Mandy - Toying with Powerful Interactions (First Attempt)

Note: Some kind of annoying bug on ArkhamDB flags the Survivor cards included in this deck as unobtainable. These cards are totally obtainable by Mandy, I have not done anything wrong; I don't know why they are flagged as unobtainable...

Introduction

This is a Mandy deck I pulled together a few days ago and was really eager to share! The deck focuses on doing the classic investigating stuff with a light lean on combat while capitalizing on powerful interactions using Mandy's "superpowers". The early-campaign version is not as good, but once you grab some XP, this deck has some real potential.

I will first display the upgrades, because the upgraded deck is what I'm going to talk about:

Upgrades

1. Charisma

2. 2x Crack the Case, 1x Inquiring Mind --> 3x Segment of Onyx

3. Higher Education (skip if you 're playing with the taboo list or buy later)

4. 1x Inquiring Mind, 1x 1x A Chance Encounter --> 2x Ancient Stone (1)

5. 2x Ancient Stone (1) --> 2x Ancient Stone: Knowledge of the Elders

6. 1x Unexpected Courage --> 1x Disc of Itzamna

7. 2x No Stone Unturned --> 2x Flare

8. 2x Studious

9. 2x Deduction --> 2x Deduction (2)

10. 1x Unexpected Courage --> 1x No Stone Unturned (5)

11. Relic Hunter

Main Concept

I specifically chose a 40-card deck for Mandy, because all the cards I wanted just don't fit in a 30-card deck. But from the tests I ran, this is no problem at all! Mandy's amazing searching capabilities and our tech cards more than make up for this issue!

So, as I said above the deck is built in a way that can exploit powerful interactions between Mandy's ability and certain cards. More specifically, Calling in Favors can be used to tutor for 2 allies with reduced cost, Dr. Elli Horowitz will search for and put into play 2 relics and Flare can search for and put into play 2 allies from your deck. These interactions are very powerful and the deck is built in a way that can exploit all of these cards to their maximum effect.

We also bring Ancient Stone: Knowledge of the Elders which we can combine with other cards in order to kill some small enemies (and sometimes even the bigger ones) without getting AoOs, or generally contribute to the team with automatic damage potential.

How to offset the 40-card deck disadvantage

Ok, we know that big decks aren't great. This deck however wants a lot of cards and all those cards can't fit in a 30-card deck. However, we have ways to offset this disadvantage. To begin with, Mandy's deckbuilding requirements allow us to get an extra copy of Occult Evidence, which is great. Next, we have a lot of cards in the deck that either search or draw, so we increase significantly the chances of seeing our key cards early in the game.

The key is in the mulligan. We need to hard-mulling for Mr. "Rook" and/or Old Book of Lore. If we have one of these cards in our hand we have everything we need. Mr. "Rook" is a lot better of course, but either of these cards will do. Other cards like to see in the mulligan are Flare/No Stone Unturned, Eureka!, Laboratory Assistant and Calling in Favors. Laboratory Assistant draws cards and with Calling in Favors we can tutor for Mr. "Rook" if we don't have him, possibly also getting another ally on the board. We also have No Stone Unturned which can help dig for Mr. "Rook" early game (you should go 9 cards deep with it if you don't have him) and later in the campaign, we also bring Flare, which can search for and put into play 2 of our allies, which is a super good thing to do early game with this deck. Later in the campaign, we also get 2x Studious which increase substantially the chances to see our key cards in our opening hand.

A significant advantage we have with a 40-card deck is that we are a lot less likely to see our weakness early on, which makes those plays described above more solid. It would of course suck to cancel the search during Calling in Favors or Flare action and the big deck mitigates that risk.

Clue Efficiency

We have 7 cards in the deck that increase clue efficiency: 2x Occult Evidence, 3x Fortuitous Discovery and 2x Deduction. Occult Evidence is amazing when you find it among the searched cards, but not so good once you get it in your hand. Only use the reshuffle action on it if you intend to search your deck soon. Deduction is classic and we also bring Fortuitous Discovery. I wasn't sure whether that or Winging It was the best option, but they 're both close and I favoured Fortuitous Discovery mostly due to being a new card that looks nice and wanted to try out. It should be realtively easy to get all copies of it in your hand with Mandy.

Dealing with Enemies

To begin with we have Mind over Matter, Disc of Itzamna and Pendant of the Queen. All these are solid cards to deal with enemies. But we also bring Ancient Stone which will do most of the hard work. While it's still useful to help killing an enemy that's bothering your teammates, the deck includes mechanics that we can use in order to trigger the Stone without getting AoOs. These are:

• Ancient Stone + Mr. "Rook" / Ancient Stone + Old Book of Lore + Knowledge is Power: Search for 2 cards as a fast action and kill a 2-health enemy.

• Ancient Stone + Take Heart: Take a fight or evade action and commit Take Heart, fail the test and draw 2 cards, then deal 2 damage.

• Any or all of the obove combined together: Deal 3-5 damage among enemies at your location without getting AoOs.

• Ancient Stone + Mind over Matter + Eureka!: Play Mind over Matter and attack the enemy commiting Eureka! to the test. You get to search for 2 cards and deal a total of 3 damage in one action.

Generic Stuff

Mr. "Rook" has incredible power in this deck and to be honest he's just great for Mandy in general. He has the potential to draw you a total of 6 cards for 1 action and 3 resources. That's great value overall. Always search for 9 and pull 2 cards with him. It's also beneficial to search for 12 sometimes in order to pull her weakness, so that to get it out of the way, in order to make those Calling in Favors, Flare and Elli plays more solid. Don't pull allies with him. You 'll just get them in play with Calling in Favors. Segments of Onyx are good to grab with him, but if you have a better card you want to pull go ahead. Dr. Elli Horowitz can pull them as well, they are Relics! Speaking of...

There are a total of 6 relics in the deck. This means we have plenty of targets for Dr. Elli Horowitz. However, it is not advised to play her from your hand, unless you have plenty of resources floating around and/or you believe you have high chances of pulling 2 relics. The best is to use her as a target of Calling in Favors, which is very likely that will happen when you play CiF. Note, here, that Disc of Itzamna is included in the deck mainly as an additional (useful) target for Dr. Elli Horowitz so that deck has more relic consistency. You should rarely play it from your hand as it's somewhat costly and it conflicts with Pendant of the Queen (unless you have Relic Hunter).

With Dr. Elli Horowitz, you can have 2 Ancient Stones down, which can increase your damage potential by a large amount. With 2 Stones out, the damage output in all cases described in the above section is doubled and you can contibute to the team a lot more as far as enemy handling is concerned.

Old Book of Lore can be used to either draw 2 cards, or search for a card 6-cards deep for an action once a turn. This is great value overall. Early in the game you will usually want to search deep in your deck in order to find your key cards, but, later on, getting 2 cards out of it should be more valuable. It sort of functions like a free Preposterous Sketches that you get once a turn, which is great.

Both Astounding Revelation and Occult Evidence are great in this deck (and, to be honest, in any Mandy deck generally). Not only they provide you bonuses for searching into your deck, but they also thin your deck when you find them, giving more consistency to the deck overall, thus making those early-game plays more solid and getting key pieces like Segments of Onyx more easily.

A Chance Encounter is basically in the deck mostly as a filler card, but it has good value. You can either pull from your discard a Laboratory Assistant to draw 2 cards (if you have already used Old Book of Lore) or you can pull Mr. "Rook" to search for 2 cards in your deck, all those for 1 resource, which is a fair price. It's not great, but not terrible either.

If you get the cards you need early, you will assemble the Pendant of the Queen soon, despite having a larger deck. Between Mr. "Rook" and Dr. Elli Horowitz you should be able to gather the pieces fairly fast. And you are also very likely to assemble it a second time during the scenario and possibly even a third! With Mr. "Rook" + Calling in Favors you will get so much milleage out of Mr. "Rook" that you will simply get every card you need. So, with the expectation that you can build it again, you can consume those charges faster than you otherwise would.

While No Stone Unturned (5) is amazing with Mandy, you will rarely need it for yourself. The deck has so many searching options that you just don't need it. That makes it a card that is mostly useful for your teammates, so, if your teammates don't have any cards that are particularly good to search for, it may not be worth it. In that case, I advise to get a Cryptic Research instead, which can help during setup and it can also be combined with the Stone for more auto-damage and more consistent enemy handling.