(The Mind's) Eye of the storm

Card draw simulator

Odds: 0% – 0% – 0% more
Derived from
[Mind's] Eye of the Tiger Norman (TCU) 26 23 2 1.0
Inspiration for
UPDATED Mind's Eye Norman - Now Ironman Proven 11 6 0 1.0

Lord Triloth · 1891

Intro

(Before we get started: a huge shoutout to @MURdos deck that was a huge inspiration for what I crafted here. So inspirational, that I had to share my own thoughts about it.)

Let my welcome you to this deck, I've refined over a few playthroughs of TDE (A and B) and Carcosa (both solo and two-player), Standalone MM and Blob.
Here you will find (maybe unplayed) cards like Mind Wipe(3), awesome Norman cards like Mind's Eye, the fan-fav Dayana Esperence and to round it out Enraptured, making this a true brain over brans deck, full of Mind-related jokes and puns.

( Edit on the 7th of August, 2020: Added more cards to the #Mind-Bending section and added the theme tag.)

Maxing the Mind (The upgrades):

1x True Understanding and 2x Mind over Matter 3x Mind's Eye 2xp.

Dr. Milan Christopher Dayana Esperence 6xp.

1x Persuasion Mind Wipe 3xp.

Charisma 3xp.

Upgrade Deny Existence(0) to Deny Existence(5) 10xp.

And if there is still xp to spare one or two copies of Seal of the Elder Sign 5-10xp.

Mind'nado (General Strategy)

Like the title announces, this deck focuses mainly on the deck MVP: Mind's Eye. Norman's 4 and 5 make him a great target for cards like The Camera (another Eye btw), Practice Makes Perfect and the (of course) the Eye itself. But this deck has so many different layers to it isn't easy to find a place to start.

The Seeker vs. The Mystic.
First a foremost there's his weird deck building restriction of only 5 lvl-0 -cards and only lvl-0 -cards. In this deck these slots are taken by 1x Spectral Razor(for a non-evadable enemy), 2x Enraptured(giving, with the Cracker-Jack-Effect and PMP a quite reliable Secret-Engine) and 2x Deny Existence(mostly for Dayana as damage protection). Of course you can choose to add a 2nd Spectral Razor for the stronger late-campaign enemies, after you get Deny Existence(5). Generally I don't find this to be much of a restriction, because the -Level-0-Suit tends to be quite powerful.

Mind's in Harmony.
Then there is his playstyle in general. Norman is known to be quite a powerhouse gator as soon as he can get setup properly. So this deck tries to focus on fast and 1-costed cards that can be played just like that from the top of your deck. Playing cards from your deck also helps cycling his deck faster, to get more uses out of the Mind's Eye-refill. Mag glass is only a substitute for Hawk-Eye Folding Camera for the early game, the goal of this deck is to get two fully-loaded Hawk-Eyes down bringing him to a respectable 67XX-statline. Crushing every -test with loads of Perception's, Enraptured's and Deduction's, hoovering up every clue and (mind-)blowing every non--test in his way. The cool thing about this is that every wierd - and -tests (I'm looking at you Military's Plan) can be replaced with your 6-, including the -part of Spec-raze.

The secret's of your Mind.
Like you may have noticed this deck has quite a few secret-using MVP's. Namely the dealer with secrets, devils and Mind's Eye, that all profit from being refilled with fresh secrets. To fill this purpose you have Astounding Revelation (Rook, PMP and Calling in Favors being the search stuff) and the possibly PMP'ed Enraptured(also a mind-related card, btw). This deck usually cycles through at least once, so the chance that you see these cards multiple times is quite high. Dayana and Rook can even rotate through Favors and Mind's Eye refills itself, making this deck (maybe even) endless in Secrets.

The Mind's Bane.
This section focuses on his weaknesses.
To shore up his 6-damage he has the Dayana-great-3-soak, a rotating cast of rook's and the infamous Deny Existence and later the lvl5, all helping allot with his low-stamina.
His Sanity should never be touched allot, two loaded Hawk-Eyes giving him 10-sanity and then he still has a one-of Logde-reases.
Enemies are generally dealt with Mind's Eye, but if you don't have acces to that you still have (Spectral Razor, of course):
Persuasion and later Mind Wipe. Both of these cards, I find, are quite underrated. Persuasion can evade or shuffle away a humanoid-enmies that come up from time to time.
Mind Wipe checks quite a few boxes in this deck: it's 1 resource and fast, it can shut down his weakness for one phase completely and not even just his hound. Most scenarios have an non-elite-enemy that has an annoying Textbook-effect. (Standouts being TDE-Spoiler, a BB-shithead, another TFA-annoyance, of course the non-return Dunwich-Blob, the omnipresent bird and lastly another Historical Society friend).
Then there is still his weakness. Personally I don't find it quite a harsh weakness. it doesn't hunt, it only deals it's effect while engaged and it only has 2 and 2-health. You also have the great Spectral Razor if he gets to annoying.

Mind-Bending (alternate options).

Logical Reasoning, True Understanding and Shortcut, indispite of being great cards are quite flexible slots. Shortcut and Logical are often used to help your weak allies. Most of the time I've paired up this deck with lead-gator-builds like Tommy and William Yorick that take all of the enemies of him, leaving him to clean up the board of clues. (Hint: If you have actual players next to you, you shouldn't tell them too much about how well you're doing with your clue part. People may feel like there not quite part of the action).

Fingerprint Kit is definitely worth considering instead of Magnifying Glass in higher player counts.

Anatomical Diagrams also has the 1-cost and fast thing. With Logical Reasoning his Sanity rarely drops below 5. Also a possible downgrade to Mind Wipe(3)

Dr. William T. Maleson instead of Dr. Milan Christopher. Maleson gives a great encounter protection until you have Mind's Eye and Dayana Esperence. In solo I would take him over Milan.

Seal of the Seventh Sign. Completely untested, but this deck tends to be in anything-but- range, so sealing it in an climactic point of the scenario can be worth a look.

There's also an alternate version of this deck that can you should consider if a) you've had enough of Rook, b) you really want to play Occult Lexicon and c) if you want to cycle your deck even faster. This version can be found here. It basically replaces Mag glass with the Lecxington and Rook with Lab Assistant, it deals significantly more damage and is maybe better suited for solo, cycling through Blood-Rite's and getting the most out of Mind's Eye in the process.

Then finally: Mind-Maxed (Standalone)

The full version of this deck has 29xp (with one copy of Seal), though I wouldn't consider taking that many weaknesses in your deck.
If you cut deny(5) you get a sweet 19xp, adding an additional weakness.
If you want to go for 8xp, only take Dayana Esperence and Mind's Eye

PS: While revising the write-up I put together here, I've noticed that I hadn't even mentioned his signature Split the Angle. To be honest, I've never played this card down in this deck. It's just super-slow and why should you discard encounter cards if you can just outsmart them. It has always been useful as two great icons.

Outro

Lastly I want to thank y'all for reading this quite elaborated version of what basically is @MURdos deck, though I think I put allot of own effort in to it. I promise that I had the idea of a Mind Norman deck before I looked it up on this wonderful site and found his deck.

Feel free to leave your comments, questions, rants and raves down below.

6 comments

Aug 05, 2020 Krysmopompas · 352

Very nice! I love Norm and usually use him as a standard, kick-butt L5 Shrivelling, L4 Mists kind of one-by-one clue guy. Never like skills on him but Enraptured in this setup makes a tonne of sense. And of course I've always been curious about Mind's Eye, wanted to use it on Patrice but chickened out. Maybe I'll stretch my horizons and try this one. Cheers.

Aug 05, 2020 Krysmopompas · 352

oh only other thing to say is since Christopher is usually in high demand, I'm much happier using the underrated WT Maleson in a level 0 Norm build. Helps fight the encounter deck really, really well.

Aug 06, 2020 Lord Triloth · 1891

@Krysmopompas Thanks for your nice words.

The Shrivelling(5)/Mists of R'lyeh(4) build in Norman is quite the "standard thing", at least the version to go with, without making your deck significantly Bader, but I think this Mind's Eye version can really stand up to that power level. Also considering the all in all lower exp. cost.

Skills are always a bit annoying to have on the top of your deck, because your not able to play them directly from there, without Mr. "Rook" or Practice Makes Perfect. The idea was to get the most of secrets through Astounding Revelation's and Enraptured's. PMP plays into this perfectly, but it wouldn't be worth it without other practiced skills, so Perception and Deduction were obvious choices.

About Dr. William T. Maleson: To be honest I'm still working a bit on the Mind-Bending section. I'm not really sure about Dr. Milan Christopher, I only took him so the curve doesn't get messed up that much while upgrading.

Aug 06, 2020 Chitinid · 14

You may want to consider eventually investing in some Ward 2's to counter things like Ancient Evils

Aug 07, 2020 Lord Triloth · 1891

Personally I found Deny, to be more effective in general. I've not really tried Ward in this deck, mainly because I find Deny5 better then Ward5, and because Deny5 on Dayana is just super Powerful. Compared to Ward5 at least that stacks the Horror.

Lastly I've never really found Ancient Evils worth Warding in Solo, basically it's just taking away 3 action, compared to 12 in 4p, and this deck goes quite fast in general.

Aug 07, 2020 Chitinid · 14

Sure, I suppose I Was thinking about multiplayer, I'd agree in solo.