Suzi snacks her way to victory

Credit: Kenan Thompson/Nickelodeon care of nsphere

You can't publish Suzi decks on ArkhamDB right now, but this works. The Forced Learning is to get the deck size correct.

Every Suzi deck must answer two questions: what is your nutrition plan, and how does it win you scenarios? The nutrition plan here is the one from this PlayingBoardGames' youtube video. It wins scenarios through sheer volume of actions rather than action compression. It is a Calvin-style statball flex deck that will be slow to get off the ground but then never stops. Since Suzi's deck size is 50, the philosophy here is to include almost no combo cards because reliably seeing any given card is nigh impossible.

• Overview

• Main strategy

• Managing your hunger

• Cooking up a victory

• When hunger strikes

• Soux chef wanted

• The secret ingredient is probably butter, or how to upgrade

• Make Your Own Deck!

• Do almost nothing for the entire first Agenda

• Transform into the undisputed Slime Queen of Extra (Basic) Actions

• Flex your 6/6/6/6 stat line to get clues, evade or kill monsters, pass whatever random tests the scenario requires, and be immune to most of the encounter deck

• Use fast, cheap, hand-slot assets to stay that way while you solo the back half of the scenario

• Suzi ups her pathetic 1/1/1/1 stat line by +1 to each for every card under Ravenous. Here is how that works.

  • You must devour a card from your HAND every upkeep, but draw 2 instead of 1.
  • As a free trigger once per round, you may devour an asset controlled by an investigator at your location. This deck assumes that asset will be yours, but feel free to help your teammates by cleaning out their clogged up slots!
  • Devoured cards go under Ravenous until you have 5 and your hunger is officially uncontrolled, then they go out of play.
  • Once your hunger is uncontrolled, you also have to devour an asset in play at the end of each of your turns, putting it out of play. You could instead devour a card under Ravenous, moving it to your out-of-play devoured pile. You never want to take this second option because it makes your stats go back down.
  • This means an uncontrolled Suzi needs to eat an asset from play at the end of her turn, and a card from hand after drawing in upkeep.
  • Just remember that it is only the mythos that wants to control your hunger. You want to free it from the shackles of calorie-counting, just be ready with enough food on hand once you do.

• You need to know where your meals will come from and how many you need.

  • By round 5 upkeep, you will have devoured 5 cards from hand and are at max stats.
  • By round 10 upkeep, you will have devoured 10 from hand and 5 from play.
  • By round 15 upkeep, you will have devoured 15 from hand and 10 from play, half your deck.
  • You want a lot of fast assets so that those 10 cards devoured from play don't translate into a 10-action tax.
  • Alternatively, you can eat non-fast assets that have served their purpose: an empty Scroll of Secrets, a Jeremiah Kirby, a Schoffner's Catalogue with only one coupon left, or any ally or asset on the brink of defeat by damage/horror.

• Do you even meal prep?

  • This deck gets big stats, and tries to never go back down. If you go up then down then back up again, you will spend two-thirds of the scenario with bad or middling stats. As a human-shaped goo monster brand new to this world, all Suzi has are her stats, so she can't afford to not be totally stuffed at peak physical condition.
  • Every asset you devour from play with Suzi's investigator ability on the way to getting swol actually costs you two assets: the one you eat now, and an exta one later as you become uncontrolled one turn earlier. With enough fast assets, this can be fine, but you need to plan ahead.
  • Your early turns are going to be almost all play, draw, and take-a-money actions. Once you are at full 6/6/6/6-power, you want your actions to be spent crushing tests. Stick with your teammates at first, then abandon them for glory when you can just do it all yourself.
  • Regurgitation takes cards from your devoured stacks (under Ravenous and out of play) and puts them back into your hand. A safe default play pattern is to start at maxed stats, take all your actions, then use the player window after your last action to regurgitate back 3 cards (and heal 3 damage and/or horror): one from Ravenous and two from the out of play stack. This will put you back at 5/5/5/5 but save you from eating an asset that turn. In upkeep you go back to 6/6/6/6. You can go down even further by taking more from under Ravenous if you know your next turn is just draw/move/play/money actions.

• Hand-slot assets are plentiful, cheap, sometimes fast, and help you win the scenario. Then you eat them.

  • You need some weapons, but you can also evade in a pinch.
  • Suzi always wants to get more cards in hand and thin her many weaknesses out of her deck, so is an avid consumer of secret knowledge.
  • 6 will often be good enough to get clues, but why not make it just a little easier?
  • Later we will add some magic hands to augment our beautiful slime ones. This will make juggling hand slots easier and give extra actions to play the non-fast items.
  • Note that all the hand-slot assets are items, so can be Tetsuo'ed, and start off with an odd resource cost for reliable Jeremiah'ing.

• Use those full hands and that full belly to live your best life.

  • You want actions, so many actions. You might only get 1 clue or do 1 damage per test, but if you always succeed and get to do that 4-5 times per turn, then you will win any scenario in no time.
  • Sources of extra actions include
  • Scroll of Secrets, Eureka!, Perception, and Lucky Cigarette Case for extra draw;
  • Lone Wolf and Schoffner's Catalogue for extra money;
  • Madame Labranche for probably extra money but maybe also draw;
  • Shortcut for extra moves; and
  • Quick Thinking for extra anything.
  • Faustian Bargain and Stand Together give you more money, but at the cost of actual actions and without providing a much needed snack later.
  • Note that this deck does not run Leo De Luca primarily because of his resource cost. You absolutely can, in which case I would remove Tetsuo Mori. Another option I have not tested would be Honed Instinct, but I would caution against spending much XP on it for the same reason we are combo-shy: no reliable way to see it each game, even with our tons of draw.
  • Key upgrades that give you extra actions include
  • Astral Mirror for playing hand items,
  • Close the Circle for taking any basic action,
  • Eon Chart for move/evade/investigate actions, and
  • upgraded Shortcut, Pathfinder, or Join the Caravan for bonus move actions.
  • Always try to find the fast equivalent of a non-fast asset. An example would be swapping Leather Coat out for Combat Training for damage soak.
  • Any of the completely balanced draw cards would be a worthy include.
  • You might think including economy cards (draw, resources, or even movement) as free actions is blurring the line, but in Suzi it isn't: you get to have 6/6/6/6 stats at the cost of one or more actions per turn in the form of eating an asset (not to mention attacks of opportunity playing those assets while engaged with an enemy). This can be more than one action per turn because you need cards to play and the resources to play them. Fast assets (or extra actions to play non-fast assets) offset just one of the costs, and your economy cards do the rest.

• Reality Acid is back!
  • You draw a token, consult a fun chart, and devour something. I have not found the devouring part to be particularly consequential.
  • If you aren't at full power, you have to flip Ravenous to its uncontrolled side, meaning you can't put more cards under it. This is a big problem and can slow you down early game. You will want to relieve yourself to flip it back over, even if you don't get a lot more benefit out of it.
  • If you are already uncontrolled, you might still devour a card under Ravenous and therefore put it out of play if you draw a . That would put you back down to 5/5/5/5, and you should consider if you need to fix that or not depending on the scenario.
• Suzi's least favorite encounter cards, either in the encounter deck or random basic weaknesses, are the pure action-tax and -discard ones.
  • If it is early game, deal with it however you want.
  • Once you are at full power, get one of your friends to fix it for you. You need to be taking tests!
• Shout out to hidden cards, plant hands, just forgetting things, and to a lesser extent being very worried! This deck is designed to have lots of cards in both the player's and the investigator's hand(s), so these can wreck you. Just don't draw them.
• Suzi's other deckbuilding restriction is no permanents, so in particular no extra slots. This means running out of space to put things can be a real problem, hence the priority upgrade of our ghost lover. This restriction also makes slotless assets even more attractive.
• Miss Doyle provides you with a bit of soak and some fun other cats that can be useful for really pumping a test since your base will now be 5 and your full belly another +5. They are also all slotless, fast, 1-cost assets that taste great! This deck doesn't really want to be upgrading survivor that much, but my understanding is that if Miss Doyle leaves play then she fetches her kitty babies from your belly and puts them back with your other out-of-play bonded cards.

• As mentioned previously, you first few turns are lackluster. You need a friend to carry you for a bit.
  • In two-player, that friend might be another flex investigator that gets going quickly. Good examples are Winifred Habbamock, "Ashcan" Pete, Wendy Adams, or Ursula Downs. Coordinate your decks ahead of time!
  • You can also be the third flex player in a goon/cluever/flex trio. You will still need protection at the beginning, so don't wander off too early.
  • Your play pattern might be similar to that of some rogues or mystics that also need to set up a healthy board state before doing much.
  • You spend the early game doodling around playing cards, and the late game absolutely crushing.
  • Given the deck size of 50, you will still be less reliable than a standard 30-card investigator at doing any one particular thing. You will be good at something, but you won't know exactly what right at the beginning. Get your friends to pick up the slack!

• Given the volatility of your draws, you will be better off upgrading a lot of cards rather than getting a few 5-xp powerhouses.
  • Anything that is fast, gives extra actions, or adds draw is worth it. Many of these are listed above.
  • Since you are required to keep at least 7 cards of each class in your deck you might upgrade cards from each class. Note that multiclass cards can make meeting this requirement easier, but can make navigating future upgrades harder if you want to spend XP on a specific class.
• Recommended order of class upgrades: → → → . After that, most likely you will focus on and .
  • This deck specifically wants you to spend 6xp on Astral Mirror and Close the Circle. If you can do that after scenario 1, you should.
  • Your second priority is more fast hand slot items like Ice Pick or bonus action-items like Eon Chart.
  • You can use Regurgitation towards the end of a scenario to try to game which class you will upgrade. I have found it relatively easy to balance out the classes devoured for the first half of each scenario, but after that you might have to make choices concerning which cards to get back based on your needs at the time.
• Recommendations for each class:
  • : Ever Vigilant, Brand of Cthugha, Survival Knife, Well Prepared, Vicious Blow
  • : Eon Chart level 1, Ice Pick, Cryptic Research, Shortcut, Pathfinder, Join the Caravan, Scroll of Secrets, Deduction
  • : Switchblade, Cheat the System, .25 Automatic, .41 Derringer, Pickpocketing, the "add to another skill" events
  • : Astral Mirror, Close the Circle, The Hierophant • V
  • : Miss Doyle, Sharp Vision
  • Any composure.
  • You will often control four or more classes of cards, so synergy cards should be evaluated with that in mind. I have already listed the ones I think are best though.
• What to remove:
  • Eureka! and Perception can go
  • Non-fast soak cards that don't do something else are largely unnecessary
  • Scavenging is slotless and cheap, but you are unlikely to use it's ability much
  • Onyx Pentacle is easily your weakest hand slot item
  • Due to your 7 card per class restriction, you will often be forced to remove card from the class you are upgrading, so try to replace level 0 cards with higher level versions that fill the same role

This deck guide uses the amazing formatting guide by Valentin1331 that you can find here