Norman Withers: He Telleth the Number of the Stars

Introduction

Built for a 2-player Standard run through EotE with Daniela as a fighter with (very) occasional clues and Norman as a clue-getter with some fight ability. I went with the "box" signatures; if you want, the "book" signatures or both are OK as well. As always, comments and suggestions welcome.

Notable Cards

Assets

• Scroll of Secrets -- a real workhorse, increasing card draw dramatically and sniping weaknesses surprisingly frequently.
• Eldritch Sophist -- useful for recharging the Scrolls, some of the partner assets, and moving charges around depending on whether you need to fight or investigate. Norman isn't in desperate need of horror soak, but EotE can dish out a lot of it horror, and every bit helps.
• St. Hubert's Key -- I don't love the card, but Norman needs all the boosts he can get, and the bonus hardly hurts.

Events

• Crack the Case -- this is a pretty cheap and fast deck; one of these early on can usually get your rig et up nicely
• Mind over Matter -- mostly a silver bullet card for when Norman really needs to evade or pass a critical or test on a location
• The Truth Beckons -- did not work in a number of scenarios, but was fairly clutch in others. EotE has a lot of random maps, so it's mostly the luck of the draw whether it will pay off or not
• Spectral Razor -- it's very rare to be sad when the razor is on the top of your deck

Piloting

The deck struggles a bit until it gets set up, which happens pretty fast but can occasionally get torpedoed by a poor opening hand or clogging by all the story cards that can get into the deck. Once the Eldritch Sophist + Scroll of Secrets combo starts working, it's off to the races! Generally, the economy keeps just ahead of the needed resources, especially after you get Prophetic down. The Harbinger can be a speed bump, but you just have to take it as it comes. Most of the story assets aren't super useful in this deck; they clog up the draw and are mostly useful for committing to tests.

Mulligan

Mulligan hard for Eldritch Sophist and Scroll of Secrets; once XP is spent, Prophetic and the Arcane slot assets are also very nice to see. This is a quick, flexible deck, so, if you can get a few of the parts into play, the rest will follow fairly quickly.

Upgrades

In rough order:

• 2x Burning the Midnight Oil --> 2x Divination (1)
• 2x "I've got a plan!" --> 2x Brand of Cthugha (1)
• Emergency Cache and The Truth Beckons --> 2x Prophetic
• 2x Divination (1) --> Divination (4) -- the extra charges and bonus to the test make a huge difference
• 2x Brand of Cthugha (1) --> Brand of Cthugha (4) -- as above, plus the extra charges help repower Divination
• 2x Logical Reasoning --> 2x Call for Backup --> once you have Prophetic down, you hit 4 of the 5 options
• 2x Eureka! --> 2x Four of Cups -- again, anything that helps Norman's is good
• 2x Scroll of Secrets --> 2x Scroll of Secrets (3)

Maybe:

• St. Hubert's Key --> Hemispheric Map or Crystalline Elder Sign (although Norman generally prefers the former)

I would like to thank Dai from the Drawn to the Flame Discord for some invaluable advice and rooting so hard for the Sophist.