Card draw simulator
| Derived from |
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| None. Self-made deck here. |
| Inspiration for |
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| None yet |
HungryColquhoun · 22541
Guns Don't Kill People, Books Do
In this mini-series I'm delving deeper in the Ch2 card pool for interesting combos. Here Joe prioritizes to enable both investigation and combat, fighting at an 8 test value for 3 damage with Scroll of the Pharaohs plus Dorothy. Similarly, he uses Insidious Truths for another 8 value 3 damage fight action. Both Truths and Scroll make it easy to kill enemies and trigger Autopsy Report, activating your card draw.
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Series Decks
| Seeker | Survivor | Guardian | Rogue | Mystic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Joe | Izzie | Daniela | Trish | Dexter |
At a Glance
Stats Clue-finding: ★★★★☆ Consistency: ★★★★★ Enemy Management: ★★★★★+ Encounter Defense: ★★☆☆☆ Survivability: ★★★★☆ Simplicity: ★★★★☆
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Overview
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Combos: The core combo here is Scroll of the Pharaohs (Words of Ra) with Autopsy Report. This allows you to lean into (running Dorothy Simmons) and test at an effective 8 for intellect fighting, while receiving a big boost on your Autopsy Report free investigate. Hence (everyone likes a good hence...), this opens up the situations where you can trigger Joe's ability - as if there's no enemies around you will investigate as normal, but if there is you can still often kill the enemy to investigate anyway (and you can even have another investigator kill an enemy to trigger an investigate outside of your turn). Caustic Reaction provides a further avenue for fighting. If you really hate Autopsy Report, I've also included a deck variant below without it.
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Complimentary Cards: Scroll of the Pharaohs (Words of Ra) necessitates horror healing and soak. Detective's Intuition, Psychoanalysis and Stakeout provide the former, while Resilience provides the latter - for an extra 11 effective additional soak/healing (and useful icons otherwise). This works well considering your Scroll isn't the only way you deal damage (and you can spend two secrets per activation for 3 damage, in which you may only take two horror per tome). Resilience is chosen specifically because it's also health soak, reducing the need to sacrifice Dorothy to damage. Literary Analysis helps keep Scroll charged, while Vicious Blow pairs to Insidious Truths to give high damage and test value options to conserve your Scroll's secrets.
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Staples: Deduction and Working a Hunch keep the clues flowing nicely. While Joe is no Carolyn at clue-finding, his card advantage means you usually have the boosts you want when you need them. As this deck kills enemies, Bounty gives resources for the privilege - providing above average resource economy alongside Dorothy Simmons, Joe's ability, Detective's Intuition and Emergency Cache. I tend to find Joe has plenty of resources, even taking Dead Ends into account. Machete is a backup weapon for when your Scroll refuses to come out of your deck, as well as a icon and a means to ditch empty Scroll of the Pharaohs (as it's unique and so can't replace itself).
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! A big thanks to fffelice for also arranging image hosting, like a true gentleman!
Starting deck and planned progression
0 XP starting deck is as follows (and link here):
A recommended order of purchases/upgrades is:*
* You might not be able to research Scroll of Pharaohs in your first scenario, in which case upgraded Caustic Reaction is a good alternative.
Post-18 XP suggestions are:
Playtesting Notes
Unlike the other decks in this series which were playtested on Traces to Nowhere, I playtested this instead in Children of Blood (Hard, two player) due to it using a 'Researched' asset - though the rules police won't lock you up if you do play this on a standalone. I did also playtest the deck variant below through BoA on Hard two player, I've made some notes in that section...
I played CoB with the 5 bonus XP, buying two copies of upgraded Caustic Reaction, with 1 XP spare. For the first scenario of CoB (playing with Miguel from my previous series), we did manage to research Scroll of the Pharaohs but it came at the cost of losing the scenario through damage. Still you get 3 bonus XP for losing, finishing with 8 XP (including the 1 XP I had left over) allowing me to upgrade both tomes.
CoB Scenario 2 was dramatically different, as with both copies of Scroll of the Pharaohs (Words of Ra) then Joe's enemy management role was in full swing. Joe found clues well using Deduction, and fried the big boss with both his Scroll and Caustic Reaction. Resilience was handy in keeping Joe alive too.
Joe was great in CoB Scenario 3, getting two clues off a 4 shroud location with Deduction plus Stakeout, snagging an extra clue elsewhere with Working a Hunch, and then destroying the final boss with Insidious Truths plus Vicious Blow followed by Scroll of the Pharaohs for 7 damage (the boss having taken 3 damage the previous round). The very good thing about Joe is his card draw is so strong that his fight assets and events tend to readily present themselves - he's the Mark Harrigan of high Intellect!
Deck Variant
For those of you who don't like Autopsy Report (y'know - all you theme-hating philistines!) then have I got a variant for you. The deck uses upgraded Magnifying Glass rather than Report, allowing you to crack high shroud locations a little easier on basic investigates (but losing out on Report's card draw from Joe's ability). Upgraded Mag Glass also makes hand slot juggling a little easier too (e.g. need a slot for Machete? Then pull Mag Glass back. Likewise, Machetes and empty Scroll of the Pharaohs can be bumped out with Mag Glass as needed - especially as Scroll is unique and so can't bump itself out).
As mentioned above I did playtest this variant through Hard two player BoA - which went well. I got Scroll of the Pharaohs researched and subsequently upgraded by scenario 2 (getting the max 8 XP out of the first scenario). I made short work out of Servant of Flame in the first scenario with Caustic Reaction, Insidious Truths (with Vicious Blow committed) plus the damage you can deal with clues in that scenario (with two more damage coming from Marie - using the Marie Poppin' Cultists deck).
With Scroll of the Pharaohs upgraded it was plain sailing in scenario 2. I killed Margaret Liu with it in the final round of the scenario - drew her, engaged her, and then dealt 3 damage in a single attack - as well as getting big hits on the Elusive Servant of Flame for a kill assist.
In the final BoA scenario I had a bad mulligan (no assets!) and as there's not many clues around I couldn't get card draw that way either (I of course went to unrevealed sewer locations with no clues). However I still did manage to do a 4 damage attack on Elokoss with Insidious Truths and Vicious Blow, so the deck still managed to get a crucial big hit in that helped secure the win (and I got Machete out before that which was useful for dispatching trash mob cultists).
Is the better version of the deck? ...maybe. It can deal more damage by the 19XP mark due to upgrading Vicious Blow - though at least in BoA I didn't get the XP to upgrade these (I could either kill Margaret or get rid of Dead Ends in scenario 2, and chose the former) and then I didn't see either of my upgraded Caustic Reactions or Magnifying Glasses in the final scenario. I will say as you're upgrading into the damaging stuff earlier then, if you do get saddled unluckily with a Dead Ends you can't shift, you're likely to have upgraded into more damage-dealing cards sooner than the main deck. However, I'm a sucker for theme - so I like the first deck more!
Mag Glass variant link here (it uses the same starting deck). Image as follows to save you a click:
Upgrade track as follows:
Post-18 XP suggestions:
The cool thing about the upgrade track is you maintain 4 fight assets while you research Scroll of the Pharaohs (Words of Ra), and then as soon as you have it upgraded Magnifying Glass comes in to edge out the now slightly redundant M1911. If it takes you a little longer to research the tome, then you can just upgrade into Mag Glass later as well and still keep doing Guardian-duty.
I hope people don't say the 'real' deck was in the Deck Variant section...
Final thoughts
This essentially turns Joe full Guardian, and I love it! With this setup Joe can deal 11 damage in a turn while testing at an 8 or more (two Insidious Truths with Vicious Blow, one Scroll of the Pharaohs), making him a very capable boss-killer. What sets this deck apart is its focus, so when you're not killing things then investigation is often trivial (especially as this deck is brimming with cards to commit). This gives you a more singular focus where you make fewer compromises (e.g. compared to say a 50-50 and deck which usually needs Charisma and Logan, and leaves much less deck space for pushing hard on Intellect icons while often requiring more setup).
I really liked this deck, it's probably my favorite Joe deck out of the several I've designed, and hopefully a good capper to this combo driven series. Regarding the title of the deck I know there is the M1911 in the campaign starter, but I thought the current title was an improvement over, "Guns kill people for a little while, but then they're swapped out for books, which kill people better!" Enjoy...
| 4 comments |
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Nov 13, 2026 |
Nov 13, 2026
While Typewriter is a good avenue to keep Scroll of the Pharaohs "charged" (secretted?), I'd rather use the resources you'd spend on Typewriter on Caustic Reaction or Insidious Truths instead (which have the advantage of not dealing you horror, and so you can flit between these and Scroll as needed to make this manageable). I think even on higher player counts where there's a greater argument for sustaining big damage, I would rather just upgrade Vicious Blow and tack it onto Machete or Insidious Truths fight actions (given it doesn't cost any resources) than get Typewriter which buys you one 3 damage attack and one 2 damage attack for two horror, two resources, two XP and a play action. I think some people might read this as Scroll of the Pharaohs is therefore a bad idea (i.e. if it was such a good idea, you would want Typewriter to make it go further), but it's more that the number of intended uses here more readily mirror the horror healing in the deck - and so it's in balance (and all the horror healing cards presented have useful secondary effects, so they're not wasting time and tempo to a good degree). Typewriter always feels a smidge over-costed for me generally, even on Carolyn decks where the use case is stronger. I guess there's always Literary Analysis for a free, small version of Typewriter! |
Nov 13, 2026Oh, shut, I forgot that Autopsy Report doesn't use charges! In that case, I also wouldn't use Typewriter. I used it, and it was superb, in Carolyn deck using Scroll of Pharaohs, Dreamer's Chronicle, and Occult Records. But in that deck, Typerwriter had 3 targets, not one, and Carolyn could work with taking horror way better than Joe. |
Nov 13, 2026
There's always a fine balance between building your engine to do stuff faster (but wasting a couple of turns' worth of actions building that engine), or just getting on and doing the stuff. This deck is definitely more of the latter and hits the ground running, as the high means you can start investigating immediately (which for Joe instantly starts to feed his card advantage as well). Usually for more split-focus and Joe decks, they require more setup than this and lack the focus which allows for a quick start here. |
Would you consider Typewriter for this deck, or is there no need for the extra charges? If yes, what would you cut?