Trish - Brrrred Clock

Overview

This deck is an attempt to replicate the joy of the original Trish Goes Brrrr! by Death by Chocolate under the current Taboo changes. This version by suika did a good job at working around the deck suddenly costing twice as much XP, but now we also have to deal with a Pendant of the Queen that can't be reassembled (as well as Three Aces being single-use). I won't go into a huge amount of detail here about the sort of nonsense the original deck was capable of; its description does a much better job than I could of illustrating exactly how silly it can be. I'd recommend reading that first to get a general sense of what the deck does.

My "solution" to the Taboo changes was to get greedy and jam the Eldritch Sophist/The Red Clock combo in here as well. For those unfamiliar, this lets you tick the Clock up to whatever value you like (I generally sit on three charges for the extra actions), and then use the Sophist to siphon charges off it each turn to keep it there. The ideal target for your excess charges is obviously Pendant of the Queen, but note that you can actually store them for safekeeping on any other asset that doesn't have a different "Uses" line on it (such as, say, In the Thick of It).

The end result is a deck that doesn't quite have the sheer card-drawing velocity of the original, but compensates by taking five actions a turn (plus the Pendant). I ran it through Carcosa and found it an awful lot of fun.

Strengths and Weaknesses

The obvious weak point here is that you have no way to deal with enemies permanently, at all; you're going to be relying on your friendly Guardian for that (and if that Guardian could bring along some Handcuffs, that would be great). You can at least evade them and leave them in the dust without too much trouble.

The deck can occasionally be a bit slow off the mark sometimes, if you start with too many expensive assets or Astounding Revelations in hand.

On the plus side, you can gather clues very efficiently and you're super mobile; once things are rolling you're going to be leaving the rest of your team in the dust. Late game you can generate more resources than you really know what to do with. And, of course, taking a lot of actions and playing a lot of cards every turn is just fun.

Upgrading and Rough Strategy

The Clock combo pieces are going to cost you quite a bit of XP, both for the Clock itself and also the copies of Relic Hunter and Charisma you need to keep everything in play at once. What I found is that this means how the deck functions will change over the course of a campaign as you upgrade into the combo:

• 0XP: Initially, you're really just Going Brrrr in a slightly clunky way and doing mostly fair things. At this point you're not going to be doing anything too excessive, but you can still draw a bunch of cards and hoover up clues and whatnot. You're probably unlikely to assemble the Pendant until late in the scenario with only a couple of copies of Whitton Greene to actively search for the pieces, but it might happen.
• 3XP: Your first priority upgrade is probably getting one Lucky Cigarette Case (3) upgraded - this makes a big difference to how much control you have over which cards you draw, in particular the tricks described in the original deck to negate Shadow Agents.
• 10XP: Now you can grab The Red Clock (2) and one copy of Relic Hunter. Your game plan here is to start with LCC and Whitton, use them to dig for Segments/Sophist/Clock, and then swap over to those for the second half of the scenario and coast to victory off the back off your extra actions and an everlasting Pendant.
• 16XP: Adding a second copy of Relic Hunter and one Charisma means you get to keep LCC/Whitton in play all game. This is where things start to get silly.
• 22XP: Upgrading to The Red Clock (5) gives you an extra action every turn. At this point the core parts of the deck are pretty much fleshed out.

Other potential upgrades worth considering, to take whenever you feel they'd help:

• Charon's Obol: Take this after scenario 1 if you're feeling spicy, maybe even with your In the Thick of It XP in place of two of the Myriad sets. This deck doesn't actually have that many Tomes or Relics, so the Obol does mean that Whitton's stat boost is consistently active, which makes a difference.
• Lockpicks (1) makes your clue-gathering a lot more reliable; slot these in early if you can.
• A second copy of Whitton Greene (2), or Mr. "Rook" give you better searching and speed up assembling the Clock combo. If you grab Rook then a second copy of Charisma lets you keep all three allies in play at once for maximum shenanigans.
• Deduction (2) and Perception (2) are just straightforward upgrades.
• Moxie (3) provides stat boosts and a bit more soak.
• Another Day, Another Dollar helps make sure that you have the resources to hit the ground running on turn 1 if you draw badly.

Mulliganing

As the upgrading notes above suggest, you basically always want to start by getting your search engine online early, and let that kickstart the deck:

• Whitton Greene, Lucky Cigarette Case (3), Practice Makes Perfect are your key pieces here.
• Lockpicks will let you investigate much more consistently in the early game and oversucceed for LCC.
• Don't worry about Segment of Onyx/The Red Clock/Eldritch Sophist; they'll turn up in their own time.