Card draw simulator
| Derived from |
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| None. Self-made deck here. |
| Inspiration for |
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| None yet |
Sassenach · 179
I always seem to have more fun playing solo Wendy than any other investigator, and I always wanted to try and figure a way to make a Dark Horse deck for her, but I couldn't get around the obvious anti-synergy with her need to pay for events. The Wendy staples of Waylay, Backstab etc cost too much to make running Dark Horse a viable approach, as does the usual play of including Leo for those sweet bonus actions. This is what I've come up with, and it seems to work pretty well.
The idea here is that you primarily deal with enemies by evading them until you manage to get Dark Horse/Fire Axe into play, at which point you have the option to fight back. The base fight of 1 is still a problem though, which is why I also added Lone Wolf. This means that you can boost up to an attack of 6 for a first swing most of the time once you get it down alongside Dark Horse, which combined with Wendy's ability to retake tests is fairly reliable. Additional enemy management comes from Able Bodied (which given the low amount of item assets in this deck usually counts as the equivalent of an Unexpected Courage for most attacks, while also boosting evasion when required), Rise to the Occasion and Overpower. Watch This is included partly as a means of getting a quick resource boost if I need to pay for an asset but also because it has a nice synergy with Fire Axe/Dark Horse if you find you have a few too many resources and need to kill a 4 health enemy.
When I first conceived this deck I ran with Fight or Flight instead of Lucky, but I found that this was inefficient. Wendy is very good at beating encounter cards that give you horror and even better at evading attacks that would do it (esp once upgraded Pete is in play), so most of the time FoF was a dead card in my hand that I could only use to discard it for retries on failed tests. Meanwhile, clue-gathering could be a little bit dicey at times. Adding Lucky solved that problem, and it offers an upgrade path that will give me a bit of additional draw.
Since I'm only running 4 events in this deck then the amulet turns into an Unexpected Courage. There isn't any conceivable point where I'd consider putting it into play unless maybe deeper into a campaign if I decide to upgrade into Will to Survive. That's unlikely though. The only other event I included was Winging It, which I like because it gives clue acceleration and can be played from the discard pile anyway.
Finally, in lieu of the extra Leo actions we have Quick Thinking (pitch it into those gimme evade checks) and the really quite awesome Track Shoes. Between them you can fly all over the map.
There aren't too many obvious upgrade paths for this deck, but the beauty is that you don't really need them. Pete and Lucky are obvious ones. After that it's not immediately clear where you'd need to go. I kinda like the idea of adding 2x Plucky to help with clue-gathering, possibly at the expense of Winging It or Quick Thinking, but otherwise you may as well just save up and bag a couple of copies of Key of Ys. Once that's in play Wendy can eventually get into a position where she can pass just about any test.
| 3 comments |
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Apr 02, 2019 |
Apr 02, 2019Some good ideas here, but I'm not sure as I fully agree with the analysis. In part I must admit that I was quite drawn to the idea of running a counterintuitive Wendy deck that didn't play to her traditional strengths, so the decision to leave out most events was deliberate. I also wanted to play around with building a deck that could fight effectively, hence the inclusion of so many skills for that purpose. Live and Learn is a great idea though, I definitely should consider including that. I disagree that Watch This is terrible for this deck. It's intended to be used situationally. There are a couple of ways in which it can come in handy. Firstly, if you need to find a quick boost of resources so that you can get Pete or Track Shoes onto the table (both cost 3) then it's very useful for that. It also works very effectively in conjunction with Fire Axe to give you two bites of the cherry though. If you find yourself sitting at 4 resources spend two for a swing of the axe and play Watch This, committing the other 2. This activates the Dark Horse ability and boosts you up to 7 for the first swing, and then for your next action you have another 2 to spend to boost back up to 6. Lucky is not intended to help with fighting. You're right that it doesn't really work in synergy with Dark Horse for that. I added it to help out with investigation for the most part. With Lone Wolf in play you'll almost always have the 1 resource it needs during turns when no enemies are in play. On reflection though, you're probably right that Live and Learn is a better option which has greater utility. Flashlight/Lockpicks was a casualty of my desire to include a lot of combat-focused skills. It doesn't mesh very well with Able Bodied and I liked the idea of having 6 cards in the deck that could give me +2/3 to fight checks so I could take a 2nd swing with the axe. I was also conscious of the cost curve since Lockpicks is a 3 cost asset. I may need to reconsider whether including them is more efficient, but getting by without them is a lot of fun. |
Apr 02, 2019I must admit that I totally missed the interaction of "Watch this!" with Fire Axe. That's actually a great use of it that I had never thought of and I admire that idea quite a bit! If it's meant to be used that way then it's fine. However, I think it will find little use besides that and I'm not sure it's worth the slot. As for Flashlight/Lockpicks, if this deck is meant for solo, you will need an investigating tool no matter what, even if that means to forego some of the skill cards that will help you during your fight tests. Wendy's Intellect of 3 won't do you any favors and you will need to find ways to boost it consistently. If not though, I think it's fine to play without them as long as your teammate(s) will cover the need to get clues. |
I think you 're taking a bad approach on Dark Horse Wendy. Dark Horse Wendy can still play events, you just have to be selective on which events you choose to put into your deck. Lucky! for example doesn't play well with Fire Axe because when you 're attacking you are at 0 resources so you cant play it. Live and Learn on the other hand costs 0 and it can play a similar role as Lucky! with the difference that you don't have to spend a resource to play it. "Watch this!" is terrible, I think. When you play a Dark Horse deck you don't want to be floating a lot of resources, because you will have difficulty spending them to get your bonuses. Lone Wolf on the other hand is fine for the reasons you mentioned. If you 're looking for suggestions, here's a Dark Horse Wendy deck that I took through Night of the Zealot: arkhamdb.com (Disclosure: I didn't beat the campaign but it performed well. It ate the Ghoul Priest for breakfast and managed to get 3 Cultits in Midnight Masks). The first 6 XP was spent on Lockpicks and Dig Deep (2). Dig Deep was in the deck so that i could enable Dark Horse during Will or Agility tests and it got upgraded immediately so that I could play it more easily. I have to admit that it wasn't great though, but it was fun. I 'll have to agree that Fight or Flight isn't really great, but it can help in some situations and it's worth recycling through Resourceful if you can get good value out of it. Also note that Abandoned and Alone turns it on, so that's something. Lucky Cigarette Case worked well along with Lockpicks, and Double or Nothing allowed some for some nasty hits with Fire Axe. Narrow Escape wasn't great either, but it helped me once get a +4 boost during a Fire Axe attack by taking a resource while engaged with an enemy and that was really helpful at that point. "Look what I found!" is always good and, with Lone Wolf you will always have the money to pay for it, since you will start your turn with 2 resources at minimum, so it's a heads-up card. If you checked out the deck, you can see that all the events are playable even while your Dark Horse engine is active, so Wendy's Amulet is not a dead card. It does conflict with Lucky Cigarette Case, but by the time you want to play the Amulet you will be done with card draw anyway.
In the end, I liked the deck despite my failure (due to bad luck) and I think it can be inspiring for other people and this is why I'm taking all this time to talk about it.