Darrell Simmons Is Lawful, Good!

Hi! I've been having a lot of fun with Darrel so far on my group's blind playthrough of Drowned City, and since I didn't see anyone else publishing this I thought I'd put it out there. If there's other information it'd be useful to have, please ask in comments-- this is my first published deck. For the record, the idea behind the title is that Darrel is Lawful, the opposite of Chaotic-- he is at the mercy of the token bag as little as possible.

The goal of this deck is to use all of that "difficulty 0" Survivor tech alongside Darrell's seeker toolkit to generate abusive numbers of clues.

Piloting: No cards are really mission-critical; if you have assets in your opening hand, they're probably keepers. Until you have some XP in the deck, Dr. Milan Christopher, Drawing Thin, and Rabbit's Foot are good to get the early game economy rolling. Alton is very important to our engine, but he's only really useful once we have some other cards in play.

Alton O'Connell is a fast action with a cost based on the current Shroud of your location. There is a player window after you start investigating but before you reveal the token. All of the cards here that reduce shroud (Matchbox, Winging It, Old Keyring) also reduce the cost of his ability. You should be picking up a clue as a fast action from a (temporarily) Shroud 0 location as often as possible.

Cards that generate Evidence (Empirical Hypothesis, Alton O'Connell, and technically Hawk-Eye Folding Camera) are almost always better used to fuel Darrell's ability that to trigger their own effects.

Pelt Shipment is your friend. Limiting your handsize makes it very easy to discard Winging It. Later, you can also generate very good action compression by playing most of your items through an upgraded Scavenging. Also, hey, free XP!

Lastly, revel in that 5 Intellect. Darrel can reliably pull of unaided Investigates well enough to trigger Scavenging, and his baseline intellect tops out at 7 here. Be very free with your limited-use assets, especially once you have upgraded Scavenging.

Upgrading: Note that this deck has two unspent experience-- getting Quick Learner makes an enormous difference, so I prefer to save most of the XP from In the Thick of It.

Upgrade priorities would be...

8xp -- +2x Quick Learner

3xp -- + Charisma

2xp -- upgrade 1x Scavenging

3xp -- upgrade 1x Rabbit's Foot

3xp -- upgrade 1x Old Keyring

4xp -- Add "Alternative Hypothesis" to Empirical Hypothesis [This is where each use of Refine goes as well]

At this point, you have enough to run the core engine. Follow up depending on how your run is going:

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Consistency package:

3xp -- + Relic Hunter

3xp -- upgrade the second Rabbit's Foot

5xp -- upgrade the remaining keyring and Scavenging

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Faster Burst Clue package:

1xp - Perception -> Sharp Vision

1xp - Refine -> Sharp Vision

5xp - Pelt Shipment -> On Their Heels This last has fun synergy with Track Shoes-- especially towards the end of your turn (when the difficulty drops to 1), you can reliably move or Pathfinder into a location, grab a clue, and keep moving without enemies engaging you.

4xp - Upgrade both Deductions

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I Have Too Much XP Due to FF Power Creep package:

2xp - Versatile

0xp - +Leo De Luca

2xp - + Scientific Studies Grant

6xp - + 2x Ice Pick

2xp - + 1x Otherworldly Compass OR 1xp Fine Tuning Fine Tuning attaches to one of your evidence generators, ideally Empirical Hypothesis (though Darrel's Kodak will work).

2xp - Upgrade the second Scavenging if you didn't already. If you go down this route, you'll need to mulligan very hard for the Grant and for at least one resource generator, Dr. Milan or Drawing Thin being ideal.

Note also that this version was played on Hard difficulty with very strong monster-handling support from the other players (one guardian, one mystic); I just focused on getting clues. Given the number of low-evade enemies, it's often possible to make that a difficulty zero test and autosucceed on that as well. If you feel the need for more monster handling, Exploit Weakness, Fight or Flight, and Improvised Weapon all play fairly well with Darrell. He'd also get a lot from Mind over Matter or "I've got a plan!", but you have better uses for the XP.

Taboo: I'm not too experienced with Taboo, but were I making this deck for Taboo, I'd replace the starting Drawing Thin with a different resource engine (probably 2x Schoffner's Catalogue ), replace the starting Scavenging with 1x Dr. Milan and 1x Perception, and replace the two starting Shed a Light with 1x Pelt Shipment and 1x Eureka.

Then put a very high priority on getting Shed a Light, followed by Scavenging.