All of their children, and all of their names

And every handout in every town

Every lock that ain't locked, when no one's around

Darrell Simmons struggles a little bit with the concept of "privacy". Luckily for him, he's got an Old Keyring with a key for nearly every building in town!

The idea behind this deck is to reduce the difficulty of investigations to 0, then use the Old Keyring to scoop up two clues at a time, while using Quick Study to feed your Research Notes. Darrel has enough ways to reduce difficulty that Quick Learner becomes a nice-to-have instead of a must for a difficulty reduction deck.

• Overview

• Main Strategy

• Piloting

• Other Cards

• Upgrade Path

The deck really requires 8xp to get going, so your game 1 and possibly 2 will be different than your further games in a campaign.

You are looking for (all upgraded versions):

Old Keyring - must

Scavenging - must

Flashlight - good to have

The loop is simple: use Old Keyring to Investigate, then use either Flashlight or Darrel's investigator ability (via Research Notes) to reduce the difficulty to 0. With the skill difficulty set to 0, you'll have no problem recycling your Old Keyring and Flashlight with Scavenging.

Use your Seeker cards, Drawing Thin and Take Heart to draw through your deck as quickly as possible to set up the combo.

Before you have the upgraded versions of Old Keyring and Scavenging, the deck will be fairly slow to gather clues. You'll want to fall back much harder on the clue-drop mechanic cards in this game. Pick up clues one at a time, while using Captivating Discovery and Quick Thinking to build up evidence on the Research Notes. Quick Thinking will largely be useful for passing encounter card tests to stay alive, but that will get you some evidence.

Building Evidence

Once you have enough xp in the deck to have the upgraded versions of the combo, you can really move quickly. Spend the first few turns of the game scooping up 2 clues with Old Keyring, but dropping one with Quick Thinking to build your evidence. This will let you pick up clues one at a time while still building evidence. Once you have 4 evidence on one of your Research Notes, you can use that to completely drain most locations of clues in one action, even in a 4-player game. Just be wary, because that evidence is also one of your sources of the -2 investigate difficulty, so manage them carefully.

Basically you want to use your Old Keyring a lot in the first half of a scenario, and Research Notes to finish off the second half quickly.

Mulligan

As with any deck that runs it, you want to mulligan hard for Drawing Thin. You are ultimately looking for your keyring and another way to reduce the diff by 2: either a Flashlight or Research Notes.

• Magnifying Glass - This is helpful to get your first few clues, but you will mostly use it to get an empty Flashlight out of your hands when you need to.

• Dr. Milan Christopher - You actually don't need him for this deck, as it's fairly cheap. He can easily be replaced by Burning the Midnight Oil, Crack the Case, or Cryptic Writings. That being said, he gives +1 , so if no one else needs him, he's a great addition. (When isn't he?)

• "Look what I found!" - You'll want to use Drawing Thin regularly, either to deliberately fail or just try to get more cards while still succeeding. "Look what I found!" let's you deliberately fail in investigate check while playing Take Heart and using your Drawing Thin to get 2-6 resources, 2-4 cards, and probably still get 2 clues.

*Shed a Light - This one is obvious, play it as often as you can. Always pull the extra clue from somewhere else if you can: either the farthest away location or the location with the highest shroud.

• Knowledge is Power - This got hit hard in a recent Taboo update, but it is still quite powerful in conjunction with Research Notes, it's just not completely broken anymore. You'll be using this to essentially get 1-4 "free" clues whenever it comes up. You'll still have to pay the evidence on your notes for the clues, since Knowledge is Power doesn't eliminate that cost anymore, but this is still a GREAT play.

Beyond immediately upgrading to have one full set of Old Keyring, Scavenging, and Flashlight, here are the further upgrades I would recommend.

UPGRADE FOR SURVIVABILITY - It's hard to predict exactly which encounter cards and types will give you the most trouble. Darrell isn't the best solo investigator - he works much better in groups, so you'll be relying on your partners for a lot of enemy and encounter management. Still, you'll want to keep an eye to upgrading him so he doesn't get wiped out with a bad draw of Unavoidable Demise or something. Look into Leather Coat, Cherished Keepsake, Grizzled, and Bandages for starters.

• Gumption - Reduce the difficult by 2 in a diff reduction deck? This is possibly your best skill.

*Peter Sylvestre / Jessica Hyde - One or both of Peter and Jessica depending on if you're struggling. Peter Sylvestre is a great optional insert for the starting deck as well.

• Magnifying Glass - Spend the one xp to be able to pick the MG back up. That makes it very valuable as a way to get your Flashlight out of your hands.

• Eucatastrophe - Pretty much the only way you fail investigate checks with this deck is when you do it on purpose, or when you draw . Turn that frown upside down and get yourself some free evidence while you're at it. Even if you play with Taboo, Eucatastrophe is pure joy.

• Cryptic Research - You may want to replace Captivating Discovery with Cryptic Research if you don't need the clue-drops from Discovery.

• Perception - Replace Eureka! with the upgraded Perception. You don't need the extra from Perception because most of your test difficulties will be 0, so we're mostly playing it for the draw power. That makes Eureka! better than un-upgraded Perception for game 1, as you get to choose the card you draw from three, but Perception better than Eureka! once you can upgrade.

Use https://arkham-starter.com/tool/upgrade

Thank you so much Valentin1331 for this amazing template!