So I finally managed to retire a Spellweaver, unlocked Cthulhu in the process. As I'm reading guides and obsessing over the morass of choices I have to make now, I'm looking for a card I can enhance with bottom-half-strengthen to replicate the Mana Bolt cheese I've played hundreds of times.

Blistering Vortex seems like a perfect candidate for this - fast (ish) initiative, Strengthen can go on the Shield dot, and Move 2 is a decent effect to get within range of the attack I want to Strengthen. The top half is not great, but might become relevant in the last room once in a blue moon. The only alternative I can see would be Rot Maggots, and that's a 125g enhancement instead of 50g (and forces the level 2 choice).

Weirdly enough, none of the guides I've read even mention this. Am I missing something?

Maybe I'm just biased because of my personal quest asking me to kill 20 different enemy types, so I want to build myself to deal damage instead of stacking curses. Also, stacking curses seems less appealing because we just unlocked Music Note, so I expect the Curse deck will routinely be exhausted anyways.

For context, we're at Prosperity 4, our party is Music Note (level 4), Mindthief (level 9), Cthulhu (Level 4) and Sun (Level 5).