Darrell and his Trusty Flashlight Can't Fail - 19 xp

Tweaking a deck idea for Darrell. This one's a deck with two themes: scavenging items and testing at difficulty 0.

For the campaign starter deck swap in the side deck cards for the XP cards

Scavenging to Install Assets

• 16 items are included that can be drawn via Scavenging (not counting Darrell's signature card which starts in play)
• Schoffner's Catalogues are there to help pay for the items, though the card costs in this deck are pretty low
• The advanced Scavenging (2) is crazy efficient because it "draws" a card for zero actions, lets you search for specific card, and puts it into play. The juicy targets are old Flashlights with fresh batteries, the latest issue of Eon Chart Weekly, and refurbished Coats
• Once you are set up it's more efficient to discard items and put them into play with Scavenging (2) (for zero actions) than to spend a precious action to play it. But note that it relies on over-success to the investigate action, so make those tests count!
• The same investigate over-success can be used to trigger both copies of Scavenging
• Eon Chart (1) doesn’t discard itself when out of charges, so use the Rabbit's Foot or the other copy of Eon Chart (1) to overload your accessory slot
• Similarly the Flashlight (3) doesn't discard itself when the charges run out. You'll have to play a hand-slot card like the other Flashlight (3) to discard it. Or pop down the fast Magnifying Glass (1) which can later be returned to your hand.

Scavenging for Cards to Commit to Skill Tests

• As with many Survivor builds, there's no such thing as a dead card for this deck
• Any Item that you don't play down is useful as a commit for skill tests and can be fetched over and over with Scavenging
• Primary targets are Raven Quills and Rabbit's Foot
• Feel free to commit and recur any duplicates that appear: duplicate Cameras, Coats, Catalogues, etc are all great for this purpose

Forced Learning

• Note that Impromptu Barrier and Winging It are better when played from the discard pile
• Every upkeep phase Forced Learning discards one card and puts another card into your hand
• Once a Scavenging is in play, Items are good to discard and then are available to be drawn (for no actions!) with an over-success, critical to gaining extra play actions as described above
• With 45 cards and no search, this isn’t a deck that excels at fast starts. But with the double rate of draw, you would draw your whole deck in 22 turns (without a single draw action), as compared to 27 turns without Forced Learning. You’re a tortoise, not a hare!

Conventional Investigating

• Jury-Rig is a great pairing with Flashlight (3) over-succeed in order to trigger Scavenging, but in a pinch it works on Magnifying Glass (1) or Eon Chart (1)
• Given your high , a pair of +1 assets, and ability commit Sharp Vision (1), Deduction, and (recurring item) Raven Quill you usually investigate just like any other clue-finder.
• Eon Chart (1) can grant a basic investigate action, which plays nice with both Flashlight and with Sharp Vision

Evidence Makes Any Test Easier

• There's no point in ignoring Darrell's innate ability to spend evidence tokens, which operate like copies of Unexpected Courage without overfilling your hand. But importantly they reduce difficulty instead of adding your test result
• You start with your signature asset in play as one way to generate evidence
• Empirical Hypothesis generates evidence tokens and lets you spend them for card draw
• The Folding Camera generates more evidence, and gives benefits to stats. Darrell is uniquely able to find a use for extra tokens that accrue here to spend on skill tests

"Can't Fail" Investigating

• If there's a particularly important location, initiate a test with Winging It if it's in your discard pile or hand. Then reduce shroud via evidence tokens, Gumption (1), and/or Flashlight (3). Theoretically these can take shroud value from 7 down to 0 (!)
• Flashlight (3) is a standout item because it stacks with Winging It or the basic investigate action from Eon Chart (1). Other items tend to initiate an investigate action or they add to the intellect stat but don't aid in shroud reduction
• Note that tests can never result in a negative value. This is detailed under the Modifiers section in the Rules Reference: "Negative modifiers... can be applied, but, after all active modifiers have been applied, any resultant value below zero is treated as zero". So if you reduce a test difficulty to 0 it doesn't matter if you draw the -8 token, your test result of 0 equals the difficulty of 0 and you pass!
• At this point the only bad token is the
• Even if you do draw the , you can fall back on Live and Learn to try again, though you lose the committed cards
• If you assemble enough parts of this engine, it would be wise to use this tactic to rapidly zip through low-shroud locations with lots of clues. That makes triggering Scavening easier while expending fewer difficulty-reducing cards and tokens

Dealing With Enemies

• You usually try the above "test at zero" strategy to evade rather than fight. You can start with Impromptu Barrier (from your discard) and stack up Evidence tokens, Flashlight (3), Gumption (1), and even possibly Anatomical Diagrams. Some combination of these can deal with whatever is threatening you
• If you reach 0 difficulty then Exploit Weakness can send the enemy back to the encounter discard pile as if you defeated it (though it won't rack up victory points that way)
• Given your low stat, fighting isn't usually a good option. But you can sometimes defeat a mook via Mind over Matter and/or Brute Force (1).

The Rest

• Resourceful and Scrounge for Supplies let you draw non-items from the discard pile... use on whatever the situation calls for!
• Leather Coat is free health soak
• Talisman of Protection is versatile soak you can grant to any investigator
• Dr. Maleson can help you avoid the worst treacheries. And if you don't avoid them he's more cheap soak
• Eon Chart (1) is a cheap, recyclable source of a free action per turn. Not quite as simple as Leo De Luca, but Leo is expensive and out-of-faction
• Logical Reasoning is underappreciated and versatile: remove a Terror, heal horror, or commit for

Later XP Ideas

• Quick Learner (4) is classic for the "test at 0 difficulty" theme
• Pathfinder(2) is free move actions
• Eucatastrophe (3) is a better option than Live and Learn to cope with the rare pull
• Deduction (2) is always good
• True Survivor (3) recycles skill cards like Gumption (1)
• Work in some Synergy with Call for Backup (2) given fact you have assets that add in and
• Orphic Theory (1) briefly negates many nasty treacheries, often beats out the similar Alter Fate/Alter Fate
• Shed a Light (2) was tabooed with additional XP but fits into the theme here
• Precious Memento (4) commits for , which is an improvement over the Rabbit's Foot but at a high XP cost
• Old Keyring (3) is good as redundancy for scooping up more clues, but it can't be used with Winging It or Eon Chart (1) since they all initiate the Investigate action
• Fortuitous Discovery could also find a place in this deck, but also suffers from the issue of not stacking