Disaster Artist | Ch2 Starters Revisited

Disaster Artist

In this mini-series I'm focusing on powerful decks built from the Chapter 2 starters. Here Miguel benefits from failure, with Rabbit's Foot for card draw, Old Compass and Daniel Jameson for do-overs, and "Look what I found!" for clues. If you're gonna fail, fail in style!

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Series Decks

At a Glance

Stats
Clue-finding:	★★★★☆
Consistency:	★★★☆☆
Enemy Management:	★★★★☆
Encounter Defense:	★★★★★
Survivability:	★★★★☆
Simplicity:	★★★☆☆

Overview

• "Fail" at clue-finding: Old Compass allows you to easily find clues on 2 shroud locations with its redo. The shroud lowering effect also allows you to always play "Look what I found!" on 3 shroud locations (or 4 during the redo). Scrape By and Stalk Prey give you further clue-finding options, and all are recurable with Do-or-Die and Hunter's Instinct. Timely Intervention then helps you push your luck further while investigating. Any time you fail or play an event, Rabbit's Foot and Knapsack give card draw (or Knapsack can be used to play events at different locations instead). Don't understimate "Look what I found!" recursion - it's great!

• "Fail" at enemy management: With Daniel Jameson then any Elusive enemy (including Feline Hybrid) is a card draw opportunity. Simply take a basic fight action, likely fail (scaring the enemy away) and so draw a card with Rabbit's Foot, then repeat the attack. For actions you don't want to fail (e.g. Guerrilla Tactics or Pocketknife attacks) then Daniel is the perfect safety net. With "Shove off!" you can consciously not boost the test, potentially fail, keep "Shove off!" if you do fail, and then use Daniel's redo to fish for its damage. Frequently you can deal 5 damage in a turn (2 with upgraded Guerilla Tactics in your free event action, then 3 Pocket Knife attacks - gaining a resource for a kill).

• Succeed at everything else: Miguel's Knapsack, Rabbit's Foot and Stalk Prey with Hunter's Instinct provide a solid card draw engine. Miguel has robust health and sanity unlike other Ch2 Survivor access investigators, making him sturdy. Pocketknife, Emergency Cache and Same Old Thing provide cash or cash-savings - allowing for Levelheaded boosts. Obviously this deck doesn't have any cards which utilise Miguel's ability - but I never draw the Elder Sign anyway! Hopefully they'll be more non-trap Tricks in the future that could go in the deck...

_{Thank you: 5argon and their thumbnail tool; Valentin1331 for his support over the years; the community creators of Arkham.Build (Felix), Arkham Cards (zzorba) and ArkhamDB (kamalisk) - linking their Patreons!}

Starting deck and planned progression

0 XP starting deck is below (and link here):

A recommended order of purchases/upgrades is:

• Unexpected Courage → Scrape By

• Old Compass → Old Compass ••

• Hunter's Instinct → Hunter's Instinct ••

• Guerrilla Tactics → Guerrilla Tactics ••

• 1 x Levelheaded → 1 x Levelheaded •••

• 1 x Levelheaded → 1 x Respite

Post-19 XP suggestions are:

• Timely Intervention → Timely Intervention •••

• A Makeshift Bomb if you're keen. "Shove off!" is the only thing that can be easily replaced.

Playtesting Notes

On playtesting CoB (Hard, two player, with the 5 bonus XP) I didn't make any changes to the deck other than to lower the consistency rating to 3★. While the card draw does help a bit with consistency, with just 3 cards allowing card draw you can get bad luck and not have any of these - and then the deck grinds to a halt a bit (typically forcing card draw actions to get something to work with). I spent the 5 XP on upgraded Old Compasses and one copy of Scrape By. I think Scenario 1 CoB is bad for this deck, as Stalk Prey for clue-finding introduces enemies, and there's enough of those going around already without you actively drawing them! We ended up defeated scenario 1 through damage, with two damage left to go on the boss - but that does give you 3 bonus XP (we secured 7 total).

Scenario 2 was a total difference. We tackled it during "day", and using "Look what I found!" with Old Compass I managed to get all clues off a 4 should Victory location. I also had Rabbit's Foot from the first turn, providing enough card draw that I could have cycled. There's a lot of 1 health enemies running around, so Pocketknife was helpful to pick these off and earn resources. Guerrilla Tactics did some heavy lifting, putting more damage on the boss and allowing for boosted evades. Hunter's Instinct was used primarily to recur Scrape By and combat events to get extra chip damage on the boss. We finished up with 21 XP total by the end of Scenario 2, and I forwent upgraded Levelheaded or Respite - instead going for two upgraded Timely Intervention.

Scenario 3 went very well, with a win by turn 6. I got some lucky pulls for Hard difficulty with Old Compass, used Scrape By for Arcane Lock, and also used Stalk Prey for an additional clue. Upgraded Guerrilla Tactics put two damage on the boss with a fight action (again a lucky pull - I was expecting to need a Daniel Jameson redo and to eat a Retaliate) and then I got a kill-assist in the final turn by committing upgraded Timely Intervention to one of my fellow investigator's 4 damage attacks (boosting it to a 14 test - even if they drew all the blood tokens remaining and the -5 it would have been safe. Take that Hard mode!).

The fellow investigator is a deck for my next series, so I'll keep it secret for now... As we'd barely begun, I hadn't had time to build up an engine - but the performance was still very good in that classic Survivor vein of getting stuff done regardless of the odds.

Final thoughts

I don't think Chapter 1 ever provided trivial, XP-free recursion of "Look what I found!", but it's powerful - especially with Old Compass. Honestly Miguel is crummy at finding clues otherwise, so being able to get two off a location is great. Compared to Izzie or Daniela, Miguel has beefier combined health and sanity than either of those two - plus his free event action makes the time spent building your asset easier (because you can be playing events for free while you put down assets).

Overall I think this is one of the better ways to run fail tech, and it's a change of pace if you don't like traps. While fail tech no longer has flashy payoffs such as Take Heart, "Look what I found!" recursion more than justifies the playstyle. Hope you enjoy!