Overview

With the taboo to Blood of Thoth, one of the worst cards in the game is suddenly a very fun build-around. The goal of this deck is to maximize the number of offerings we can put on Blood of Thoth and consistently be giving 2 bonus actions a turn to our team. To do this we run a doom suite, and we use Dexter Drake since his lets us stack a bunch of doom one asset and then throw it away without slowing down our turn.

The deck is a blast to play. It combines Dexter Drake's usual minigame of figuring out when to toss old assets for new ones, with the minigame of managing your doom assets, with the minigame of figuring out how to optimally delegate the bonus actions on Blood of Thoth. There's a pretty rich decision space and a very unique engine to build using lots of cards you might be trying for the first time. And of course, everyone loves taking more actions. Your teammates will go through an emotional roller-coaster of watching you pile up doom, but they'll be grateful when they get to kill a 12 health enemy in one turn or clear 8 clues with your help.

For hopefully obvious reasons, I do not recommend playing this in a campaign with vanilla Ancient Evils. You'll have to either risk advancing the agenda several turns early, or play so conservatively you don't get to have maximum fun or power. At least consider house ruling to replace Ancient Evils with one of its alternatives such as Resurgent Evils. But if you like living life on the edge you do you.

Card Choices

• Of course, Blood of Thoth is the star of the deck.
• We opt for Molly Maxwell and Yaztaroth instead of Showmanship and Occult Scraps. This is a combo deck, and Molly's whole thing is enabling combo. Our hope is that our teammates will be the ones buffing their stats and we'll contribute by giving them more actions rather than buffing our own, so Showmanship is less good. Yaztaroth is also relatively chill; two actions to clear it isn't a big deal with the amount of actions we're generating. Occult Scraps is difficult to deal with because we want to save our to remove doom at the last minute.
  • Notably Blood of Thoth is our only Relic, so we can tutor up a copy with Molly easily. Ceremonial Sickle, David Renfield, Arcane Initiate, Robes of Endless Night, and Cat Mask are also unique cards you can tutor.
  • Note that Blood Pact is NOT our only Pact, because Yaztaroth is in the deck.
• Our doom generating cards are Ceremonial Sickle, Arcane Initiate, David Renfield, and Blood Pact.
  • Blood Pact especially is a superstar in this deck, if we take 3 actions testing (which Mystics often do), we get 3 offerings on our Blood of Thoth in one round, maybe even 4 if we also have a mythos test to take. It's often worth playing it one turn, only to use it three times and discard it next, just because of how many bonus actions it generates.
  • I picked Ceremonial Sickle over the alternatives Dowsing Rod and Onyx Pentacle because the action that adds doom is one we'll want to take more often.
• Moonlight Ritual is an option to clear doom without discarding an asset, though I don't find myself using it too much. You could consider replacing with Guts or another filler card.
• The rest of the deck is pretty standard Mystic fare, meant to fill a flex role on a team with a dedicated fighter and cluever (our bonus actions are better spent on teammates who are specialists). You could make substitutions to lean more towards fighting or investigating depending on your team's needs.

Upgrades

• The deck is built at level 0 to accommodate Down the Rabbit Hole. Despite this, I think Relic Hunter and Sin-Eater are both priority upgrades, even though they cost 1 extra with Down the Rabbit Hole. Relic Hunter of course lets us get a second Blood of Thoth into play, doubling the actions we can give out. In addition to letting us remove doom without discarding assets, moving doom onto Sin-Eater counts as placing an additional doom, letting us stack offerings on Blood of Thoth faster, and also all of our doom assets except Blood Pact benefit from being readied.
  • Optionally, since we are Dexter Drake, to enable getting these cards as fast as possible we can opt for the experience pumping cards like In the Thick of It, The Great Work, and Charon's Obol. We run 5 allies and 2 Robes of Endless Night to soak, we have double Ward of Protection and Deny Existence, so we are generally unlikely to die if we play it right.
• Otherwise, as with most Down the Rabbit Hole decks, the upgrades are on-rails since upgrading is better than buying new cards. For the first few upgrades, Ward of Protection, Ceremonial Sickle, our arcane slots, and Uncage the Soul (note that it can get back Blood Pact!) are probably the best, in whatever order lets you maximize Down the Rabbit Hole value and depending on what your team needs you to do better.
• Do not upgrade Blood Pact. The whole point of the deck is that we can discard our doom assets. Once you make Blood Pact permanent, it significantly neuters its potential for this deck.

Mulligan

• Blood of Thoth and Molly Maxwell are must-keeps to enable our combo as soon as possible.
• Otherwise, I typically prioritize being ready to fight on turn 2 over being able to get clues, so that the scenario doesn't spiral out of control if your team draws many enemies in the first mythos phase.
• While doom assets fuel our combo, it's not something we want to prioritize. We run plenty and will eventually find them.