Daisy Walker, Bookish Assassin - full scenario guides

Introduction

We’ve all been there, haven’t we? Desperately trying to get that final piece of an assignment completed in the library after hours of hard labor, when we start to feel that involuntary sneeze slowly rising in our nose. There’s that tingling feeling which comes from nowhere and which still leaves you enough room to think ‘this could be a false alarm, I might still be ok here’, but it builds and builds and you gradually realize, second by agonizing second, that this one is for real and there is no stopping it. You could hear a pin drop right now. I mean, you’re in the library. That’s part of what it’s for. Peaceful solitude, quiet thinking space, a sanctuary for the thoughtful. Your sneeze has no place in a temple like this but there is nothing you can do about it now, it’s coming and the whole world is going to hear it. You could dash for the door but it’s already too late, and in the closing few fractions of a second you have the same thought everybody has in this exact moment.

“Maybe it will be a quiet one?”

Head back, involuntary spasm, and BOOM!! Release, and there it is, the inevitable raising of the figure from across the library and the only situation in life where you’ll be exposed to an aggressive shhhhhhh! How librarians put so much threat into such a soft sound is a mystery. That is not something you can train into someone, that is something inherent, genetic, passed down through bloodlines. A superpower? It doesn’t matter. You’ve been hit with the shhhhhhh! and everybody knows it and they’re all thinking the same thing.

“Thank the powers it wasn’t me this time.”

It doesn’t matter that your noise was involuntary, beyond your power to control, you made yourself a target and trust me, a librarian is a dangerous enemy to make.

The Power of the Mind

Daisy Walker is one such Librarian and you’ll find her in the world of Arkham teaming up with her buddies investigating mysteries and generally trying to bring down the Big Bad wherever it might be. I am going to assume you are familiar with Arkham Horror : The Living Card Game, considering you are choosing to spend your time reading a strategy article about it, so we can get to the good stuff quickly. In case you are not then I highly recommend you check it out before reading any further. It would be helpful to at least have a few plays under your belt first. So let me introduce you to Daisy our favorite bookworm and the Investigator who is the focus of this article.

From her stat line, Daisy is not the kind of investigator you would expect to be strong going it alone. Dealing with enemies can be difficult for her, with a low Power of 2 and an equally low Agility. She is as you would expect exceptionally intelligent and perceptive and this also leads to her having quite a strong mind. She is willful. What this means for Daisy is she typically needs a lot of support to deal with direct enemy threats because she can struggle with conflict, even when trying to Evade it. However, this article will set the bar high for Daisy. We are going to construct a deck and strategy with one goal in mind and one alone - the vengeful slaying of the Ancient One from Scenario 3 of the Core Set. We are only interested in that resolution. And we are going to be asking Daisy to do this alone. Pure solo. Drop those eyebrows and be brave dear readers, for I would like you to meet a very special friend of mine. Allow me to introduce “Daisy Walker, the Bookish Assassin”, and her dire nemesis “Umordhoth, Lord of Loud Sneezes”, he who must be slain!

Deck - “Daisy Walker, Bookish Assassin”

So having set ourselves the goal of a take-down in Scenario 3, ‘The Devourer Below’, we need to craft Daisy into a book-wielding killing machine. The traditional tools of that trade are much of a mystery to her so the best strategy here is to avoid trying to mitigate her downfalls too much and really push her strengths. For Daisy, it’s all up in the head. Let’s break the deck down into three significant parts, each one representing a piece of the strategy we are trying to employ. Focusing on her Willpower and Intellect we must build a pool of cards which give her a chance in combat, after all if the objective is to kill an Ancient One she is going to need to dish out some damage - consistent Evading will just not cut it. We’ll call this our Combat Packet and the key card it will be built around is Shrivelling, along with a bunch of ways to maximize the power of that and provide some damage for edge cases along the way. We’ll also need tools to progress through Scenarios so investigating is a must. Luckily she is naturally strong here but because we want to try and deliver Daisy to the end of Scenario 3 fairly rapidly and most importantly pick up sufficient XPs along the way for our upgrade plan, we want to be able to rush some clues. This will be our Clue Gathering set and will focus on progressing quickly where necessary especially in Scenario 2 where encountering and defeating Cultists will become critical to gaining those vital XPs. Lastly we need a spread of options for dealing with threats that come up which do not represent combat challenges or block our investigations - these we shall call our Support Packet and the cards here will add some extra spice to our adventures, particularly for survival and card draw. Let’s go through each of those packets and understand what the different elements need to achieve in the three Core Set Scenarios. Remember, the main objective of the deck is to deliver Daisy to the Ritual Site with the tools and survivability needed to deal out the 10 damage we need to do to defeat her nemesis.

Combat for Daisy in this list is based around the card Shrivelling, an Asset which makes use of her Willpower to power her attacks rather than her Power. It also does +1 damage. The downside is we can take horror if we make a bad pull from the Chaos Bag, but nobody said this was going to be easy. With Shrivelling being the pivot of our Combat Packet all other cards either need to support it or provide combat for niche cases. Blinding Light gives us a way to utilize Willpower to Evade whilst also doing damage which is excellent and a perfect fit to the strategy. Arcane Studies gives us a dump for resources picked up through Dr. Milan Christopher and Holy Rosary not only gives a +1 to Willpower but also acts as a mind shield. We will need that protection for sure especially in the final showdown. Mind over Matter gives us a way to address threat cards which test Power and Agility and also a filler combat card for when our Willpower is not being buffed or we have no Shrivelling on the table. Unexpected Courage fills multiple roles but is in our Combat Packet because we will need that vital +2 to commit most likely during combat. Manual Dexterity has synergy with Mind over Matter and also allows us to perform some Evasions along the way to our final destination if we need to, just to keep the game going. We’ll discuss the strategy per scenario more later but what we are looking to do here is use our card draw from cards like Old Book of Lore to construct a dashboard of most if not all of the elements in our Combat Packet ahead of going into the Ritual Site in Scenario 3 - best case? You have 2 x Shrivelling on board and enough charges left on them to deal the 10 damage you need over two turns. Living the dream.

Daisy is strong on Intellect so makes a great Investigator without anything out. Notice here we ignore Flashlight and Magnifying Glass - she just doesn’t need them and because most of the time we are looking to rush clue gathering, Deduction, Working a Hunch and Drawn to the Flame do enough of what we are looking for. Working a Hunch is also a nice commit card to go with Mind over Matter from our Combat Packet. Dr. Milan Christopher is mainly here for resource gathering to help fuel our Arcane Studies but also makes a nice meat and brain shield during combat. For the final fight we will absolutely need Allies and other protections out to survive the 2-3 rounds we need to go to beat the Ancient One.

Old Book of Lore is a beast if you drop it Round 1. Being able to fish and draw from your deck is insane and given we need to position Daisy perfectly going into the Ritual Site, plus combining with her ability to give us a free action if it comes from a Tome asset, is immense - drop it as soon as you can, it will set you up in future turns even if it feels like a slow play right away. Ward of Protection has a specific use case which is to help us once the fight with Umordhoth begins because we need to fend off nasty cards coming off the Encounter deck to avoid getting hung up on multiple enemies or taking damage and horror from treacheries at the vital moment. Scrying is also a card we are looking to use right around the final flip of the Agenda Deck in Scenario 3, so we can set up the Encounter deck to make it as nice to us as possible once the tentacles start flying. Medical Texts and Research Librarian are both nice support elements for us, providing some healing (which can come as a free action if Old Book of Lore hasn’t been used already the same turn) and also an extra meat and brain shield in the case of the Research Librarian. So we have a plan for combat, clue gathering, card draw and threat mitigation - let’s take a look at each of the three Scenarios from the Core Set and explain the strategy we need to adopt, plus the upgrade path we should take towards our final challenge.

Scenario 1 - The Gathering

The Gathering should be very straight forward. We need to achieve three things - kill the Ghoul Priest, secure Lita for our deck (her boost to Power is not so interesting to us but we need her +1 damage to monsters and she makes a great shield for Daisy), and achieve 6+ Victory Points doing it. That last one is important, we need to secure 6 XP for our upgrade path. Killing the Ghoul Priest gets us 2, and we receive 2 for the Scenario Resolution. That means we must ensure to clear both the Attic and the Cellar, or achieve those 2 Victory Points in some other way. There are two Scenario-specific ghouls which each provide 1 so they might help us. With our Combat Packet, we should be able to deal with them. This Scenario is great practice. You want to arrive at the Ghoul Priest encounter with your dashboard set up with the Asset elements of our Combat Packet in play and plenty of resources so we can maximize the use of Shrivelling + Arcane Studies to kill it quickly. This is the core principle of what we need to do in Scenario 3 too.

With our 6 XPs we should look to make the following changes. Upgrade 1 x Blinding Light. Reducing the cost of this card is a big plus but the additional +1 damage it provides will be necessary. Encyclopedia is a controversial card. We take 2 copies of it. The bonus it provides is hefty and it can come as a free action with Daisies special ability but it activates Attacks of Opportunity if you use it while engaged with an enemy. Even so, there will be times when doing this while engaged with Umordhoth is actually the correct play to get the win. Remove Research Librarian and 1 x Deduction to make room for the new books. If you didn’t make it to 6 XPs then Blinding Light is the priority here.

Scenario 2 - The Midnight Masks

The critical thing on Scenario 2 is to secure as many Victory Points as possible so we can achieve our final upgrades ahead of the showdown. Use as much clue rushing as you can with cards like Deduction, Drawn to the Flame and Working a Hunch. You should aim for a comfortable 3-4 Cultists interrogated, as usual keep an eye on the clock, and be ready to resign if necessary. Our strategy for Scenario 3 actually doesn’t care much for how many Cultists got away in this scenario but where it does matter is in the XPs we earn and the doom penalty we suffer so rush hard, set up your Combat Packet along the way, and try to ensure 6 Victory Points before resigning or completing the Scenario.

With our 6 XPs we start with upgrading our second Blinding Light. Then we improve our survivability for the final fight by taking a Bulletproof Vest. The Vest is the priority if you did not make 6 XPs. If you did badly then you might only get to upgrade Blinding Light but this is still fine. With 1 remaining XP taking an Emergency Cache ahead of the final scenario is a good idea. It will provide us with a nice pool for Arcane Studies to help with our combat through Shrivelling, which will be vital if we are to defeat the Ancient One.

Scenario 3 - The Devourer Below

Ok things get fruity here. Rotten fruity. First of all, do not move. Don’t budge an inch. The strategy for this scenario is to remain where you are, to not advance the Act deck at all, and to spend as many actions as you can gearing up and preparing for your date with destiny. It is only by advancing the Act deck that we encounter any escaped Cultists from Scenario 2, which we would like to avoid, and the end result of the Agenda deck advancing is for Umordhoth to spawn - perfect for us because we came here specifically to kick his tentacled butt back to whichever dimension he spewed forth from. Spend your turns drawing cards, taking resources, and setting up your Combat Packet with as much Shrivelling juice, Arcane Studies and whatever meat and brain shields you can. The challenge here is dealing with the Encounter deck as you do this, which means utilizing some of your resources just to keep going, but ultimately you want to try and be as efficient as possible keeping in mind the state you must be in when the Ancient One spawns. The best case is you have protection out in the form of Allies and Bulletproof Vest, Shrivelling at least once if not twice with multiple counters remaining (more than 6 if possible), Arcane Studies and Holy Rosary, and a clutch of cards to Commit to combat plus Blinding Light to add further damage. You will for sure need to go 2-3 rounds with the beast to bring him down to 0 health so this requires survivability. Time a Scrying for the turn before he spawns and try to keep a Ward of Protection available for when you move to engage. When he does spawn, activate Encyclopedia before you move to the Ritual Site to get the +2 without an Attack of Opportunity and start dishing out the damage. Run the numbers all the time and keep in mind it may be worth taking an AoO through Encyclopedia if you can survive it and the boost is worth it. You’ll be getting it as a free action from Daisies ability anyway.

Final Thoughts

Killing Umordhoth with Daisy pure solo is a great feeling. She is probably the weakest Investigator to go poking around on her own with but don’t underestimate the power of the mind. Give it a go and let me know how it went, where you see improvements, and how you think future spoiled cards might fit into this deck. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts. Thanks for reading!