Rules don't apply to the rich

Rules don't apply to the rich: how to buy your way out of trouble

Introduction

This is a pretty flexible deck. The only core cards are Lucky Dice, Henry Wan and the token sealing cards. If you've been playing Arkham Horror a while you probably know where this is headed, as none of these cards are particularly new. This is my take on an old concept, leveraging all the new cards and synergies that have been released in the meantime.

Henry Wan allows you to generate huge amounts of card draw and resources provided you don't reveal a scary symbol.

Lucky Dice lets you pay money to ignore a scary symbol, and crucially you don't need to put that token back into the chaos bag. Unfortunately if you draw a then you lose your dice, and the cost to ignore a token is $2 which means you need to reduce the number of symbols in the bag to maximize profit margins.

Seal of the Seventh Sign removes the from the bag so you can confidently use your dice, but each other scary symbol will wear down this protection.

There are a lot of options available to protect your Seal of the Seventh Sign. You don't even really need any other cards if your bag doesn't have many symbols since you can just pay to play with your dice and ignore any scary symbols. Any rich person worth their salt knows that this is totally unacceptable and luckily we have a whole suite of options to pump those numbers up.

Making Money

My preferred profit maximization cards are Sign of Xelotaph, The Chthonian Stone and Protective Incantation. Depending how your bag looks, you may not need too many of these.

Sign of Xelotaph is nice because it is flexible, you can play just one copy and use the others to recharge it if that's all you need, or you can play 2-3 copies and recharge it with other cards if you have a scary bag.

The Chthonian Stone is a relatively uncontested hand slot and your Seal of the Seventh Sign protects it. It's unique so unfortunately we can't play two of them.

Protective Incantation costs experience so it's the last one I add, but it's nice because resources are a lot more abundant than charges when you're rich.

We need Sign Magick to give us enough slots to play these, especially since we also want to run some other spell assets. We can later upgrade to Sign Magick for some extra actions.

Spending Money

Lucky Dice is our main spending outlet. We're going to be using it many, many times a turn to absolutely bury the chaos bag.

Honed Instinct and Swift Reflexes are ways to turn our mountains of cash into extra actions. If you need an extra cash outlet you can add in Grounded (3), Streetwise, Arcane Studies or similar. I don't really like the level 0 pay-to-increase-skill assets but if you're playing hard or expert you probably need them.

Well Connected isn't really 'spending money', but it's in this section because it's one of the payoff cards that comes online when you're sitting on more money than Scrooge.

Embezzled Treasure is pretty great for transferring your wealth to next scenario. You can use it on someone else if you want, but we rich people don't recommend it. You can even include two of these, but it's a bit gratuitous.

"You've had worse..." and Spectral Shield mitigate the horror you'll take from cycling your deck - which you will do - and are generally just pretty handy cards when you want to live forever.

Actually Contributing

So far we've got a lot of money and a decent amount of actions, but nothing to really use our actions on. We've spent all this time greeding up a hoard of cash Bezos would be jealous of but we haven't done anything to progress the game.

This is where you have a lot of options and it will depend on your role and how many investigators you're playing with, etc. This sample deck is a flex that can do either clues or enemy management, but doesn't really specialize in one or the other.

Breath of the Sleeper and Eyes of the Dreamer: these cards are very good on their own, but once you've tamed the chaos bag and have your Lucky Dice out they really go off. You only need to spend one charge each time because you can choose one of the two tokens to resolve and milk your dice by ignoring the second one until you get a matching token. That's 3 damage or 2 clues per action. You might even be able to do the same without spending a charge but I'm not sure how the rules work with that exactly, and it plays just fine getting 27 damage or 18 clues out of a level 0 asset. If you're low on cash because this is very expensive you can use more charges. Using 3 charges gives you a pretty good chance you are only going to spend $2-6 to find a juicy double.

To boost our willpower, we use Living Ink as it's in the uncontested body slot. You want to take Macabre Depiction if you are using any bless or curse tokens so it lasts forever, but you have enough money and actions and cards to just keep playing them on top of each other when they run out even without investing xp.

Quick Thinking is just there to give us more actions. Bonus points when used outside your turn for the flexibility.

Friends in Low Places helps you assemble your combo pieces. You can start out with Ally or Ritual but you'll eventually want both.

"Where's the party?" is great for card draw and also victory point hunting. Grab any non-Elite victory enemy and get some card draw for your trouble. Everybody wins... except the poor guy you're about to kill.

Charon's Obol and The Great Work are because we greed for experience, not just money. In the Thick of It lets us start with Obol for maximum greed.

Synergies and Upgrades

This deck pairs fantastically with a bless or curse friend, because the more tokens in the bag the more money Henry Wan makes for us. We unfortunately just don't have the deck space to accommodate our own bless and curse generation without dropping something.

Memories of Another Life is a huge upgrade. You can use it for whatever is needed at the time. Some of my favourites are Drawing Thin, Ancestral Token (with Relic Hunter), Leo De Luca (with Charisma), but the best part about this card is that you can adapt it to what you need RIGHT NOW.

Eldritch Brand is ludicrously expensive in terms of experience, but starting the game with Seal of the Seventh Sign out is a beautiful feeling. Just make sure you stocked up on cash with Embezzled Treasure otherwise you're going to struggle a bit.

Ghastly Possession, Enraptured and Call the Beyond recharge your spell assets but in my experience this is a bit of a luxury upgrade since you will cycle your deck and have money and actions to play the second copy before the first runs out most of the time. The curse tokens and extra action from Call the Beyond are extra nice.

Spectral Razor and Read the Signs: only run these if you have curse or bless tokens otherwise you'll never see a symbol.

Word of Command and Uncage the Soul let you find your cards and recover them from discard but I would call this a luxury upgrade as well.

Transfiguration is a Ritual so you can find it with your Friends in Low Places and turn into Patrice so you draw 5 cards a turn. Or Jacqueline so you get some free token manipulation. Or Norman so you can see the top card of your deck. Pretty nice, but luxury.

0 xp/Starting deck

Just play it like regular Dexter. You only need 9 xp for your 2 important cards; you're getting +3 from Charon's Obol and The Great Work and you start with 1 spare from In the Thick of It so you just want to make 5 xp on your first scenario. Pretty doable for a temporarily embarrassed millionaire.