Card draw simulator
| Derived from |
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| None. Self-made deck here. |
| Inspiration for | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marie Poppin' Cultists | Ch2 Starters Revisited | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1.0 |
| Marie Poppin' Cultists | Ch2 Starters Revisited | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2.0 |
HungryColquhoun · 20598
Marie Poppin' Cultists
In this mini-series I'm focusing on powerful decks built from the Chapter 2 starters. Here Marie be poppin' cultists with Cosmic Flame and Consume Life, which she can easily find with Jim Culver, Arcane Initiate and her ability.
If you want to support my work, give it a like ❤︎ and a favorite ★ on here!
Series Decks
| Seeker | Survivor | Guardian | Rogue | Mystic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carolyn | Miguel | Tommy | André | Marie |
At a Glance
Stats Clue-finding: ★★★★☆ Consistency: ★★★★★ Enemy Management: ★★★★★ Encounter Defense: ★★★★★ Survivability: ★★★★★+ Simplicity: ★★★★☆
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Overview
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Practically perfect in every way: Marie is the queen of card advantage. If you use her ability each phase and Arcane Initiate then you can theoretically churn through up to 11 cards per round (or 33% of your deck), drawing 5 of these. You of course won't need to gobble through your deck at this rate (plus you're limited by the damage going directly onto Marie), but still it demonstrates just powerful her ability can be. In addition to enemy attacks or treachery damage, you can use Blood Curse, Offering Bowl and Grand-Mère's Charm to activate your card draw. Card advantage makes finding Offering Bowl and Emergency Cache easier - handy given the deck is expensive (but manageably so).
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A spoonful of sugar: This deck has both damage healing (Cosmic Guidance, Consume Life, Infuse Life) and horror healing (Fearless). Having both to hand means you can use Blood Curse, Soul Link or Ward of Protection readily. Aside from healing, you have a shedload of soak as well (Jim Culver, Bloodstone, Grand-Mère's Charm and the disposable Arcane Initiate) which make Marie tough to kill. Both the soak and healing makes putting damage on Marie for her ability much more palatable.
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Everything is possible, even the impossible: This deck has Second Sight for clue-finding, Cosmic Flame for frying enemies and then 25 icons to commit to tests, with Jim Culver and Bloodstone boosting Willpower. As there's a few disposable assets here, Will of the Cosmos provides easy additional clues. Is there anything Marie can't do?!
Thank you: 5argon and their thumbnail tool; Valentin1331 for his support over the years; the community creators of Arkham.Build (Felix), Arkham Cards (zzorba) and ArkhamDB (kamalisk) - linking their Patreons!
Starting deck and planned progression
0 XP starting deck is below (and link here):
A recommended order of purchases/upgrades is:
Post-18 XP suggestions are:
Playtesting Notes
The deck is good! I made no changes on playtesting. I played on Hard two-player through Children of Blood, taking the 5 bonus XP it suggests you can take (getting an upgraded Cosmic Flame). After the penultimate scenario we'd amassed 24 XP, so I forwent one of the Fearless from the upgrade track and instead purchased both upgraded Blood Curses and a Retribution. With the final boss of CoB, after A Sudden Fall from André then Marie swooped in and fried them with two Cosmic Flame attacks - one with a +1 damage Blood Curse committed - for the win (with another 8 Doom left to go on the Agenda, no less). We also had Retribution to hand as well, should one of those attacks fail - making the win guaranteed.
I will say Grand-Mère's Charm was very useful throughout the campaign, particularly in scenario 1 where it allowed a win (by killing the boss) through refueling upgraded Cosmic Flame. If there's an area where this deck is weaker it's clue-finding; Will of the Cosmos can be very useful - but it is situational, and sometimes you have to ditch it for something else when using Marie's ability. Also, by only having one copy of Jim Culver, there can be a delay with him coming online while you have Second Sight out - still there is enough power here to warrant a 4 ★ clue-finding rating. Health and Sanity-wise, Marie was extremely robust - probably one of the studier decks I've ever made. Even with Called to Guinée, often she had enough health left that it didn't need to be dealt with during a scenario.
Final thoughts
Marie's innate card advantage really sets her apart, meaning you can find both powerful Mystic assets and a huge number of icons. While you can't put damage on Marie indefinitely, you can do it enough that card draw is very strong - allowing you to run a single copy of Jim Culver and free-up XP to take Fearless (and so lean into Ward of Protection and Soul Link). Honestly this feels like the greatest hits of the evergreen Mystic card pool rolled into one... Hope you enjoy!
| 4 comments |
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Sep 04, 2026 |
Sep 04, 2026
For a single copy of Jim, there's two reasons for this: (1) Marie's card draw is high enough that you can find a single copy, and (2) unlike most decks with allies, here you also have Arcane Initiate - with the idea you'll often play them early to find spells faster and so you don't need Jim immediately. For low card draw investigators, or decks where the ally is a key part of the decks function, I would include two copies - but here you will usually find a lone copy sooner or later. I do reserve double copies for cards that are critical for function, e.g. Second Sight and upgraded Cosmic Flame. This approach isn't entirely without its drawbacks, as especially on harder difficulties then investigating without Jim or upgrading your Second Sight is a bit more painful (mentioned in the 'Playtesting Notes' section). In essence though, as Marie is so good at card draw it's very rare you won't see him, and so XP for me is better spent elsewhere. For Favor of Baalshandor, as it only plays Spell and Ritual assets and has no symbol to commit it to tests I think it's a bad card on most decks. You have to have it and an appropriate asset together at once for it to be worthwhile, and usually you want to get your spell assets out as soon as you can (so if you don't have Favor in your opening hand, it's usually a "dead card"). Marie, with Offering Bowl and E-Cache (and later upgraded Jim) has enough resource economy in my opinion even with her expensive assets and events (especially as with some very expensive events, like Infuse Life, you only play these when it's needed later in a scenario when your cash has recovered - and again this has a so it's not dead weight). I also like how Offering Bowl allows you to activate it in any phase with its trigger, and it also has a icon if you don't need its cash. For Favor specifically, I'd only consider it on a Mystic Izzie deck. While Izzie has bad health, 1 direct damage is unlikely to kill you (especially if you have damage healing in the deck) and her resource economy is poor enough that it feels more warranted. With the 3 damage from Offering Bowl, Izzie just can't handle that - whereas for Marie it's borderline advantageous with her card draw. Any other questions, let me know. I know there's plenty of new players floating around currently (though I can see you've had an account on here for a while) so I think probing these things is always helpful for everyone's benefit! |
Sep 04, 2026Thank you so much for your clarifications. I've been playing this wonderful game for about five months. I'd built a very similar deck myself, then I saw yours and took inspiration. You pointed out something very interesting regarding "Balshandor's Favor," and I think I'll follow your advice. Regarding Marie's Pendant and the Bloodstone (which I think is very strong and cheap), how would I manage them without Relic Hunter? Thanks |
Sep 04, 2026
It's much the same situation as Jim and Arcane Initiate really, they tend to be needed at slightly different times for different reasons - so no need for Charisma in that case either. |
Hi, that’s a really great deck; Marie is very strong, even in true solo. I wanted to ask a few things to understand it better: why only a single copy of Jim Culver? And what do you think of the Favor of Balshandor card for this deck? Thanks.