Perusing the Restricted Section | HC 1K Series

Perusing the Restricted Section

I'm continuing my series with a deck each Sunday and using the new Hemlock Vale cards. This deck uses Rod of Carnamagos and Olive McBride for very frequent activation of Prismatic Spectacles, giving this cursed Daisy deck some tasty clue compression...

Overview

• The idea is to use Abyssal Rot or Virescent Rot from the Rod of Carnamagos •• to shut an enemy down - which then allows for persistent use of the Rod on that same enemy in subsequent turns during the window of a Prismatic Spectacles test for finding a (the enemy can be at any location, and adding further Rot is optional). Olive McBride complements this, allowing for a larger bag pull on a second set of Specs (with a second slot from Occult Reliquary). This combo therefore delivers excellent enemy management and consistent clue compression with the Specs, which can otherwise be a bit fickle. Make sure not to over-curse the bag, as the Specs shut down at 10 curses!

• Astral Mirror gives you more hand slots, allowing you to juggle two Ritual Candles (and so with the taboo not feel the effects of tokens you draw), the Rod and a Grim Memoir (or The Necronomicon when it rears its ugly head). Astral Mirror also takes a bite out of the opportunity cost of playing assets into your hands, giving you a free action to do so. Blasphemous Covenant can be useful while your Candles come online, and provides more ways to manipulate the bag. Of note, Daisy is the only Seeker that can take both the Rod and Candles at the same time without Versatile.

• On top of Specs and a free Grim Memoir action, additional clues come from are Deduction •• and Stirring Up Trouble - giving you plenty of options to keep clue-finding tempo high. Gaze of Ouraxsh meanwhile provides extra enemy management, especially if you use Olive McBride to increase the tokens drawn. A fun interaction with The Necronomicon is that it causes to be treated as , giving Gaze an extra chance of damage!

• Card draw is strong, with Grim Memoir, Gabriel Carillo (when the bag isn't too cursey), Deep Knowledge and Eldritch Initiation. For the latter, you can re-specify what slot Occult Reliquary is providing - so if you can set it to an Arcane slot initially (for drawing 3 cards) and then change it to an Accessory slot when you play your second Prismatic Spectacles (or set it to a Hand slot while you're waiting for Astral Mirror to come out, etc.). Resource generation is also decent, with Voice of Ra (which is now a banger on and decks with its taboo), Crack the Case and Cryptic Writings (leveraging your above average card draw).

• Soak is Gabriel and Olive. Olive is chosen over Favor of the Moon because of the soak she offers (with Favor of the Moon being great on an accompanying Mystic). It's worth saying that Ritual Candles reduce the need for soak generally, as they nerf all symbol pulls from the chaos bag - making you more likely to pass nasty treacheries (or at least fail them by less!). Additionally, Gabriel provides an boost as does Death • XIII, which pair nicely to the +2 from your Specs for investigating high shroud locations while maintaining compression.

Campaign starter and planned progression

With In the Thick of It this is a 30 XP deck. Promise of Power is in the side deck here, as it is of course great for decks but I already had it in my accompanying Mystic deck and didn't want to proxy. 0 XP deck is directly below (and link here):

A recommended order of XP purchases/upgrades is as follows:

• Dr. Milan Christopher → Gabriel Carillo

• Perception → Astral Mirror

• Charisma

• 1 x Rod of Carnamagos → 1 x Rod of Carnamagos ••

• 1 x Crack the Case → 1 x Prismatic Spectacles

• 1 x "I've got a plan!" → 1 x Rod of Carnamagos ••

• Occult Reliquary

• Blasphemous Covenant

• Accursed → Stirring Up Trouble

• Mind over Matter → Gaze of Ouraxsh

• Deduction → Deduction ••

Final thoughts

To address what some of you will be thinking, yes the Rod of Carnamagos with Armageddon is also a very nice combo - but perhaps, dare I say, not without its own issues? With the Rod on Mystics it's a bit tricky to kill high health Elite enemies whom you'd want to use it on, as you can't target them with the Rod (it's only for non-Elites). Therefore you'll likely need to use Abyssal Rot or Virescent Rot to shut an enemy down to the allow for it to be targeted while testing on an Elite, but as Elite enemies can kill you it definitely feels like a riskier strategy (especially when Shrivelling ••••• exists for 3 per action damage, it doesn't require a combo to work at its best, and it's cheaper in terms of XP when using two Arcane Research). More broadly, the Armageddon combo is good for crowd control of two non-Elite enemies at the same location by dividing Armageddon damage between the two - which is again nice, but situational.

For me personally, I enjoyed the Rod on Daisy much more as it gave her enemy management which she greatly struggles with and because it can also be used to abuse the Prismatic Spectacles window. Mystics meanwhile can still take Armageddon with Favor of the Moon and - now that their hands aren't occupied with a Rod - use Wicked Athame and their own Ritual Candles to great effect (Drake Dastardly was the companion deck). This plus the Drake deck creates a really nice curse duo for two player campaigns, which I think was lacking before Hemlock Vale as the curse tech was spread too thin (between the two decks listed, the only card that needs proxying is Occult Reliquary - and it's easy not to proxy with it being a permanent). Overall, I found this deck solid and a powerful Rod abuser in its own right. How do you like the new Hemlock Vale tech in general? Let me know in the comments!