Monterey Jack: my definitive solo deck

This is my definitive solo Monterey Jack deck, forged after a couple of campaigns and various standalones. This one walked easily through The Dream Eaters, even defeating Nyarlathotep (although, let's remember that solo victory in that scenario is largely down to how the cards draw from the Encounter deck!)

Goal when I built the deck

• Use Underworld Support and In the Thick of It for shenanigans and victory.
• Prove to myself that a Highlander deck, starting with 2 physcial trauma, is viable.
• Create a deck that's as lightning fast as the legendary Ursula DUBs deck.

Goals Achieved?

Heck, yes. This deck flies fast. While the DUBs deck gets its speed from needing no setup, this one combines card draw and action compression to get lots of stuff done each round.

10 assets? Isn't that a lot?

No. Once Eon Chart, Ariadne's Twine and Dr. Milan Christopher are online, you have so many spare actions, playing all the assets is possible. In Search for Kadath, I had all 10 assets in play.

10 assets? Is that enough? What if you don't get your core assets?

Not a problem. I was worried that with Underworld Support, I wouldn’t draw the key cards quickly enough. At any time when I didn’t have the assets in play, I had enough events (Breaking and Entering, Eavesdrop, Backstab, Sneak Attack) to make progress. Also, card-draw was accelerated by the skill cards, Monterey's innate ability, and Pickpocketing.

Healing? Thermos? Isn’t that inefficient?

Using three actions in a turn to Draw a healing card, Play a healing card and then Heal is inefficient, sure. But you’re Monterey. Once you have Hiking Boots, Eon Chart and Pickpocketing in play, moving, investigating, evading and drawing are all compressed into free actions, so you do have the actions to spare. I did have to use the #Thermos a few times to save my dwindling Sanity.

Where is Gené Beauregard?

Gene is an amazing Ally. I did run her in this deck, but she didn’t shine, but that’s because I was trying to do too many things at once in that deck. In the end, I found the Milan/Chart/Twine combo more fun. I have no doubt there are many amazing deck builds for her.

Piloting.

• Basically, mulligan hard for Death • XIII. You'll be drawing so fast, you don't need any other card in hand.
• You’re truly up and running once Eon Chart, Ariadne's Twine and Dr. Milan Christopher are in play. Until then, your events and skills will keep you progressing.

Investigating

Mag glass, Milan and Death get your Intellect to a base of 7 while investigating. Breaking and Entering and Eavesdrop are helpful if those aren’t in play.

Evading and moving

Monterey evades like a knife through soft butter. Hiking Boots gets you to a base of 6 evade, and then you’ve got your Bullwhip, and event cards to assist. Extra movement comes from the Boots and Nimble. Scout Ahead also gets you where you need to be, quickly, especially in big maps.

Fighting.

In Dream Eaters I did more evading than fighting, but the Trusty Bullwhip, Backstab and Sneak Attack all boost damage enough for solo success.

Standout cards:

• Underworld Support is so much fun. I love the concept of the Highlander deck. Getting the balance of assets/skills/events right was a challenge (as I found in other Monterey decks I built), but with lots of card draw in this deck, I got it right here. I hadn’t appreciated that an Underworld Support deck needs so little XP to be fully boosted. That’s such a good bonus!
• Eon Chart and Ariadne's Twine are the backbone. Along with Hiking Boots, There's so much action compression, Monterey flies around and can trigger his ability every round.
• Monterey Jack. Of course, none of this happens without a great investigator. Monterey is super fun. His ability lets him achieve so much, so quickly.

Starting deck and an upgrade path

Here’s the starting deck.

I used In the Thick of It to start with 3xp, picking Hiking Boots, Death • XIII and Forewarned (inspired by Twinal Deck from StartWithTheName)

Can I use this in Multiplayer?

I admit I’m still a bit puzzled for Monterey multiplayer. I played him as the main clue-getter in my Edge of the Earth blind run. I found it hard to build enough clue compression. Fingerprint Kit, Deduction, Pilfer and Stirring Up Trouble are possibilities (if you go with the latter, you could lean into Curse tech by adding Deep Knowledge and Blasphemous Covenant, too). Those cards add cost to the deck, and while this deck runs rich, my multiplayer experience felt less flush with cash.

Campaign highlight turn:

The power of this deck was clear in Search for Kadath where, amazingly, I managed to clear an entire region in one round, ready to move on. That’s three clues on three separate locations, with an enemy at one of them. (Note: Hunted by Corsairs was attached to the current Act at the start of this turn)

1. Action 1: Investigate Kadatheron. Pick up the clue and trigger Hiking Boots to move to Ruins of Ib (the Beings of Ib are there, aloof)
2. Trigger Eon Chart via a resource on Ariadne's Twine.
3. First free action: Play Breaking and Entering to Investigate, which also evades the (aloof) Beings of Ib and draws me a card via Pickpocketing. The evade wasn’t necessary, but I wanted the card-draw.
4. Second free action: move to Sarnath.
5. Action 2: Investigate Sarnath and pick up the clue
6. Action 3: Take the action on Hunted by Corsairs to clear the card, committing Nimble. Succeed, and use the effect from Nimble to move back to the the port in Kadatheron, with all clues collected.
7. End of round - I’m back at a Port location, ready to move on.

The End

Monterey Jack brings his Rogue-ness to Seeker style so well. I was surprised at how few native Rogue assets I needed in the final version of the deck; the level=0 Rogue events were the ones that I needed for the deck to work: while waiting to draw and play the key assets, those events ensured I kept making progress.