Handwritten Memories

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Octo · 94

This Daisy Walker deck has been designed for a two-player run through of Carcosa alongside William Yorick.

Themes

Secrets

Yup it's one of those decks. The thing is Enraptured and Truth from Fiction are for later really - they're for getting the most out of the awesome Pnakotic Manuscripts and In the Know later on. In the meantime, Archaic Glyphs can be boosted by these (not that it's really necessary), as well as more charges put on Scrying with Enraptured.

Futures Management

Scrying is slow, but hey I'm giving it a try, especially as it's a two player run. Ward of Protection is obvious and when we add Forewarned later that'll be 4 encounters negated. Delve Too Deep is made easier by all this stuff, and Premonition is something I wanted to try. Combine all this together with Pnakotic Manuscripts and we have some serious token and encounter management.

General Investigation

Daisy does have to get on with her job though, so many of the usual suspects in here - Deduction, Magnifying Glass, the Good Dr. as well as Archaic Glyphs to grow into.

Notes

  • Is there too much going on here? Each sub-theme needs a fair bit of support and better cards later to really get going.
  • Deduction: this is the only card that speeds up clue gathering, so this deck might be quite slow. Other than Drawn to the Flame though (see below), I'm not sure what else would speed it up. Maybe I'm just too used to Rex Murphy.
  • Drawn to the Flame got a lot of thought as it combos with the encounter management is two clues in one turn. However, spending a scry on it negates the action-gain unless you also are interested in what's up next in the encounter, and you still have to deal with one anyway. Ultimately it got cut for Shortcut as that helped speed things up in a more flexible way.
  • Research Librarian: this feels like staple include for Daisy, but in four games I've never used it so maybe it's a waste - I just want Milan out as soon as possible and am unlikely to replace him.
  • Medical Texts: these were skipped as the other player has some healing and it saved me some valuable space. It also means less competition for hand slots which is a relief.
  • Truth from Fiction: it's just dead-weight at this stage unfortunately, but I will hopefully get lots out of it later.
  • Logical Reasoning was a very late utility include as the 3 options is has are really useful: two willpower icons in a deck with little icon variety, two horror heal in a deck with no healing, or discarding a terror which is hit and miss.
  • @matt88 has recommended Unexpected Courage and Mind over Matter as alternatives. These could get swapped out for Shortcut and/or Logical Reasoning.

Anyway, after a few warm-up games we're off in the campaign. I guess I'll see how it goes!

11 comments

Dec 08, 2018 Octo · 94

Just realised I totally overlooked Alyssa Graham for encounter deck manipulation. Hmm.

Dec 08, 2018 Tzabar · 9

Shrewd analysis is really good for Archaic Glyphs, you'll be happy no matter what comes in the random.

Dec 09, 2018 matt88 · 3098

Nice deck. The only things I don't like is that you don't have skill cards that will help you when you need a good boost (like Unexpected Courage) and that you don't have Mind over Matter, which I think is a must-have on Daisy. Other than that, the encounter protection theme seems pretty good and Pnakotic Manuscripts should work very well with Old Hunting Rifle (if your friend Yorick chooses to go down that road). If he doesn't though, I think it loses a bit of value because you won't have a teammate with a high-powered gun to use Pnakotic Manuscripts on to (which is where the Manuscripts really shines), plus Yorick can also take Will to Survive and make testless actions on his own, without the help of Manuscripts.

Dec 09, 2018 Octo · 94

@Tzabar - yeah I pulled two of the evasion spell in the end. My weakness is stubborn detective so I will definitely get engaged so I'm happy with that, especially as I have little support for evasion currently.

@matt88 Thanks, yeah those two are cards I thought about a lot:

  • Unexpected Courage: I was umming and ahhing over this or Inquiring Mind for a long time and the latter was in the deck until the very end. Some people prefer Unexpected Courage and it may well be better, Inquiring Mind was just newer and little more interesting so I had that in there. It got swapped out for Logical Reasoning right at the last moment as that has more utility and the willpower icons were what I was short of anyway. Not 100% convinced by that decision, but both Logical Reasonings were used well in the first game
  • Mind over Matter: this was in for a while as a staple as I agree it is fantastic with Daisy, I just don't know what to cut to get it back in there (see my point about whether too much is going on in the deck). Any suggestions?

As for Pnakotic Manuscripts, yeah my friend has gone 2x Old Hunting Rifle so that's good. However, even without that I was thinking of just nullifying tons of encounter cards with it really. I suppose it's a good point though that we can nullify encounters all we want, but that won't kill bosses for us.

Dec 10, 2018 matt88 · 3098

@Octo Does it really matter if I make any suggestions now?? You 're already mid-campaign. Well, if you 're willing to spend some XP to put Mind Over Matter in your deck, I guess you could cut the Shortcuts (but that's only my humble opinion). I suppose though that since you pulled 2 Archaic Glyphs: Prophecy Foretold with Shrewd Analysis you don't really need them anymore, so it's not really worth it to spend XP on Mind Over Matter, since that's the case.

Dec 10, 2018 Octo · 94

@matt88 - of course it matters! :D Mainly I'm just curious in case I play it again (or a mate does), but also people might stumble across this deck and would be grateful for the alternative suggestions.

So Shortcut eh? Hmm. That card basically saved my bacon as I ran past the [spoiler] without taking damage, not sure I would've made it out otherwise. I guess with Mind over Matter I could've evaded them which actually might've been more constructive as my team-mate spent their turn whacking them!

Dec 11, 2018 matt88 · 3098

@Octo If you find it hard to cut Shortcut, I guess you could also cut Premonition. I didn't suggest this previously because Premonition fits well with the theme (but I actually see it as kind of a luxury card). Has Premonition had any good use, by the way??

Dec 12, 2018 Octo · 94

@matt88 yeah Premonition, that has been really close to getting cut, certainly. Up until tonight it has had no good uses - you pull a crappy token to see what's coming, you just go "well that sucks" and waste an action investigating hopelessly. So not great and I was pretty underwhelmed and disappointed with it. However I figured I was maybe just using it wrong.

I think it really needs to be played carefully and at certain times. I'm still figuring out what those times are, but that's why it made the cut, so that I could experiment with it and yeah because it fit the theme.

It's been good for the Old Hunting Rifle tonight which both copies were used on - knowing it will jam once was really useful so we avoided that, knowing the enemy would go boom was better. So I'm thinking it's more about having good cards to use it with than anything - things with bad consequences that you can avoid triggering. It seemed rubbish for encounters (spoiler: the pull will be bad, you will fail) and Big Moments (again, the pull will be bad, you will fail). It seemed a much more natural fit to see what kind of bad pull you get i.e. special icons etc. rather than any plans that involve optimistic pulls. Also, using it earlier in the turn lets you adapt more, e.g. knowing that Rite of Seeking will end your turn will be useful before your first action, same as knowing the rifle will jam.

So up until recently, no good pulls, then a couple tonight due to smarter usage - so it's tricky and useful but not great. But then it is a 0 cost, 0XP, fast card you can play out of turn (which is super important), so I can't complain too much!

Dec 12, 2018 matt88 · 3098

It seems we 've found the candidate, then!! :)

Feb 21, 2019 kai_spa · 1

Hi. I was curious about a posible upgrade path for this deck. Is higher education a priority? , or pnakotic asap ? thanks

Feb 22, 2019 Octo · 94

Hi @kai_spa. I'm playing through a campaign with this for the first time so it's difficult to say what is best. However, I've gone straight for double Pnakotic Manuscripts and no Higher Education just yet (about to do scenario 5 of Carcosa).

Is that working out? Ummm, yes and no.

The Manuscripts are really expensive to get out and while useful are not quite as useful as I would've hoped. I rarely use them for encounter negation which is the main reason I put them in there. The most common thing is enabled the Old Hunting Rifle or Baseball Bat and generally just helping out my co-investigator. The times when I need it are usually in order to evade something pretty nasty, but then I can't activate them without taking an attack of opportunity so that compromises the plan somewhat.

I am having some problems consistently nailing the heck out of clues when I don't get Dr. Milan Christopher early on. That situation also means I'm probably going to struggle to afford the Manuscripts as well, so it really seems to hinge on getting him super early. I have been wondering if Higher Education should've been picked up earlier as that would really help me out in some situations.

So yeah - not sure to be honest. Pnakotic first is possibly more fun though, I would say that. Higher Education is just a bit old hat at this point.