I saw you tease this in leaks and spoilers in MythosBusters and oh boy am I excited for the bomb you just dropped! Thanks for going in depth as always.

Yo, this deck is cool af, I've been getting bored of the cookie cutter Mystic decks that all run the same things (spell assets, Ward of Protection, and Deny Existence with Arcane Research lol) so this might be a nice change of pace.

I also didn't know that little fact about bypassing the skill commits for teammates, PMP is so good. Nice.

Where did you learn that Practice Makes Perfect can be committed to another player’s skill test in addition to other cards? It seems to me that the “if able” clause in PMP explicitly prohibits this.

The “eligible” clause on Livre d'Eibon and Astronomical Atlas also appear to prohibit this strategy. Have you learned of a ruling to the contrary?

There's no rule that prohibits you from committing more than one card to another investigator's skill test, so the stated interactions with PmP, Livre and Atlas do work. The rule about committing cards to other players' tests is permissive, giving you an opportunity to commit one card to the test, but not preventing you from doing so. If an effect tells you to commit something to a test, then you can do it. It's like Ever Vigilant letting you play multiple cards in one action, nothing stops you from doing so, the card itself just lets you. I'm pretty sure it's also how it works if you commit Copycat or Daredevil to another investigator's test.

“Permissive,” not restrictive. I get it now. Good to know.

I think this was in part due to poor word choice in my writeup. I will be changing the "you are allowed a maximum of 1 card" to "you are allowed to commit 1 card during that step of the skill test". Thank you Davi for explaining, for I simply could not.

I ran a similar list (with fighting spell assets, like the ones in the Side Deck) and it's pretty solid. Norman became extremely efficient at low xp count. You'd just wish he could run the upgraded deduction. I wager true understanding should replace one perception in the final version of your deck to be truly "versatile" in the cards you can commit.

Also, I'm not really sold on the divination tech lv 1. Evading and fighting should give you enough opportunities to heal back yourself with fearless, baring autofail. There are always a decent amount of will test with treacheries. Running a second fearless (2) seems better.

@mugu I sided True Understanding into the side deck. Playing True Understanding or not is absolutely a personal choice and is a fantastic card to include in this deck. I simply preferred the card draw from Perception over it. Depending on player size, team comp, personal pref, definitely pick the right skills for yourself.

Regarding the Divination tech, you should try it. I imagine the reason why you're not sold on it might have to do with player count and how specialized you are playing your investigators. If you're playing in a situation where Norman needs to be able to 50/50 fight/clue, then take a fight spell, but this is more of a 4 player dedicated cluever with some emergency enemy management sort of deck. There are always clues to find, whereas enemies are less consistently expected. Shrivelling also has the potential to cost you horror when the purposes of teching the Divination is to give you options to recover horror.

Divination makes your Enraptured a pseudo-Deduction. In a turn where you discarded Enraptured with Written in the Stars. you gain back 3 charges while spending 6 charges out of the 7 available to you.

Running a 2nd Fearless (2) can certainly help you recover horror, but I've explained the way that 1 single skill can really be stretched into extreme degrees of recursion via the "Deduction" loop, and thus, you only need 1 copy for that to work.

Aaaah, I didn't see the interaction between Enraptured and Blur. Yes, it's definitely valuable then. I'm not sure if you could squeeze a second copy of enraptured then, but that would be a bit too ideal of a situation to hope for them not cluttering your hand until you draw your core spells.

For what its worth, I don't love Divination, and I don't see it as a necessity in campaigns where you are really certain on the number of willpower based tests will match the number of Guts/Fearless ended up in your deck.

I did want to find some sort of value in the new spells as they did feel quite foreign to me upon first impressions. Maybe this is just my own way of trying out new cards :D

I don't think it hit arkhamdb yet, but there is a level 4 version of divination with 6 charges and up to 3 charges spent. You may want to update your deck once it's live.

Yep, but I'm less excited about the lvl 4 divination compared to the lvl 4 blur. the lvl 4 blur gives you extra actions for Written in the Stars and Harbinger. lvl 1 divination already gives you the freedom of switching between your will and int tests.

Not had a chance to read the full guide yet but I lookforward to it when i do. Love the deck on paper though. Its so nice to see a viable skill build for norman coming out in the card pool after his replacement cards looked like he was going to be a 1 cost asset/event build. I for one did not see this coming when we heard he was "launching proper". Great work!

I am using Close the Circle on my Norman deck, combined with Blur or Earthly Serenity, you can easily get to 3-4 charges and then refill them with Enraptured.

This is the full XP version I am looking at:

arkhamdb.com

@StartWithTheName Wow! Thanks for checking the decklist out. I love your decks so much and they really inspired me to put more effort into mine explanations :D

@HarrisonF Yee! That looks like fun, there's definitely a lot of variations to the skill-based Astro deck. I definitely was enjoying seeing what Pax came up with and you as well when we were discussing in deck-tech.

Cheers @chirubime, love your stuff too. Im actually in awe of your formatting skills. in particular the little overview metrics bar thingy right at the top. I was trying to find you on discord to get a few tips as i lack IT skills but i couldnt find you.

@StartWithTheName hahah, there's not much formatting to the overview stats bar is like... just using these as spacers | and manually spacing them. My discord handle is Tofu Mushroom#6686 and on MythosBusters I'm Mint Tea Fan.

damnnn... I've been playing Norman wrong

thanks to this post, I decided to play norman in the coming campaign <3

Versatile might also be a card that could be considered. Since you cycle fast, the extra cards are not much of an issue, even though it makes your setup a little less likely, of course.

But there are some really nice skill cards in Rogue and Survivor.

Just think about what Quick Thinking could do with Written in the Stars. ;-)

Maybe I should have read your description to the end first. ;D

@Thanee For the current taboo list, Quick Thinking is max once per round the effect goes off. So it is not an ideal Quick Thinking candidate. However, the skill card loops created by Livre and Astro Atlas is fair game.

Correction: "not an ideal Written in the Stars" candidate for this taboo list.

Ah, that's too bad. Or maybe... better that way. :-)

I eat your decks up! Wish I could bring this to Arkham Nights if only I could get a copy of the edge investigators by then.

This deck is bonkers. I can't believe how cheap it is exp wise. I'm getting flashbacks to Death by Chocolate's Trish Brrr deck.

stupid question.... how do I add pictures into my decklist?

@Wittebaard You can use HTML or Markdown formatting.

The top one is Markdown, and the bottom one is HTML.

Thank you so much

On topic: I love your deck, the Astronomical Atlas combo is insane! Keep up the good work

Sorry for a stupid question. but can someone please explain the side deck. I don't see anything about it in Norman's deckbilding options - is it a side deck like Joe Diamond's?

@Raoul-Duck The side deck cards are just different card choices the author mentioned. They are just there for convenience probably.

The Deck is great. I had 5 of 6 Midnight masks, the ONLY problem I had, is that I have 2 arcane slots and messed up with spells for different situations. Plus I was not able to boost my will.... I do not know why, but willpower tests were always 1 above maximum... any ideas? maybe some solo tipps?

@vak36 Hmm if you're hurting for willpower boost, there is the Mystic tarot that gives you an additional willpower. You can also play 2 guts and more willpower skills. You also don't have to play 2 astronomical atlas if you don't want to give up an arcane slot to arcane enlightenment. You can also consider the tarot hierophant to give you additional arcane slots and/or accessory slots for willpower boosts.

@vak36 Arcane Studies is good for boosting willpower and/or Int if needed. The level 4 one is quite good for Norman

This might be the best deck I've ever played!

I took it through 4 player War of the Outer Gods last night and it was ridiculous. I had 9 clues by turn 3.

In the last 2 rounds (after looping the deck twice) I had so many cards in hand, in play and under Astro Atlas, that when The Harbinger appeared, I didn't even need to clear it. I just ran out the rest of the scenario with the tools in hand.

The combo with Livre and Astro is bananas.

Thank you!

Your 3 exp link is broken my friend - it leads to a deck with tons of exp spent.

@Dreadreaper must have copied and pasted the wrong link. it should be fixed now!

I can confirm through field testing this is a very good shell to work off of it. In classic "I changed the recipe" fashion I'm going to comment on where I split from the list as provided because of Hard difficulty and other things my group prefers:

Occult Invocation over I've Got a Plan is usually to taste, but if you know nothing about a campaign go with Occult Invocation. You never know when a scenario will randomly strip you of clues to prevent you from getting a good hit off, and you do not want to be caught with your pants down.

Prioritize upgraded Divination over Blur in 3-4p, as your ability to evade is nice but not mandatory in multiplayer. You'll probably get both though, just because. It will also make Enraptured a little more appealing. Fearless is nice but Deny (5)s will serve you better (which isn't a surprise, one of them is a 5 XP card). I ended up with both just because, but Fearless probably should have been another Guts (2).

I wouldn't (and didn't) take Defiance (2) unless it's a tech card for like TFA9. It just doesn't hold up compared to another Guts (2) a lot of the time even on Hard. You have better things to Written in the Stars or Astro Atlas cycle, so you should take Ward of Protection (2) over it for better group utility.

There are a lot of good practice decisions in the list otherwise, like the very small but present "out of role" package combined with high native draw to allow you to easily find and hold onto it for emergencies. The stated upgrade order is pretty solid, and almost matches how I ended up opting for it in practice. I went for the Atlases, the level 1 spells, then a Deny (5), the Foresights, then doubled back for the upgraded spells, and finally finished out with upgrading the skills and the second Deny (5).

I consider this to be a very solid guide for anyone who has started to find Standard too easy and wants to push things up to Hard but still wants to play decks that make skill tests.

@Swekyde these are great suggestions for harder difficulties. I admit I play mostly on standard so its good to have people with more expertise on the higher difficulties comment. I think occult lexicon and blood rite is probably another good choice in addition to occult invocation.

Furthermore, dropping 1 atlas or playing 2 arcane enlightenment in conjunction with hierophant to fit your other spells in can be beneficial if you can make room for scrying mirror. It can be recharged with enraptured and can put the curse token promise of power puts in after you have already seen the token. Can be much more valuable than 2 atlas in higher difficulties

@chirubime That was something I should have mentioned actually, I very rarely resolved my second Atlas. I wanted it to be there for draw consistency, but I found that needing to stick both Arcane Enlightenment and the Atlas itself was enough of an install barrier that I would just try to get by instead.

Arcane Enlightenment saw most of its use pushing arcane assets to the bin once spent and as +1 hand size, leading me to believe of I were to play this again in the future (not a knock on the list by any means, there are just too many decks and not enough time) I might opt for Dream-Enhancing Serum instead. In some 4p groups it should possibly be another Divination, as you can set up moving into a 2i clue location with the Deduction recursion trick to rip 4 clues off, and then do it again next turn and move out clearing it pretty cleanly.

@Swekyde The primary role Arcane Enlightenment plays in this deck, in my experience, has been managing Norman's signature weakness -- a card that forces itself into play and takes up both hand slots, which means you're forced to discard at least one tome. This can be brutal early in a game if you're forced to discard the Livre! Unless I'm reading things wrong?

whoops, disregard above comment -- I was thinking of a weakness I happened to draw as part of my Norman deck! Sorry, all.....

thank you very much for this deck, i run it for EotE. could you precise which card remove from the deck in the upgrade path please ? i do not know which card to remove withoutruining the balance of the deck thank you

Thanks. Great desk to try Norman. May I ask how to resolute when I play Written in the Stars and discard Seal of the Elder Sign? Do I remove it from the discard pile after the first eligible test?

@tom89819 yep! that's just as you said.

This deck is is awesome. Huge kudos. Among my friends we think this is one of the strongest clue-finding decks from just how fast, consistent, and exp-cheap the setup is. Once the core 3xp (lol) is spent, everything else is just gravy. We've had several campaigns where we've wondered "well what do we do with all this experience now. Everything we add will make the deck worse."

We've also experimented with Versatile for Winging It across multiple campaigns, and it's very good. Running Sleuth to pay for it (incidentally also pays for the tomes if you find it early), the deck either draws harbinger first so you're just back on the original gameplan until the deck cycles, or you find winging it and sleuth and you're pre-taboo Rex Murphy (with effectively 4 more ). This little package can replace Divination for multi-clueing, and we ran Close the Circle instead in the arcane slot, using it for any pesky scenario or location action tests, or just as a pseudo-pathfinder.

Overall this is an amazing deck. Achieves the seeker pinnacle of being Rex Murphy with upside, and then can go beyond.

@Activeshooter Kind words! Thanks to hear you like this. I'm curious if you heard about the Winging It + Harbinger from Mythosbusters or if we both came to idea independent of each other xD

@chirubime The Winging It+Harbinger among my group came about when we were joking about how well Norman's weakness acted as an upside in multiple campaigns. Preventing discards from top of deck and weaknesses shuffled due to act/agenda advancement was a benefit that made us laugh every time it came up. We took a look at other 'shuffle in' mechanics and we decided to give Winging It a shot and it worked very well.

I'm loving this deck running return to Carcossa on a 4 player team. I'm going to try using Close the Circle+Versatile+Charisma+Leo de Luca for increased actions. I could use Quick Thinking but its too broken if not considering the taboo list. Has anyone tried it?

This deck just got better with the addition of Ghastly Revelation from the new Scarlet Keys expansion. For both Divination and Blur, Ghastly Revelation is significantly better than Enraptured for re-charging your spells, and doesn’t require using Written in the Stars to be effective. In fact, with Divination(4), Ghastly Revelation is even better to loop than Deduction, with Revelation giving you an effective 3 clues on a single action, every turn. At maximum capacity, using Written in the Stars with Deduction and a full charge Divination and a Ghastly Revelation, you can swoop up an absurd 12 clues over the course of a single 3 action turn. I’m including at least one of these, maybe two in my current Norman deck.

Swap Ghastly Revelation for Ghastly Possession in that last comment. There are a lot of ghastly things running around Arkham these days

Norman is easily the best user of Ghastly Possession for sure. I've been testing it with various cards like Hyperphysical Shotcaster. Definitely a must-add

Hello thank you for this deck. in the upgrade path, could you please tell us which card you remove ? thank you

Also with the upgrade path, you mention deny existence and ward of protection, but Ward of Protection isn't in the deck, and compared to the 0xp deck, you remove one of the Deny Existences.