Infinite Wishes (Standalone Ready 19xp)

This is kind of a tech demo updating a relatively under-popularized combo ( Eldritch Sophist + Empty Vessel + source of charges = infinite wishes). Setting aside for a second whether we actually care about turning ~4 to ~8 tokens into 0s and if that's worth building an entire deck around, why isn't the combo that popular?

Well, first, there's only a handful of investigators that can take Empty Vessel and Eldritch Sophist without versatile: Roland Banks, Zoey Samaras, Carolyn Fern, Ursula Downs, and Vincent Lee.

Second, Prior to TSK, we had limited options for getting access to replenishing charges to feed the Empty Vessel. Only Zoey and Ursula can take Decorated Skull, only Ursula can take The Red Clock, these both take up that accessory slot, necessitating a Relic Hunter. None of them can take True Magick, Recharge Book of Shadows, or Bangle of Jinxes. Several of them can take Brand of Cthugha, but "around 6-9 extra wishes" sounds a lot less fun, even if in practice that's usually enough for a scenario. Overall the choices were limited and the combo, was it ever janky.

Well, Runic Axe solved that problem. all 5 investigators can take the axe, and empty vessel, and eldritch sophist. And this gives you infinite charges for the vessel, and we're in business. Upgrade the Axe with Saga (if you're not Carolyn, who can't check any boxes) and you'll have charges to spare, so you can even still fight with it.

And since the key card is a "Deck limit 1", why not wrap it in everyone's favorite "21" card hunter-killer? Dear reader, I present:

"Harry Potter Zoey Samaras and the Axe that Grants Infinite Wishes"

This is a 19xp standalone version. (don't forget to add the extra basic weakness)

You might consider the following (still 19xp) changes:

• Brand of Cthugha (4) Brand of Cthugha (1) + Relic Hunter (to play both Accessories) OR
• Brand of Cthugha (4) Brand of Cthugha (1) + In the Thick of It + Soul Sanctification (suggested by Valentin1331)

and/or

• Torrent of Power No Stone Unturned (to help find Eldritch Sophist)

to reset to a campaign starter

• Replace Runic Axe and Brand of Cthugha with .45 Automatic and Machete
• Replace Backpack (2) and Empty Vessel with the cards of your choice, maybe a "Get over here!" or Guard Dog etc.

Backpack (0) doesn't really do anything without the axe and vessel to go fetch, so there's not much point in using it. Further upgrades for going past 19XP are suggested below.

Summary

Clueing:☆☆ Fighting:☆☆☆☆☆ Mobility:☆ Mythos:☆☆☆☆ Consistency:☆☆☆

How to Have Infinite Wishes

Similar to 21 Thump Street which served as inspiration for the shell around the signature combo, the effective deck size is 21 non weakness cards, so a hard mulligan will see nearly half of these. Backpack (2) will see 12 of the remaining 19 after your opening hand. Between these and Prepared for the Worst, you should be all but guaranteed to see Vessel, Sophist, and Axe within the first few turns.

Lacking an Effective way to search for Eldritch Sophist is probably the biggest downside of this particular build, the other is that, at least in the standalone, you've got no space for Zoey's Cross, at least it has decent skill icons.

You can clue a little bit with Sixth Sense once you find it, but realistically this is a multiplayer pure combat build. Wish Eater does give you a lot of flexibility with taking less than strictly favorable tests, since a significant proportion of the bag is effectively 0 modifier for you.

Mulligan and First Turn(s)

The Combo

In case, dear reader, you aren't familiar with the underworld/STTP/Astounding Rev "Combo", here's the basics: your deck starts with 27 non-weakness cards. Put these on Stick to the Plan:

• Prepared for the Worst
• On the Hunt
• Emergency Cache or First Watch or Breach the Door

Stick to the Plan is a whole deck search effect, which will trigger Astounding Revelation for 2 more resources and put it in the discard. Per FAQ2.0 this no longer works, but you have a high chance of hitting the revelation off of backpack or prepared for the worst which will help cover the resource cost of the added search.

going into the Mulligan you'll now have 24 non-weakness cards, a hard mulligan (all 5 cards) will let you see up to 10 of these. Keep:

1. Eldritch Sophist
2. Backpack
3. Empty Vessel
4. Runic Axe

Mulligan the rest in the hope of getting them unless you have good reason. Backpack is probably more important than either Axe or Vessel, since it might find both for you, and Runic Axe is least important because you'll have two chances at it with Backpack and Prepared for the Worst. You can toss backpack back to try for Sophist if you already have Empty Vessel, but it's probably better to just deal with it, you can still have success using Wish Eater fairly. Brand of Cthugha is also a backup source of charges for either the Axe or the Vessel, but I wouldn't keep it in the opening hand.

Post Mulligan weaknesses matter again, but you've got 5 cards in your hand, that puts you at about 22 cards, so your searches go pretty deep, and hopefully that will let you find everything in short order. Torrent of Power could be No Stone Unturned to help you find the Sophist, but even with a reduced deck of 18 cards I felt like going 6 deep wasn't really enough. Mr. "Rook" is also a consideration, although the deck is already a little tight on opening cash:

Early Setup

Ideally we're putting Runic Axe, Eldritch Sophist and Empty Vessel into play as quickly as we can, they cost 9 resources and we only have 5 at first though. So an ideal first turn includes playing Emergency Cache off of STTP, putting two of the three in play, and finishing setup at the start of turn 2. Be careful of Scenarios that include the Chilling Cold encounter set though.

Realistically you'll probably need to play Backpack and/or Prepared for the Worst turn 1, So we're really looking at 10-11 resources. If you put Emergency Cache on STTP, you only actually have two targets for backpack, don't worry about it. You can choose not to do that to hopefully pull an extra card out now in case you missed Sophist during Mulligan, but I found generally that I preferred having the definite resources. E-Cache + Backpack + PFTW turn 1, assuming you hit Astounding Revelation will leave you with 8 resources at the end of the turn, ticking up to 9 in upkeep, which will then enable you to play the entire combo turn 2, assuming you've now assembled it.

Once all three cards are in play, you can freely start pushing a charge from the axe to the Vessel each turn with Eldritch Sophist, Feel free to convert to Wish Eater as soon as you can (although it's also fine to wait for an enemy to die first if one happens to be around.) Once Wish Eater is active you turn anywhere from about a quarter to nearly half the bag into 0s depending on scenario, which is a good place to be when you're fighting with the axe at 5-7 and investigating at 4 with Sixth Sense.

Soak with your face, that's what Wish Eater is for and you don't want to let the Sophist die.

Campaign upgrades

For a full campaign the deck has some small downsides in that it doesn't have a good reason to use Eldritch Sophist at level 0 but it's probably not worth the XP to wait on it either.

upgrade order from 0 to 19:

• .45 Automatic Runic Axe saga checked (3)
• Machete Brand of Cthugha(1)
• Guard Dog (or whatever) Empty Vessel (4)
• Stick to the Plan (6)
• "Get over here!"(or whatever) Backpack (2)(2)
• Brand of Cthugha (1) Brand of Cthugha (4) (3)

further upgrades to consider:

• Relic Hunter (3)
• Soul Sanctification (6)
• Runic Axe checkmarks!
• Enchant Weapon (3) possibly instead of brand if you want to go all-in on the runic axe.
• Fang of Tyr'thrha (4)
• Physical Training (2) or Physical Training (4)
• Well Prepared (2) - if you have good symbols from Relic Hunting Zoey's Cross or Physical Training.
• Bandolier (2) and a Cyclopean Hammer (5) (but if swinging a giant hammer that can't miss is your jam, seriously go check out 21 Thump Street )

For Runic Axe, probably further check Scriptweaver and Ancient Power since you won't be carrying any other weapon really and having the option to spend 5 charges in one turn (with some help from sophist) for 8 damage and +5/+5/+3 will help with that inevitable boss, but Hunt can also be quite useful in Zoey (in which case I'd probably skip ancient power and be satisfied with a solid +3/+1 damage weapon, just be aware you're gonna need awhile to chop down a big boss if you choose this route.

What if I want someone else to have Infinite Wishes?!

Nobody else who can run the combo can take Underworld Support, so you'll want to use the extra 5 cards to build in some redundancy at the cost of reducing the breadth of your backup gameplan and making the Empty Vessel harder to find.

Ursula Downs needs to check Heirloom on the axe, but then has the option to get extra janky with Relic Hunter and The Red Clock and possibly even Miskatonic Archaeology Funding to keep Whitton Greene and Eldritch Sophist in play at the same time as Dr. Elli Horowitz to further hold a Grotesque Statue if you think one charge manipulation combo isn't enough. Throw in a Charisma and you can add Mr. "Rook" to pass the secrets off Sophist; or even put a second sophist into play so you can get infinite Statue charges, infinite wishes, and a stopped clock, all at the same time! (big-rig shaper vibes and a jank level approaching infinity).

Vincent Lee needs to check glory on the axe, and probably relies very heavily on Mr. "Rook" to assemble the combo, is probably the worst at assembling the combo, and only Carolyn gets less out of it. On the other hand, a fully upgraded Runic Axe and Empty Vessel are both good cards independently for him, and at that point putting in an Eldritch Sophist to get more uses out of, say, a Grim Memoir and shuffle charges to the Wish Eater is barely out of his way and you won't super mind if the combo doesn't hit every time.

Carolyn Fern can't check anything on the axe which limits the ceiling on this combo - Runic Axe is not super great at 0, you won't generate enough charges to do both things, and Carolyn usually wants to use her hands for plan A (). But she can technically take the combo thanks to a recent FAQ clarification on bonded cards and "cards that heal horror/damage" deckbuilding restriction. Unlike Vincent, she can run the full Backpack/STTP/PFTW/ASTREV combo just... I'm not sure it gets us where Carolyn wants to go - making 4-8 tokens in the bag 0s at the cost of both hands in an investigator who could otherwise already hit 8+ for investigating seems kind of pyrrhic other than to say we did it.

Roland Banks probably looks basically the same as this deck if you removed Underworld Support, the couple mystic splashes, and used the extra 7 slots to double up on the key assets to add in some redundancy. His best advantage would probably be that a 30 card version of the deck definitely has room for either Bandolier or Dr. Elli Horowitz, enabling you to bring the Runic Axe for infinite charges and still smash face with a Giant Hammer. His second best advantage is that he actually will pick up more than approximately 2-3 clues per scenario, but I still wouldn't play it as a solo or primary cluever.