Harvey's Speedrun Srats (Stage 1:Lvl0)

Have you ever wanted to play your starting entire hand and still have 3 actions to spare? Does your weakness keep you from doing what you planned? Do you wish for your friends to beg you to stop giving them cards and ignore them like the great professor you are? Did you ever think to yourself, "Hey that's not a weakness that's a combo piece" aloud? Welp, maybe Harvey is the right investigator for you.

Overview: The entire deck relies on the help of fast cards. Given Harvey’s ability and desire to draw cards, the deck is packed with card draw, fast actions, and any other card that will give him the ability to handle the scenario himself.

Draw: What kind of Harvey deck would this be without card draw? The deck runs a total of 13 card draw effects to maintain a constant flow of action as the game progresses. Cards like Mr. "Rook" and Eureka! have a special interaction with Harvey in that you can grab the cards you want, shuffle your deck, then draw another card right after. These specific cards help you get rid of your weakness at opportune times to mitigate the damage thrice can do to you and gain a bit of extra support right after. Since there is a bunch of duplicates in the deck, Dream-Enhancing Serum is a key component to ensure actionless draws and, once the signature weakness is in discard, can help you maintain a huge hand when so desired. The plentiful amount of card draws help the deck ensure plays can happen and combo with other cards such as Occult Invocation and Cryptic Writings to produce both resources (unless you are an unlucky sap and draw it during your upkeep) and damage.

Fast: As the deck entails, fast cards are a priority for the deck. Running 12 at level 0, each fast card helps enable certain actions to be done without having to expend an action which will be used either to draw, play the few assets we own, or move. Shortcut helps get to a location faster and provides a possible action to investigate said location. Working a Hunch and Connect the Dots help acquire test less clues and if paired with crack the case can combo off each other. Mind over Matter gives Harvey the option to run away and let others handle it or smack an enemy with his 5 big brain plays. Magnifying Glass helps him investigate better which is never a bad thing especially when his signature draws cards from succeeding investigates.

Mulligan: In terms of mulligans, Harvey mainly only cares about having a way to draw and keeping cryptic writing as far away as possible. Out of desired cards, Mr. Rook and dream serum are high on the list of keeps as well as crack the case since Harvey wants to use his actions to draw and investigate rather than gain resources.

Upgrades: Two words: Cryptic Research. A card so perfect for Harvey that it draws, is fast, cost 0, and has Harvey himself in the art. What makes it better is that it can have someone else draw 3 to 4 cards as well just for 4 experience.

Segment of Onyxis another first pick upgrade after 1 cryptic research in that it pairs with dream serum, is fast, gives actionless actions, and combos off with another card mentioned later under the Spoilers category.

Magnifying Glass is the next upgrade of priority since it decreases the cost to 0, and if thrice is gone, helps you gain more resources once cryptic writing is upgraded.

The rest of the upgrades are cryptic writing, Mind Over Matter , Studious and Preposterous Sketches because they do what the deck wants to do but better which is churn through your deck but faster and cheaper.

Spoilers: If you got this far then that means you want to know the secrets to Harvey being the best character created so far and to understand that one must delve into his background. Did you know he committed murder prior to his tenure days. That’s right! What Have You Done? is the one weakness Harvey desires If he wants to combo off with pendant of the queen. To assemble the combo you need dream serum, what have you done, pendant, and an empty library. With an empty library you trigger the weakness to shuffle it back into your deck and draw said weakness each turn. Once pendant is out of charges the three segments go into the deck, you draw, exhaust dream serum then just rinse and repeat. Rather than having to worry about your weakness or spend many resources on trying to find the pieces, all you do is forgo one action to either test less evade, clue, or teleport to your heart's desire. If you're lucky in a campaign, then Kleptomania could do the same especially when others continue to provide you generous funds for your amulet needs though it requires more set up than the previous weakness.

Playthrough: The playthrough this Harvey went through was Carcosa. Throughout the campaign the build was able to cycle through the deck at least once and get pendant out at least 2-4 times each game. One of the issues the deck has is when to reshuffle the deck. One of the issues when reshuffling is having the potential of redrawing the weaknesses again which could lead to high damage potential especially when running into campaigns that add weaknesses into the deck. Out of the cards in the final build miskatonic funding is not a card that this deck would recommend unless laboratory assistance are being replaced since the limitation of 1 damage/horror gave Harvey a few close calls in the campaign though no defeat was done. One of the things that was impressive on the deck was the ability for the deck to clear places quickly by combining the various fast actions together to gain resources and pick clues up from other locations without expending a single action which occurred turn 1 after another investigator, moving, clearing 5 clues, gaining 13 resources, and drawing 4 cards, gaining 3 more resources, drawing sig weakness and taking 0 damage. Although the previous mention was dream wonderland, the simple fact the deck could accomplish deck demonstrates the potential Harvey has to simplify the game