Town Scryer | HC 1K Series

I like your usage of Scrying Mirror! The idea to use the survivor tech to guarantees its persistency is awesome! Scrying Mirror indeed also provides great support to other investigators.

I wonder if resources are enough to recur the 3-cost Scrying Mirror, and how many times the mirror can recur in one game on average?

@RyanMuQ Thanks! Yeah I've been wanting to make a Scrying Mirror deck for a while but haven't been able to find a place for it, especially as it takes a hand slot. Because Pete's combat engine here is so lean, that provided the opportunity! There's also not too many ways to get clue-compression on Pete in particular, so it was nice to figure out an angle which makes him flex even better.

I found the resources plentiful personally, and they would usually build up over a scenario (Nothing Left to Lose when used well provides a big burst). All of the assets and events here are pretty cheap, and Scrying Mirror actually stops you over-boosting with Plucky or Scrapper, because you only need to boost by an amount which gives a 0 success. Usually a couple of recursions are feasible - one through Salvage and one through deck-cycling, so if you fully utilise that then that's 16 tests over the course of a scenario. Naturally you only need to use it when it feels important to do so, as Duke already tests at a 5 with Plucky and so can often crack low shroud locations either by himself or with a +1 boost if you feel the need.

I would strongly recommend making room for Long Shot in this deck, especially in the level zero. Its interaction with Hatchet is extremely generous. With an odd-health enemy, or with two Long Shots committed to a Hatchet swing against a four health enemy, you can lose control of the Hatchet for a nanosecond, then let the pings from Long Shot finish the enemy and re-attach the Hatchet. I would part with the Backpacks to add the Long Shots.

I enjoy Scry mirror, but wonder if running it alongside pay to win isn't kind of self-undermining at least on Standard. Suppose instead of running the mirror you ran Emergency Cache. (I know, you already are -- but there are so many emergency-cache-alikes especially if you're willing to burn Dunwich slots).

Instead of spending an action and three resources on the mirror and then previewing 4 tests, you could spend the same action on Ecache to bank 3 resources, and end up up by 6. Then you could buy yourself up by +2 on two of those tests and +1 on the other two. This probably helps just as much without consuming your hand slots. This frees them for mag glasses or dissection kits or cameras or newspapers or scrolls of draw if you like.

If you must guarantee a couple of crucial tests I'd honestly probably rather run Premonition than Mirror, given that I can already dump resources to boost tests.

@Eudaimonea Thanks for the suggestion! It's an alright idea, but at most it's going to save you likely 1 (maybe 2) action(s) over the course of a scenario, and even then it has to be a bit of right place right time (i.e. you need the card when there's a 3 health enemy) - but this deck does have the card draw to facilitate that. It also doesn't have any icons on top of this. As always, make these decks your own, I like Backpack for getting out your crucial assets and econ cards like Emergency Cache, but if you don't by all means run Long Shot.

@OrionJA Thanks for the input. I'd say you save more in the long run by running Scrying Mirror, because you know when to boost and when not to on important tests. Sure you could not play Scrying Mirror and indiscriminately boost more tests, but a lot of the time you'll be wasting those boosts because you would have succeeded anyway (or failed by too wide a margin). In not over-committing resources or cards to tests, you save those and can use them on boosts later. I saw this a lot while playing - actually banking resources so sometimes I'd be at 10+ when the Scrying Mirror ran out of juice, and then if I didn't want to play a subsequent Mirror because of that opportunity cost I could start boosting indiscriminately when needed at that point (it's a call you make based on the circumstances, naturally). I would say, as Pete's stats aren't jaw-dropping, this tech is very relevant even on standard as well.

The other side of this as well is that there's Survivor fail tech here. The Mirror almost refunds itself when you've secured a fail for Take Heart, and it means you're not committing things like Sharp Vision where "Look what I found!" would work just as well. It's letting you consistently make perfect choices, executing tests with total efficiency.

As a last point, there aren't any in-class level 0 non-taboo Emergency Cache equivalents as of right now that are generalisable (e.g. there's things like End of the Road which suck, and Drawing Thin was tabooed for a reason). Given that I don't think the hypothetical opportunity saving you've mentioned is there in practice. Most off-class level 0s which provide resources come with downsides - e.g. Faustian Bargain, etc.

If you don't believe me, play the deck over a campaign and let me know what you think afterwards! After doing a campaign with this I'm confident of the benefit, empirically.