Weekly Deck #4: Ambulance Daisy

Without further ado, here’s my next entry: Ambulance Daisy.

Introduction

Ambulance Daisy is a multiplayer Daisy archetype that has our fearless librarian supporting the team with healing when she is not gathering clues. In my decklist, enemy management is nearly non-existent, so hopefully you have a fighter to team her up with. Mark Harrigan is an ideal candidate as Daisy can heal his self-inflicted damage to prevent a Sophie flip and protect his low sanity value. Meanwhile, Mark can handle enemies while Daisy handles clues. In fact, Mark & Daisy is a pairing I have played since Carcosa and if you have never tried it, I recommend it as a great beginner pairing. That being said, Ambulance Daisy can shine on many other teams as well.

Of course, there are other investigators out there who heal, particularly Carolyn or Vincent. With those two available, why choose Daisy as team healer? The main reasons to take Daisy over the other two are her higher intellect stat and four action turns. These make her more of a powerhouse individually compared to Vincent or Carolyn who spread their power more broadly. Also, five intellect means it doesn’t take a lot of extra cards for Daisy to lock down cluevering, and that means she can use more deck space on support effects without sacrificing investigation power. Anotber consideration is she has better access to high level cards in her own class. While both Vincent and Carolyn are obviously very good healers, Daisy should absolutely not be overlooked in the healing archetype.

Building Ambulance Daisy

The first considerations for our Daisy deck should be our Tomes. I like to take 6 tomes, as I feel that’s generally enough cards to ensure she has at least one good one available to play early on. Medical Texts is of course the key card to all of this. This lets you heal a damage on your bonus action, which solves a big problem with healing generally. A common criticism of healing in Arkham is that it eats up too many actions and forces you to slow down. Being able to use your special bonus actions on healing means you aren’t losing as much time when you heal, and that’s a big point in Ambulance Daisy’s favor as our chosen healer.

Next I take Encyclopedia and Old Book of Lore. These cards can also be a great help for our teammates or ourselves. Whenever healing isn’t necessary, card draw and stat boosts let us keep the support rolling.

Now I must point out that if you choose to play Parallel Daisy, you can also take Book of Psalms. This allows you to heal horror with your Tome action as well as bless the bag. I think that’s fantastic for the archetype.

However, my particular decklist for this article isn’t a Parallel Daisy list (although that being said, the list only needs one fewer Mystic card in it to make it legal for Parallel Daisy so make of that what you will). Instead, I have Clarity of Mind for horror healing. I do find Clarity of Mind to be really slow, but it is cheap and doesn’t compete with my hand slots. If the team needs it, I’ll put it down and if they don’t, I’ll happily use it as an icon. I have played a scenario that forced me to use all six combined charges off of two copies of Clarity of Mind, so my attitude when it comes to healing is it’s better to have something and not need to play it than to not have it around at all and then die.

Jeremiah Kirby gives us an additional Intellect, which is very important for our Medical Texts as it makes the skill tests 6v2. On most Standard bags, this means we pass on everything but autofail. Furthermore, with the exception of Old Book of Lore, every card in this deck with a resource cost is even. (And, if you choose to upgrade to level 3 Old Book of Lore, that card becomes even too.) This means Jeremiah Kirby can have huge card draw potential, and that’s another big reason why I put him in as my Ally for this decklist.

Holy Rosary is around because I am just a big fan of Holy Rosary in basically anyone who can take it. Feel free to switch this if you’d prefer a different Accessory. I especially like the 2 horror soak it provides because I will regularly elect to clear The Necronomicon weakness if I have the time to do so. While that horror can’t go on Holy Rosary, having extra horror soak is meaningful when you know there is a good chance you will elect to take 3 direct horror to clear your signature weakness.

Now to the events! First, here are two you can easily switch out if you feel like it. Read the Signs is there because it’s a powerful clue event that is easy for Daisy to use. This can be switched to something like Drawn to the Flame if you want to lower your cost curve. Deny Existence is there to give us more safety but also because our Jeremiah Kirby can reliably draw it over a Ward of Protection. If you want to switch this out for Ward of Protection or even Ward of Radiance, feel free to do so.

Next I’ll talk about Bizarre Diagnosis, Logical Reasoning and Working a Hunch as a set. Bizarre Diagnosis is your big damage healing event while Logical Reasoning is your big horror healing event. Both of these require you to have at least one clue to use them. What card can give us 1 clue if we are in a pinch? Working a Hunch! In fact, Working a Hunch can even immediately pick up the clue you dropped from Bizarre Diagnosis, if that is a concern. Don’t need any of these events in the end? All of these events have double icons, making them all great commitment fodder!

Taking two copies of each card previously mentioned, that leaves us 8 slots open for skills. I just took a bunch of skill cards I like on a cluever Daisy – Deduction, Perception, Inquiring Mind, and Unexpected Courage. However, you can’t wrong if you want to change these up based on your needs. For example, I will often take two copies of Manual Dexterity on Daisy even if I think I don’t need them just because it’s often terrible for Daisy if she fails Agility treacheries.

Upgrading Ambulance Daisy

There are two main things you could do with Ambulance Daisy’s experience points. First, you could simply get upgraded versions of the cards in this list – particularly Medical Texts, Old Book of Lore, and Deduction. Take this route if you feel happy with your place in the team and just want to keep doing more of what you are already doing.

Second, you can pick up cards that will push your deck further in a specific direction. For example, Surgical Kit or Gray’s Anatomy can help you heal even more. But if you need more clues instead, intellect boosts like Death XIII or Prophesaie Profana may help you out. You can also use XP to pick up fighting cards if the team needs more damage output. Level 2 “I’ve got a plan” synergizes well with this deck, as well as the previously mentioned Gray’s Anatomy.

Another neat option I want to highlight is Lab Coat. If you are worried about failing on Medical Texts, Lab Coat can help salvage those tests. You don’t really have any other targets for Lab Coat to interact with, but you can adjust the deck to have more (Mending and/or Calming Alchemical Distillation or level 4 Fingerprint Kit could be great if you are willing to occupy a hand slot) and the soak alone can be nice.

Team Composition

As mentioned earlier, Mark is an ideal teammate for this deck. However, you can also consider pairing Ambulance Daisy with a Guardian like Daniela who wants to take hits from enemies on purpose or a Survivor like Stella who may take hits due to intentional test failures. Bob Jenkins can also be a good teammate, as Daisy wants to put her Tomes out quickly, and these are all items. Any investigator with low base health or sanity will probably also do well with a healer like Daisy around to manage one of their inherent weaknesses. Again, just make sure that someone on the team is able to handle enemies because this deck can be extremely vulnerable to them.

Conclusion

Ambulance Daisy is a great way to play Daisy that gives her a clear support role when she’s not getting clues. It works surprisingly well, too, as her extra actions make it so that she doesn’t slow down too much by healing. If you have teammates who benefit from the healing she can provide while keeping her safe, you can create a sturdy team that is ready to face whatever threats the Mythos throws at you. As always, feel free to make any adjustments to the list to suit your preference and if you find you’d rather just play Vincent or Carolyn instead, some of the concepts that make Ambulance Daisy work will make those other investigators work well too. (And I will eventually feature Vincent and Carolyn decklists as well!) Until next time, happy investigating.