SoSE – Ancient Laser Gun

Card draw simulator

Odds: 0% – 0% – 0% more
Derived from
None. Self-made deck here.
Inspiration for
None yet

ElseWhere · 3771

I have the most brilliant mind in modern academics, but you won't hear my colleagues admitting it. That's quite all right as far as I'm concerned. Let them have their lecture circuits and symposiums. None of them have reverse-engineered an alien weapon from multiple mythological texts scattered across the planet.

But I have. And unfortunately I know all too well that a time is coming soon when I'll have to put it to use.


Hey everybody and welcome to Secrets of Somewhere Else! I've got another unusual thematic and mechanical take on an investigator for you today, in this case Harvey Walters.

Our Dr. Walters is a primary fighter, packing a reverse-engineered Mi-Go Electric Gun. Its primary firing mode shoots extremely accurate electrical discharges, sourced from portable battery cartridges and a dynamic field generator that charges over time. It also has a secondary firing mode that delivers high-impact plasma bolts, which is particularly useful for single-target elimination.

Everything else in the deck is designed to maximize the primary firing mechanism, Ancient Stones, drawing quickly through the deck to trigger the Stones and deal massive damage while refilling by replaying the Stones and using Truth from Fiction. Dr. Walters' quick thinking and electrical engineering skill can even be used at lightning speed with Cryptic Research to kill an enemy with up to 4 health without spending an action! Expose Weakness is also an easy way to put out some damage or highlight a weak spot for Strange Solution, or even an actual bout of fisticuffs! Dr. Walters was a well-known lightweight boxer back in his university days, I'll have you know.

As if that remarkable damage output wasn't enough, five Intellect is more than enough to reliably investigate, especially with all the icons the deck will be throwing at you. Lacking compression means that you'll never be an efficient cluever at higher player counts, but when enemies aren't around or before you've loaded up your weapons, you can cheerfully collect clues and help advance the mission that way.

Shortcut helps with mobility and Mind over Matter allows our rather physically frail hero to leverage his far more impressive mind to pass scenario tests.

Thrice-Damned Curiosity is a dangerous weakness, and since many of the cards in this deck cantrip you may find it difficult to keep your hand size down to a safe enough point where Dr. Walters' post-doctoral assistant Mr. "Rook" can take the hit (he's got first aid training, he'll be fine). You may want to swap out a copy of Mind Over Matter for a Bulletproof Vest just to be safe–after all, we are going to be on the front lines of the mythos here!

In testing, this deck has performed admirably, showing that a Seeker primary fighter is no mere pipe dream but a living, breathing reality! Dr. Walters doesn't care much for appearances. He knows that at the end of the day, what matters is what you can do–and with his weapon of choice locked and loaded, he'll face down any monster from the mythos and leave their smoking corpse behind. "Old" and "weak" is simply a state of mind, one he has no intention of adopting any time soon.

11 comments

Apr 14, 2021 joshcurtis · 22

This is very cool. In what contexts have you tested it?

Apr 14, 2021 joshcurtis · 22

My only concern is how much XP does it take before this can get off the ground fighting? In campaign mode how do you survive the first couple scenarios if the group is relying on you as the fighter?

Apr 14, 2021 PaxCecilia · 396

Harvey probably takes on a more flex role at the start of the campaign with combat events like Occult Invocation and "I've got a plan!", Anatomical Diagrams, etc, and does a slow transformation as he finishes his identification quests.

Cool deck, what's your ideal number of secrets to identify on the stone?

Apr 14, 2021 ElseWhere · 3771

@joshcurtisSo far I've only run him through War of the Outer Gods solo. He successfully beat the scenario with a turn to spare, despite having no clue tech, and then ORKO'd each Outer God as I spawned them for fun.

Your concern is valid. He won't be a very efficient fighter at the start of the campaign, but his solid clueving capacity will mean that, as Pax so eloquently said, he can consistently clue and fight periodically via combat events, making him a strong early-game flex. As he tinkers with his equipment he will begin to become a better fighter until eventually he's fully focused. A level 0 deck can also run clue compression if you want him to focus more on that until scenario 3-4, at which point (depending on the campaign) he should have a couple of his 4XP damage dealers ready.

The basic function of the deck pretty much only requires 16 XP, for the Stones and the Solutions. All other XP expenditures just make the deck more efficient and give you more damage off your primary weapons.

@PaxCeciliaIn testing I just picked 6, as a not-unreasonable quantity, and found that I was burning through those extremely quickly. I would recommend going as high as you can–my Amanda has the Stones identified for 9, and that seems like a solid top end if you have the shroud location to hit it. Then again, I was testing solo in a scenario with a lot of aloof enemies; in higher player counts with other flexes or fighters, or enemies that engage him so Strange Solution is better, he may not need to burn quite so quickly.

Apr 14, 2021 suika · 9254

I did run a similar deck through a campaign, vowing never to take any investigate actions as Harvey.

It actually works quite well from 0xp as a pure fighter, as long as you pack a lot of resource and draw to support your Occult Invocation and Blood Rites and cycle them back into your deck, and as long as you never draw Dissonant Voices when you do need to fight something. Disc of Itzamna worked as another damage source.

Apr 14, 2021 chirubime · 25319

The deck is missing Backpack. In a lot of Acidic Ichor + Emergency Cache decks, you're going to want to assemble the combo with Backpack. Plus then you can also fish out Astounding Revelation for Rook and Ancient Stone.

Also you're not running any organic Stone pushing cards like Magnifying Glass. I think this is a critical error. When you look at this deck, it LOOKS good on paper, but often if you have to push 1 Ancient Stone with another because your other slot is Occult Lexicon, you're going to have to go through your deck an entire cycle before you can play the other Ancient Stone. It certainly isn't hard for Harvey to cycle within 1-2 turns, but then when you get a chance to replenish Ancient Stone is not something you have as much control over.

Apr 14, 2021 Django · 4854

On the topic of Ancient Stone, also consider Scavenging via Versatile to recharge it. With base 5 it should be easy to succeed by 2.

Apr 15, 2021 ElseWhere · 3771

@chirubimeBackpack was in the deck for a while and I'm still definitely open to the idea, but in testing I definitely didn't miss it. Maybe at lower levels before the cycling really takes off, but after a certain point I'm not sure I want to spend the action to Backpack when I could spend that same action to just play a draw event.

And I was easily replenishing Ancient Stone every couple turns by cycling, like you said. As an additional process-smoother Ariadne's Twine, as your chief TFF target, means that you are always accruing ammo over time that can be spent if you manage to run out of Stone charges without time to play your next one. That being said, I'm also not opposed to Mag Glass, and it was in the deck for a while too. I'm just not sure I really need two Stones per deck cycle, seeing as he was able to kill everything in WOTOG without ever being without ammunition–and that was with a relatively low Identification value.

In fact now that I think about it, bumping the Stone out of the slot would prevent me from using the Ariadne secrets for damage, and I wouldn't want to introduce any such "shields down" moments to what is currently a very consistent build.

@Djangothat's a cool idea and I definitely prefer recursion to cycling when I can get it. But in this case I draw far too quickly through the deck to worry much about recursion, and the extra +5 deck slots might actually slow me more than taking an action to investigate and recur speeds me up.

Apr 15, 2021 suika · 9254

Agreed, backpack and scavenging is completely unnecessary in a deck that cycles this fast.

My suggestion is to drop a copy of Ancient Stone and the Strange Solutions/ecache/expose weakness in favor of even more cycling. A single stone with Blood Rites is more than enough to kill everything, so you just need to support it with more secrets (Astounding Revelations!) and if you want more consistency you could take No Stone Unturned to find your stone! That'll save you a bunch of XP.

Apr 21, 2021 joshcurtis · 22

I guess this is more of a Harvey in general question (because I haven't played him before), but how do you manage Thrice-Damned Curiosity when you're cycling your deck multiple times? Do you just try to commit all of your cards to skill tests almost as soon as they enter your hand?

Apr 21, 2021 ElseWhere · 3771

@joshcurtisFrankly that's probably the one weakness of this deck. One of my playgroup has a really good Farsight Harvey that just plays events fast or with Farsight as soon as they enter his hand so he never takes more than a damage from it. In this deck my hand gets big faster than I can really reduce it, so I tend to take 2-3 damage instead even while committing everything superfluous. To that end I might recommend a single copy of Bulletproof Vest, since you're guaranteed to draw it at the same rate as Curiosity. In a deck that draws less or is more susceptible to damage, two copies is probably a good idea.