Card draw simulator
| Derived from |
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| None. Self-made deck here. |
| Inspiration for |
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| None yet |
HungryColquhoun · 22206
The Interceptor
In this mini-series I'm delving deeper in the Ch2 card pool for interesting combos. Did you know magicians can teleport? With The Grapevine Dexter gets efficiently to enemies and fries them with Cosmic Flame, intercepting the bad guys before they cause mischief!
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Series Decks
| Seeker | Survivor | Guardian | Rogue | Mystic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Joe | Izzie | Daniela | Trish | Dexter |
At a Glance
Stats Clue-finding: ★★★☆☆ Consistency: ★★★★☆ Enemy Management: ★★★★★+ Encounter Defense: ★★★★★ Survivability: ★★★★★ Simplicity: ★★★★★
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Overview
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Combos: The key combo here is upgraded Grapevine and Cosmic Flame. With these two assets, Dexter can get to enemies up to 3 locations away, draw a card and then deal up to 6 damage - it's insane! Grapevine's action is also a Parley, so you can do this even with an enemy attached to you (and with Cosmic Flame you can split damage between enemies when spending charges, further adding to the great synergy here), and it lets you efficiently engage Aloof enemies. Spiritual Charm (also a Parley) duplicates function by pulling enemies towards you and giving resources instead.
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Complimentary Cards: To aid with Cosmic Flame tests, Bloodstone and Jim Culver both provide a +1 boost. This means you test at a 9 for combat (and a 7 for Second Sight investigates). Will of the Cosmos is a nice pairing to Grapevine as it self-discards, giving Dexter a little extra support on the clue side (and you can get rid of the doom with his bounce back as well). Arcane Experience means you don't have to take the Sophie's choice of discarding Cosmic Flame or Second Sight when The Necronomicon comes out (or if it's already discarded, then the extra slot supports Dexter's asset bounce back shenanigans).
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Staples: Dexter's signature "For my next trick..." is superb as always, allowing you to do a full deck search for key assets. Out the Door is free cash, while it's left unupgraded here it's still useful alongside "Watch this!". Arcane Initiate allows you to find spells early on (including "For my next trick..."), with Jim Culver replacing your Initiates when they've exceeded their usefulness. Ward of Protection is excellent support vs. the encounter deck as always. While there's no Lucky Cigarette Case here for card draw, the inclusion of Jim, the Initiates and The Grapevine all help to churn your deck.
Thank you: 5argon and their thumbnail tool; Valentin1331 for his support over the years; the community creators of Arkham.Build (Felix), Arkham Cards (zzorba) and ArkhamDB (kamalisk) - linking their Patreons!
Starting deck and planned progression
0 XP starting deck is below (and link here):
A recommended order of purchases/upgrades is:
Post-18 XP suggestions are:
Playtesting Notes
I played this deck through two standalones: Fortune and Folly, and Traces to Nowhere.
Fortune and Folly: For the former, I'd only played it the once as part of TSK, so I thought it was high time to give it a refresh. I played on Standard, which still has a fairly challenging bag (down to -5, and with several harsh symbol tokens). The deck worked well, I managed to bounce back Second Sight at one point to recharge it, and with Cosmic Flame plus Jim Culver I managed to kill a Dimensional Shambler (which has a 6 combat value - the devs weren't messing around!). The splashy icons in this deck also came in handy: there is a test of 3 to knock a guard out at one point - I committed both Unexpected Courage and Soul Link and passed as you might expect.
Towards the end of the scenario, you need to get to a far away location and resign. The Grapevine really pulled its weight here allowing me to close the distance in record time as there was an enemy at that location. The scenario also placed a restriction on me where I was only allowed to take a Move action once per turn, so the Grapevine helped with playing around this too. In addition to dealing with the Shambler, Cosmic Flame did its usual excellent crowd control - picking off a 1 health enemy while I whaled on a high health enemy at the same location. Coming off Fortune and Folly, I was very pleased with the result!
Traces to Nowhere: We played two player on standard. It can be a tough scenario so two player on standard is still a difficult experience. I'll aim to keep spoilers minimal! Play time was 2 and a half hours (there's randomness in the scenario, and we got some of the worst possible randomness). However it does mean the deck was more thoroughly playtested! The eagle-eyed among you will notice this is the same paragraph I used for my Izzie and Daniela deck guides - that's because we had awful luck a second time around as well haha!
Honestly, this Dexter deck is perfect for Traces to Nowhere. There's an annoying recurring enemy which pops up a lot, and will often spawn attached to your cluever (Trish in this case). While Trish could sometimes evade the enemy fine, there were several times where she couldn't and so Dexter being able to zip across the map with The Grapevine and fry them with Cosmic Flame was - in a word - awesome! His enemy management was extremely strong throughout, and later in the scenario he did get Second Sight out too to support with clue-finding. Card draw from the Grapevine was good enough that even though we didn't draw Jim Culver or Arcane Initiate early on - we didn't really need them. Both copies of Grapevine saw use in the scenario.
As the scenario runs pretty long, we did see The Necronomicon - but with Arcane Experience this was no bother as expected. Later, when the first Cosmic Flame was running low, Arcane Experience provided a slot for the second copy to kill the big boss (playing this in tandem with Jim Culver via Dexter's ability, as Trish had exhausted the boss that turn).
Our rather cursed luck meant we had to finish the scenario by killing a person we were meant to save (due to an enemy which adds doom spawning at an inaccessible location, cutting the game rather short). But I suppose it's better than no resolution at all (and this time we did earn the reward card)! This deck was a match made in heaven for Traces to Nowhere, when paired with a good cluever (e.g. the Trish deck I've posted in this series) it works very well!
Final thoughts
This deck basically feels like Superman - zip across the map, and melt your enemies with laser eyes Cosmic Flame (or at least, I think that's what Superman does?). Honestly, even factoring in the Ch1 card pool, it's rare a deck has this level of mobility paired to very good damage. I went into the upgraded Grapevine Discord thread from when it was first revealed - and no one was talking about this on Dexter. I've not seen it on Reddit either, so I don't think this combo has caught on yet.
This deck hopefully speaks for itself - enjoy!