SSS (Synergistic Spell Slinging) Dexter

Intro

This is "The Mystic(™)" build, on sixth gear.

If you played any usual "willpower for everything" mystic, you might have encountered issues like:

• Slow setup

• Drawing the wrong part of the deck

• Not enough actions, always a bit short of what you actually want to do

This deck solves those issues.

The Deck

Mulligan for your card draw (Molly Maxwell, Scroll of Secrets, Arcane Initiate). Other than these, Prophetic is the key piece of your engine, and you may want to keep a Clairvoyance or Rite of Seeking to simply start progressing the scenario as soon as you can.

What you want to do is, put your assets with charges in play, deplete them, use your Dexter action to replace them and keep on going.

3 clue gathering spells accompanied by 2 Read the Signs proved enough to sustain all your cluevering needs in a 2-player game. Before you run out of charges, you will probably shuffle your deck so you will be able to play your assets again. If your partner also pulls his weight on the clue department, maybe you can go 2/2 Clue/Fight spells.

You can afford to play 2x Arcane Research. I didn't put any upgraded spells in this published build, just upgrade your arcane assets first because the level 2-3 Rite, Clairvoyance and Shrivelling has good bonuses. If you are playing 3 or 4 players, you can upgrade them all the way to the 5th.

A Charisma along the way should help with having a slot for Leo De Luca while using the other to cycle between the others.

 Efficiency

You have access to Leo De Luca. Your Close the Circle will grant you kinda an extra action a turn. You will never have to get your clues one by one thanks to your spells. You will draw a lot of cards with Arcane Initiate and Scroll of Secrets. You will play these and all the other assets with your Dexter action, free of action and even a resource cheaper. When you get your resources and cards with David Renfield and Arcane Initiate, play Protecting the Anirniq while replacing them to cycle your deck even faster.

You'll just find yourself way ahead on the doom clock thanks to the insane action compression.

Tips

• Drawing like crazy is the name of the game. This will enable you to see your powerful spell events like Deny Existence, Ward of Protection or Read the Signs more consistently, and even more than twice a game. You will feel well equipped against mythos phase.

• Most of the assets in this deck are meant to be replaced quickly. Deplete them and throw them away to stay ahead.

• Playing Arcane Initiate and David Renfield is easier compared to other mystics because managing doom on them as easy as triggering your bonus action. Just get some resources and cards and replace them.

• Holy Rosary can be replaced with Lucky Cigarette Case for even more draw. I like static stats a lot but especially after upgrading the spell suite and getting the Four of Cups and Prophetic deck felt like it could have been ok without it.

• Molly Maxwell can consistently get your Prophetic (Talent), Holy Rosary (Charm), Sword Cane (Relic/Weapon/Melee), Four of Cups (Tarot), Scroll of Secrets(Tome). If you have all you need, just name spell or ally to cycle your deck.

• Close the Circle can become an evasion/fight/investigation spell in a pinch.

• Don't bother with trying to get extra arcane slots. The rhythm of depleting assets to play more assets will be enough and (hopefully) more satisfying. Sometimes you will need to discard an arcane asset before depleting it because you need that Shrivelling right now, but since this decks drowns in extra actions, cards and resources, you will be just fine doing that.

The End

I played this deck in Innsmouth and even on the first scenario it didn't show much weakness. It has good mythos protection, good soak, and good tempo. I guess one weakness was the critical non-willpower tests like Malfunction. The way I handled them was to Ward of Protection them if I could, if not I just spammed tests until I got lucky because I had enough spare actions. I played with a bless heavy partner so it made sense to spam disadvantaged tests every now and then. We got every flashback collected, which I wasn't able to before because In Too Deep is no joke. This deck however got online just before it (3rd scenario), and we demolished it with turns to spare on the doom clock.

I started with this deck.

Lastly, I also tried Black Market and Friends in Low Places because I'm a sucker for them. Protecting the Anirniq was better than Black Market for cycling, and Arcane Initiate was better than FiLP (mostly because you can only invest 4 xp into FiLP).