Lola Hayes in the Arctic, 45 XP

Following a discussion on Boardgamegeek, I tried to create a Lola deck using what seem to be the best cards of the new cycle for her.

I mostly play 2-handed solo so I made this as a "cluever" deck but I think it does need a lot of changes to adapt it for solo.

Permanents:

• With 13 Item cards among 40, Geared Up should get you good chances to play enough cards to have a positive result. Plus the card makes 5 of them free and 7 1 resource each (and the last 2 resources) meaning you could probably play your entire starting hand if you hadn't to consider slots.
• With a deck based on Scavenging / Professor William Webb, starting with 10 cards (of a 35 cards initial draw pile) in your discard pile can give you a quicker access to a given Item card and/or to a copy of Winging It in your discard. The deck has a copy of A Chance Encounter in case you need to recover an ally.
• Charisma for obvious reasons.
• In the Thick of It to get XP faster.
  
  

Investigation:

• Cryptographic Cipher and Old Keyring to decrease the test difficulty and increase the chance to trigger Scavenging. The former can be recharged with Truth from Fiction or use the secrets from Ariadne's Twine,
• Pocket Telescope can guide you towards the best places to investigate in, and also investigate from a distance to avoid entering in locations with enemies or other nasty effects,
• with 10 assets costing from 0 to 2, Unearth the Ancients can easily grab a clue in a high-shroud location (or several in combination with other cards),
• Winging It decreases the investigation difficulty and can grab 2 clues in a single action,
• Crafty provides 2 +1 per round for an investigation,
• Ice Pick gives a +1 for any investigation test once per round and grab a 2nd clue,
• Gené Beauregard can move clues to a lower shroud location,
• and finally On the Trail to automatically grab clues.
  
  

Enemies management:
The 3 copies of Blood-Rite provide up to 9 testless damages with the added bonus of the Spell trait. The single copy of Gang Up provides an attack ranging from +2 / +2 (thanks to your 2 permanents) to +4 / +4 and Ice Pick can add a damage,for up to 6 in a single action ! Gené Beauregard + Hiking Boots provide a good agility bonus and a way to displace enemies.

Economy:
The main idea is to use Schoffner's Catalogue (potentially played with a reduction thanks to Geared Up / Ever Vigilant) to get a total 5 resources reduction cost (so a profit of 3-4 resources) and then recycle it with Scavenging. Geared Up and Ever Vigilant complete the cost reduction for Item and all assets respectively. The 2 copies of Improvisation are an other source of cost reduction. Crack the Case can distribute resources among the investigators, and in a last resort, the 3 copies of Blood-Rite can turn into 3 copies of Emergency Cache.

Defense against the encounter deck and the weaknesses: Against the encounter deck, only Take the Initiative. Scroll of Secrets (with secrets provided by Ariadne's Twine and Truth from Fiction or scavenging) is here to discard the weaknesses from the bottom of your deck if possible or assure you you're not about to draw them by putting safe cards on the top of the draw pile.

Various:
Arcane Enlightenment allows to have 1 Tome and 2 investigation cards at the same time. Backpack considering the amount of items in the deck.

Possible changes:

• downgrading Occult Lexicon if you trust the rest of the table to do 95 % of the fighting,
• adding 2 copies of Resourceful to have a possibility to recover Professor William Webb / Crafty / Scavenging / A Chance Encounter from your discard pile in case one of this card has been discarded by Short Supply,
• and overall focusing on less different cards (especially in hand slots) to have 2 copies of each and more consistency.