The Spy Who Found Clues

There's not a lot of gaming in my summer; therefore, the blog has been light on content. I figured it's time to share some Arkham decks I played in the past that I really liked. We'll start with a Trish Scarborough deck.

Link the full deck on ArkhamDB

As you know, I play Rogue Investigators a lot, they are clearly my favorite class, but I also don't like using the same cards repeatedly. With this in mind, I tried to stick to the spy theme with this deck. Since Trish is one of the most powerful cluer you can get, a theme deck is definitely not an issue.

Trish has a strong stat line to investigate and evade enemies. Moreover, her signature ability calls you to lean into that. Discovering an additional clue when there's an enemy at your location is yummy! Or you can go the other way around, automatically evading an enemy after discovering a clue. Important note: this enemy doesn't need to be engaged with you. She can also use up to level 2 Seeker cards.

You know what is even stronger? Discovering 3 clues when there's an enemy at your location! That's where Damning Testimony comes into play. Even at level 0, you'll get plenty of mileage out of it. It's not the only tool in Trish's spy kit:

• Fingerprint Kit: Another way of discovering two clues with one action with base intellect 5.
• Hawk-Eye Folding Camera: All the evidence you gather should serve you in the future in the form of better stats.
• Disguise: A spy shall not be identified! Also, it's one of the better evasion card.
• Eavesdrop: Spies do that a lot. An unengaged enemy shouldn't be difficult to find; there's going to be one after you evade one.
• Narrow Escape: It's key a spy isn't caught. The idea here is you investigate while engaged with an enemy, cancel their attack of opportunity, automatically evade it, and continue your turn with a bonus of +2 to your next action.

All these assets are expensive to play. You will need a good economy to use them properly. Sneak By should help; many enemies can be dodged with a base 4 Agility. Gregory Gry and Bianca Die Katz, two of your less reputable contacts, can also provide you with some funds. Worst-case scenario, you help yourself while no one is looking with Burglary.

Rounding up Trish's investigation tools, there is Mouse Mask, with the added benefit of providing some Mythos protection, Hyperawareness, maybe we'll have too much money, and the usual skill cards (Deduction, Inquiring Mind, Perception). I threw in a Manual Dexterity for good measure.

That's the base deck; you can't go wrong from there. Have fun with it. For my part, I follow this sequence of upgrades:

• Blackmail on Damning Testimony for the juicy +2 intellect when using it.
• Charisma, in preparation for the next steps.
• Lola Santiago replacing Burglary. A must have in any Rogue cluer deck.
• A second copy of Lola to replace a Fingerprint kit.
• Deduction upgrade x2.
• Perception upgrade x2.
• Moxie-3 to replace the last Fingerprint kit. More mythos protection and another way to help with the evasion.
• Streetwise-3, pushing out the Hyperawareness out of usefulness. They were replaced by a second copy of Moxie-3 and Guidance.

The Guidance card is a throw-in before the last scenario of the campaign. Totally not needed. Use whatever you want at that point. I had enough tools in the deck to never bother with upgrading the number of evidences on Damning Testimony, but that could be a valid upgrade path too.

You can see the final 29XP deck here.

Please let me know if you use this deck. How did it work for you?