Normcore Preston (Transfig combo) | Deck Guide

tl;dr:

• Dig up your universal coupon
• Turn into an old man, with assistance from a specific co-conspirator
• Clue your brains out

This is a specific Transfiguration scheme, into Norman Withers, to be run alongside a trans-bearer. As soon as yall've both found your respective halves of the combo (probably turn 6 at the latest?), Preston's Norman's clueing capability skyrockets, and you're off to the races. The pair performs very well at 2, but even better as part of a larger 4 team (more players = more clues to schlorp).

Preliminary Q&A session with the Transfig skeptics:

• "Why bother? (Isn't Preston already good as-is?)" Sure, but the transition is pure upside: he gains a usable statline and a beneficial investigator ability, and loses a minor disability.
• "Why change into Norman specifically?" Clueving is the more natural role to target (since there's always more setup leeway for cluevers); and Norman's 5 and universally-valuable ability would make him a natural default target, even before considering all the specific self-milling / dilemma-prepping synergies!
• "Why not just play as Norman?" Preston's 5+2 (sans illicit) deckbuilding makes for a completely different experience, and is arguably even stronger than his usual slightly bewildering EOTE 0->1+. He also inherits the 4$/turn trust fund.
• "How fast can you really dig up YOMO?" Very fast! Assuming you keep 2 cards and mulligan 3, there's a 40% chance of drawing it naturally, then (if that fails) a 52% chance of milling it, for a total 71% chance. If milled, it can be retrieved with varying degrees of directness. Then, even if both are still stuck in your deck, digging tools and bonus actions can reach it quite quickly, without hindering your setup at all.
  • Out of 50 extended test draws on here, 6 would have been able to play YOMO on round two, 1 would have on round four, and the remaining 43 all got there on round one. Try it out yourself!
• "How fast can your teammate really dig up transfig?" If you've already found YOMO, then further AaCs/FILPs can be pointed at teammates as well ... but yeah, you are relying on them to also be able to dig very quickly on their own. Marie2, Izzy, either Dexter, and (original) Daisy could probably all fit that bill.

Overview of post-trans capabilities:

• Clueing: Easy baseline 2 clues/round via Nautical Charts, plus as many more 2-for-1 Winging Its as you can handle, thanks to Yaotl's auto-milling. (In 2, this is probably overkill, and the WIs can be swapped for admittedly-less-exciting Intel Reports.) Streetwise (3) is a bit of a crutch to push those double-weight investigations through; many rounds (on Hard, at least) will involve half of your allowance being dumped into this.

  • If abstaining from overpowered permanent talents, High Roller can serve a similar role, and interestingly also helps you launder $ from your allowance to your savings.

• "Draw": Beyond the initial YOMO-locating frenzy (already described above), you have multiple effective draw engines:

  • Scavenging (2) assets: Effectively a (selective!) draw and a bonus action (assuming you also play the item). Ideally you'll never play any Item directly from hand, once you find this.
  • Recurring Winging It: Every time you can play this for 2 clues, you're getting a leg up on the game, and with Yaotl's help that can happen a lot. Ideally you'll never play this for 1 clue.
  • Playing from the top of your deck: Effectively a draw and a (potential) $.
  • Actual draw via LCC: Help provide fodder for Nautical Charts, and chew your way through to something Norman-playable. Actually looping means resetting your toolbox, and pulling weaknesses back into circulation, so can be counterproductive. But it may be worth considering anyway if Short Supply mills something un-retrievable (currently only Haste, but Double, Double could also fall into this category).

• Enemy management: Killing is almost entirely delegated to others, but fleeing is something you are great at, via Hunter's Instinct-enabled Predator or Prey. But if that's going to screw up other peoples' plans (the likelihood of which scales with ), you can always throw your allowance into Streetwise (3) for +6, or try to oversucceed at Stir the Pot. PoP is very useful at pulling obnoxious enemies in towards your fighters.

Some notes on specific cards:

• Nautical Charts: Play one out to the board, try to use it every round. You don't need both copies in play, and you probably won't ever need to use its discard-itself-from-hand ability.
• Hunter's Instinct / L2: Upgrading this to L2 allows it to retrieve AaC, but then Scrounge can't retrieve it. I split the difference and only upgrade one copy.
• Loner: Fantastic in 2, but gets a bit more awkward with increased player count.
• At a Crossroads: Pre-YOMO, check with your : if they're still looking for Transfiguration and haven't found an Offering Bowl to help them dig, they may need this more than you.
• FILP: 2 XP buys the critical no-shuffle option ("Clever"), which makes it much more interesting once you've Normalized. Slightly lower priority are the 3 XP dig-9 option ("Experienced"), the 2 XP second-trait option ("Versatile", to add Dilemma), the 2 XP option ("Prompt), and the 1 XP play-on-teammate option ("Helpful"). Try to Refine every scenario!
• Versatile: Marginally increases setup time, in exchange for strengthening your later-game power. You can reintegrate some good L0s that have been displaced by XP cards, pull in Lawrence Carlisle (along with a Charisma), and grab a strong splash card (Artistic Inspiration's effective statwide +1 is hard to pass up).
• Heavy Furs: Specifically for rerolling nasty spooky symbols on Hard+; replaceable on Standard-.
• Pocket Telescope: Particularly good in Innsmouth, TSK, and certain other specific scenarios (for which one could potentially Adaptable).

Other options:

• Hyperphysical Shotcaster: Surprisingly reasonable treachery-zapper with the 2 XP "Realitycollapser" upgrade (assuming you have Streetwise (3)). The 2 XP evade-shenanigans upgrade ("Translocator") also looks impactful at higher counts.
• Scrape By: Lucky! cranked up to infinity, and very cheap, but probably wants some form of horror mitigation.
• Hunting Jacket: Competes with Heavy Furs on Hard+, but otherwise a nice multifaceted scavengeable tool that includes horror soak, $ generation, and hand protection.
• Eon Charts (displacing LCC), and possibly later L4s: An option if you find yourself with too much $, and/or if Loner is not working well (due to high + regularly spread-out teammates). Probably also wants a 2nd Scavenging, both to ensure you find 1 copy and also to compensate for the NC-food usually provided by LCC. (You could also Relic Hunter to try to run both, but that hampers your ability to immediately displace EC via a 2nd accessory.) Upgrading EC to L4 adds on a free move every turn, but in many cases Loner already has that handled.
• Double, Double: Often a strong mid/late-campaign card in more traditional big-money Preston decks, but significantly less impressive here. You could try to lean into it, but the list as-is has few stand-out options, unless you have a teammate with lots of events that you could potentially YOMO-play and then double... this should be setting off jank alarm bells. Furthermore, if SS mills DD, you would then be forced to loop in order to retrieve it (unless you could also convince your enabler to take Uncage the Soul (3) for you to YOMO). (This is true of Haste as well, but 8 XP is a much harder pill to swallow than 2 XP.)
• Other Versatile targets:
  • Occult Records: Potent and actionless horror healing, that can target teammates, on a scavengeable stick.
  • Hallowed Chalice: Horror and damage healing, but very action-intensive. If you find yourself with more actions than you can usefully spend clueing (which is entirely possible), this is a solid outlet ... but ideally you could then just YOMO a copy from your pal, rather than spend a valuable splash slot.
  • Hallowed Mirror (probably accompanied by Relic Hunter): Weaker than the above two options, but doesn't take a hand slot, and is also able to heal off of Ally assets. It also synergizes very well with Double, Double, if you're being silly enough to try to build into that. (You could even potentially reach the L3 version, if you used Collector instead of Versatile, but note that that must be taken at deck creation, and so would require more early-campaign filler cards.)

Example campaign starter: (Link to this starter deck on arkham.build / arkhamdb)

Example upgrade path (FILP upgrades roughly interspersed to allow for Refinement):

(View at arkham-starter.com)