Patrice "Mind's Eye" Allaway

I've always had trouble finding the right tempo on Patrice. Often I'll have Miss Doyle, Mind's Eye, Violin, Fire Axe and Labranche and feel like I have too many options yet none good enough.

This is really interestingly streamlined deck. I will definitely check it out.

What are your thoughts on playing Doyle for your weakness, and Granny Orne over Peter considering, you're primarily looking for willpower boosts and Granny has a built in soft mini Lucky that can be used every turn.

What would a 0 exp version of this deck look like? Half of the cards here are fantastic once you have Cornered and Mind's Eye, but seem really clunky in a 0 exp deck. Could you share some details regarding how you prioritize exp and what starting options you'd use.

I had the same thought on Mind's Eye! Django and I had a great discussion on it here.

But ultimately I found it wasn't nearly as helpful as I'd hoped, nor would I be able to use it as often as I'd hoped, so I dropped it and focused on the scavenging aspect of the deck for v2 (here).

The problem I had in play testing was this:

Let's say you get through your deck 2x in a scenario (questionable but happens regularly enough if you're not moving quickly). In this case you could draw Mind's Eye a total of 5 times, meaning 11 charges. I also ran Enraptured to give me potentially 4 more charges.

15 uses of Mind's Eye is pretty great over the course of the game, but you've also got to account for losing both arcane slots to it. As a secondary mystic with no strong stat other than Patrice Hathaway really needs to be able to leverage more often than ~1 per turn (average over the scenario anyway).

If you could slot Sign Magick it could work with Sixth Sense (or an offensive spell if you're leaning that way with her) but not only does that kill your economy a bit more but it prevents you from having anything in hand other than Patrice's Violin.

In the end I dropped my plans for Mind's Eye even though I really wanted it to work in that build. I did it mainly because my Scavenging 2 combo was just stronger and there was no limit on spell usage with Sixth Sense.

I do really like the idea though, maybe you can come up with a way to make it work with just Mind's Eye + Sign Magick, but without a consistent way to avoid using up your secrets I think you'll find you're less effective with Mind's Eye than you would be with two spells and a few extra commits.

Thanks for the comments :)

@chirubimeI don't think Miss Doyle is needed to deal with the weakness since Mind's Eye just does the trick. Granny Orne is a great suggestion though. I think it is better to include both Granny Orne and Peter (2) with Charisma though, since the horror soak and buff is still occasionally useful.

@ethannader95Basically Sixth Sense and more Skills as placeholders. Upgrade priority is Mind's Eye ~ Cornered > Peter (2) > Relic Hunter. 3x Mind's Eye + 2x Cornered is just 6xp, which should be within range after a single scenario.

@hackesackmanNow you put it in that way, it sounds very interesting to me since I have never run out of Mind's Eye's secret during my (admittedly limited) play throughs. Drawn to the Flame, Read the Signs, Spectral Razor and Cornered go a long way in preserving secrets and compensating the lack of Spell assets. Peter (2) and Moonstone also give boost so I am not as relied on Mind's Eye for evasion.

I think your problem is that Scavenging (2) and Mind's Eye just don't belong to the same deck. The former requires a more investigate-focused approach, which the latter is better for generalists.

Getting back to you, without Minds Eye, I'm not sure how to use the Improvised package in the first scenario though. Do you just supplement the deck with the neutral skill boosters ?

@ak45 Yeah that makes sense, if you're using it a lot less you'd be a much lower risk of running out. I found I was much happier with Scavenging 2 + asset spells because it mostly solves the consistency issues. I'd initially wanted a way to use Mind's Eye constantly but you just can't rely on it that often (though it is certainly amazing while it lasts).

I think the main reason I found it too swingy was actually due to the lack of reliability on events. Other than improvised events I found myself regularly missing an event I'd had no use for a turn or two before. Early play testing of that was actually why I didn't include Spectral Razor/Read the Signs/etc.

For example take Deny Existence. There is no doubt this is a fantastic card, but it's usually fantastic because you can hold onto it and prevent something terrible. Patrice doesn't get to do that, she either get's lucky that she has it on the same turn something goes bad, or she gets a single out of it. (Which is at least something, but if you're going to use it that way ~75% or more of the time then it's probably better to use something else).

I'll probably end up dropping Fortuitous Discovery and Ethereal Form from my latest Patrice draft for the same reason.

@ethannader95The deck is still functional at level 0 with Sixth Sense and other events, and you can choose to play the Improvised events from discard pile when you have appropriate icons (often ) in hand.

@hackesackmanYes sometimes those events don't get played and become Cornered fuel, but that can be said to almost any card in Patrice, and Cornered fuel is not bad at all. You still want action compression as Patrice, and Drawn to the Flame/Read the Signs/Spectral Razor are among the best cards in that department. Fight/Investigate events are at least something consistently useful, so more often than not they are useful in a given round. If you find you regularly miss an event you had a turn or two before, IMO it is a sign that you need more of it, not less.

@ak45 Agreed once you get Cornered out (which should be a very early purchase) it becomes much less of a big deal to have cards that aren't good commits, that is a fantastic card for Patrice.

If you find you regularly miss an event you had a turn or two before, IMO it is a sign that you need more of it, not less.

For this I'd probably say it's a sign we need that function to be more consistent, not less. So the options there are either include a few extra cards in the deck to do the same thing, which can make it a bit less swingy, or just swap to things much less likely to be affected by Patrice Hathaway's upkeep mechanic.

I really like Mind's Eye as a concept and thematically I think it works well for her also since she's starting to get glimpses into another dimension at the edge of her vision. I think it just needs a little more to become a centerpiece in the deck. In my play testing I found it had to be more of a backup option that I could use fairly liberally than my primary plan of attack. I ended up trying out my deck without it and found it just as strong and more consistent.

But to be fair, that was aggravated to some degree by not being able to run Sixth Sense at the same time for Scavenging recursion. I may give this a shot again with a deck more built around Mind's Eye support similar to yours and see how I like it.

I’d love to try this deck out for a blob stand-alone. What would be upgrades you’d recommend for adding another 16XP. Was considering Eucatastrophe, Will to Survive but the high resource cost often conflict with her playstyle in my personal experience. Love the deck idea!