Darrell Simmons Investigates The Scarlet Keys

Just finished our Scarlet Keys playthrough, and I wanted to think out loud about the deck as a whole, and figured maybe some other people would be interested in reading about it too.

So, the most obviously notable thing about the deck is that I'm using Forced Learning. I'm not sure it was the best thing I could be doing, though I'm pretty confident that this is the best place to use it, using Survivor cards alongside it, though you could make a case for Mandy already being at 50 cards doesn't lose too much.

So, the big hits: as you might expect from a deck with a ton of discard synergy, Scavenging was the best card in the deck at basically all points. Paired with short supply it added some much-needed consistency to our rather large deck, and if you were able to keep the resources going, you'd always have stuff to do.

Winging It, and to a lesser extent, and Fortuitous Discovery were consistently great. Being able to get consistent value off of your discards and effectively drawing 2 cards is a really big deal. Winging It also has the hidden second mode where it helps you avoid running out of cards in some longer scenarios where you just shuffle it back every turn. Also just means that you're very likely to draw and get to discard it every time.

The deck did have some structural issues though. Hawk-Eye Folding camera and Dr. Milan Christopher together could easy get your stats high enough that you never want to bother using your keyrings, which is how the deck tended to play until I got those upgraded. The deck started with "Look what I found" and Take Heart in it, despite being somewhat incapable of leveraging those effects with any consistency.

The Ice Picks and Hiking Boots were both mistakes I would not repeat. The version of this deck using EXP has two kinds of hands: the ones you get a camera out early, and the ones you don't. As you might guess, the Ice Pick is pretty worthless when you have a camera in 1 hand and a keyring in the other. Hiking Boots were cute, but them being an item doesn't justify them being so much worse than Pathfinder. There's probably a home for Hiking Boots, but this isn't it.

Talisman of Protection was also a mistake. In our campaign we had a Vincent Lee who focused on healing, so the Talisman ended up not being great, but I also think that even without that, Talisman would have been pretty bad. I think you'd much rather get some real soak that you could re-use. I'd probably go with fine clothes, though I haven't given that much thought, maybe there's something better.

Sparrow Mask was pretty cool. Before I had the upgraded Scavengings it was definitely a bit difficult to justify spending the action to get it into play early, but once I could get it into play for free with Scavenging it became an all-star.

Empirical Hypothesis was insane, and I'd probably throw in a copy of Refine as well to help with that. This deck really wants evidence, but your camera is actually not that great at getting it, especially late in some encounters where you just don't get clues anymore, and your folding camera also gets evidence relatively infrequently, and wants to keep its first 2-3 evidence.

End of the Road was a fun-of that I didn't expect to be very useful, and I was correct: the card is bad. Don't play it.

I'd probably consider playing Improvised Weapon over I've got a plan? Just having another card you can discard for value would be great. I've got a plan did dome a boss for 4 damage once, which was nice, but a lot of the time you're out of clues when you might actually want to hit something, and while Improvised Weapon doesn't use your book stat, you can spend evidence to make the card more reasonable. I don't think I've got a plan was a bad pick though, and I'm still open to the idea of it being better.

Scrounge for Supplies is a card I basically never used. There just didn't turn out to be that many cards I was interested in spending an action to get back, and the key engine piece in Scavenging isn't a valid target. I guess you could get your Resourceful to help you find your scavenging?

Old Keyring was great, and probably would have appreciated its friend the upgraded flashlight. This deck just doesn't have the hand space when you're also playing 2x Camera. Keyring was great even without being overly optimized for though, and once you get Flashlight in too you can probably justify playing Shed a Light, which I've heard good things about.

I guess I should mention all the cards at this point.

Dr. Milan was great, no notes. Didn't draw him a huge amount, but when I did, I always had enough resources to do everything I wanted to do.

Crack the Case is boring, but works. Gets you resources early to help you get set up. Same with Burning the Midnight Oil.

I've mentioned Resourceful at least once before, but card is just super solid. A bit awkward that some of your important cards like Camera and Dr. Milan aren't targetable, but being able to get your Scavenging already makes it worth it.

Working a Hunch was filler, and got cut when I was able to.

Deduction is just a pretty solid card. It is admittedly a little awkward at level 2 when you're often getting the extra clue from other sources though, like with Old Keyring or Winging It.

Lucky! and Live and Learn are just good cards. Didn't blow me away, and a sometimes they kinda just sat in my hand for a while, but I consider that a good problem to have.

Unrelenting was sorely needed to improve card flow, though it did put me in danger of needing to reshuffle a couple of times. Take Heart fills a similar role, but its sometimes surprisingly difficult to find a test you can reliably fail to get the bonus.

Disc of Itzamna was solid, but the 3 resource cost is actually a lot for this deck. On draws without Milan Christopher it was a bit awkward. And obviously, it doesn't answer enemies that are already in play or elites, so it doesn't really change how dependent you are on getting help with enemies, outside of occasionally using Sparrow Mask and maybe an evidence to get your evade high enough to run away.

I guess I can cover the weaknesses too. Ruined Film was annoying but manageable. It ended up being rather scenario dependent, as sometimes you just wouldn't be able to get evidence off of things because they were spawning in places with no clues. Maybe Darrell would benefit from some clue dropping.

Chronophobia was fine. As I mentioned previously, with Vincent Lee in the party taking a little bit of damage isn't a huge deal, and you can always just spend 2 actions to trash it. Having a weakness you can put evidence on was also nice, I think it came up once or twice.