Pictures at an Exhibition - Marie Lambeau (solo/MP)

Thanks for the link! This looks great. I'll give it a go next time I try Marie. Mind over matter potentially giving you a +7 to combat!! AMAZING FUN!!

Hey thanks for the inspiration! I'm gonna do one more based on Carolyn later on.

The idea of stacking Intellect and Will as high as possible is fun but the list feels kind of all over the place. Why are you running a bunch of expensive/hard to set up Int boosting assets but then also have Sixth Sense? I get you want a spell that you can freely cast to investigate but why not use one of the Archaic Glyphs upgrades instead? If you want to run Sixth Sense, I'd get rid of all the Int boosters because they don't do much and cost a lot of resources. If you want to stack Int I'd probably swap out Working a Hunch for Magnifying Glass and just get one of the Glyphs as your spell. Working a Hunch also feels out of place because you don't have much in the way of resource generation and have 0 problems getting clues. Mind over Matter feels odd too, I'd assume that with 2 Wither 2 Shrivelling you wouldn't need it for Combat, and if you really wanted to evade you should just run Mists. And I feel like it goes without saying that if Mind over Matter is good in your list you really should just be investigating normally instead. Also why is Flashlight even here? You're going to be investigating at a 6-8 once you're fully set up, why do you need Flashlight on top of that?

The upgrades are a mess too. I don't want to outright say Deny Existence (5) is a bad card, but I don't feel like it's something you should be picking up 2nd scenario. Why Fearless (2)? Your deck has very little in the way of self-inflicted Horror, (just Shriveling backfires) extra sanity from Camera, tons of horror soak from the two allies, and at that point Deny Existence (5). At that point I'd just take the card from Guts. And replacing Sixth Sense with Arcane Insight loses you the ability to investigate using Marie's spell action, which was the whole reason why you were running Sixth Sense in the first place.

I understand that the big point is to stack as much Int and Will as possible, but some of the cards really don't make sense. I feel like this would make the list much better while keeping the general spirit of the deck the same:

Flashlight -> Archaic Glyphs (to be upgraded to Guiding Stones later)

Working a Hunch -> Magnifying Glass

Mind over Matter -> Deduction (Or really anything else. Deduction is just easy value and will always be good)

Sixth Sense -> Anything else (Personally I think that Mists of R'lyeh is really good on Marie, alternatively you could just go for Ward of Protection or something)

For upgrades, Charisma is super good on Marie because of Baron. Depending on the campaign I might get 2 at some point so you have room for story allies. Four of Cups is also an appealing option, would go along well with all of your other Will-boosting assets. Guiding Stones is next because it would be insane in this list. Arcane Studies is an interesting card on Marie, I've thought about taking it while using David Renfield because he usually generates crazy amounts of resources that you would otherwise not have an outlet for and it's obviously bonkers with Guiding Stones. I would probably keep the Perception though since it's good with Guiding Stones and get rid of Guts. That's probably the necessary upgrades, from there I'd start looking at luxury stuff. Shrivelling you can probably put off leveling because you have such high Will with all of the boosts so Shrivelling (3)'s boost isn't necessary, and you deal a lot of damage so Shrivelling (5) can be put off. But I would eventually get it, honestly Mystics don't have a ton of super exciting stuff to spend XP on so you should get them eventually because they are good. And yeah probably at some point you should get Deny Existence (5)

A lot of your criticisms, including on Mind over Matter (which is added here because there's not a much better option for the splash slot and because the potential is very good) are concerning the core concept of this deck, which is based on the Jim Culver deck I linked to. I recommend reading Brownloaf's explanation in regards to a lot of your concerns. The idea is to raise both intellect and willpower using the Camera, and I chose Marie for this specifically because she's:

1. High in both to begin with.
2. Needs to compensate her low combat with high willpower.
3. Can utilize that willpower through a free action (either fight or investigate)

Keep in mind first of all that this deck is based on a deck that was designed for solo play first. I personally included some multiplayer recommendations because I think this deck can definitely work as is multi, but it depends on your team composition so the deck as presented is mostly solo based (which I should have been more upfront with, I apologize). If you're the only cluever in your team and/or you're playing 3 or 4 player some cards (Archaic Glyphs, Deduction) are going to be much stronger. Solo that wont be the case at all.

Working a Hunch is in the deck to activate the cameras without needing to do a test, which is a bigger deal on higher difficulties. Magnifying Glass isn't helpful because we're trying to fill the cameras and we only have 2 hands. Can't hold 2 cameras and 2 magnifying glasses. Flashlight is there for similar reasons- yes you can't hold two cameras plus a Flashlight, but you will rarely get two cameras in play at the same time. Set up one with flashlight helping you, then set up the other once your intellect and will are slightly boosted and you don't need Flashlight. Given the choice between Glass and Flashlight, the latter is just a better card on higher difficulties. Flashlight is also just a very good choice for hard/expert in general- our cameras can get shuffled away or discarded by many different treacheries, and Flashlight is a good backup in case everything falls down to get near guaranteed clues from low shroud locations. We need that failsafe- we don't get to run Higher Ed like Seekers do, so we can't just rely on high intellect all the time.

Concerning the cost it really isn't an issue given that all three of our spell assets cost 3 or less and we're running Uncage the Soul. Graham and Key are the bigger resource hogs in the deck, and if they are a large enough issue then go ahead and replace either the Initiate or Graham for David.

Archaic Glyphs is a sensible choice instead of Sixth Sense for multiplayer, but I don't see the need to run through those hoops (having to decipher it and then spend a whopping 6 XP total unless you want to gamble with Shrewd Analysis, which would have to replace 2 of our 3 remaining non-camera Seeker slots), unless you want to investigate using only Intellect. Sixth Sense is available scenario 1 and if you're playing solo you don't need the "discover additional clues" clause at all (vast majority of locations have only 1 clue on them, some have 2, almost none have more). For similar reasons I don't want Deduction in this deck. Having a continuous extra investigate action for the rest of the game makes Marie almost like a pseudo-Ursula, and that is much more powerful than being able to discover 1 extra clue at a location you're already investigating. If you want to build Marie like Rex for multiplayer then absolutely go that route, but you're right in that you'd be better just stacking Intellect directly (a la Magnifying Glass) instead of trying to simultaneously do Will and Intellect, which is the entire point of this deck. If you don't think the free investigate action a turn is worthwhile, don't include Sixth Sense, but I personally value it very highly, ESPECIALLY in solo. As far as assets that stack Intellect, keep in mind the Camera and Key also stack Willpower (in fact the Cameras stack will first). So this deck hits potentially 7 Willpower and 8 Intellect.

Arcane Insight is more of a multiplayer recommendation, but I decided it's a worthwhile choice in single player. Yes you lose the extra action from Sixth Sense, but you gain significant consistency in trade while still being able to use that extra action to fight if you need to, which tends to be more likely towards end scenarios. So that extra action will be spend on Shriveling and Wither, not Sixth Sense, and you might as well use Insight as a full round Flashlight (that stacks with Flashlight if you really need it) in order to all but guarantee three clues a turn. Again, it's about getting those Cameras filled, and Insight will make that happen better than anything else you could possibly grab.

In regards to fighting spells I mentioned specifically that you should take Shriveling (5) and Shards of the Void right after taking Charisma if your goal is to make Marie a dedicated fighter.

Finally there's your concern about not needing horror healing. We're running Hubert's Key first off, so our base sanity in this deck is really at 6 (we don't want the key to leave play if we can help it) until we get both Cameras out and filled, which puts us at 8. Deny Existence works a lot like Ward but doesn't add horror to us AND is relevant during monster encounters, which is where Marie is weakest when she doesn't have spells. You could for example use DE as a way to absorb an AoO while putting out a spell to then deal with the monster. We take horror from both Shriveling (about 1/3 of the time) and at least occasionally Drawn to the Flame (you wont avoid horror from every encounter card, especially monsters). The big reason aside from horror healing to upgrade to Deny Existence is how it defends her exactly where she's weakest. It turns a monster attack into healing (damage or horror), it can turn a losing situation into a winning one, it can even occasionally just gain you 3 actions a la Ace in the Hole. That level of security is absolutely necessary when our health and sanity is running low and we don't have the combat to deal with monsters without our spells. Initiate and Graham can tank up to 10 of it if they need to, but like the Key we want Graham to stay in play if we can help it. Again, play it by ear- if you don't need Fearless (2), skip it (it's a lower priority upgrade for a reason). But for me, the extra damage from Shriveling (5) to me is not an auto-grab because of Marie's extra action potential- if you play with 3 or 4 players it becomes more worthwhile as enemies gain more health.

tl;dr Build her how you want. If playing multiplayer, Archaic Glyphs is definitely a worthwhile option (one that I'll add to the possible swaps, good catch) if you want to go the cluever route. If you want to go a more fighting based route, definitely get Shriveling (5). The build here is solo/generalist and is built more defensively than offensively.

Also Mind over Matter for 8 combat/agility is the dream. I can't not keep it in the deck just to try and make it happen. Trust me, I even thought of cutting 1 Hunch just to fit the other one in.

Also as a quick sidenote to the horror/Fearless argument, it makes the deck capable of running Arcane Research to get all the big fighting spells and Insight for multiplayer while also still being able to hold on to the Key. But again, it depends- if you don't think you need it don't take it.

These camera-based spell decks are definitely giving me ideas for a Norman deck. The limit of 5 level 0 Mystic spells makes it a bit rough on Scenario 1--I'm thinking you try to get by with Wither as your only spell and buy Shrivelling 3 right away, and build his mystic upgrades from there.

I feel like this deck (and the Jim deck) is almost there, but is lacking something to put it over the top. Building up intellect and willpower is great and all, but I think this deck needs a bit more to make use of high stats, like Fingerprint Kit or something. Investigating at 7 for one clue an action feels like lots of expenditures and buildup for not much payout.

I playtested a couple scenarios on Solo expert and by far and away the biggest problem is that the deck is absurdly expensive to the point where it' pretty hard to function. If you don't find Uncage the Soul or Emergency Cache (which for some reason there's only one of) it's extremely hard to get your "core" assets in play. Hubert's, Graham, Shrivelling, Sixth Sense, and one Camera is 16 resources, that's insane. Obviously you're not likely going to have all those cards immediately, but Hubert's and Graham both costing 4 resources and not being discountable by Uncage makes any opening hands with either of those very hard on your resources. This whole deck is filled with cards that aren't necessarily terrible but are very taxing on resources and the end result is a deck that has a hard time playing the core cards that it needs to function because of all of the supplemental stuff that costs too much for their benefit.

In my playtesting I didn't come close to setting up Doom+Sixth Sense. Firstly I usually didn't have the resources for it, but secondly it was hard to consistently have doom in play. Alyssa is the only card that can repeatedly put doom in play, and often I would go several turns revealing an Encounter that I didn't want to put on the bottom in fear of getting a VP monster that I wouldn't be able to kill. That whole combo just does not seem practical when the big payoff is sometimes getting an extra action, especially since if you have Alyssa out you're actually investigating at a lower value than if you just did a normal investigate action.

Similarly Working a Hunch was cute but every time I played it I almost instantly regretted it because I'd topdeck some important Asset I needed to have in play but now didn't have the resources because I just spent them to get a clue. Flashlight would have been better replaced by literally anything else with an Intellect icon because that's all it was used for. There was always one or two other assets I had in hand that were more important to get out first.

And again I really don't see how this deck needs horror healing. I took quite a bit of horror and I was never at risk of losing Key because of how much horror the allies can soak.

Although I will say that most of my suggestions were geared towards multiplayer rather than solo, pretty much all the stuff that I had identified as not being good ended up not being good from my experience. And since you mentioned it I think that the list you based this off of suffers from a lot of similar problems. (Minus the resource issues) Flashlight is unnecessary, Working a Hunch and Sixth Sense are not all that useful given their cost, and the list seems to be boosting Int for not significant benefit when the game plan is to play Sixth Sense at some point. Also for MP I feel like Alyssa Graham is a ton of resources for an effect that is generally not very useful. There's so many encounter draws you're going to find all of them eventually, burying one isn't that good and is nowhere close to being worth a doom.

I appreciate the playtesting. I’ll tweak the deck later and see if I can mitigate the cost issue.

I think the easiest fix to that is to just swap Graham for David, and the extra willpower makes investigating with Sixth Sense as an extra action more worthwhile.

Is that Mussorgsky reference ... if yes NIIIICE

It was in fact, though I realized afterwards I got the title wrong lol.

After playtesting a while with some different possibilities, I settled ona new version of the deck, found here: arkhamdb.com