And the Oscar Goes To... Marion?

Ok, maybe I was driven insane overnight and this deck is terrible, but hear me out. You won't regret it. I guess.

So yeah, Lola. Where do I start? I dislike her with a passion. Not because of her inherent demerits, but because of how little I felt it could be done with her obnoxious role thing and her amazing deckbuilding. That is, until Transfiguration came out, and my gears started spinning like crazy.

What if Lola didn't have to be Lola at all? If she immersed herself so much into her method acting that it became second nature to her? What if she became better at being her on stage persona than herself? That's basically the plot of a Philip K. Dick novel, but I digress. The main question is: which role should she dedicate herself to?

I should start talking about this convoluted mess of a deck you see on the left here, but where do I start from? The creative process behind this has been absurd, with interactions and synergies (haha) coming from every corner. I'll try my best to explain them all as neatly as I can.

Let's start with the basics: we need to find Transfiguration fast. In order to do that, Underworld Support, Bewitching and Stick to the Plan thin out the deck to a measly 24 card pile. Hard mulligans, Friends in Low Places, No Stone Unturned, Glimpse the Unthinkable and a good dose of card draw can find it pretty soon. And then the fun begins.

We are turning to Marion Tavares. Why her? Because her ability isn't tied to the identity of a specific color: she uses events, she doesn't care about traits, or enemies, or the chaos bags. Just events, and we have those in each color, and abundance, so yeah, Marion's ability is great and makes the deck a hundred times better. But that's not the best thing about her.

Once you turn to Marion, you lose your second hand slot. And somehow this became integral to the building of this crazy deck. If you have only one hand every asset you play discards whatever you're holding. A disgrace? No. Fun times? Absolutely.

This deck aims to abuse Occult Lexicon as much as it can. Blood-Rite is amazing: card draw, resource management and free, textless damage. What's not to love? If you factor in Marion's ability, you can chain damage, or fire it with another event, free of opportunity attacks. It's really good. But what's abusable about it? The fact that every time we play the book again, a Rite goes back to hand and two are shuffled back in the deck. Think of it as reloading a gun that has pages instead of bullets. Beautiful, isn't it?

But how are we discarding the Lexicon? Glad you asked. Magnifying Glass to the rescue! Just play the lens and the book gets scrapped. Also, Act of Desperation and Unconventional Method can discard the Lexicon for value. And how exactly are we taking it back? Easy, Scavenging! The deck is filled to the brim with investigate events that make it easier to pass the test like Read the Signs or Unconventional Method itself, or better yet Breaking and Entering and Pilfer, both of which paired with Scrapper are easy to recur in order to keep the loop alive. If you manage to empty your location of clues you can also bounce the Magnifying Glass back to hand before the Scavenging trigger, in order to have even more consistency.

But wait! Have I heard Scrapper? This means we already have three colors in our Permanents. Add a completely useless Shrewd Analysis and a somewhat cool The Great Work and the rainbow is complete. Oh, if you happen to turn into the Lost Homunculus you can alway Transigure back to Marion, so not that big of a deal. Since we start the game with an asset of each color, Gang Up immediately punches for +5 and +5 damage, which is beautiful, and Cheat the System is fast 5 resources. Great stuff.

Hallowed Mirror heals back wounds and draws, Double events are very cool when you have to spend only an action to play them (thanks, Marion), the whole idea of the deck is shoot enemies without testing anything at all and do a few tests to investigate like a madman, returning your damage-dealing spells back in the process. And sometimes give a really big hard punch to something.

Sweeping Kick slots under Bewitching and is a nice way to deal with pesky enemies, Scout Ahead is a triple move that can stick with another event, Nothing Left to Lose refills us in the dire event of running out of gas, Research Librarian obviously looks for Occult Lexicon.

The deck needs tons of money to work, but as you can see there are loads of econ events in here, some of which you can nicely fit under either Stick to the Plan or Bewitching. Also, Chuck Fergus gives insane value to most of our events, so yeah, love the guy.

A thing to note: I don't know how roles work once you turn to Marion, but I guess Crisis of Identity helps us by discarding the Lexicon (or Hallowed Mirror if we want to reuse that!) if roles stick, otherwise it just mills the first card of our deck. That's barely a weakness at all. Improvisation is a fun little trick to discount stuff (if roles work), and worse case scenario is a free, fast event that draws 1 and lets us chain another event to it. On some levels, this is better than Determined.

Another side note: the deck is harder to pilot if you don't find Transfiguration, but it's far from unplayable. Occult Lexicon is still amazing and the other events still offer huge value. You're just far from you final, more optimized and well rounded form: Marion Tavares.

So yeah, wanna play all sort of events, chain them for value, be a great independent flex that can beat the everliving spirit out of eldritch being and investigate with great efficiency? Wanna be the theatre kid that dedicates mind and body to the role? Like to play with whack, fun, strong and yet unique deck ideas that feel both eccentric and functional? This is my love letter to all of you people. If you have questions about this insane idea please feel free to ask, I'm so happy about this and I swear it feels awesome.

So, thank you for the Oscar, Marion... erm, Lola. I mean, well, yeah, you get what I mean.

Have fun.