Learning True Solo (#2) with Wendy Adams

I decided I'd make a little series of these, we'll see how far I get. For the first entry, check the "derived from" section. To make these more accessible I will be limiting myself to Core+1 expansion for most of the series... If these get traction I might go back through later and add suggestions for non-core cards to the end of the various guides.

True Solo has always been interesting to me because it dramatically alters how we perceive the cardpool: in multiplayer generally people think seeker is the strongest, in true solo generally it's thought to be survivor.

Last time we dipped our toes in by checking out Roland Banks because his true solo playstyle is quite close to how one might approach the classic two-handed solo combo of a Guardian and Seeker pair.

This time we're going to showcase Evasion as a premier enemy management strategy, and Wendy is a great way to showcase this because it's hard to be worse at than Wendy!

Wendy is also a great second investigator to explore True Solo with, because she and Roland have effectively the opposite playstyle: he wants to end his turn on a location with a clue, she wants to end on an empty location; he wants to kill every monster he sees, she wants to avoid killing as much as possible; he tries to avoid investigate tests, she prefers them, and so on.

Mulligan

• Dig for: Leo De Luca, Lone Wolf, Rabbit's Foot
• Keep: Flashlight, Perception, Think on Your Feet

General Play style

Wendy has one of the best Investigator Abilities in the game, allowing her exchange any card she doesn't want in her hand (like a duplicate asset) for a second try at succeeding on a test. In most cases this makes every card in your deck roughly half a Lucky!.

This allows you to play with a reasonably fast pace, and little setup, and when combined with her access to the extremely strong Survivor Card pool (even in the super limited "core+dunwich only" version we're looking at here) means that she can be confident about succeeding at most investigate tests, most of the time, despite "only" having 3 intellect.

You'll want to try to use Flashlight or your investigator ability on 1-2 shroud locations, and save "Look what I found!" for high shround, especially VP locations, which will often actually have 2 clues. Perception is better committed than discarded, and replaces itself with a new card if you succeed, so I tend to commit these fairly aggressively.

In True Solo, Evasion is Good!

The opposite of Roland, we would prefer to end your turn on locations that do not have clues! This is because our primary enemy management strategy is not, in fact, the Fire Axe, but instead evading everything that isn't a hunter or scenario objective and leaving it on a location that is no longer useful to us.

an ideal turn mid-game as Wendy will often involve moving to a new location (possibly evading a single enemy at the old location first), then investigating to clear the clue on the new location, ending our turn on a now-empty location. This way if you draw a monster in the mythos that does not hunt, you can safely evade it and leave it there... for the rest of the game!

We take Think on Your Feet to sometimes get to do this fast, Lucky! and Manual Dexterity to help make sure we don't have to test twice, and Fire Axe in combination with Lone Wolf to be able to afford to kill those enemies that we can't just ignore. Going broke for 2 damage is fine, but you shouldn't try to ride too close to zero resources because your events aren't free and the +stat boost is much more important for you than the +damage.

If you can't end your turn on an empty location that's ok, it's fine to Evade, Investigate, Move instead of Evade, Move, Investigate. Leo De Luca helps give some insurance for failed tests as well as giving you 33% more actions to try to win the scenario with, since every action counts in True Solo.

Street Urchin Blues

Wendy's Investigator Ability can be harmful to our cards in hand, so we run Rabbit's Foot to help us reload when we do run into the occasional test we don't beat. Wendy's Amulet is a way better accessory though, so feel free to replace the Rabbit's foot when you find it.

Dealing with Abandoned and Alone when you're not a combo-oriented Wendy Adams is fairly straightforward, try to play like you have 5 sanity, not 7. This does mean that you are somewhat vulnerable to Sanity damage in the Mythos phase, but you have 4 to help mitigate that.

Side Deck/upgrades

It wouldn't be a True Solo Survivor (or a Fire Axe) deck without talking about Dark Horse. It is good, it's arguably optimal. I did not include it because I wanted to emphasize that it's not mandatory to make her playable. If you aren't bored of the card it's a great inclusion, I would likely replace either Overpower or Lone Wolf. (Also it's pretty likely that the next True Solo deck I demo will be a dark horse deck and I didn't want to repeat the theme.)

Rise to the Occasion is a more flexible alternative to Overpower which will sometimes help you with 5+ shroud locations in the event that you can't save "Look what I found!" for them. 99% of the time you'll just use it on a test so overpower tends to be the safer choice.

Elusive is an alternative to think on your feet that benefits from not needing to be in your hand at the time you draw the enemy. It's downside is instead that you can only use it to go to an (adjacent) already revealed location, which is less useful in true solo since those locations are probably empty and no longer of interest to you. If you don't play Taboo this might be worth it anyway since you can teleport. It's also fine as an additional enemy management event instead of Backstab if you know that you won't be needing the damage output for that scenario.

Adaptable is one of the best cards in Rogue and should nearly always be picked if you are not going in blind to a campaign: this lets you swap in situational assets (like Fine Clothes ) or events (like "I'm outta here!" or the aforementioned Elusive) in and out of your deck, or adjust your skill mix to match the upcoming scenario.

Lockpicks (1) with base 4 is roughly as valuable as Flashlight on locations that are 3+ shroud, and is slightly worse on 2 shroud locations. The number of 1-2 shroud locations decreases in the later scenarios of most campaigns, so at some point it becomes better to run Lockpicks (1) instead. When that point is varies from campaign to campaign though; you could figure it out yourself if you are fully spoiled and trying to optimize that perfect run, or you could go by feel and just try to get it in around scenario 5 or so.

Peter "the boyfriend" Sylvestre (2) is one of your targets for a post-Charisma asset, and generally helps you with surviving Abandoned and Alone and if you elect to start with Charisma via In the Thick of It, using Peter level 0 is probably worthwhile over your least favorite of the events and skills.

Aquinnah (3) (the big sister) is the other post-charisma asset target: at some point, most campaigns involve at least one Massive elite boss monster that you must kill to favorably end the scenario. Upgraded Big Sis can redirect back to the attacking enemy and unlike many other similar effects, does not say "non-elite". Her downside is she only works once per round, so don't cut the Fire Axes. Testless outgoing damage and cancel is a really big game, and she's better than any big weapon would be for 1 Wendy accordingly.

Wendy's other upgrades (and there's lots of options with a full collection) are mostly down to scenario specific considerations, and at least for now I'm going to continue pointedly ignoring scenario specific considerations in this "series" because part of the fun of True Solo, at least for me, is chasing that personal "perfect" campaign and I don't want to deprive you of the joy of solving that puzzle yourself. (also giving scenario specific advice for 9 years of campaigns would take too much space, hah).

Remarks

This deck is 2024-02 taboo compliant although I can't currently mark it as such in arkhamdb.

I enjoyed making the Roland deck and thought it would be fun to do a series of these, no firm commitments on how many I'll do... each one will hopefully be a "teaching" moment about some aspect of True Solo that I found interesting, so the decklists are likely to remain fairly conservative for awhile, similar to this one and Roland's.

Wendy's Deck options are surprisingly limited with Just Core and Dunwich, huh? The intent of making this a series is to hopefully give players who are interested in True Solo multiple accessible starting points and showing off decks that require hundreds of dollars of cards is kind of the opposite of "accessible". True Solo takes a different mindset, not a deep collection!

That said, obviously with a full collection you can do a lot better, and I encourage you to do so! Although I did not consult An_Undecayed_Whately's 2023 Solo Wendy when working up this list, it is a nice look at what you can do with a full collection for a non-combo Evasion-focused True Solo Wendy, and definitely recommend checking it out as well.

I considered showcasing Daisy Walker but I don't think it's possible to improve on Zozo's or AegriSomnia's take with my self-imposed "one cycle" restriction. I also think Daisy, like most high-asset count investigators, is a more advanced deck to pilot than a typical Solo Evasion Wendy, so I felt Wendy would make a better second deck, and we'll save the big-rig-shaper vibe decks for later in the series.