Daisy, You Make Me Crazy (Tomes, Secrets & Dooms)

Ever since the first time I touch this game in 2018, Daisy has been my first-love investigator. Now 6 years passed by, Daisy received many more fascinating Tomes that are both interesting and powerful. Now Daisy makes me crazy - not only before, but even more.

This deck is built around Tomes, secrets and Dooms. It is intended to be not only a core cluever in a 3-player campaign, but also a powerful card-draw engine and assistant for the whole team, in order to form an organic team collabration.

Highlighted moments are like:

• take 7 EVERY round (+2 from Eon Chart and Ariadne's Twine, +1 from Daisy, +1 from Abigail Foreman).
• Encyclopedia x3 by Abigail Foreman and The Raven Quill in one action to have +6 this round, then Archaic Glyphs to investigate and take all clues on the location.
• De Vermis Mysteriis x2 by Abigail Foreman to play Deep Knowledge and Burning the Midnight Oil, resulting in team-drawing 3 cards, getting 1 clue and get 2$ in one free .
• Old Book of Lore to arm the guardian by drawing a handgun and immediately playing it when they are facing a horrible enemy.
• peek the encounter deck and drop cards you dislike EVERY round by Scroll of Secrets & Ariadne's Twine.

Mulligan

• Keep Dr. Milan Christopher, Old Book of Lore and one of Scroll of Secrets / Deep Knowledge / Thorough Inquiry / Preposterous Sketches, and replace others.
• If all of them are in the hand, keep Abigail Foreman.

The perfect opening hand consists of both Dr. Milan and Old Book of Lore, so that I can 1) play Milan, 2) investigate and get 1 clue + 1$, 3) play the book, and use the free action to 4) Old Book of Lore to search for Daisy's Tote Bag and immediately play it at 0 cost. As a result, I get Milan, Old Book of Lore and Daisy's signature card ready and got 1 clue in Round 1 - perfect!

In the middle stage (Round 4-6), use De Vermis Mysteriis to reuse insight events from the discard pile.

The clean-up-table set is composed of: Encyclopedia, Abigail Foreman, The Raven Quill and Archaic Glyphs, which clears the clues on the table (with 13 plus other boosts like Mouse Mask), or help to pass hard skill tests for my team.

I upgrade Daisy's Tote Bag to the advanced version in the middle of the campaign to avoid horrible advanced The Necronomicon before I am fully prepared - usually after purchasing Abigail and Logical Reasoning or wait for horror soaks from team partners, and before purchasing more tomes like Scroll of Secrets.

Old Book of Lore: no one can refuse free search-3-for-1, not even for a chance to immediately play it, reducing its cost by 2. One secret here trades for 1 and 2$. It makes this like a Motivational Speech but not limited to allies, not mentioning it is a free action on Daisy’s tome.

Encyclopedia: +2 is too few? Use it with Abigail Foreman and The Raven Quill. It ends up with 3x +2 skill value which lasts for the whole round.

• Primary use: +6 and then Archaic Glyphs.
• Secondary use: +6 to evade up to 3 enemies. The Raven Quill helps to waive AoOs.
• Other uses: support my teammates (e.g. make Carson Sinclair a real fighter).

De Vermis Mysteriis: play events from the discard pile means, 1) saving (it is a free action on Daisy’s tome), 2) lower $ cost, 3) one card-draw for double use, and 4) trim the deck for the third Archaic Glyphs at the second deck run. Furthermore, it is the tome Abigail Foreman likes. It is interesting and efficient, but needs to pay more attention, which is described in the following section.

Archaic Glyphs (untranslated): it is a tome before translated. So Daisy’s ability works. Truth from Fiction also works here, as it is counted as secrets.

The Necronomicon is horrible, and there is no suitable ways to handle it properly - 3 actions & 3 horror is too expensive. So in most cases it is brought to the scenario end. But after Abigail Foreman is in the deck and more and more horror soak come in, it is better to upgrade it and resolve it to avoid . Scroll of Secrets also helps to fan it out, but it is more reliable on the deck’s second run.

Truth from Fiction and Ariadne's Twine provides additional secrets for:

Old Book of Lore: search-3-in-1, and immediately play it, reducing its cost by 2! It makes tons of tempo for you and your teammates. Love it? Recharge!

Eon Chart: one secret for 2 for move/evading/investigating. Trade it for 1$? Of course!

Scroll of Secrets: one secret for turning next turn’s encounter cards unknown to known, assign enemies to fighters, and discard those don’t like.

To be honest, I would vote for nerf this combo - it seems like I am manipulating the ancient ones, rather than combating against it.

Ariadne's Twine is definitely underrated in my perspective - it has excellent synergy with many seeker cards, and some of them are pretty popular. I am surprised that not so many decks include it. It occupies the arcane slot that helps to move 0 charge Archaic Glyphs to the discard pile.

Playing with doom is dangerous - one doom = 3 actions and is likely to be the worst penalty in this game. To keep your investigators safe (also to keep physically YOU safe from losing friends), one must do their best to avoid additional Dooms.

In this deck, De Vermis Mysteriis produces Dooms in exchange for better tempo. Its drawback can be avoided by:

• adding Dooms when Dooms on the agenda is right to reach the threshold. (Doom threshold is only checked on the Mythos phrase after adding the Doom to the current agenda.)
• using Moonlight Ritual. Just be cautious to randomly hand discard and Dissonant Voices. In this case, try to discard De Vermis Mysteriis.
• trigger De Vermis Mysteriis and play Moonlight Ritual from the discard pile? Yes, it works as expected.

Based on my experience, triggering De Vermis Mysteriis is triggering it 4-7 times is not that hard.

It is impossible to make a perfect deck suitable for every kind of teams. However, with help of De Vermis Mysteriis that doubles event card effects, Daisy naturally has more better choices than her fellows.

In my campaign, my partners are support Carson Sinclair focusing on desperate commit cards like Desperate Search, and fighter Mark Harrigan who is a reliable and traditional guardian.

• Carson provides tons of skill values which is best suited for Archaic Glyphs, as long as I provide sufficient card-drawing.
• The two guardians protect me by their damage/sanity soaks, so no need for me to bring Bizarre Diagnosis and Logical Reasoning.
• The two guardians need my move action to move by Safeguard.
• I really need to provide some card searches to prepare for the worse for these poor guys.

It needs another 10 thousand words to describe all cross-deck synergies. But I will list some points that I think is typical and helpful.

• Most guardians and mystics rely heavily on seeker's card draw. So the second copy of Preposterous Sketches and Deep Knowledge would be helpful.
• Flexes like typical mystics and rogues usually need a long time to set up. Card search opportunities on Old Book of Lore would boost their progress. Upgraded No Stone Unturned could worth it.
• If clue finding is 100% my responsibility and no one supports me with skill values: add Deduction and possibly replace Eon Chart with St. Hubert's Key for higher while using Archaic Glyphs.
• If I need to be more flex, add Abyssal Tome and the second Moonlight Ritual.
• Add upgraded Logical Reasoning for better horror soak if the team lacks it. It provides 12 sanity healing with De Vermis Mysteriis.
• Purchase Scroll of Secrets early to help teammates handle horrible weakness, for example, Dark Memory, Final Rhapsody, Deafening Silence or Bought in Blood.

• This deck is expected to be fully functional at the end of Scenario 5.
• Down the Rabbit Hole discounts 10 - 4 = 6xp.
• The Raven Quill discounts 5xp.

(View at arkham-starter.com)