Infinity Walker

To Infinity and Beyond

This plays as a fairly straight seeker deck until it suddenly takes a 45 min turn and wins the game.

The idea is to infinitely cycle the deck. Using Knowledge is Power to activate Archaic Glyphs to investigate, Shortcut to move around and then Knowledge is Power on Feed the Mind to cycle the deck and get Knowledge is Power back.

Getting There

For the combo to run you need to trim the deck+hand+discard down to 10 different cards. Feed the Mind is the central draw engine, and it'll kill you if you routinely draw above your hand size. The deck uses Dream-Enhancing Serum and Laboratory Assistant to avoid this.

Therefore the main buildup is about drawing the entire deck, and playing all the assets.

Scientific Theory and Segment of Onyx are easy to get in play. Archaic Glyphs helps getting other assets in play. Eidetic Memory removes Burning the Midnight Oil and itself, handily getting an early resource boost and removing two cards.

All in all the deck needs to take somewhere between 10 and 15 actions to play and draw cards before the combo wins the game.

You don't need to have Feed in play when the combo comes online as Knowledge is Power can trigger it from your hand. However it's possible to include a Sign Magick for the 2nd hand slot (Abigail holds the Encyclopedia) and only a single Feed to reduce the total number of cards in the cycle.

The Cycle

In the end the cards in the cycle are:

1. Feed the Mind
2. Scientific Theory
3. Cryptic Research
4. Cryptic Writings
5. Knowledge is Power
6. Shortcut
7. Time Warp
8. Ward of Protection
9. Perception

Everything else is either in play all the time, or removed from the game.

Some basic weaknesses will add a 10th card to this list, but that depends on the weakness. This is manageable with the deck list as it is, and how you would modify the deck list to manage the weakness likewise depends on the weakness in question.

At 10 unique cards you need Dream-Enhancing Serum as well as at least one Lab Assistant in play at any given time. However you usually end up having both, since the Scientific Theory can usually cover the horror you take from continuously cycling the deck.

Obstacles

You do end up playing with The Necronomicon in play, and you'll draw your random weakness billions of times. This can force you to adjust the deck to account for this, if you have to be able to tank extra damage in every cycle for instance. There are some basic weaknesses that immediately kills the combo. By my count about 25% of the basic weaknesses in the game will do this.

The Time Warps are there to be played every time you pull an auto fail from the chaos bag on Knowledge is Power activations of Feed or Glyphs. If you hit 3 auto fails in a row you lose that action. The deck doesn't usually have to deal with enemies, since nothing provokes attack of opportunity, but you do have Pendant of the Queen to help deal with enemies as well. Similarly Abigail Foreman Encyclopedia with Daisy's or even Knowledge is Power activation can do quite a lot to get you out of tight spots as well.

For scenarios that have some sort of required combat it might be worth looking at some mystic asset for some damage. You can use Knowledge is Power on Encyclopedia repeatedly to boost infinitely, and then Knowledge is Power on Shrivelling for instance.

Alternatives

It may be worth adding in a Mr. Rook to smooth things out early on in which case Mr. Rook could take the place of 1 of the lab assistants.

You can get a lot of deck thinning done by including assets that don't cost xp and don't use slots or use slots not used by the combo, so you could work around Eidetic Memory+Burning the Midnight Oil at the cost of making the deck slower.

Additionally the 2nd Cryptic Research, and the second Time Warp, as well as Abigail+Encyclopedia are absolute luxuries.

Including a Magnifying Glass and a Death could be a good way of reducing cards in the cycle if other options are less appealing.

Including 2x Arcane Research to cheaply upgrade the Feeds and Wards and foregoing the upgrade of the Cryptic Writings are also reasonable options for saving some experience.

In terms of absolute minimum xp required for the deck to be able to do the combo I'd estimate you could cut the total xp required down to maybe 25.