Card draw simulator
| Derived from |
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| None. Self-made deck here. |
| Inspiration for | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Poker Face Mandy - Starter | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1.0 |
| Mandy Deck | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1.0 |
| Mandy for the win | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1.0 |
BlueHg · 286
This is a lean and mean standalone Rogue Mandy deck that uses Three Aces to abuse potential. You expect to cycle your deck many times in a game, getting a lot of use out of Mr. "Rook", Practice Makes Perfect, Dream-Enhancing Serum, and Easy Mark to do so. To facilitate this, I've build the deck with a 30 card deck size and only 9 xp to keep the ball rolling so you hit the minimum amount of weaknesses possible. This deck is really strong, and I want to get this out the door before the next Taboo list drops, as I expect both Mr. Rook and Pendant of the Queen will be Taboo'd in some form or another.
Playstyle
Mulligan for Mr. Rook. I think this should be obvious in a Mandy deck, but it bears repeating. Start using him to grab Dream-Enhancing Serum and economy (Crack the Case and Easy Mark) asap, and fish out your weaknesses. Other cards nice to see in your opening hand are the aforementioned Dream-Enhancing Serum, the ever-ubiquitous Pathfinder, and Death • XIII. Don't be shy to use a single Easy Mark on its own early game if you need the tempo--one of the big mistakes using this card is waiting until you have multiple copies instead of using it when you need it. Early game, don’t be afraid to chuck your extra Pathfinders or other cards if you need to—-you’ll see them again on your next cycle.
After that, it's pretty simple to just start doing the Mandy thing, zooming everywhere and hoovering up all the clues. Using Practice Makes Perfect early to grab Deductions and Perceptions early and let those maintain your early tempo. Practice Makes Perfect into Perception into Dream-Enhancing Serum triggers feels wonderful. After you're set up a little bit, you can also use Practice Makes Perfect to start assembling Three Aces too. Often it's better to use Mandy's ability for Practice Makes Perfect even though we're all used to abusing it with Rook.
Your only enemy management in the deck is Pendant of the Queen, so Segments of Onyx should be your early Rook target once you have a bit of cash.
Level 0 Deck for Campaign
Remove:
- 2x Pathfinder
- 1x Death • XIII
- 3x Segment of Onyx
- 3x Easy Mark
- 1x Double or Nothing
- 3x Three Aces
Add:
- 2x Shortcut
- 2x Fingerprint Kit
- 2x Emergency Cache
- 2x Eureka!
- 3x Slip Away/Mind over Matter/"I've got a plan!" (any combination)
- 2x Quick Thinking
Pretty generic L0 Seeker deck. At this point you should also consider whether you want any of the untranslated/unidentified cards. Dream Diary (Dreams of a Child) will be really good for the high level version of the deck, Three Aces will let you really abuse Archaic Glyphs (Guiding Stones), and Ancient Stones (Knowledge of the Elders) will give you some solid killing potential after you've bought Cryptic Research. These can be easily inserted over Fingerprint Kit. We're skipping Strange Solution (Acidic Ichor) because it's honestly too slow for this deck, but if you plan to run this true solo or have little enemy management on your team you may consider it.
You can also swap the Magnifying Glasses for some Hawk-Eye Folding Cameras. I didn't like it as much because it's slow compared to how fast the rest of the deck is, but Mandy can find them early and it provides some further encounter deck protection, so your mileage may vary.
A couple notes on unusual choices--Mandy can of course make good use of Quick Thinking with her high . Two of the three enemy management cards are pretty typical for Seekers, but Slip Away is a card that Mandy in particular is well-suited for, since she'll test at base 8 +.
Upgrade Path
Priority
3x Slip Away/Mind over Matter/"I've got a plan!" 3x Segment of Onyx
Now you've got a functional endgame deck. Isn't Seeker great?
Next Targets (in order)
- 1x Shortcut 1x Pathfinder
- 2x Emergency Cache + 1x Fingerprint Kit 3x Easy Mark
- 2x Quick Thinking + 1x Fingerprint Kit 3x Three Aces
- 1x Shortcut 1x Pathfinder
All that and you've only spent 5 xp. The remaining swaps are the Eureka!s for Double or Nothing and Death • XIII to get to the Standalone deck, but that's up to you if you want to prioritize other upgrades below first.
More Upgrades!
- 1x Death • XIII
- 2x Studious
- 1x Double or Nothing
- 2x Magnifying Glass L1
- 2x Deduction L2
- 2x Dream Diary (Dreams of a Child) (if in the L0 build)
- 2x Archaic Glyphs (Guiding Stones) (if in the L0 build)
- 2x Ancient Stone (Unidentified) Ancient Stones (Knowledge of the Elders) (if you bought the L1 version)
- 2x Cryptic Research
- 1x No Stone Unturned L5
- 1x Pnakotic Manuscripts
- 1x Higher Education
I've already talked about the sidequest cards, and Deduction L2 and Studious are obvious easy upgrades. Death is mostly to get Mandy to 8 , though you could also do this in a more clunky way with Charisma and Dr. Milan Christopher. However, that might be worthwhile if you're using sidequest cards that take a hand slot (thus bumping out Magnifying Glass).
Double or Nothing is fine as a 1x because you'll see it repeatedly as you cycle your deck anyway.
Cryptic Research is just bonkers early game acceleration, and becomes even more bonkers when you have some Dream-Enhancing Serums in play. This'll increase your cycling speed, allowing you to abuse Three Aces more and more.
No Stone Unturned L5 is used for your friends, not for you. You're already seeing all of the cards in your deck super often between Cryptic Research, Rook, and Practice Makes Perfect that it's silly to use it on yourself unless you're in a pinch.
Pnakotic Manuscripts is definitely not a priority, but it combos well with using Double or Nothing on a fellow investigator's skill test, and you're already running DoN. In particular, it helps your monster killer Flamethrower down that big boss enemy.
Higher Education is there because you might honestly need an xp sink. You'll always hit the handsize requirement, and it'll help you during the Mythos Phase.
Summary
This deck is lean and mean and gets stuff done fast, and it uses an incredibly fun card (Three Aces) to its fullest potential. It's a pretty standard Mandy with just enough flair to make it an absolute pleasure to play. Take it for a spin before the next Taboo list drops!
Note: This is not a real card.
| 8 comments |
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Apr 20, 2020 |
Apr 20, 2020I played a very similar deck through the nightmare part of the dreamer campaign and it's just ludicrous how effective the deck is, cycling 3-4 times each scenario and using Three Aces an equal amount of times... Side note, Practice Makes Perfect does not draw the chosen card, it adds it to your hand. So it does not trigger Dream-Enhancing Serum. Still, it's very effective to locate 1-2 of said aces during a test. Or all 3 with 2 of them and mandys ability. |
Apr 20, 2020
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Apr 21, 2020Yes, anything that searches more than 3 cards is great with Mandy. I used "Watch this!" and Quick Thinking in place of easy mark, as both don’t require actions and can be Doubled. Add 3 aces for auto success, though their effect won’t be doubled. |
Jun 22, 2020Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it against Mandy's deck-building rules to include the Taboo'd version of Double or Nothing, considering it now costs 3 experience? Perhaps Momentum could find a home in this deck as part the Practice Makes Perfect package? |
Jun 22, 2020
Momentum is a good shout though, to leverage her naturally high Intellect value. It might be a good include over Death for instance. |
Jun 23, 2020
But seriously, thanks for clearing that up, I appreciate it. On the topic of Momentum over something like Death, I recently played a similar list true solo through Night of the Zealot, and found that Momentum really pulled its weight. Since automatically successful tests are considered to have a difficulty of (0), commiting Momentum alongside Three Aces guarantees max Momentum value, which in turn synergizes with Double or Nothing, and so on. Really fun stuff. |
Jun 24, 2020
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I like it. I tested a similar deck, albeit without the Double or Nothings, two-handed though hard TCU and it performed really, really well.
One critique: Death • XIII seems unnecessary — Mandy finds both her Mag Glasses quite quickly and effortlessly which puts her at a very satisfactory 7. You have an abundant supply of Perceptions and Deductions for times you need to bounce higher and no "I've got a Plan" or any other card that forces a naked test.