Akachi de Luca | The 5-Action Cluever

Deck overview

This is a dedicated cluever deck built around taking 5-action turns with Leo De Luca and Close the Circle.

1. Main combo
2. Cluever role
3. Survivability
4. Economy and card draw
5. Mulligan and setup
6. Upgrade Path

1. Main combo

The deck revolves around Close the Circle, which enters play with one additional charge thanks to Akachi's ability and can be replayed multiple times with Spirit-Speaker.

To maximize the number of charges it enters play with, we rely on the following cards:

• Prophetic provides .
• Scroll of Secrets and Divination provide .
• Leo De Luca played through Memories of Another Life provides .

With this setup, Close the Circle enters play with 6 charges every time you play it. This effectively gives you one additional action per turn over a six-turn cycle, while the occasional cost of replaying Close the Circle with Spirit-Speaker is negligible.

Combined with Leo De Luca, this gives us 5 actions per turn.

2. Cluever role

I opted for clueving rather than fighting because Eyes of the Dreamer is fantastic in Akachi:

• Using your willpower for basic investigations is always good (and much better than using it for basic fights with its counterpart, Breath of the Sleeper)
• It provides a safe skill test for Memories of Another Life, allowing you to spend a charge to ignore the autofail .
• It provides cheap charges to pay off Angered Spirits.
• The second copy of Eyes of the Dreamer doubles as a level 0 Hot Streak(4) when discarded to Spirit-Speaker.

Flexing would also be too unreliable, considering that one arcane slot will always be occupied by Close the Circle.

Speaking of arcane slots, we run Arcane Experience to ensure we always have 3 arcane slots, giving us plenty of room for our spells. Ideally, we fill them with:

• Eyes of the Dreamer for single-clue investigations.
• Rite of Seeking or Divination for clue compression.
• Close the Circle for the additional action.

Having 3 arcane slots also means you can leave an empty spell in play until you draw Spirit-Speaker and recharge it.

3. Survivability

We're not entirely helpless against enemies: Spectral Razor can take out a 3-health enemy in a single shot, while the extra action from Close the Circle can be used to fight or evade with your willpower . This flexibility actually inspired me to replace Close the Circle with Sword Cane in the level 0 deck.

Soak is rather limited, with Holy Rosary and our allies being our main sources of damage and horror absorption. That's why I included Deny Existence to help keep us alive.

The second copy of Memories of Another Life also provides some flexibility, letting you adapt to whatever the current board state calls for.

4. Economy and card draw

Setup economy is provided by Emergency Cache and Uncage the Soul. For sustained economy, Prophetic helps fund replaying your spell assets with Spirit-Speaker.

Card draw comes from Scroll of Secrets and Arcane Initiate. While Arcane Initiate competes with Leo De Luca for the ally slot, Leo's additional action can always be spent drawing cards when needed.

5. Mulligan and setup

Don't rush to find Close the Circle or Memories of Another Life. Additional actions are a "win more" strategy: they only really pay off once you're set up to do your job, which is getting clues.

For your opening hand, prioritize the following:

1. Investigation assets: Eyes of the Dreamer, Rite of Seeking or Divination.
2. Economy: Prophetic, Uncage the Soul or Emergency Cache.
3. Stat boosts: Holy Rosary.
4. Card draw: Arcane Initiate or Scroll of Secrets.

6. Upgrade Path

Here is a suggested level 0 deck and upgrade path.

Our XP first goes into building the Close the Circle engine and improving our clue compression. Then, Memories of Another Life comes as the cherry on top.

[0 XP deck]

Thanks to Arcane Research, we can upgrade our spells at a discount between scenarios. This brings the total cost of the upgrade path to 29 XP over an 8-scenario campaign: