"Everything by the Book", even when it instructs you to go on a Bloody Hunt to feed a Blade

Credit: Shane Pierce & Patrick McEvoy

With a new expansion comes a new set of combo and fun deck concepts. Now that I have completed all the new investigators, I will try to release a few new deck concepts. I can't promise I'll stick to a schedule, but they'll come out eventually!

For this first deck, we're starting with one of my favourite cards of this expansion, The Book of War. I love cards like this that can be the centrepiece of whole decks, and this one is a pure design masterpiece. When you read it, you immediately think: this can break the game. But Tactics are actually not so common and there aren't that many options that stand out. In this deck, I am exploring one of the best events to combo with the book: On the Hunt (3).

Disclaimer A quick word to say that this deck was tested with 2 . Since you re-shuffle the Encounter Deck a lot more in 4 , this concept will be significantly less potent. If you intend to play this deck with 3 or 4 players, using First Watch is a great alternative.

Note This deck could also be made using // Roland Banks, benefitting from +5 starting experience, and gaining access to interesting cards like Act of Desperation. I will leave it up to experienced players to make the switch if they would like to.

• Overview

• Main Strategy

• The long, unrelenting, high-yield chase

• Prepare for the Field Work

• Other Cards

• Upgrade Path

• Final Thoughts

• Use The Book of War to play On the Hunt (3) every turn during most of the scenario, first taking all the enemies away from your teammates, and then skipping the Encounter Deck entirely.

• Use your secured enemy flow to feed the The Hungering Blade, and the resources gained to pump your with Keen Eye.

• Use your ability to turn enemies into clues, and the Hiking Boots to ensure you start every round on a location with a clue.

• Using the The Book of War, you can play On the Hunt (3) over and over again.

  • At first, this allows you to fish every enemy in the Encounter Deck, choosing in which order. The weaker ones first, as you keep setting up, and the stronger ones after, when you have the tools to deal with them.
  • Then, unless you play a scenario that reshuffles the Encounter Deck regularly, you'll quickly run out of enemies. As On the Hunt (3) does not whiff, if there are no more enemies in the Encounter Deck, you simply skip that part of the game! Who needs Gloria when you just don't draw Encounter cards at all?!

• Astounding Revelation and Truth from Fiction are here to add Secrets to The Book of War so you can use it for as long as possible.

  • The best play sequence is as follows:
  1. Play the The Book of War with Ever Vigilant, along with any other assets you have (starting maybe a Backpack (2) to search for the Book first).
  2. Use a secret from the The Book of War immediately to get Ever Vigilant back to your hand.
  3. Empty all the secrets from the first book.
  4. When ready, use Ever Vigilant a second time, with a weapon to bump out the empty book and play a second one immediately after, replacing the just played weapon. This allows you to swap your The Book of War with a new one, as the rules don't allow you to replace a Unique asset with another. This is costly but will help you keep your combo alive longer.

• Every time you have 2 Offerings on The Hungering Blade, you can use Mr. "Rook" to search for 9 cards, increasing your chances to find a Bloodlust, and pick an Astounding Revelation on the go, while also picking any other card you may need at that point!

• Roland Banks is the best investigator for this combo, because one enemy every turn is the perfect input for his ability. This turns them into 1 clue each turn.

  • And once your location is empty, you use Hiking Boots that you stored in your Backpack (2) to make sure you start every Mythos phase on a location with a clue.

• Because On the Hunt (3) gives you +3 resources every round, as soon as you empty the Encounter Deck, you will be swimming in cash and you will not draw any encounter cards anymore, so you'll have plenty of time to get clues. This is achieved by throwing all your resources into Keen Eye and spam basic investigations, get as many clues as you can each round and hopefully empty a location to get the free move from your Hiking Boots.

  ---

• The first part is to assemble your core combo:

  • To begin, you need a weapon and The Book of War. These are your targets during mulligan, as well as Backpack (2) to find both. You also have Prepared for the Worst on Stick to the Plan for a final push to find a weapon.

  • Stick to the Plan holds On the Hunt (3) so this one is ready from turn 1.

  • Ever Vigilant (4) is the last card on Stick to the Plan that eases the initial resource cost of setting up your combo.

• Mr. "Rook" is your fallback option to find an elusive combo piece. Ideally, you keep him to find Bloodlust, but don't sit on him if you haven't found your core combo pieces.

• Finally, some draw from the numerous cantrips can help bring you closer to what you need. This includes Overpower, Daring, Glory and Ready for Anything.

• Roland's .38 Special and Enchanted Blade has 2 uses in this deck:

  • It is good early in the scenario since its +3 secures you easy kills as you setup the rest of your hunting kit.

  • It helps push away an empty The Book of War to play the second one, as described above.

• The Hungering Blade can of course be replaced by a Blessed Blade for team support effects (though you won't need these yourself). You could then also pack an Ancestral Token for a shower of tokens every turn.

• The Machete is always a solid backup in case you don't find The Hungering Blade quick enough. Since you pick the enemies out of the encounter deck yourself, one by one, it should always meet the 2-damage requirement.

• Enchant Weapon is always great in decks using a main melee weapon, to bump skill value and damage for one attack per turn.

• Hiking Boots can be swapped for a Pathfinder, but it won't be findable by Backpack (2), so it's up to you. Another alternative is Safeguard (0) or Safeguard (2), both coming with pluses and minuses.

• Ready for Anything is a little slow, but fits perfectly in this deck, because the hunting part of the deck (picking enemies every turn) will negate its major downside – triggering it, and you will often be able to afford to spend your first action for it. Also, the horror healing is particularly welcome since Bloodlust will inevitably cost you a few horrors here and there. But we only stock one of them because it becomes a dead draw once the Encounter Deck is empty.

• For Cover Up, I advise you to wait for a low shroud location, bump your skill value with Keen Eye and spend a complete turn on it. Otherwise, if your cluever is already set up and you have your boots out, you can use your ability to slowly get rid of it and stay with your seeker thanks to the boots.

• Shortcut is never a dead draw, and it always comes in clutch here for when you will inevitably start your turn on a location with no clue.

• Finally, we are not packing Take the Initiative simply because once we are done with enemies, we should not draw any other encounter cards!

Early Campaign

We have the same core, except that we don't have Stick to the Plan yet, so we have to find On the Hunt (3), and we also pack the lvl 0 to increase our chances. It's not ideal, but better than nothing.

• Since we are much more likely to face treachery tests, we also add Take the Initiative.

Late Campaign

• Upgrading to Ever Vigilant (4) is insane when you combine it with the The Book of War, since you can use it, play The Book of War and use the latter immediately on Ever Vigilant (4) to return it to your hand and use it another time. Twice should be enough to get your whole team ahead in the early game.

• Another layer of support comes with 2 copies of Stand Together (3) to give an extra edge to your team.

• Preposterous Sketches (2) is not necessarily the best card, but 3 cards without a downside is a dream for any .

• Truth from Fiction (2) adds another secret per copy to The Book of War, which will make it last longer, thus increasing your time spent without Encounter Cards.

• Overpower (2) and Vicious Blow (2) because why not.

• We do not upgrade Prepared for the Worst (2) because we want to draw the card and then play it with the discount thanks to Ever Vigilant.

• Play Ever Vigilant and use the book on it.

• Don't play the The Hungering Blade over Machete if there are less than 6 enemies in the deck

• Keep useless cards attached to the Backpack (2) to decrease deck size.

If playing 3 or 4 players, you should start the campaign with First Watch, and some could argue that you could use this combo for the whole campaign!

Link to the 0xp deck

(View at arkham-starter.com)

Link to the full xp deck

To create your own guides, find the template here.