Minh goes on the hunt, and fullfills her dreams by slaying the Mythos, one punch at a time !

• Yes, you read that right ! Have you ever done 5 damage to Dagon bare-handed ? Minh Thi Phan has ! She has taken inspiration from the other Asian members of the roster, Nathaniel Cho and Lily Chen, and is ready to bust out a few moves of her own.

• With Michael Leigh and Ice Pick + Scavenging, combined with a bunch of icons, Minh has the means to hit both well and hard, even bare-handed.

• Not only that, but this package also contributes to Minh's ability to gather clues, turning her into a well rounded flex.

• Overview

• Hitting Well

• Hitting Hard

• Other Cards

• Other Options

• Upgrade Path

• Conclusion

• How is Minh and her base 2 meant to attack anything, you ask ? Well, Michael Leigh boosts it up to 3, and Ice Pick helps us reach 4.

• However, 4 doesn't quite cut it to reliably nail some of the toughest enemies out there. This is where Minh's unique skillset (get it ?) comes in. With her deck loaded with icons, strong draw engine, and means to get even more icons on commits, she is able to boost up and power through them with ease.

• Notably, the Dream Diary gets her up to 3 icons even without fulfilling its condition, and can do so turn after turn. You might think that the Madman Diary would be the prefered card for this build, but i find grabbing 2 at random using Shrewd Analysis to save 3 xp is the better option in most cases, since you often don't need all 4 anyway.

• In fact, if your table allows Researched cards and Shrewd Analysis, this deck is technically a 29 xp Standalone deck (35 - 3 (In the Thick of It) - 3 (Shrewd Analysis) = 29).

• Thankfully, the same tools that help us successfuly attack are also the ones that empower said attacks with extra damage ! It's like a weapon, only with a bunch of extra steps !

• Michael Leigh is very easy to charge up thanks to Minh's high and his own static boost. Investigating is still a key part of what you want to do with this deck, as it helps both to reload Michael Leigh and to fetch back Ice Pick using Scavenging.

• Remember that you can use Ice Pick without discarding it, which can help kill 2 health monsters or investigate high shroud locations where Scavenging may not successfully pull it back.

• Need even more damage ? Two options are available :

  • Just hit harder ! : Brute Force provides a huge boost to combat and the promise of extra damage, all while being a skill that benefits a lot from that extra icons to help reach the "Succeed by 2" Threshold.

  • Minh's Ulimate technique : The Kamahameha ! You gotta hit the to learn about that one. It can bump your damage up to 5, and benefits from using Minh's higher instead of her low . Note that Ice Pick will boost your skill value and damage all the same, even if this attack uses .

• Empirical Hypothesis : Supplies Minh with extra card draw to keep the engine running. The extra from her ability make reaching the Oversuccess treshold very doable.

• Crack the Case : Some additioanl resource generation. The deck's setup is quite cheap, but replaying Ice Pick can quickly drain your resources and leaving you unable to play other things. If the resources aren't needed, just hand them to your teammates.

• Practice Makes Perfect : Get extra value and draw from your Practiced skills. With 9 of them in total out of 19 skills, Ancestral Knowledge still leaves enough of them in the deck to for it to be reliable.

• The skills : I find most of these to be fairly standard inclusions for Minh, and instead of going through each one, I am just going to highlight the notable additions :

  • Analysis : This deck really hates the . Most decks do, to be fair, but this one particularly so. Every attack you make involves exhausting 1-2 assets and commiting that many skill cards, making every failure sting particularly hard even before factoring in extra stuff like Retaliate. Being left with both Ice Pick and Michael Leigh exhausted, with an enemy engaged with you, is a very precarious position. Having some kind of protection against it is really useful, and also helps avoid the dreaded as you try and get rid of The King in Yellow. The Practiced trait and the make it a very valuable card in general.

  • Overpower : It's like Perception, but for fighting ! Most Minh deck investigate, and therefore run perception, which is everything minh wants from a skill (Good Icons, Good trait, Additional card draw). This Deck intends to fight, and thus Overpower is here for the same reasons.

• How about a weapon ? Well, Minh's hand are pretty full as is, and getting extra hand slots via Scientific Studies Grant or Arcane Enlightenment makes the deck slower and clunkier. The new Dial of Ancients is very much a consideration, but at this point, it ain't really 'One punch Minh' anymore, is it ?

• Discard package : Using Artistic Inspiration / Cornered to boost both and as needed, alongside the new Improvised Weapon, Winging It and Persistence for extra synergy sounds like an interesting addition. It didn't make it into the deck because I couldn't find the XP or the deck slots for it.

• Some more combat options : Mind over Matter (and its excellent upgrade), "I've got a plan!", Flare, Good Weather (for ). All perfectly valid options. I couldn't fit all these even into a 35 card deck, but all these sound like interesting options with additional experience.

• Versatile then ? I haven't used this card much, and I'm always wary of increasing my deck size. Still, filling these slots is not difficult, and Minh may have enough card draw to make it work. I also can't think of any level 0 card that would work especially well here, aside from something simple like Vicious Blow.

Link to the level 0 deck

(View at arkham-starter.com)

• This deck can put out some really big damage, but fits more as a flex than a dedicated fighter. It not only needs a bit of setup to get going, but also downtime to investigate in order to "reload" both Ice Pick and Michael Leigh.

• Michael Leigh is very expensive in terms of experience, but oh so worth it. I find that most players haven't really given him a fair shot outside of Charlie Kane and Joe Diamond. This card is just awesome

• I was very tired of seing the same Ice Pick / Scavenging combo in many cluever survivor deck, and wanted to remind people that Ice pick also provides additional damage, which is just as hard if not harder to come by than additional clues.