Dragon Pole

2xSign Magick + 2xFamiliar Spirit + 2xThe Hierophant • V = 8 Arcane Slots.

To hold both Sign Magick and Dragon Pole, we just need a Bandolier(2).

To play two copies of The Hierophant • V, we simply need Anna Kaslow.

To play two copies of Familiar Spirit and Anna Kaslow, we merely need 2x Charisma.

We then need to fill our Arcane Slots to get the attack boost, but luckily The Hierophant • V allows us to fill the slots with a bunch of accessories as well as spells.

So if we spend about 12 XP, draw our deck in the right order and put down 17 assets, we have an insane weapon that will fight with a whopping +8 , deal as much damage as a .45 Automatic and never run out of ammo!

At this point Conglomeration of Spheres will be the only thing that can stop us.

guybrush · 20
Don't forget to buy two copies of relic hunter so Hierophant will let us hold even more, and 2x Arcane Enlightenment + 2x Book of Shadows. Just another 14 xp for 4 more arcane slots, more if you need to Versatile in the AEs. Unless I'm forgetting any other additional arcane slot cards, the max bonus is a +12 to hit. Good luck! — MiskatonicFrosh · 360
*12xp sorry, thought Book of Shadows cost more — MiskatonicFrosh · 360
Both our maths are off, sorry. Base 2, dragon pole +1, sign magick +2, book of shadows +2, arcane familiar +2, hierophant +3, relic hunter +2. Total of 14 arcane slots. Only current investigators who can clear the deckbuilding requirements are Diana and Lola. — MiskatonicFrosh · 360
Nope sorry again, I misread Hierophant, it merely lets you use those slots interchangably, doesn't let you turn one slot into another. Max bonus is +11 — MiskatonicFrosh · 360
It's kinda incredible that I totally missed the "You have 1 additional arcane slot." text on Dragon Pole because I focused too much on the +1 Fight for each filled arcane slots. Thanks for correcting me. Anyway, I'll publish a +11 Dragon Pole lola deck that I tinkered up yesterday. — guybrush · 20
Add 2 Binder's Jars (with Relic Hunter), and now you have 12 arcane slots! — suds · 1
Regrettably Binder's Jar is unique. — vitaemachina · 1
The Red Clock

I wasn't the one that came up with this, but consider for a moment two investigators who can take this, Ursula Downs and Trish Scarborough. They can also take Eldritch Sophist and Pendant of the Queen (which RFGs once it runs out of charges, according to the latest taboo). It's a pretty interesting one to use as a battery, because it still does its thing even while you're siphoning charges off of it. You could just keep it permanently at 3 charges to just get an extra action every turn on top of keeping your Pendant alive.

Zinjanthropus · 231
Really great sounding combo! Ursula unfortunately can't take card as it's not a relic, leaving Trish to be the sole exploiter of this combo. — shortpunch · 186
Its an Item. Relic. It just got put on the database as a Favor for some reason. — Xenas · 7
Ah! Fooled by the description... (Favor really doesn't make sense now that you point it out) — shortpunch · 186
Also the new "seeker" could take the sophist and the pendant. Also Jenny might be interested with an upgraded skull. — Tharzax · 1
Monterey Jack can, indeed take Sophist and Pendant, but cannot take The Red Clock (at least not this version) — Zinjanthropus · 231
Lola can also run this combo while in Seeker mode; as ChouiceE notes below, the Clock is a Forced ability so would still work. Probably not recommended as her bloated deck makes Clock harder to find plus CoI blows up the whole combo. — MindControlMouse · 48
Bob Jenkins

So, I don't have a ton to say yet, but I've always wanted to build a Lupara Scavenging deck, I've tried in Finn, a bit, but you need a lot of cards to reach a good level of efficiency, and his 5-card splash is a bit limiting. Bob can take both Lupara and Scavenging without it counting toward any card limit, and his ability both synergizes quite well with Scavenging (mitigating some of the disadvantage of not being able to run Scavenging (2)), and gives him a built-in way to get the Lupara into play without using a normal action (other investigators must find stuff like Joey "The Rat" Vigil or Sleight of Hand to do this). He can even dump it into his discard with Act of Desperation for an additional 2 damage (at +3 no less).

Like Finn, he could have some issues making making shots connect, but he does have access to a lot of the same means that Finn can use to pass tests. A few examples are Lucky!, Momentum, Well Connected, High Roller, Fight or Flight, Justify the Means, Sure Gamble. Of these, Finn can only choose a very limited sub-set of the Survivor cards if he wants to also have Scavenging, while Bob has to use limited slots for Well Connected, but it is a pretty good card for him (Plus, with RttCU, we get Well Connected (3), which is no longer taking up his 5 L0 Rogue cards).

I, for one, am excited about this!

Zinjanthropus · 231
Strength in Numbers

I can hardly wait to start running this in Lola Hayes. It counts her permanents, like Shrewd Analysis and Adaptable! It double-counts multi-class cards like Enchanted Blade! She'll be able to get this thing up to 4+ wild icons easily! Wow!

mattastrophic · 3373
I forgot about permanents! Definitely makes Synergy even stronger than I thought. — MiskatonicFrosh · 360
21 or Bust

The expected resources is about 5.0 resources, same as Emergency Cache, in standard token setup. Many "5" give slightly better result, but many above 5 (-6, -8) give poor result. In this reason, this card is not suitable for expert difficulty. If you consider "fun", 21 or bust is good choice unlike Henry Wan, since 21 or bust at least achieves E-Cache.

Additionally, if your deck has Prophetic, 21 or bust may be better than E-cahce. Since 21 or bust has fortune trait, you can play 21 or bust for free with Prophetic. Sadly, Prophetic doesn't have , so that only off-class investigators can do.

Note: additional -5 or symbol token slightly increases the expected resources, and -7 or -8 token significantly decreases the expected resources.

The below is my stratagy. I believe your intuition is better, so please refer this just for fun.


Here is my stratagy to achieve E-Cache. According to the combined value of revealed tokens,

  • 11 or less: reveal 1 additional token
  • 12, 13: reveal 1 additional token only if and/or was revealed. (exceptional case: stop if you revealed but you bust if you treat as 11).
  • 14, 15, 16: reveal 1 additional token
  • 17, 18, 19: reveal 1 additional token only if was revealed and treated as 1.
  • 20: reveal 1 addtional token with above condition and if 2 or more "1" tokens exist in bag.
  • 21 or more: stop

Nevertheless, I believe many of you don't want to stop when the total value is 12 or 13 (including me) for fun. I also give the expectation value when you follow above stratagy but don't stop at 12/13.

NotZ Standard bag] ideal: 4.98, proposed: 4.96, proposed(non-stop): 4.86, 17-stop: 4.76
NotZ Standard bag + ] ideal: 5.01, proposed: 4.99, proposed(non-stop): 4.95, 17-stop: 4.85
NotZ Hard bag] ideal: 5.02, proposed: 5.00, proposed(non-stop): 4.97, 17-stop: 4.88
NotZ Hard bag + ] ideal: 5.07, proposed: 5.03, proposed(non-stop): 5.03, 17-stop: 4.96
Here, "ideal" means ideal stratagy. I reveal one additional token only if the expectation will be increased considering all cases. It's the upper bound if you don't know the future information.

With above stratagy, you can achieve below table in standard NotZ.

name
0
4
5
6
9
exp
ideal 3.6% 58.1% 9.6% 13.6% 15.1% 4.98
proposed 3.7% 60.1% 9.6% 10.2% 16.3% 4.96
nonstop 11.2% 44.0% 13.6% 12.9% 18.3% 4.86
17stop 8.8% 48.9% 14.8% 13.9% 13.7% 4.76
12/13/17stop 2.9% 61.7% 11.6% 11.7% 12.1% 4.83


  • 17stop: we stop whenever the sum is 17 or above
  • 12/13/17stop: In addition to 17stop, we stop if the sume is 12 or 13 (not 14~16).

(modified Oct 8, 2021)

elkeinkrad · 512
This card is probably really bad (if you stop at 17 it's sub-E-cache-efficiency), but it's really fun. — Zinjanthropus · 231
If you're expert gambler, you can earn more resource than E-cache. 0.1 higher than E-cache. However, I believe I cannot earn 5 resources using this card. (note: 17-stop gives approx. 4.75 resources) — elkeinkrad · 512
4.83 in standard notz + 1 additional symbol token (17-stop) — elkeinkrad · 512
Do you not put the token back in the bag after revealing it and drawing the next? — Olider · 1
I think the tokens are returned after the effect ends, like test. — elkeinkrad · 512
What does the phrase "(ignoring +/-)" on the card mean? It sounds like numbered tokens are ignored? But then you can't even get 19 or 18? — Nils · 1
It means that both -1 and 1 are calculated as "1". You just ignore the sign of the number token. — elkeinkrad · 512
That makes sense, thank you! Nice review! — Nils · 1
What happens when you play Wendy and "stack the deck"? — ErynnWoodward · 3
@ForrestWoodward // In that case, you can cancel last revealed token, return it, and reveal another. Canceled token don't be combined but you should reveal another. — elkeinkrad · 512
When busted, the number of tokens in chaos bag is small, so that Wendy's ability may not be efficient. — elkeinkrad · 512