Lola's fear

Card draw simulator

Odds: 0% – 0% – 0% more
Derived from
Dark Horse Lola Plays 'em All 255 205 30 1.0
Inspiration for
None yet

gothicmink · 1

This Lola Hayes build, our first try, was meant to be coupled with a , combat oriented Sefina Rousseau to take on the path to Carcosa. The idea was that Sefina needed help with clue gathering and a occasional combat support.

Firstly, a / build seemed like an obvious approach, but Lola's deck construction rules required a third class to be added to the mix. Because Sefina was already very and technically a , we opted for cards to complete this Lola's deck.

Secondly, Lola's limitations make static boosts a must, and these static boosts better not be lost to Crisis of Identity so assets that provide static boosts should be from a class that we shouldn't need to play as, unless it is for playing them.

Thirdly, a Dark Horse oriented build also seemed like a good idea in a Lola, pushing all of her stats to 4 just sounds lovely. It also works pretty well with her signature cards Improvisation, which provide non negligeable discounts. But that still meant that this deck needed to be cheap, having just a few costly cards that we could pay for with Emergency Cache, Improvisation and our starting resources.

Building around these idesa was a struggle, but here are some of the thinking behind the (poor) choices :

  • This Lola needed to be able to fight and weapons are the best. But she would need to be in order to use Machete or .45 Automatic, that means they would be the only assets of that class, to prevent losing too much to Crisis of Identity. While being , why not use events and skills that interact with combat, such as Evidence! and Vicious Blow. Prepared for the Worst was just there to up our chances to find a weapon without raising the price of the deck, it also comes with nice and skill icons. Dodge is really just a nice option when needed.

  • This Lola needed to find clues. Too bad Dr. Milan Christopher couldn't make it, too expensive and his reaction would rarely trigger as we would hardely play as . So the only real static option was Magnifying Glass. Flashlight is really useful as we can always use it whatever the role we are in. Lola's average meant that auto clueing would help, that explains Art Student, Deduction and Evidence!.

  • This Lola needed 7 cards from a third class and Dark Horse looked like a valid approach, so we chose . Because we would mainly play as , we wanted these cards that provide static bonuses, along with Dark Horse. We also wanted these assets to be cheap, hence the inclusion of Cherished Keepsake, Leather Coat and Peter Sylvestre. The latter's reaction would rarely trigger but it would still be a nice card!

While we managed to build around a few challenging ideas, it seems this deck only works in theory. putting it to practice was not a disaster but we never felt that Lola was making a difference and she could'nt really fit in either nor roles.

A few notes after 3 failed attempts at beating Behind the Curtain :

  • The deck worked really well around the role switching play style of Lola and Crisis of Identity rarely triggered. Being in the right role at right time was easy and quite interesting to manage.
  • Investigating went quite well, until we ran out of Art Student and Deduction... Lola barely did the job.
  • On the down side, the Dark Horse strategy didn't work at all. Either because it was never drawn from the huge 35 cards deck or it wouldn't trigger because Lola didn't have any way of spending her resources! So the cheap deck approach just bit us back. We thought about including Fire Axe or a resource funnel such as Dig Deep, Hyperawareness or Physical Training, but they all require being in the appropriate role to work. Maybe we should have switched to for our main class?
  • Dark Horse led us to making our class for static bonuses, but while Peter Sylvestre is always amazing, 2 copies of each Cherished Keepsake and Leather Coat was way too overkill, it is nice to have shield, but these cards don't help wining!
  • And that leads us to the main issue, this deck is way too passive and doesn't reliably provide the static boosts we wanted to abuse! That meant spending lots of cards to skill tests and running out of options pretty quickly, stuck with an average stat line.

Lessons learned :

  • Don't go all the way into a strategy (let's say Dark Horse) that might never start happening, especially with a 35 cards deck!
  • Don't be THAT afraid of signature weaknesses. Maybe Crisis of Identity scared us too much, Losing a beat up Beat Cop would not be that bad for example... We might have added a few more useful cards rather than cards we would never lose.
0 comments