manfromleng · 188
During our review of the Rogue cards in the A Light in the Fog mythos pack on the Whisperer in Darkness YouTube channel, Nate ‘Lost in Time and Space’ and I didn’t take a shine to "Lucky" Penny. It seemed slow, inconsistent and all too random to make the cut in a serious deck. All that glitters is not gold, as they say. However, there has been a lot of buzz about "Lucky" Penny in the Arkham Horror LCG community, so I challenged myself to build a deck that could leverage "Lucky" Penny to draw cards. This deck is the result of those efforts.
THE STRATEGY
The deck is based on the traditional Dark Horse Preston archetype, which has been around since the investigator was spoiled prior to the release of The Circle Undone. The goal of the deck is to fill the bag with tokens using Keep Faith, Tempt Fate and Signum Crucis and then leverage those tokens using "Lucky" Penny and Eye of the Djinn to draw cards, set your base skill value to 5 and take additional actions during your turn. If you draw a ‘Cursed’ token with"Lucky" Penny, False Covenant gives you the option to cancel the token (returning it to the bag so you have the potential to draw more cards down the road), or let it ride to take an additional action with Eye of the Djinn.
Backpack is there to help you find "Lucky" Penny and Eye of the Djinn since Preston doesn’t have many ways to draw additional cards beside the draw action.
HOW DOES IT WORK IN PRACTICE
When the deck is firing on all cylinders, it’s quite fun to play. If Lady Luck is on your side, you have the potential to draw quite a few cards with "Lucky" Penny. Flipping a coin every time you draw a or token from the chaos bag gets really annoying after awhile, but "Lucky" Penny does create some interesting decision points in combination with Eye of the Djinn and False Covenant. If you really need to pass the skill test, cancelling the ‘Cursed’ token is a good option; otherwise, you can save the trigger on False Covenant in case you draw a second token, which is always a possibility with "Lucky" Penny on the table.
Unfortunately, based on my testing so far, the deck’s lack of consistency is problematic. You need to draw and play two Exceptional cards, which isn’t that easy for Preston, who lacks access to a reliable source of draw, and you need to fill the bag with tokens. While most of the cards in this deck that add tokens are , you still need to draw them, which can take time, again, since Preston can't draw through is deck that quickly. Ultimately, the deck feels slower and less consistent than the traditional Dark Horse Preston build, which begs the question: Why play "Lucky" Penny and all the tech required to play it when it doesn’t improve the archetype?
Honestly, while constructing this deck I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was making the traditional Dark Horse Preston build worse, not better, while cutting cards to make room for "Lucky" Penny and the tech required to power it. That a shame, considering so many cards in the Innsmouth Conspiracy cycle are committed to the Bless/Curse mechanics. Perhaps there will be a card in the final two mythos packs that will speed the deck up and make it more consistent.
FUTURE CONSIDERATIONS
While I’m still not sold on the value of "Lucky" Penny, Eye of the Djinn is an excellent addition to the Dark Horse Preston archetype. The ability to jack your base skill value to 5 for one skill test each turn proved to be invaluable.
I considered adding two copies of Priest of Two Faiths to this build to add even more Bless/Curse tokens to trigger Eye of the Djinn; however, I decided against it because I really wanted to remain under the 19-XP cap to avoid adding additional weaknesses when playing scenarios in standalone mode. In a future iteration of the deck, I may exchange Backpack for its Level 0 counterpart, cut "Lucky" Penny altogether, and trim one other card to make room for them. Two copies of Trial by Fire seemed unnecessary as long as I had Eye of the Djinn on table, but I’m not quite prepared to cut one them due to the consistency issues I raised earlier. If you don’t care about XP caps, then I would keep Backpack and purchase Charisma to play two copies of Priest of Two Faiths in tandem with Leo De Luca.
I’ve gone back and forth on whether False Covenant or Ancient Covenant is the right choice for this deck. I think False Covenant is the right choice if you’re committed to playing "Lucky" Penny; otherwise, I would probably switch to Ancient Covenant to avoid drawing multiple tokens during skill tests.
Comments and suggestions are welcome. If you hunger for more Arkham Horror LCG content, visit the Whisperer in Darkness YouTube channel!