Hello & welcome to my new weekly deck series! (Or at least I hope it’ll be weekly with my ADHD, but I will certainly try my very best!) In this series, I’ll be writing short and simple articles about a deck list that either myself or others have designed. I typically have posted longer guides on this site, but these articles are going to be much shorter in order to make it easier to put them out more frequently. Hopefully, it will still be more than enough to give you new ideas for fun things to try out. Of course, what I say here is not intended to be taken as hard fact — feel free to change up the cards to fit your needs or preferences. With all that intro out of the way, here’s the first deck!

Butler Nathaniel

Butler Nathaniel is a damage-heavy deck with a support off-role that is designed for multiplayer. The butler name comes from Carson Sinclair, as we will be taking a handful of support cards that Carson might enjoy and simply play them in Nathaniel instead. My iteration of this deck puts no clue tech at all in the build. If that won’t work for your team, then you can adjust some cards around – Scene of the Crime works, for example. However, the core idea of Butler Nathaniel is that clue tech is disregarded entirely in favour of support tech that protects your cluevers.

https://arkhamdb.com/decklist/view/39320/butler-nathaniel-1.0

Core Concept

The reason that support on Nathaniel is so powerful is because of his natural synergy with Boxing Gloves. Often, a Nathaniel deck will use the opportunity to pull a Spirit event to grab more fighting events. Butler Nathaniel will likewise be doing that regularly. However, Motivational Speech and Stand Together are stand out support events that are also Spirits. This means Boxing Gloves can just as easily pull them too. Playing these events will boost your team’s economy, and give Nathaniel a way to help the team when he’s not beating up enemies.

In addition, we have plenty of healing and soak around. Hallowed Mirror gives us a fantastic healing spell in Soothing Melody, which also lets us draw a card. Nathaniel loves drawing cards, so this is a great fit for him. Also, Tetsuo Mori gives us some damage and horror soak that can be used by the whole team. When Tetsuo is defeated, you can search your deck or discard for your Boxing Gloves if you don’t already have it out. If that’s not necessary, then you can let an ally search for something, which is another way you can help out your team.

With all this in mind, I opted to take In The Thick of It and take 2 physical trauma. Nathaniel naturally has one of the highest health stats in the game, and this damage can be healed by Soothing Melody, Emergency Aid, or Randall Cho. If you find you don’t need the damage healing, just direct the events to your teammates or have Randall find you a weapon.

Skill cards are another way we can potentially help our allies, so we do want to take some of those. However, since we are all about having a hand with events ready at all times, we really want skill cards that draw other cards. That’s why I chose to take Daring and some Neutral cantrips. Since you are still primarily a damage dealer, Vicious Blow remains a standard choice and will often be committed to yourself. However, don’t underestimate the value of letting a team member use it as your damage potential is already quite high even without it.

Suggested Upgrades

Your initial upgrades are Boxing Gloves 3, Hallowed Mirror 3, and Stand Together 3. From there, you can start building up your damage potential by improving your damage events. You might also be interested in picking up Brother Xavier or Girish Kadakia as a team soak alternative to Tetsuo Mori. Whatever you choose, Motivational Speech can help you play it. Since your signature asset is also an ally, you may want to invest in a Charisma if you want to go big on team soaking allies. Finally, Stick to the Plan is always great for Nathaniel if you can afford it as he is dependent on having access to his events. However, if you have good card draw, don’t feel like Stick to the Plan is a necessity.

Suggested Team Comps

I recommend playing Butler Nathaniel alongside powerful cluevers who can also empower his card draw. This is because Nathaniel’s damage output can fall off entirely when he has no cards in hand, so you must always keep that in mind. Some suggestions for great teammates are Mandy, Harvey, or Daisy with Old Book of Lore. Most of Nathaniel’s support is resource based, so you might also be able to supplement an investigative Rogue with a more expensive deck, such as Trish or Finn. Butler Nathaniel can also fit in well in teams that have other fighters, as having support events in hand make him less likely to have dead turns when he’s not the one fighting.

Conclusion

And that’s it! I recently played Butler Nathaniel with Harvey in Night of the Zealot, and Nathaniel did 14 damage to Umôrdhoth all by himself. So don’t let the support element scare you away from the damage potential Nathaniel can still supply with this build. Notably, I found the deck does well with low XP, as it gets amazing mileage out of its level 0 cards and its primary upgrades aren’t too expensive. This can help you secure a strong start to a campaign and with the right upgrades for your needs, you’ll be staying strong throughout. All that being said, happy boxing!