Norman, Stormin' for Clues

My disclaimer is that I'm not a top-tier deck-builder by any means, but I still like to share these from time to time, as I've had some great Arkham games using decks made by others. If you enjoy playing this one, leave a comment and let me know!

Intro

This deck was built during an ultimately successful run of Return to the Circle Undone (Easy), paired with Silas Marsh; Norman's role was almost exclusively cluever. We earned 30 XP leading up to the final scenario, with Norman earning 4 additional due to a certain scenario's resolution, giving me some end-game experience flexibility.

Ironically, I picked Norman because I had been on a run of playing a bunch of characters, and rather underestimated just how I was going to end up making him. Oops!

Norman's goal was clues. Clues, clues, clues. And he certainly was able to get them. As a means of making that happen, he tried to find the Livre d'Eibon, pump up his great stats (St. Hubert's Key, Hawk-Eye Folding Camera), and largely ignore the latter two, having some emergency buttons that could be hit when needed. Use the Livre to swap an asset onto your deck so you can play it at a discount as often as possible; I rarely used the commit option, and only when I was in a real jam.

I got lucky that after upgrading it, Four of Cups hit on the start of almost every subsequent scenario, making Norman 5-5-2-1 out the gate. Get his key and a semi-charged camera into play and start vacuuming clues, and those 5s quickly can become 7s. And 7s are... real good.

This deck was loads of fun. I hope you like it!

Upgrades

• Fingerprint Kit turned into Clairvoyance (3) almost immediately, though Rite of Seeking (4) is a perfectly valid option if you prefer to go that route instead. I much prefer mitigating the downside of Clairvoyance though.

• Arcane Enlightenment was only there at the beginning to make sure I had enough hand slots should I have happened to draw all of my hand-slot items in the first scenario. Once Fingerprint Kit was gone it went fast, becoming Four of Cups (1).

• Occult Invocation also very rapidly became the new Spectral Razor (2), which usually ends up being slightly better, and has a good chance to return to your hand.

• Connect the Dots became Divination (4) (with a pit-stop at Divination (1)). The economy in this deck overall was fine, but more two-at-a-time clue spell potential (and later, three-at-a-time!) made much more sense with the pairing I had.

• Transmogrify became Bind Monster (2). Similar effects, though Transmogrify I think is better earlier in a scenario, where Bind Monster can be brilliant later in a scenario just to keep things out of the way.

• Delve Too Deep ultimately wasted space in my deck; I almost never drew it, and the times I did it was always in crunch-time. I should have turned it into Ward of Protection (2) far sooner than I did.

• Heading into the final scenario, I suspected having some fighting options would come in handy so I traded 1 copy each of Dr. William T. Maleson and Research Librarian into Shrivelling (3)s, and also turned one of my Hawk-Eye Folding Cameras into a Robes of Endless Night for some soak.

• Other than the preceding bullet point, everything else was part of my original plan and is organized roughly in the order in which I made those upgrades. My original plan was to convert my Bizarre Diagnosis into Healing Words (3), though ultimately I thought the combat pivot for the final scenario would be more effective for the team, and it was.

Other Notes

• Holy hell is Testing Sprint a lot of fun. Obviously you need the right map(s) for it, the TCU has several that worked well, and it was a blast to play it. Norman with 5 is obviously a strong user of it, too.