This quality card double, triple dips into as bunch of different card roles.

• The typical Hp/Sanity value you can expect from utility allies. Like other high-importance allies (Leo De Luca) though you really don't want to have Lola Santiago die, ever. Lola Santiago extends your hp and sanity bar by 1 each, and then if is a matter of life or death she can take one more of each. Nothing of particular note here.

• A static +1 for two different stats. This here is tremendous value for a 3-cost card. Buffing two(+) stats insofar has been the realm of conditional allies (Dario El-Amin and sensitive accessories (St. Hubert's Key, Key of Ys), Lola Santiago does occupy an ally slot but she is completely unconditional and always "on". The faction typically has middling and high and rely on one or both for clue gathering, Lola Santiago is already at this point the premier Clue-card for clue-minded characters, even without the extra card text. Note that Lockpicks taps into both of Lola Santiago's stats, that's a cool synergy there.

• The text ability, exchanging cash for clues, will become expensive ->FAST<-. if you've ever played cards like Scene of the Crime or Working a Hunch you will know that these mechanics can chunk down your resources dramatically. Obviously though Lola Santiago can keep doing her thing "infinitely", an action-less clue every turn! Running this ability with any sort of regularity means that you need a powerful economy engine to pay for repeat payments at 2/3 or 4 resources. One trick with Lola Santiago is that regular "investigate" actions suddenly become somewhat less effective than just triggering her ability, this means that rather then spending the odd-action to investigate you might actually be better served spending those actions to gain resources. If your engine is strong enough then your only actual investigate actions will be the ones you try while she is on cooldown (Barring superpowered Lockpicks triggers. Note that Flashlight can bring her cost down or nullify it completely, with Lola Santiago as a centrepiece (dual wielding Lockpicks and Flashlight) it is now possible to build a very strong clue-sniffing .

The biggest strength of Lola Santiago is not her incredible ability, it is her flexibility. Cards that on one hand help you gather clues and on the other help you deal with enemies are very rare, Lola Santiago's +1 can really help bridge the gap for when you can't quite (or don't want/need to) kill an enemy.

Lola Santiago's biggest weakness however is her high sustained cost, there is no way that you can play a dedicated monster killer, you just wont have the resources to fund weapons and combat utility cards like Machete+Physical Training. You can still deal with a few threats every scenario and if you hold off on using her special ability and lean on the raw +stats instead you can shift strategies to/from clue gathering and monster killing as needed.

Lola Santiago is incredibly powerful in a Preston Fairmont deck. I’d say she’s an auto-include.

With Preston’s Family Inheritance Lola lets Preston discover one clue per turn on a shroud 4 or lower (5 or lower if he’s a Lonewolf...) without taxing his resource pool.

In solo, where many locations are single clue locations, this lets Preston solidly hoover up clues while tooling up / drawing cards / moving around the map with his three actions.

Lola is better than Leo in a Preston solo deck. She also gives you a free action a turn, albeit limited to investigating, but that action is test-less, and one you’ll often want to do every turn anyway.

Finally, how does she compare to Streetwise? Sure, streetwise is far more flexible, as it lets Preston boost either Intellect or Agility to 7 once a turn by spending all of his Family Inheritance. Lola boosts those stats too, albeit only to 2, but at least it’s a permanent boost. I’d rather be investigating testlessly than pumping my Intellect via Streetwise and still risking drawing an Autofail.

Streetwise’s main strength is that it’s permanent, so you really have to buy it first. But once you have I’d save up your next 6XP for two copies of Lola

Especially when you add in her damage / horror soak which effectively puts Preston up to 8 in both.

I really believe Lola will become a contender for one of the strongest cards in the game. A guaranteed clue each turn is nuts. On top of that, it was confirmed that Flashlight can be used to lower shroud, and then in that window Lola can be triggered to make her ability 2 resources cheaper. Not that the cost is a huge challenge for someone like Jenny or Sefina, or even rogue in general now that we have 2xp versions of Hot Streak.

The +1 intellect and +1 agility are just gravy, and make you better at the things you want to be doing anyway, with the 2 intellect pips being the cherry on top. Fantastic.