't cover all of them. A lot of the cards in the deck are just there to hit the 50 card requirement, and you shouldn't feel bad about not using them to their maximum effect.

• Forced Learning is basically mandatory for George. Instead of drawing 1 card during upkeep, we get to draw 2, discard a card, and then draw another using George's (remember, it's once per phase so we can trigger it in upkeep even if we triggered it during the investigator phase), effectively tripling our draw power.
• As mentioned above, our core engine is Lawrence Carlisle, Mariner's Compass, Magnifying Glass. One could have opted not to use Magnifying Glass, and instead try to get a second copy of Mariner's Compass into play. However, this is more resource-intensive than we would like to be given we would like to become a Dark Horse deck after our first set of upgrades, and also having 4 instead of 2 Hand assets in our deck increases our consistency.
• Deduction and Contemplative give a bonus clue. Quick Thinking gives us a bonus action if we succeed by enough, which due to the fact that we are regularly testing at 8+ Intellect is easy to ensure. These cards provide us the most throughput, and these should be the highest priority cards to put under George and retrieve with Grim Resolve so that we can reuse them as many as times as possible.
• In addition to being a Dark Horse deck, we are also running a discard pile package enabled by Short Supply. The main reasons to do so are we already want to run a few cards that synergize with the discard pile suite: 1. A Glimmer of Hope is great because it is a cheap way to refuel our hand after drawing Cast Adrift, a treachery attacking our hand, or if we just end up spending a lot of skills to pass some key checks. 2. Resourceful is basically an extra copy of Contemplative or Sharp Vision, which we want to be using as much as possible. 3. Scrounge for Supplies getting back a card like Deduction is still a net positive in terms of action compression, as we are able to use the card we get back twice (so if we spend 1 action playing Scrounge to get the card back, and then can commit it twice to save 2 actions, we are up 1 action).
• Madame Labranche is great once we get Dark Horse, provides soak (we are likely to cycle through our deck at least once per scenario), and also can help refill our hand.
• Laboratory Assistant is not our ideal ally for endgame, but still makes sure we get to use our ally slots if we don't draw our key allies until late game, provides protection against Cast Adrift discarding our hand, is an ally we don't mind pouring damage and horror into, and of course helps find the key allies faster.

Upgrades

The below order is a rough guideline; based on your party and the campaign and difficulty you are playing, you will have different priorities. For example, Bound for the Horizon is much more important in a movement-heavy campaign, whereas the action compression from Sharp Vision might be more important if you are the only dedicated cluever.

Cards to add:

• Our first priority is Charisma, since Madame Labranche is much more important once we are in Dark Horse mode (but we don't want to give up Lawrence), and still useful when we are not. I took In the Thick of It to start with Charisma, since Madame Labranche will provide soak to make up for the trauma.
• Our next priority is Dark Horse. It's expensive but very worthwhile, not only for increasing our Intellect but it allows us to pass skill tests on treacheries and fight/evade in a pinch. Note that we are not running the level 0 version; I found upgrading out of two copies of the level 0 version to be a bit awkward, and it's also competing for resources with many of our other cards in the level 0 deck.
• Next, I would add both Bound for the Horizon as it is an additional source of action compression, and makes dead draws (like a second copy of your unique allies, or cards you'd rather play from discard) less disappointing.
• Our final priority upgrade Sharp Vision is another skill that provides clue compression.

At this point I'd consider what remains less important upgrades, and again prioritize them based on your experience playing the deck so far.

• Cornered, Gumption, and Persistence will help you pass more skill checks.
• Unrelenting if drawn early can help you find key cards faster.
• If you find that you don't have a window to build up resources to play the 3-cost Mariner's Compass, you could also consider upgrading to 2-cost Mariner's Compass. This will let you use Madame Labranche to gain a resource before upkeep, then a resource during upkeep to play it during the following turn. However, this is spending 2XP for a 1 resource discount (the ability to unexhaust Mariner's Compass rarely comes up due to our high skill check values, unless you are playing at a higher difficulty).

If you still need cards to add, look for Survivor skills that cost experience and sound fun to use. You can also consider upgraded Lucky! (3) if you're swimming in experience, since we can use it while at 0 resources and it also supports your teammates who are probably testing at lower values than you are. And of course, Observed is always available as an XP sink.

Cards to cut:

• Lucky!, since once we are using Dark Horse we will be less prone to failure and also are less likely to have a resource after a test.
• Rise to the Occasion is nice protection against high Willpower checks, but otherwise is often a dead draw and fine to replace.
• Take Heart is nice but we don't really want the resources once we have our key assets in play with Dark Horse, and especially once we have some upgrades we'll have a harder time finding a window to use it.
• Nautical Charts provides action compression but discarding two cards is a hefty cost, especially once we have Bound for the Horizon as a reusable way to convert cards into action compression.
• Long Shot is mostly in the deck to be committed to our allies' attacks and evades, but doesn't do much for us.
• You might find yourself rarely playing Winging It and Fortuitous Discovery because of their costs, and also the fact that we often reshuffle our deck mid-scenario, in which case they are fine to cut; we have plenty of extra-clue effects as is, especially once Sharp Vision makes it into the deck.

Playing the deck

I'll give a few tips here, but otherwise the high-level plan of the deck is mostly straightforward (get key assets into play and then maximize the number of clues you can get per turn), and the low-level gameplay of hand management and also understanding rules interactions is what will maximize your success.

• Mulligan: Fish for assets aggressively. We start with 5 cards, and can easily draw 4 more on our first turn between triggering our twice and also Forced Learning. Of these 9 cards, we can only keep 4, with 2 of them being skills going under George. This heavily incentivizes us to find and play as many assets as we can Turn 1, since otherwise we're either wasting a lot of cards, either by discarding them during upkeep or by committing them to a low-value Turn 1 test. Assets are even more important because it is almost guaranteed we will draw Cast Adrift during each scenario, which will wipe our hand but not wipe our assets.
• Eureka! and Unrelenting can be kept, because they dig more than 1 card into the deck and maximize your chance of finding assets turn 1, but otherwise even 1-for-1 cards like Perception are worth redrawing.
• For choosing cards to put under George via committing, Deduction, Contemplative, Quick Thinking, and Sharp Vision are the top priorities for cards we want to commit twice. If none of these cards are available to you, cards like Eureka! and Perception that dig into your deck to find these cards are the next priority.
• When you discard a card during upkeep to Forced Learning, you generally want to discard a card like A Glimmer of Hope or a second copy of one of your allies that could be useful to commit to a skill test in the future, but doesn't provide any immediate benefit for doing so.
• Don't forget George's is once per phase, including the mythos phase. Be aggressive about committing low-value skill cards like A Glimmer of Hope during the mythos phase in hopes of cycling them into better cards. It will happen a lot where you will only have 1 test per mythos phase you can commit a card to, and especially once we have Cornered and Dark Horse we are able to attempt most tests with a reasonable chance of success regardless of what our hand has, so the cost of committing cards to random mythos tests is low.