"Nancy Drew" staring: Lola Hayes

Card draw simulator

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MOTUX · 8476

This is a cluever Lola build that naturally focuses on getting clues. To that end, it's clearly a multiplayer build and you will want a Guardian/etc escort to deal with enemies should they pop in. While Lola doesn't have the consistency of Daisy and Minh, or match Rex's acceleration, you can certainly put on your best impression of the three. If you want a jankier Seeker with better action economy then this might be for you.

1. Piloting Instructions / Our Roles

The precise uses of our roles and their associated cards are detailed in greater detail below, but the general idea is to use Seeker as our "primary" class. We will then bounce between Seeker and Mystic or Rogue depending on the current situation. Mystic is more of a "support" role, specifically Alyssa Graham who we can use her to peek at either our deck (watching out for Crisis of Identity) or the encounter deck. Rogue, meanwhile, is our "accelerant" role to burst investigate. Because we will actually be switching to Rogue now and then, Leo De Luca will not be safe from Crisis of Identity; sometimes you just have to take a chance, fortune favours the bold!

1.1 Seeker: Getting Clues

Seeker of course brings its natural investigating power; both Magnifying Glass and Dr. Milan provide helpful passives, Deduction gives us some burst power, and Shortcut to save on movement. If Dr. Milan is out, we want to stay in Seeker as much as possible so we can use his .

1.2 Mystic: Support and Scouting feat. Alyssa Graham

So what's Mystic for? Mostly for Alyssa Graham. Beyond her always useful passive, her serves two purposes:

  1. Scouting our deck for Crisis of Identity

  2. Scouting the Encounter Deck for a nasty treachery that we may draw either in the Mythos Phase, or via Delve Too Deep and Drawn to the Flame. Regarding the Mythos phase, make sure you are the lead investigator so you draw the top card.

Use of Alyssa's will require some thought and whether you have already used Lola's this round. What it comes down to is: if you start your turn in Mystic (), use her to scan our deck to watch for Crisis of Identity: if it's safe, switch to Seeker () to use Dr. Milan's . If you end your turn in Mystic (), scan the encounter deck to get a heads up.

Holy Rosary and Shrivelling help resists treacheries and provide a smidge of combat prowess. Delve Too Deep is there to help accelerate our deck and fuel our Flare's. It will eventually be swapped to Drawn to the Flame. Alyssa Graham can help scout things out.

1.3 Rogue: Winning Big

Rogue is our role to swap to when we really need to kick our cluevering up a notch. Double or Nothing and Quick Thinking offer a powerful means of generating actions to take down a location. Keep in mind that there isn't a window to change role during the "commit cards" step during a skill check; in other words, you cannot combine Deduction with Double or Nothing et al.

Leo De Luca nets us additional actions which equals more clues, obviously. Try to avoid switching to Rogue too often until one or two copies of Crisis of Identity have been discarded.

Elusive is there to help move us across the board when we need it, or simply run away from an enemy. This card is easily abandoned if you have a Guardian escort and emergency movement becomes less valuable.

Eventually, we will acquire Streetwise which is our primary outlet for the resources Dr. Milan brings in.

1.4 Neutral: Filthy Neutrals

Standard assortment of neutral cards, what else is there to say? Well, one thing. Once we have Adaptable, depending on what is more valuable to the current scenario you can swap Flashlight and Fine Clothes (or perhaps take both) based on the scenario.

2. Mulligan Guide

You are primarily looking for two things:

  1. An investigate tool: Magnifying Glass > Flashlight

  2. An investigate ally: Dr. Milan Christopher > Alyssa Graham

Once you have Flare(1), keep it so you can dig out your allies cheapily and easily.

3. Upgrade Guide

Recommended upgrade path is as follows:

  1. Charisma x1 (3xp)

  2. Emergency Cache(0) x2 Flare(1) x2 (2xp)

  3. Streetwise (3xp)

  4. Adaptable (1xp)

  5. Charisma (3xp)

  6. Magnifying Glass(0) x2 Magnifying Glass(1) x2 (2xp)

  7. Deduction(0) x2 Deduction(2) x2 (4xp)

  8. Elusive/Emergency Cache(0) x1 Ace in the Hole(3) x1 (6xp)

  9. Shortcut x2 Pathfinder(1) x2 (2xp)

  10. Elusive/Emergency Cache(0) x1 Emergency Cache(2) x1

  11. Blood Pact (3xp)

  12. Higher Education (3xp)

  13. Shrivelling(0) Shrivelling(3) x2 (6xp)

I recommend using Adaptable to swap Elusive x2 to Emergency Cache(0) x2 once you have both Rogue permanents

Charisma and Flare are obvious priorities to find and bring out our key allies. Beyond Streetwise and Adaptable, the rest can mostly be done in any order you prefer or are able to.

Of the booster permanents, Streetwise is the most useful followed by Blood Pact and finally Higher Education. The problem with Higher Education is it can be tough to keep our hand size at 5, whereas Streetwise offers no such restriction. We have no means of removing Blood Pact's doom short of including Moonlight Ritual, but its + and + can save your bacon on plenty of tests. Don't underestimate it.

3.1 A Note on Permanents

Note that Permanents do count towards Lola's deck building "min. 7 cards from three different factions" requirement. Consequently, once we buy, for example, Adaptable, we need only physically include 6 Rogue() cards in our "actual" deck. This helps provide some flexibility.

4. Card Alternatives and Adaptable Targets

The following are some cards that can be swapped out, and alternatives you may want to consider swapping in:

4.1 Mystic()

Ditch:

Swap in:

4.2 Rogue ()

Ditch:

Swap in:

4.3 Seeker()

Ditch:

Add:

  • Pathfinder(1) (we should be able use its nearly every round)
  • Encyclopedia(2) (to help support the teams troops; we will probably have actions to spare to use it via Leo De Luca)
  • In the Know(1) (if someone scouts out the high shroud locations, you should be able to "snipe" them, especially in combination with Deduction(2) and Double or Nothing if need be)
  • Inquiring Mind
  • Pathfinder(will be able to trigger its as we will be in Seeker fairly often, but its bonus is somewhat unnecessary for once you have some investigating tools and allies out)

Neutral

Ditch swap:

4 comments

Oct 17, 2017 Glitched · 2

Personally I feel you have too much card draw. It seems almost guaranteed that you will lose assets to Crisis of Identity. You might also consider running Dark Horse alongside resource burn like Hyperawareness or Arcane Studies since Dark Horse is outside of the spheres you're using, there is no chance of loosing it to Crisis. Those would also give you some options for boosting skills when you're outside of Rogue for Streetwise. If you're interested, I would be curious to what you think of my own Lola Hayes Deck and would appreciate your input: "Arkham's Razor - Flex Lola"

Oct 17, 2017 MOTUX · 8476

@Glitched

The only card draw in this deck is from the neutral skill cards (besides deck shrinking from Flare); I'm hesitant to not include these as they offer Lola necessary flexibility and ease a possible "Role jam". This is also why I don't want to use Hyperawareness et al; these cards are slow on their own but Lola's role switching to both play and use them drastically limits their usefulness in my opinion. Permanents work much better as they (1) are more action efficient (i.e. they start in play) and (2) give Lola more flexibility in her deck design.

I've made a Dark Horse Lola deck before and I wanted to try something a bit different with this one.

In regards to Crisis of Identity, I haven't found it to be too problematic with this deck thus far. If we are able to use Alyssa Graham every turn, Crisis of Identity will only work 50% of the time it's drawn.

Oct 17, 2017 Dreadreaper · 6463

Do you really think the permanents are valuable here? If you have streetwise and boost your investigate you aren't going to benefit from Milans ability. I have been trying to build Lola in a similar way, with solely support cards for allies and a focus on clue gathering.

Oct 17, 2017 MOTUX · 8476

@Dreadreaper

I've found streetwise to still be pretty useful, a bit niche. With all the + assets I haven't needed to use it often except on particularly difficult tests (or for its boost). You can still take advantage of Milan's if you switch roles from Rogue to Seeker using a window during a test.

It's also useful since it counts as a Rogue card for purposes of Lola's deck building requirements, so it gives some flexibility once I also have Adaptable (i.e. I now only need 5 Rogue cards in "actually" my deck).

Overall it's not as useful as I've found Dark Pact to be in Dark Horse Lola (switching between Guardian/Mystic) but it still has some function.