Minh Thi Phan plays with Cats and Stones

Hey guys! I pulled together this fantastic Minh deck that I will be eager to play once the Dream Eaters expansion gets released. It is based on @StartWithTheName's Minhfinity Stones deck that was published several months ago and uses elements of a variation a tried a while ago. The main difference between @StartWithTheName's deck and this one is that it uses the about-to-be-released Miss Doyle and it relies heavily on that asset (and Ancient Stone of course) to handle enemies! I'm not sure how effiecent it will be but I expect it be very fun, because, truth be told, those cats are simply awsome!

I 'd first like to mention some core elements of the deck that don't have big difference between the 2 decks:

The deck does the classic Seeker stuff (ie. get clues, advance the act, etc.), but has the ability to deal with some enemies on its own. For that we rely on Miss Doyle and the 3 cats that you get with her, along with Ancient Stone: Knowledge of the Elders and can either evade enemies or kill them using the Stone's auto-damage mechanic by drawing cards while engaged with the enemy without getting attacks of opportunity. Sometimes we can do both. In order to be able to deal with enemies with the Stone consistently we need big charges, which you can get by using Drawing Thin(s) during the identification of Ancient Stone (1) (allows you to get 8-11 charges on it) and that should generally be relatively easy to do with Higher Education. One big downside of the deck is that it requires a lot of setup, which means you will be sitting idle for most of the early game, but in order to cover that weakness we run Deduction and Winging It (which is expected to be played multiple times during the scenario) for a lot of bonus clues and we try not to lose too much tempo from enemies by dealing with them using no more than 1 action (when possible). We also run Pathfinder and Track Shoes, both of which can save us a lot of actions on the long run. Another element is that we run a lot of cards of which there is only 1 copy in the deck. This shouldn't worry you because we can dig for them with Mr. "Rook" and we have very high card draw. We are expected to draw our whole deck at least once (sometimes twice) through the scenario, so we are going to see all our assets. A major weakness this deck has over @StartWithTheName's is that we rely almost solely on the Cats for enemy handling (the Stone simply supports THEM) and another downside is that the deck is probably not good for higher difficulties due to lack of sufficient boosters for regular investigations. Luckily for us, we 're packing Higher Education.

Upgrades

Core

1. Higher Education (skip if you 're playing with the Taboo list or buy it later)

2. 1x "I've got a plan!", 1x Mind over Matter --> 2x Ancient Stone (1)

3. 2x Ancient Stone (1) --> 2x Ancient Stone: Knowledge of the Elders

4. 1x Fire Axe --> 1x Pathfinder

5. Charisma

6. 1x Mind over Matter --> 1x Miss Doyle

7. 2x Rabbit's Foot --> 2x Grisly Totem (3)

Essential

1. 2x Deduction --> 2x Deduction (2)

2. 1x Overpower --> 1x Cryptic Research

Luxury

1. Relic Hunter

2. 2x Studious

3. 2x Magnifying Glass --> 2x Magnifying Glass (1)

One issue this deck has is that it may have trouble dealing with The King in Yellow early in the campaign, before you upgrade into Grisly Totem (3). I originally had Working a Hunch instead of Live and Learn, but I favoured Live and Learn, mostly because of its icon. The problem here is that you may have to commit more than 3 cards to clear it in order to get enough skill icons (Grisly Totem gives more icons, so it solves that problem). I figured that Grisly Totem (0) might be the solution, but the card draw from Rabbit's Foot is really necessary to keep the deck going, so I favoured that instead. I believe the high card draw of the deck can make up for this disadvantage.

Playing the Deck

So, even though I haven't actually played the deck yet, I have tested it several times in the card draw simulator, so I 've gotten the feel of how it rolls. Hence, I can give small guide:

Mulligan for Magnifying Glass, Mr. "Rook", Drawing Thin, Rabbit's Foot/Grisly Totem (3), Analytical Mind and Ancient Stone (4), in that order. Even though Miss Doyle is really necessary for the deck to function properly, your high card draw and searching capabilities will guarantee you 'll get her later so you can throw her away, but if you happen to have a lot of those cards in your opening hand, you can consider keeping her.

Draw hard and make money with Drawing Thin and Rabbit's Foot/Grisly Totem. Use Track Shoes and Drawing Thin together for free resources and cards. At the early game, you will usually want to save your cards for The King in Yellow, but using some to fuel Grisly Totem and Analytical Mind is ok, especially if you don't have Mr. "Rook". If you have Scavenging you can juggle your Magnifying Glasses and Ancient Stones. This helps a lot for The King in Yellow.

Don't play Miss Doyle, unless you also have Ancient Stone on the table. She's not very useful on her own. For maximum efficiency, you need all your assets on the table. Miss Doyle will usually be one of the last assets you play. After you 're setup, you 're good to go and you are able to deal with almost anything. This is where the fun begins:

The 3 Cats: Hope, Zeal and Augur

The 3 Cats are all awsome. They are very strong, because all of them have very powerful effects. Of those cats, though, we actually need 2: Hope and Zeal. Augur is almost useless in this deck, because (obviously) you 're playing Minh Thi Phan. Well, to be honest, 1 guarranteed clue for an action every now and then is not too bad, but not a big deal either. The best value she can have in this deck, actually, is to save you from a when you try to clear The King in Yellow.

So, the other 2 Cats are what we want. If you 're fully set-up when you play Miss Doyle, you have 66% chance to get a useful cat by default. With these cats, we can evade enemies and in combination with Ancient Stone and the other assets we can deal a lot of damage to one or more enemies and sometimes, we can do it with guarranteed success!! How we do it:

Dealing with enemies using Zeal and Hope combined with Ancient Stone

• Use Hope to evade. Simple as that. With Track Shoes, you 're at 6 . You also have Live and Learn in case you draw a bad token. Then you can investigate committing cards and trigger Drawing Thin/Grisly Totem/Analytical Mind to draw cards and kill the enemy with the Stone.

• Use Hope to evade and commit Eureka!/Unexpected Courage/Live and Learn and trigger Grisly Totem + Analytical Mind (+ Drawing Thin -as bonus if your skill value is high enough) and draw 2-4 cards, resulting in a successful evade and up to 4 damage distributed to enemies at your location.

• Use Zeal to attack and commit Overpower/Unexpected Courage/Live and Learn and trigger Grisly Totem + Analytical Mind (+ Drawing Thin -as bonus, again) and draw 2-4 cards, dealing 3-5 damage among enemies at your location (you get 1 bonus damage from attacking).

• Use the discard action on Zeal or Hope to attack or evade and trigger 2x Drawing Thin (you don't care about the difficulty of the test here -you automatically succeed). With Zeal you deal 3 damage and with Hope you deal 2 damage and evade an enemy, and you get that without committing any cards and at 100% success rate!

(and finally, the big stuff:)

• Use the discard action on Zeal or Hope and commit Resourceful. Trigger Grisly Totem + Analytical Mind + 2x Drawing Thin (again -you don't care about the difficulty of the test) and draw 4 cards. With Zeal, you deal 5 damage (+1 from attacking) and with Hope you deal 4 and get an evade, but the best part here is that you get your Cat back after the test ends (with Resourceful), for later use. Again, all of that 100% success rate!!

Note that this list doesn't fully cover all possible combinations of cards and abilities you can use, but is more of a general guideline on how these cards can be used. Also note that if you have the second Totem down (with Relic Hunter), damage count goes up by 1 in almost all cases and it is doubled if you have the second Ancient Stone out, so you can be a real boss-killer!!

Don't miss the and icons on Zeal, Hope and Augur! They can be used to fuel Analytical Mind and Grisly Totem when you 're using one of your other Cats and you can get them back by shuffling the one you used into your deck. Shuffling, by the way, a Cat into your deck to get another Cat from your discard is totally ok. Except for the fact that this is what these Cats are supposed to do anyway, your high card draw and Mr. "Rook" can get them back for you easily.

Other Stuff

Early in the campaign, before you get Grisly Totem (3) you will have Rabbit's Foot. This card can not only help you with card draw, but it can also trigger Ancient Stone while you are engaged with the enemy: Take a Fight or Evade action, pop Drawing Thin and after the attack or evasion attempt fails, pop Rabbit's Foot for an additional card draw. This way, you can deal 2-3 damage to enemies without expending any cards.

The Cats will also have diminished value until you upgrade to Grisly Totem (3). They can still do some work, but their real power will be displayed after you get it. At least, with Rabbit's Foot, you can deal with some enemies without them. Besides, Hope will always be useful for her evade action.

We also bring Cryptic Research later on, which is a good boost to the deck's setup and of course it can be combined with the Stone for more auto-damage. We do cut 1 copy of Overpower which is important, but it's good to speed things up. I 've also found (in a similar deck that I have played) that second Cryptic Research is somewhat superfluous -we are drawing hard, so we don't need to spend more XP on card draw, we can spend it on other stuff.

Use Scavenging to refill the Stones! Obvious one, but worth pointing out that when your Stone starts to run out of charges, you should play your second Stone or a second Magnifying Glass to push it into the discard and get it back with Scavenging. Don't wait until the Stones run out of charges completely. When they are at 2-3 charges, you should aim to refill them.