Dreaming of Desert Riches

This deck is the final upgrade version from a 3p Dream Quest run. The quirks to this deck are rooted with that campaign at its focus and was run prior to the reveal of upgraded WC(3).

This deck was not one I planned out a ton nor did I expect it to super well over its campaign, but it kind of happened to become a deck I loved and one that did VERY well in its campaign, doing the vast majority of Act 4 of Where the Gods Dwell and passing far more tests than a character with a combined base statline of 4 has any business passing.

At Preston's release, Well Connected gave him a solid ability to buff his stats enough with some time accumulating wealth, but came with the draw back of one use per round, which meant that a turn with a critical mythos test that needed passing required using up your one generally good test for the turn. Eye of the Djinn now gives us a second solid stat test per turn AND its value starts high from turn 1 rather than having to build it up in power over a scenario. Plus, it can be possibly used more per turn if the blesses flow. So, these two pieces to give Preston actual stats means a lot of the deck need to do two big things:

1. Bank a lot of money quickly to get Well Connected's boost up ASAP. A 5-stat tends to be functional, and after multiple upgrades, I've found 20 resources to be a decent number to reach and sustain.
2. Keep the Blesses in the bag.

In this deck, there's really only two cards that actually work directly towards 1: Another Day, Another Dollar and Faustian Bargain. Family Inheritance can contribute every so often early if you happen to miss your setup and likely will let you accumulate your upkeep resources. Since our soft target is 20 resources and we start at 9 with double ADAD (meaning turn 2 you hit a +2 value on a skill), it's at MOST 11 turns of upkeeps to get there, but you can accelerate that on any turn where you don't spend most of your resources/actions from Inheritance, with Faustian turns give a good supercharge to the value. Added bonus from Faustian: the curses it generates turn around to both help Djinn AND create blesses via Token of Faith.

Unlike money, which is a slow gain but nearly permanent once acquired (you COULD spend them, but spending more than 4 resources per turn seems odd unless it's an emergency since it eats your stats), Bless tokens need a LOT more work to keep up unless you have outside help. My practical deck relied heavily on Tempt Fate from me and my teammates and Keep Faith with Token of Faith providing a couple here and there. Spirit of Humanity was NOT in my original deck (or it wasn't until the end of the campaign), but it's a solid way to maintain both Bless and Curse in the bag for Djinn.

So, with those key combo pieces and their setup explained, what's going on with the rest of the deck?

In this campaign, I was working with a very strong fighter and a solid clue character so I had room to flex a little bit, but Preston's pool access does not really help him fight well. I did most of the evasion as needed to keep the cluever clear to work or to give the fighter time to setup as needed and typically worked on getting a clue or two as needed or when there wasn't a ton of other things that were of immediate concern.

This is, at its core, a Bless Deck both in terms of generation and use. Ancient Covenant is bread-and-butter in Bless decks and probably one of the strongest payoffs in the game, reducing the chances of autofails dramatically in a highly-blessed bag.

Cunning and Money Talks both give payoffs from the same thing we're already working on with Well Connected. Fun fact: Money Talks let me clear The Black Core in a single test. Cunning is another part to that clue emphasis over fighting, alongside Old Keyring.

Rise to the Occasion and Lucky! are just helpful tech when you need to make that extra test on a turn or work around not having a huge stat from Well Connected early.

Skeptic is in here in conjunction with Favor of the Moon to help reduce the impact of the curses on others while allowing us to benefit from Djinn's extra action ability. Skeptic lets us possibly pass the tests when we're intentionally using a curse from Favor with Djinn for an extra action.

Delilah O'Rourke and Streetwise both serve as money sinks when your resource pool is solid and you either need some extra damage or need to boost your stat value a little beyond what your key pieces offer. Early game, you probably won't get much use out of them, but I've seen solid payoffs from both with an otherwise stagnant refilling resource stack towards the end of the scenario.

Finally, just as an afterthought for a card that's only in as a safety net, "You handle this one!" is here when you have most of your turn planned and can't afford to waste one of your buffs for the round or the card would be a huge wrench in the works.

This deck is a VERY flexible deck at its core, since Well Connected and Eye can modify any stat, but not many times per round. You have a couple of tricks if you need to pass extra tests or the difficulty is extraordinarily high (see my note on Money Talks above). If something were to require the deck to lose resources (like in Witching Hour on one location), you'll generally have a bad time. And this deck is VERY MUCH built for multiplayer, as its damage is non-existent early in a campaign.

Early versions of this deck also included Predestined and Beloved for bless shenanigans as well as "Watch this!" and Dario El-Amin to help with money payoffs. But the levels stay fairly consistent over the campaign. I think early on, my Well Connected hit 30 resources but stabilized overtime to 20.

As always, any comments or questions are welcome!