It's a Win-Win for Rabbit Foot Rita

The problem with Rita Young is that she only excels at evading. Evading does not advance the game, so by itself it is a losing strategy. What should Rita do with her other actions? I think that using cards like Flashlight to try to overcome Rita's weaknesses is a mistake, because then Rita has to devote too many cards and resources to be successful, in effect making her work a lot harder than other investigators to do the same thing. She has to spend more actions to draw cards and take resources in order to fuel these effects, making her slow-- exactly the opposite of what we want from our star track athlete. Because of this problem, it took me quite a while to figure out how to use Rita effectively. But now I think I have the answer.

Instead of fighting Rita's tendency to fail tests, we must embrace it! We do this by using the full suite of cards that reward her failures. This might sound crazy, but I will explain why I think this will work. First, let's see what we actually get out of these effects:

Rabbit's Foot "Look what I found!" Dumb Luck Live and Learn Lucky! Oops! Take Heart

Of these, the most notable is Rabbit's Foot because it can be used every turn. This card is generally undervalued, in my opinion, because skill tests are failed almost every turn, especially on harder difficulties. But if our deck actually plans to fail tests, Rabbit's Foot is a first-line addition. Of the rest of these, "Look what I found!" has the most powerful effect in terms of moving the game forward. Lucky! and Live and Learn are very flexible and either give an extra action or save you from a nasty effect. Lastly, Take Heart gives you net +1 card, +2 resources, which is fantastic value. Dumb Luck and Oops! are definitely more situational. As a whole, these cards give extra card draws and a few extra clues, resources and actions.

Rita can activate these effects more consistently than other investigators, because with low , she tends to fail the most commonly available skill test: the investigate test. But is it really worth it to fail an investigate action to get these effects? For Take Heart, the answer is definitely yes, but you want to be pretty sure you will fail because otherwise you get nothing. But what about the other cards, especially Rabbit's Foot? With these, the answer depends on the probability of success.

Here's an example of how this plays out. The standard difficulty Night at the Zealot campaign starts with +1, 0, 0, –1, –1, –1, –2, –2, –3, –4, skull, skull, hood, tablet, auto-fail, elder sign. You start the first scenario at the Study with 2 shroud and 2 clues per investigator. The chance of Rita succeeding an investigate test here is 37.5%. Since the odds are so bad, you play Rabbit's Foot. Now if you investigate you have a 37.5% chance of getting a clue, and a 62.5% chance of drawing a card. Win-win! But let's say you want the clues, so you play Lantern and then investigate for your third action. Now your chance of success is 62.5% to get a clue and 37.5% chance of drawing a card. By choosing whether to use Lantern or not, you can manipulate your chances to either draw a card or get a clue, but you will always get something. For locations with 3 or 4 shroud, you will be mostly getting a card draw and only a few clues here and there, but these are bonus clues, not to be scoffed at! And there are other ways of bringing your intellect up, if you need to (my choice is Dark Horse, see below).

So with this strategy in mind, here's how this deck came together.

First, I added all of the fail cards except Dumb Luck and Oops. Then I added the essential Peter Sylvestre and Track Shoes. Next, I added Dark Horse and Lantern, because they allow you to manipulate your skill level to optimize your Rabbit's Foot/investigate engine. And unlike Flashlight these can be used the whole game! Fire Axe fills the same role in fight actions by letting you choose your odds of getting a card (without an attack of opportunity!) or a hit.

To take advantage of the one attribute that Rita doesn't fail at, I added Bait and Switch, Belly of the Beast, Resourceful and Survival Instinct.

Then I used the rest of the slots to shore up weaknesses and balance the deck. Rita's second most glaring weakness (after her inability to investigate) is her low sanity. Peter helps a lot, and Lucky a little, but we need more. Usually Cherished Keepsake would be included for this but it clashes with the foot, so I added Say Your Prayers (most treachery effects that deal horror have willpower tests) and Perseverance instead. The deck ended up being a little more expensive than I wanted, so I added 2 copies of Emergency Cache. In the end, it looks like a deck that will be mostly oriented towards evading enemies (definitely better in multi-player), but which can get some clues and kill a few enemies along the way, while being much faster than most Rita builds.

I am planning on using this deck in a 3-investigator team in the Circle Undone, which will be a hard test of her ability to survive nasty horror-causing treacheries, but we will see! I am planning to hard-mulligan for Peter and Rabbit's Foot. I will make an update after I play, including thoughts about upgrades.

Please leave comments below!