Winifred Habbamock: Engines of War

Introduction

A Winifred deck to partner in standard difficulty with Norman Withers during the DttF huge online War of the Outer Gods in April 2021. The design was intended to be about 66% enemy management/34% clue-getting, able to set up quickly and (hopefully) clear Providence between bouts of killing cultists and worse things. As usual, comments and suggestions welcome.

Card Comments

None of this will surprise, I imagine

Assets

• Lockpicks (1) -- the critical clue-getting tool for Wini
• Lucky Cigarette Case (3) -- when Wini gets up and running, being able to dig 4-6 cards deep is standard. It's excellent filtering
• Delilah O'Rourke -- not only does she boost 2 critical stats, a huge number of the enemies have low evade values, making her a budget murder machine
• Lone Wolf -- once we realized that the investigators had to split up for most of the game, this was a perfect inclusion. IN the opening hand, it made getting the rest of the rig easy to set up

Events

• "You handle this one!" -- there are a couple of bad treacheries in the encounter deck
• Faustian Bargain -- played for its pips both games; resources weren't really an issue by the time it was drawn, and they're good icons. If I hadn't gotten Lone Wolf out early; it might have been more useful

Skills

• "Watch this!" -- fairly safe resource generation in Wini
• Hatchet Man -- use this in an evade, exhaust Delilah O'Rourke, and that's a 3-health enemy out of your hair
• Nimble -- this was critical in getting Wini to enemies in time to prevent Doom piling up.
• Opportunist -- 4 XP is a lot, but in one game both of these were in hand for 3/4 of the scenario, letting the Lucky Cigarette Case (3) dig deep, and, of course, they synergize with each other and Wini's ability

Piloting

Wini is very easy and fun to pilot (heh). She's very flexible, and she can do a lot with a fairly small set up. She draws very fast, so you have to watch the deck, be prepared for weaknesses, and the 1 horror for decking yourself, but she also tends to get the cards she needs when she needs them, at just the right point in her resource generation. The scenario has some rough elements for her, though -- some tests that are mostly out of reach, and plays a bigger role than she can easily handle -- she can make 3-5 of them during a deck cycle, but the scenario demands more, especially in large groups.

Mulligan You would like to see Lucky Cigarette Case (3), Lone Wolf, and at least one of Lockpicks (1), Delilah O'Rourke, or Mauser C96

Alterations

As noted above, this was intended for a stand-alone, so there is no upgrade path, but you could use it as a base for a Wini deck that's meant to upgrade through a campaign. Swapping Lola for Delilah and Perception for Hatchet Man would make the deck more balanced clue-wise. You could make her full-on combat swapping the Lockpicks and Mauser C96 (2) for the Beretta M1918 and Swift Reload. Ms. Habbamock is a very flexible investigator; I hope you find time to try her out.