Book-Burning Wendy: Fun with Exile

One of the mechanics I've been intrigued by is the Exile mechanic. However, at the time of this writing (April 2021) there are only eleven cards that exile themselves. This number drops to nine if you exclude The Council's Coffer and treat A Test of Will (1) and A Test of Will (2) as "one card" for counting purposes. Several of these nine options don't personally appeal to me (and if they appeal to you, that's great!), even with Déjà Vu (5) making exile XP costs easier to handle.

Last year the Gen Con Council-in-Exile created a "beta card" that was released by FFG for print-and-play (and will hopefully be officially included in an upcoming release) that greatly opens up the exile mechanic:

• Burn After Reading
• Survivor Event
• Insight.
• Cost: 2. XP: 1.
• Test icons:
• Discard or exile a non-weakness card in your hand or play area. Discover clues at your location equal to half that card's level (rounded up). If you exiled that card and its level was 2 or higher, also remove 1 doom from the current agenda.

This deck is one example of how to incorporate Burn After Reading into a deck, using it both for its clue-finding potential as well as its exile mechanic.

The Card

There are upsides and downsides to every player card. I will start by presenting what makes Burn After Reading a good card, then describe what challenges this card presents.

The Good

The most interesting part of the card to me is that Burn After Reading is the first card allowing an investigator to exile other cards rather than exiling the card itself. You can exile (or merely discard) cards depending on your particular situation: high XP for lots of clues, low XP for fewer clues, target a card in your hand that you don't need, target an asset in your play area that is out of uses, etc. This flexibility is greater than what other current exile cards provide. Additionally, Burn After Reading exiling other cards allows each copy of Burn After Reading to potentially be played multiple times per scenario (though potentially at significant accumulated XP cost).

The second flexibility the card provides is that the exile effect is optional, not required. Several of the current exile cards provide ways to gain value from the card without exiling it, such as A Test of Will (2) through a test or Stroke of Luck with a "may" effect. That said, other exile cards do not have those possibilities. Being able to choose whether to exile or merely discard a card means Burn After Reading can provide good value without costing you XP.

For its main effect (as I see it), Burn After Reading provides up to three test-less clues. Test-less anything is strong in Arkham, and test-less clues are one of the best options for getting something without risking the wrath of the chaos bag.

Lastly, for its secondary effect (as I see it), the exile effect is one of very few player card effects that can remove doom from the agenda, the others being Hallow and Fortune or Fate. Burn After Reading provides greater efficiency than Fortune or Fate as for a similar cost (two resources, two XP exiled) you also collect a clue. Burn After Reading costs an action whereas Fortune or Fate does not, and for me the clue balances out the action cost. Hallow requires significant token management to be usable while Burn After Reading requires much less coordination. That said, Hallow also does not exile a 2+ XP card, which is certainly a point in its favor.

The Bad

The first drawback is exiling costs XP. The XP cost can be mitigated by other cards, most readily Déjà Vu, though this still requires the overhead cost of spending XP to reduce ongoing XP costs. Many decks can run with a relatively low amount of XP compared with other classes, so spending XP on repurchasing exile cards or on Déjà Vu may not be that costly overall. That said, spending XP on repurchasing cards does reduce the amount of XP available to otherwise upgrade one's deck.

The second drawback I'm putting in this category is the clue-finding efficiency of Burn After Reading. Rather, its lack of efficiency. When exiling or discarding a 1-2 XP card, Burn After Reading compares poorly to several level zero cards, including (but not limited to):

• Burn After Reading: 1 action, 2 resources, 1 exile/discard for 1 clue
• Scene of the Crime: same effect without the exile/discard, possibly for 2 clues
• Working a Hunch: same effect without the exile/discard, and it's a fast action
• Intel Report: same effect without the exile/discard, with the potential for buying more clues or clues at other locations

The clue-finding efficiency does look better when exiling or discarding a 3-4 XP card, where Burn After Reading is more efficient than (for example) Intel Report when comparing resources-per-clue. Again, it still comes with the opportunity cost of using another card to enable those clues, and that cost is significant. Overall, my sense of Burn After Reading is that it supplements one's clue-finding engine rather than providing that engine itself.

The third drawback of Burn After Reading is that it is the very definition of a combo card. It can literally do nothing on its own. I'll double down on this and say it's even more constrained than other combo cards such as Extra Ammunition because Extra Ammunition can be played on a variety of level 0 cards. In contrast, Burn After Reading requires XP on the front end to provide targets, then it requires XP on the back end to repurchase exiled cards.

Because of this, Burn After Reading is likely going to be a midgame card if not a late game card for decks that include it. This deck aims to purchase the card on the earlier side so there are more opportunities to play the card. Also, several campaigns have rather tight doom thresholds in Scenario 4 (I'm not going to list them here for potential spoilers to newer plays), so having this card going into Scenario 4 can be particularly useful.

General Deck Design Principles

The main deck design principle is Burn After Reading likes having lots of other upgraded cards in the deck to serve as targets. Because of this, getting a lot of early XP 1 upgraded cards in one's deck early on increases the likelihood of having a variable target for Burn After Reading.

Extending that thinking, building a deck with a significant number of XP 2 cards provides the most XP-efficient way to leverage the exile effect of Burn After Reading. Similarly, including XP 3 cards provides the most XP-efficient way to obtain multiple clues.

Burn After Reading provides an opportunity to include multiple copies of unique or "Limit 1 per investigator" XP cards in a deck as the extra copies can serve as exile or discard targets. For example, I usually only include a single copy of Haste (2) in my decks. With Burn After Reading, I can include two copies knowing I'll play the first and sacrifice the second.

My last general principle for deck design is that Burn After Reading is great for turning spent assets (such as items without any uses left) into clues. There are other cards that provide asset recycling benefits (such as Joey "The Rat" Vigil (3) for items and Calling in Favors for near-dead allies), and Burn After Reading joins that class of cards.

With these ideas in mind, let's turn to the specific desklist published here.

This Decklist

This decklist is intended as a somewhat mature Wendy deck, having accumulated and spent 31 XP. (This could be reduced to 26 XP if you view Déjà Vu as an upcoming purchase for the next scenario.) Because current beta cards are not yet included in ArkhamDB, there are two placeholder cards that represent other cards:

• Live and Learn is a placeholder for Burn After Reading
• Flashlight (0) is a placeholder for another beta card, Flashlight (3):
  • Flashlight (3)
  • Neutral Asset. Hand
  • Item. Tool.
  • Cost: 2. XP: 3.
  • Test icons:
  • Uses (4 supplies).
  • : When you perform a skill test while investigating or attempting to evade, spend 1 supply: This test gets –2 difficulty.

"Why Wendy?"

I think Wendy is particularly well-suited to leveraging Burn After Reading for two reasons:

1. Wendy can take both Charon's Obol and Déjà Vu, which helps mitigate the XP cost of exiling cards.
2. Wendy's Amulet makes discarding events from hand with Burn After Reading effectively cost-free:
   • Play Burn After Reading
   • Discard Easy Mark (or other event) into your discard pile
   • Wendy's Amulet places Burn After Reading on the bottom of the player deck
   • Play Easy Mark (or other event) from the discard pile as if it were in your hand due to Wendy's Amulet

Neither of these are at all required for using Burn After Reading, to be sure. Other investigators provide different opportunities for pairing with Burn After Reading. For example, William Yorick can discard assets from hand or from play and then get them into play through his investigator ability.

Targets for Burn After Reading

This deck has 10 cards that are viable targets for Burn After Reading (only counting the second copies of Haste and Peter):

• Lockpicks (1) and Flashlight (3) can be discarded from play and then recurred through Scavenging
• Easy Mark and Lucky! (3) can be discarded then recurred with Wendy's Amulet (per above)
• Haste and Peter Sylvestre (2) can have the first copy played and then the second copy discarded or exiled

This provides many different options for what to target with Burn After Reading with many of the discarded cards being recoverable.

"What about ____?"

There are a great many cards that go well in a Wendy deck, and this is certainly not the only way to a deck for her and Burn After Reading. For example, if you prefer Leo De Luca (1) or Granny Orne (3) as an ally, go for it! Think Will to Survive (3) is better for this deck than Lucky! (3)? Make the switch!

Again, the goal of this deck is to showcase one option for how to build a deck around (to me) some principles to get the most value out of Burn After Reading.

Conclusion (for now)

If you made it this far, thanks for reading a rather lengthy write up! I hope the above was informative and helpful.

Have you tried this card out? How did it go? Perhaps you didn't know it existed. What do you think of it now that you know about it?

If you agree with what I've written, let me know. If you disagree, also let me know.

Cheers!