Hey all, tell me your weird deck ideas!

I'm a big fan of weird and unconventional deck builds. As fun as it is to play a mystic using Shrivelling to attack and Sixth Sense to investigate, or a Seeker with a high intellect and Dr Milan Christopher, I like the idea of decks that break the mould. Some of these are pretty clear from the cards that exist as intended interactions - a mystic using Song of the Dead and chaos token manipulation to get skulls for bonuses, or a rogue stockpiling resources for the "big money" cards - but others can be pretty weird. I'll hopefully be starting a new Arkham campaign this weekend and am not sure what to play - so if you have any decks (or even concepts) that you think of as strange or unconventional, please share.

To start off, here's some ideas for decks that I have not been able to try out yet:

Big Money Zoey using Well Connected alongside her ability and the Thompson engine.

Jenny Barnes with 20 skill cards and the Desperate suite.

Carolyn Fern concentrating on the Meat Cleaver to act as a monster-hunter.

"Gunslinger" Diana Stanley, using Daring to give enemies Retaliate in order to ignore it with Marksmanship and then use Marksmanship to trigger her investigator ability.

I don’t have a ton of these that I’ve played and they may already be things you’ve tried, but I played a Mark with stick to the plan, act of desperation (attached), and guardian Thompson that generated silly amounts of resources. That was fun but was never sure what to do with the excess if I had it. Teamwork?

I also made a fun Marie that could pull a ton of clues for free by using her doom ability, knowledge is power, + guiding stones (it’s a spell) and fueling it with torrents of power from cheap alchemical transmutations, skills, and enraptured for more charges. Actually had a skeleton key from another investigator at points and got like 6 or 7 clues at once without using any of my 3 actions. There are a ton of ways to fuel her guiding stones investigate check that are rather potent.

Here is how she ended up:

https://arkhamdb.com/deck/view/467220

EDIT: Some of the deck description in the listing for Marie is not really accurate. It's something I wrote for an unleveled version of her deck, but you get the idea.

6 minutes ago, Soakman said:

I don’t have a ton of these that I’ve played and they may already be things you’ve tried, but I played a Mark with stick to the plan, act of desperation (attached), and guardian Thompson that generated silly amounts of resources. That was fun but was never sure what to do with the excess if I had it. Teamwork?

I also made a fun Marie that could pull a ton of clues for free by using her doom ability, knowledge is power, + guiding stones (it’s a spell) and fueling it with torrents of power from cheap alchemical transmutations, skills, and enraptured for more charges. Actually had a skeleton key from another investigator at points and got like 6 or 7 clues at once without using any of my 3 actions. There are a ton of ways to fuel her guiding stones investigate check that are rather potent.

Here is how she ended up:

https://arkhamdb.com/deck/view/467220

I've played the Mark/Thompson build myself and I love it (I spent the resources on tanking assets like True Grit and Something Worth Fighting For, and you could always take Keen Eye). That's what I meant by the Thompson Engine for Zoey, using her off-class slots for 2x Well Connected, 2x Act of Desperation and 1x Astounding Revelation - just a shame that I wouldn't also be able to pick up Sixth Sense. The .45 Thompson Guardian build is just amazing fun - I also have to try it out on Leo, using Swift Reload rather than Act of Desperation/Well-Maintained. Oooh...that could be a cool build.

That Marie build looks amazing . That's exactly what I mean by "silly" decks - normally Torrent of Power and Alchemical Transmutation are niche or bad cards but throw them together with a card that allows you to benefit from nearly any amount of skill bonus and you get a really cool trick. I love it!

I've been meaning to revisit my Do Not Engage, Soldier! Mark build, intended to make use of the Blackjack and the Springfield. I published it about a year ago, before we had the upgraded Bandolier and the grenades. The brand new Safeguard should probably get slotted in there.

I recently wanted to see if the new Winchester could outperform the Thompson(0) if you included some chaos bag manipulation. So here's Zoey Winchester McBride . I've only tried her solo in The Gathering so far. I'd play her again.

I have many great deck ideas for Lola, but my silliest one is definitely:

Build her by upgrading into both versions of each of the dual class cards.

It probably won't help us win anything, it's just a weird flex.

Another weird idea I’ve been messing with is an event heavy rogue (probably cluever or big money?) that takes 2 copies of stealth upgraded, 2 pickpocket upgrades, and 2 Crystalizers to turn the beast of the crystalizer into free cards and resources.

Since the enemy is prey crystallizer bearer only, and stealth does not exhaust it but still counts as an evade, you can free trigger stealth once a turn to avoid it and get free stuff from pickpocketing while also getting the benefits of the crystallizer relic. Similarly your shenanigans won’t cause issues for other players trying to get through locations with the guardian who will never exhaust because the enemy will only engage and try to fight you.

Could be good on Finn or Sef. Also have a card deck built but it is for a custom/fan gator of mine so the event cards likely won’t be possible. But again, you get the idea.

https://arkhamdb.com/deck/view/567186

The custom investigator is here, updated cards are near the end of the thread. I love playing as her in 3-4 player. She’s very different if you are at all interested.

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2001786/update-astrid-lee-custom-investigator-looking-opin

53 minutes ago, Iuchi Toshimo said:

I have many great deck ideas for Lola, but my silliest one is definitely:

Build her by upgrading into both versions of each of the dual class cards.

I like the dual-class cards for Lola, but they're better at level zero where they each still work in two roles.

This isn’t a specific silly investigator deck build idea, but we are getting a little slap happy over here as we wait for Dream Eaters to fully release and have incorporated some of our own brand of silly deck ideas. Instead of replaying entire campaigns, we are doing something we kind of have coined “Another Day, Another Deck” But this is not your average standalone play. We have to choose an investigator we have either never played, or not played in a long time. Then choose a scenario from any campaign and build a deck for that day. Since this is a “one and done” kind of mindset and to add sauce to the goose, we came up with several ways to tweak the deck build or play and wrote them down separately. After our investigator/scenario is chosen, we randomly choose one of those “tweaks”. Some examples include: Ignore all secondary class/card instructions. No Neutral Cards allowed. No (insert level here) experience cards. No permanent cards. No duplicate cards. There are a couple that show up during play: “If 6 doom has been placed on the agenda, swap investigator cards, keeping your deck for the remainder of the scenario” and the cult favorite: “After 2 per investigator doom has been put into play, move one chair to the right in player order and play the investigator in front of you for the remainder of the scenario.” You get the idea. Probably not the kind of “silly” you were after though.

A while ago, someone proposed Lola Hayes, Blood Mage, possibly on Board Game Geek. Basically, you take Blood Pact and Borrowed Time, plus as many cards that give you extra actions and that generate doom as you can.

Spend most of your turns just doing stuff normally, probably badly. Fill up your Borrowed Time. Then, when the Witching Hour comes, pump your blood pact, generate all the doom, and start a 6+ action turn with enormous stats.

4 minutes ago, Eldan985 said:

A while ago, someone proposed Lola Hayes, Blood Mage, possibly on Board Game Geek. Basically, you take Blood Pact and Borrowed Time, plus as many cards that give you extra actions and that generate doom as you can.

Spend most of your turns just doing stuff normally, probably badly. Fill up your Borrowed Time. Then, when the Witching Hour comes, pump your blood pact, generate all the doom, and start a 6+ action turn with enormous stats.

And Will to Survive / Ace in the Hole classic combo, since we have all the extra action cards. Then Resourceful or Quantum Flux to recycle and start over.

Lola is amazingly underrated.

2 hours ago, Carthoris said:

I like the dual-class cards for Lola, but they're better at level zero where they each still work in two roles.

I've played Lola through most of the campaigns thus far (except TCU and TDE) and only play her when I think of a new deck. Lola's weakness actually makes the basic versions of these strictly worse because they're all assets and get hit by her weakness... unless we're just filling up space to play with more neutrals. She requires 3x7 classed cards and a cycle of the 6 dual class cards counts as 12 of those, leaving 3 more from each class. That would mean, minimally, 15 classed cards (6 dual + 9 other) and 20 neutrals. Interesting. Keep talking, please.

One impractical but thematic deck I thought would be fun to try is a "Diana the Huntress" deck with Charisma & 2x Summoned Hound. Play Inspiring Presence to use the Hounds multiple times per turn, and Vicious Blow to increase their damage. Bonus points if you give her Ornate Bow. It can one-shot a turned Hound (Unbound Beast). Or she can cancel their attacks with Dodge and "I've had worse!"(2).

I may try it as a 9 or 19XP deck with Curse of the Rougarou.

RELEASE THE HOUNDS!!!

Update: Since we decided on Return to Dunwich with its low experience gain, I decided on the dumb Jenny Barnes desperate build.

While our luck has been atrocious, the deck has turned out to be surprisingly good. It only needs 19 exp to essentially be complete, which helps a lot.

9 hours ago, Allonym said:

While our luck has been atrocious, the deck has turned out to be surprisingly good. It only needs 19 exp to essentially be complete, which helps a lot.

I have always had a love/hate relationship with Jenny. I never found a truly satisfying deck build for her and have kind of shelved her. Sometimes it’s the weird decks that are most fun. Is this deck online?
So being inspired, I tried my hand at a “silly deck” build today. I built a Finn resource generation deck, with a twist. After playing Patrice who is so effective even given her limitations, I wanted to see if I could impose some limitations on Finn, who I’ve never played, to test his effectiveness with that 1 Will. I wanted to see if there was a way to generate resources for skill value, without using any assets or allies that gave him increased base values (unless it was based on resources). So no Hemispheric Map, Dr Milan, Hawkeye, Tarot cards etc. But he could have Well Connected for example. We just did stand-alone mode with 9XP. I gave him Pay Day 2x, Lone Wolf, Burglary, Watch This 2x as extra resource draw (Watch This ended up giving him 6 resources sans actions). With Fence, Well Connected, Leo De Luca and Mr Rook, (who thankfully showed up early) in his deck, he was even able to get them all into play. Mr Rook and Fence were a great team, because unlike his signature card, Mr Rook takes no action to search and I could use Fence if I chose an illicit card and put it into play, all without using an action. Truth from Fiction boosted him to 5 searches. With Leo’s extra action and a lot of Lone Wolfing, he ended up with 28 resources not counting the assets in play that cost 20+ or the many events he played. Money Talks, which both came up pretty late, had skill tests at a base value of 12 and 14 (overkill yes, but -5? Who cares!) Even Well Connected was +5 once a round to any of his skills by the end. You Handle This One turned out to be pretty helpful as well, because I used them both on fairly beefy enemies which I threw to Agnes (who was overcome by such a generosity of spirit) freeing him up to do other things...like Burgle. He came through relatively unscathed and really was able to consistently overcome his horrible 1 Will. (2x Rise to the Occasion helped).
Of course, his random weakness Self Centered was pretty tame. I shudder to think what would have happened if he had gotten Paranoia. 😬

On 1/26/2020 at 2:10 AM, Mimi61 said:

I have always had a love/hate relationship with Jenny. I never found a truly satisfying deck build for her and have kind of shelved her. Sometimes it’s the weird decks that are most fun. Is this deck online?
So being inspired, I tried my hand at a “silly deck” build today. I built a Finn resource generation deck, with a twist. After playing Patrice who is so effective even given her limitations, I wanted to see if I could impose some limitations on Finn, who I’ve never played, to test his effectiveness with that 1 Will. I wanted to see if there was a way to generate resources for skill value, without using any assets or allies that gave him increased base values (unless it was based on resources). So no Hemispheric Map, Dr Milan, Hawkeye, Tarot cards etc. But he could have Well Connected for example. We just did stand-alone mode with 9XP. I gave him Pay Day 2x, Lone Wolf, Burglary, Watch This 2x as extra resource draw (Watch This ended up giving him 6 resources sans actions). With Fence, Well Connected, Leo De Luca and Mr Rook, (who thankfully showed up early) in his deck, he was even able to get them all into play. Mr Rook and Fence were a great team, because unlike his signature card, Mr Rook takes no action to search and I could use Fence if I chose an illicit card and put it into play, all without using an action. Truth from Fiction boosted him to 5 searches. With Leo’s extra action and a lot of Lone Wolfing, he ended up with 28 resources not counting the assets in play that cost 20+ or the many events he played. Money Talks, which both came up pretty late, had skill tests at a base value of 12 and 14 (overkill yes, but -5? Who cares!) Even Well Connected was +5 once a round to any of his skills by the end. You Handle This One turned out to be pretty helpful as well, because I used them both on fairly beefy enemies which I threw to Agnes (who was overcome by such a generosity of spirit) freeing him up to do other things...like Burgle. He came through relatively unscathed and really was able to consistently overcome his horrible 1 Will. (2x Rise to the Occasion helped).
Of course, his random weakness Self Centered was pretty tame. I shudder to think what would have happened if he had gotten Paranoia. 😬

It's online now: https://arkhamdb.com/decklist/view/18598/the-desperate-dilettante-1.0 . Marvel as the disaster dilettante deliberately ignores her missing sister!

Finn big-money builds are always fun to watch, though I have mainly seen them focus on Pickpocketing (2). I want to like Fence but it always ends up being more cost than benefit. Shame that Finn can't take All In...

I ran a Fence/Pickpocketing 2 Finn in our Labyrinths event. Did pretty well.

17 hours ago, Allonym said:

's online now: https://arkhamdb.com/decklist/view/18598/the-desperate-dilettante-1.0 . Marvel as the disaster dilettante deliberately ignores her missing sister!

Finn big-money builds are always fun to watch, though I have mainly seen them focus on Pickpocketing (2). I want to like Fence but it always ends up being more cost than benefit. Shame that Finn can't take All In...

Thanks! I will check her out!

2 hours ago, Eldan985 said:

I ran a Fence/Pickpocketing 2 Finn in our Labyrinths event. Did pretty well.

Fence/Mr Rook. Not a resource generator, but being able to search for and put illicit cards into play with no action, multiple times is pretty cool.

Pretty sure Mr Rook wasn't out back then.