Slash Fiction

Being a good librarian means infinite patience with undergrads who return books 2 weeks overdue with coffee stains on the covers. It means being able to work long hours researching for snooty academics who feel that literature reviews are beneath them. It means painstakingly returning everything to its proper place under the Dewey Decimal System when some frazzled postgrad leaves a pile of books strewn on a table in the reading room after pulling an all-nighter. And, apparently, it means dealing with crazed cultists and otherworldly monsters who want to plunder the Restricted Collection for forbidden lore. That last problem might need a new approach...

Analysis of Parallel Daisy

It's no secret that the Parallel Daisy Walker deckbuilding is a bit underwhelming. You get access to tomes from any class, and up to 5 level 0 Guardian or Mystic cards. In exchange, you give up unlimited access to Mystic 0-2 and access to non-Tome Seeker cards levels 4-5, which includes the crucial Abigail Foreman. Most Daisy decks find good use for St. Hubert's Key so that's already 2 of your 5 slots spoken for, and there's precious few good Guardian cards for a 5-intellect, 2-combat Seeker. The only tomes you get that you couldn't already get with 5/2 Seeker/Mystic are Book of Psalms, Grimm's Fairy Tales, Scroll of Secrets (Mystic version only), Book of Shadows and the upcoming Astronomical Atlas. That's a really quite poor selection in light of what you're giving up.

And yet I always found it kind of appealing. Maybe it was being surprised and impressed with Grimm's Fairy Tales in Stella Clark, or my love of Carolyn Fern. Or maybe just being contrary!

Core Concept

This deck aims to make Daisy into a more flex role investigator without trying to make her into a Spellcaster. It also lets me make a really terrible pun with the deck name. Ignoring Mystic assets entirely allows us to cover for Daisy's weaknesses - low health and weak defensive stats - and rely on her excellent investigative ability to contribute. By packing a Machete and the skills, events and Dream Diary to wield it, we can avoid the need to rely on a Guardian to follow us around - and make some contributions of our own if it's boss fight time.

"But Dai!", I hear you cry, "Are you OK, did you hit your head? Daisy has 2 base Combat and needs her hand slots for tomes!", and to that I say... thank you for your concern, it's only a mild concussion, I swear. Seekers can rely on events for the occasional bit of fighting, for sure, but Daisy with a Machete is (at baseline) no less accurate than Daisy with Shrivelling - base 3 to hit - and doesn't need to worry about ammo. With the standard Daisy front-of-card, you only really need a single action-triggered tome in one hand slot, and getting the Daisy's Tote Bag out (and using the Advanced version because it's nice to have!) lets us have the Dream Diary, Machete, an action-triggered tome, and even have a space for the The Necronomicon.

I've played this deck concept (with minor deviations) through The Innsmouth Conspiracy on Hard difficulty so while I wouldn't exactly call it optimal, I'm satisfied it can stand up to a decent challenge. In essence, because Daisy and the Seeker card pool are so good at investigating baseline, able to easily achieve a consistent score of 9 intellect before any one-time skill commits, there's plenty of room in a deck to add other options. The deck should also be particularly well-suited to The Circle Undone, which emphasises flexibility rather than specialisation, and has the horror healing to be an asset in Path to Carcosa.

Second Wind and Hallowed Mirror provide an excellent amount of healing at low cost, covering for Daisy's low health and helping her keep going, which is particularly important in Innsmouth where the amount of damage going around is truly punishing. Anatomical Diagrams is an absolute standout card, providing a de facto +2 to hit (or almost guaranteeing attacks or evades against enemies with 2 base Combat/Agility), and can be used to support a more fighty investigator as well - and with 9 base Sanity and the Hallowed Mirror and Book of Psalms, it'll be online most of the time.

Upgrade Priority

This deck is shown at a bare-bones level of upgrades (the amount you can achieve without adding a basic weakness in Standalone). The side deck shows level 0 cards that will be subbed back in when we take Ancestral Knowledge, as well as the various upgrades (with Enchanted Blade for before we get the exp to purchase Machete). The priority from here is first on establishing a strong economy and getting a few key pieces into place, and then adding several more ways to contribute to combat:

• Grisly Totem (3), replacing Hallowed Mirror.

• Ancestral Knowledge, adding in Inspiring Presence, Preposterous Sketches and Shortcut.

• Backpack (2), replacing Practice Makes Perfect.

• Pathfinder, replacing one copy of Plan of Action.

• Encyclopedia (2), replacing Book of Psalms

• Mind over Matter (2), replacing Shortcut.

• Two copies of Studious.

Then upgrading the skills as shown. At this point, we're at 47 exp (44 if we opt to use Shrewd Analysis), which is likely enough for most campaigns, but if we have more experience to burn, we can upgrade Preposterous Sketches, replace Deep Knowledge with Cryptic Research, and take Relic Hunter and a second copy of Grisly Totem.

Replacing Book of Psalms is something that depends on the rest of the team - if other investigators have upgraded into more efficient bless generation or the bless tokens are otherwise seeming superfluous, it's time to get rid of it, so it could be higher up or lower down in the upgrade priority depending on the circumstances.

Playstyle

We're still playing a 5-intellect seeker, so our main job is to get clues. I probably don't need to tell you how a 5-intellect investigator gets clues, but until we upgrade to Encyclopedia, we can't trivially handle high-shroud locations without boosts, so bear that in mind - one or two static intellect boosts have been sacrificed on the altar of flexibility.

Book of Psalms is for support purposes - help out the entire team with bless tokens and enable bless strategies for your friends. Level 0 bless generation cards are mostly underwhelming, and for anyone other than Daisy, Book of Psalms is one such underwhelming card - but for Daisy, you can drop 2 bless tokens a round into the bag. Coupled with extra horror healing to keep Anatomical Diagrams online, counter The Necronomicon and help the team stay on its feet, it's actually a really useful way to get through the first few scenarios intact.

Once our rig is set up, we can react flexibly to the situation on the table, whether that's dropping huge investigate tests on key locations, engaging and taking out an enemy if the monster-hunter needs to reload, throwing a couple of heals around, or pitching in when the group is swarmed by enemies.

Mulligan Priority

In principle, this deck doesn't need to worry too much about mulligan - it's happy to see any of its assets in the opening hand, merely mulliganing away duplicates. Economy cards aren't a particularly bad thing to have in the opening hand, either. That said, this allows us to adapt our mulligan strategy to other players' opening hands - if the fighty investigators have been unlucky and not managed to find their enemy management tools, we can emphasise digging for Machete and Dream Diary, or if they have that aspect covered to start with, we can prioritise digging for intellect boosts and card draw. Dr Milan Christopher, of course, is always best when played early in the scenario so never mulligan him away!

Since mulligans are made in player order, this incentivises us to be last in player order, so bear that in mind when selecting lead investigator. This is often good practice in general for low-health clue-gatherers - being last in player order means that if you draw an enemy or treachery that could be a problem, the Guardian or Mystic will know whether it's safe to use "Let Me Handle This!" or Ward of Protection (2) to protect you, having already seen what everyone else has drawn.

To an extent, it's also useful to know the scenarios we'll be playing. This is by no means mandatory - I went through Innsmouth mostly sight unseen with this deck - but it can help to know whether a scenario will require strong combat ability from the beginning or whether you'll be better served emphasising investigation from the start. Don't worry too much about this, of course, but it bears mentioning!

Variations on a Theme

The biggest question when starting this deck is - does Book of Psalms make sense? It's great bless generation and the horror healing can be surprisingly useful, but if no-one on the team has any use for bless tokens, it's a bit of a waste. We could replace Second Wind with Rite of Sanctification but unless we strongly anticipate needing to help out other investigators with their resource economy, it's all a bit of a roundabout way to solve resource economy when we could just take Emergency Cache. It's something to discuss with the rest of the group - if no-one really needs Bless tokens, we can opt for the more straightforward Encyclopedia or Old Book of Lore instead.

When I played this deck, I actually went down a slightly different route, adding a small amount of Curse generation - I took Tempt Fate with Ancestral Knowledge and took Fey and Favor of the Moon. It's the most simplistic of Curse builds - chosen because one of the other investigators was playing with Curse token cards so it made sense to lean into it. It's an effective enough combination, but it doesn't add much to a deck that already struggles for deck space so I can't recommend it unless it makes sense for the group.

As much as I love the idea of Daisy using a Machete in one hand and a book in the other, the limitations of the weapon are pretty obvious - since the extra damage only works when you are engaged with the enemy (and only that enemy), it can be a pain to structure the turn to make proper use of it. Using the Encyclopedia for a Combat boost will provoke an attack of opportunity even with Daisy's ability, and having to spend an action to engage can be a problem when dealing with high-health, non-Massive enemies. It's therefore equally possible to stick with the Enchanted Blade (0) for the full campaign - the limited charges are certainly restrictive but it's not like we're playing a primary fighter, and even the .45 Automatic is a possibility.

If we do go down the Enchanted Blade route, we can emphasise it more strongly if we like. Eldritch Sophist and Flesh Ward can be combined for survivability and keeping the Enchanted Blade charged up just like in my Roland Banks Sophistic Swordmaster deck. However, if going that route, it probably makes more sense to stick with Daisy's standard deckbuilding, eschew the Guardian cards and take Eldritch Sophist, Mists of R'lyeh (2) as a source of charges and evasion, Enraptured, and a Secret-using tome asset like Encyclopedia (0) upgrading into Old Book of Lore (3). I may throw together another decklist using this combination and publish it or link it here, but I don't want to confuse by publishing two pieces of slashfic at once! If you'd like to see that, let me know.

Conclusion

This deck was a lot of fun to play and write about! You could certainly make a more straightforwardly optimal seeker build but that's pretty much a solved problem at this point, and there's always appeal in making something unconventional with the less popular options available. Stay safe out there - horrors lurk in the stacks and shelves wherever lore is stored, but try not to get blood (or ichor) on the books.