Daisy has Whispers in her Head (DttF Contest)

This Deck is for the latest Drawn to the Flame Contest it only uses cards from the Core, Path to Carcosa and the Circle Undone.

One of my favorite encounter sets from Path to Carcosa is the Delusions Set, specifically the Whispers in your Head series of cards. When thinking of a theme befitting the contest I wondered what it would be like to play as if you had all four of the Whispers in your Head cards in your hand at the same time. Let's go through them all.

Whispers in Your Head (Anxiety): Reads You cannot trigger abilities. This usually isn't that bad but it removes a couple options namely the amazing Mr. Rook, David Renfield, the skill booster cards and the useful Forbidden Knowledge.

Whispers in Your Head (Dismay): Reads You cannot commit skill cards to skill tests. So Skill cards are out, luckily we can still commit non skill cards to tests.

Whispers in Your Head (Doubt): Reads You cannot play events. So no events in our deck.

Whispers in Your Head (Dread): Reads You cannot move more than once each turn. This pretty bad but we have one solution and the prime inspiration for this deck Esoteric Atlas. It allows us to double back as a free action with Daisy's ability to places we've already been to and fits the restriction of moving once per turn. It's less important for some scenarios where you progress in a mostly path (such as the pallid mask) but its key to dealing with our restriction.

In short we have a deck that can only be made up of assets, which can't use abilities, can only move once per turn and if we fully follow our restriction can only have 4 cards in hand without discarding, along with our limited card pool.

Even with this limited pool lets look at the cards I chose, I intend it to mainly be a solo stand alone deck that can clue and fight well and is intended for the Path to Carcosa campaign. I decided to follow the taboo list which mostly means no Key of Ys, it's still really good but I think the deck can work without it. I decided to go with a 29xp limit as 2 extra weaknesses isn't too bad and I think it gives the deck just what it needs.

The fact all our cards are assets works well with our hand limit as we want to play them all out as soon as possible but we have to be willing to also use them for skill tests.

First up our hand cards, usually I go with 2-3 sets of two copies of 1 hand cards but we have access to Daisy's Tote Bag so I felt safe including some more tomes. I also decided on having more than normal given our only asset restriction. Encyclopedia lets us boost up our stats if we know we need a particular stat. It's less handy in a fight but we sometimes might need to tank an AoO in order to get a willpower boost to cast our spells better. Esoteric Atlas is key for reasons discussed above and I'd prioritize it above Encyclopedia in most scenarios. We pack 2 Hawk-Eye Folding Camera to help our key stats will and intellect. It's also pretty easy to power up in solo in most scenarios (notable exception is The Last King). As for of 1 ofs we have a Fingerprint Kit for those rarer 2 clue locations in solo, I'd probably bring 2 if we were in multiplayer cutting an Encyclopedia. We have an Old Book of Lore to help us draw what we need though we have to be careful using it given our hand limit. We also have Scroll of Secrets which we want to use up quickly to stack the encounter deck in our favor with stuff we can plan around, a second might be nice but I haven't played with it enough to know how good it truly is. I should also mention the The Necronomicon as it steals a hand slot we want to polish this off as soon as possible to get us our slot back and have decent horror soak despite our starting 9 Sanity in a rare situation we might even use Research Librarian to fetch it and prevent it from stealing a hand slot. Of consideration was magnifying glass but we can't trigger its fast action to bounce it back so I went with other cards. I also considered Book of Shadows but we only have Shrivelling which can use extra charges and I think we have enough uses of it in solo.

Next up our Spells these are pretty self explanatory. Shrivelling and Wither are to fight monsters and are pretty high priority especially given our poor evasion skill. I'd love more ways to deal with monsters but we are pretty limited by the card pool. Last up is Alchemical Transmutation which should be the level 2 version (I couldn't publish it with that one as it's not released yet), I'm not sure how needed this card is but we do have some pretty expensive cards and being able to quickly build up resources I think can be some help. If we don't need it, it's icons aren't too bad so we can always commit it.

On to accessories: Usually I only pack 2 copies of 1 accessory but again with our restrictions I think more makes sense especially as they are expendable. Disc of Itzamna is a great way to deal with enemies especially if we stack the encounter deck with a Scroll of Secrets we ideally want it early to get a use out of it then switch to one of our stat boosters. Holy Rosary is an important relatively cheap willpower boost along with soak for sanity that is always nice in Carcosa. St. Hubert's Key fulfills a similar purpose and also helps our Intellect.

All alone in the body slot is our helpful Bulletproof Vest which helps deal with our low Health.

For our Ally slot we have 2 expendable selections. Our Arcane Initiate helps us find our combat spells especially if we need a second copy of Shrivelling but we can easily throw them away once they've gotten us what we need. The same can be said for the Research Librarian which quickly gets us whatever tome we need most. I considered Anna Kaslow and more Tarot but we would want her to show up right away and stick around which prevents us from using other allies.

In our Tarot slot we of course have Four of Cups to help our willpower which Daisy starts only mediocre at.

Next in our slotless items is Fieldwork. This card I'm not that sure of we ideally want to move once each turn so it will often trigger but we'll usually use it to investigate which we are already pretty good at. If I cared less about an extra weakness I'd consider replacing it with another Scroll of Secrets and a Disc of Itzamna but we have a lot for those slots already and fieldwork is slotless. Daisy's Tote Bag bares mentioning as a super useful slotless item in our deck i wish we could run backpack to semi tutor for it :).

We also have in our permanent slots Studious. It's an awesome card but I was wary about it given our hand limit but it works well with Four of Cups and we'll have a guaranteed selection of 3 cards to gear up with so I think it's important.

And there you go a thematic heavily restricted deck that I still think functions. If you run it in a scenario with Whispers in your head those cards are essentially blank or if you want you can put them right away in your hand to remind you of the restriction. Enjoy and remember to always listen to Whispers in your head!