Lily Chen in FHV (Hard) (62XP) + Campaign Report

This deck was created for a two-handed solo run of The Feast of Hemlock Vale on Hard, alongside Kate Winthrop. The partner deck can be found here.

This was the starting deck:

Lily Chen (1XP) in The Eternal Slumber (Hard) + FHV

I did The Eternal Slumber on Hard with 1XP as the opening scenario (spending the other 2XP from In the Thick of It to pay for it). In this article I'll cover all the upgrades purchased after each scenario along with notes about the decks and the scenario itself.

This is the campaign plan:

1. The Lost Sister.
2. The Twisted Hollow.
3. Written in Rock.
4. The Longest Night.
5. The Silent Heath.
6. Fate of the Vale.

At the beginning of the campaign I chose the option which added a Tablet token to the bag instead of an Elder Thing token, because its effects are generally easier to deal with. During the campaign we will add an additional Tablet token, plus one Skull, one Elder Thing, and two Cultist tokens.

One of the key cards in this deck (which was replaced right before the finale) is Scroll of Prophecies. It was the card I most often tried to put into play during each of the three preludes so that Lily could start with it, as it allowed her to cycle through her deck to find her weapons and other important cards, and it also allowed her to fight effectively using events.

Being able to begin the game with an asset in play in half the scenarios also saved a lot of resources, so the deck's economy fared better than it might seem throughout the campaign.

With so few assets in the deck (plus being able to start with one in play half the time) Ever Vigilant lost a lot of usefulness, which had the flow-on effect of reducing the importance of Stick to the Plan. I tried including that card a few times but it always underwhelmed; one of its other advantages is to thin your deck out so you draw your good cards sooner, but with all the cycling from Scroll of Prophecies that aspect of it fell by the wayside as well.

I did consider the XP4 version of Ever Vigilant to help Kate out, since her deck is quite asset-heavy, but Unearth the Ancients mostly solved that problem for her and it didn't really make sense for Lily to spend 10XP when there was no real advantage for herself.

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The Eternal Slumber: 6XP gained.

Upgrades

Lily's starting deck was heavily customized for the starting scenario, so it's going to take a couple of scenarios to reconfigure it.

Removed:

2 x Bolas: This card was good in TES but it has very limited use in the rest of the campaign.

2 x Ethereal Slip: Likewise, this card enabled a lot of high value plays in TES but it doesn't have much to offer going forward.

Added:

2 x Vicious Blow: This card adds a lot of much-needed killing power to Lily's deck. It combos well with Toe to Toe and it will help bring down the Elite that spawns when the agenda advances, as well as the final boss.

2 x Sweeping Kick: This provides useful utility when it comes to fighting bosses since it allows you to "tank" them for a turn if you can't deal with them all at once.

1 x John & Jessie Burke: This was the story card we took for beating The Eternal Slumber. The other option, Ancient Ankh, takes care of Kate's weakness (Failed Experiment) very neatly, along with treacheries like Rotting Remains and Grasping Hands, and I did take it on some test runs. Ultimately, though, Kate's own horror mitigation tools were sufficient, and John & Jessie Burke is more useful in the hardest scenario, The Longest Night.

6XP spent, 0XP left.

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Scenario One: The Lost Sister

The Lost Sister is a good fit for Lily because it contains very little combat at the start. There's only one medium-sized enemy in the encounter deck (the Corpse Lichen) and multiple small Aloof enemies (the Black Amanita and Cavern Moss). This means Lily can afford to play Scroll of Prophecies early and cycle through her deck to find the pieces to assemble her Dragon Pole suite before she needs to use it.

As in The Eternal Slumber, she can make use of the downtime before the boss fight to use Meditative Trance to heal any damage or horror she took during the first part of the scenario.

• I had Lily use the parley ability on the starting location right away to see if I could find the location that spawns one of the two set-aside Elites, because you really want to avoid it if possible. You have to take a gamble on the first location you reveal, but after that my typical strategy is to not reveal the other two starting locations until I either know where the enemy one is or there's no other option.

  This does mean someone has to return to use the parley action again, but it's usually not that far out of the way if you place new locations with it in mind.

• Kate typically ended up with Cavern Moss attached to her Fingerprint Kit, but it was easy enough to plan for and ensure it only happened when it ran out of uses. At that point you can play another hand slot item to discard the kit and the moss gets discarded as well.

• The doom clock is quite generous on Day One, so in most of my test runs I was able to sit around and wait for both VP-enemy treacheries to be drawn, and for both such enemies to be killed (String of Curses is still good for this) before advancing to the final act and spawning the boss.

  The encounter deck is quite large and also fairly toothless, so you can use Delve Too Deep early to speed things up if you haven't be able to spawn the VP enemies by the time you can advance the final act.

• Kate being the only one who could discover clues was a bit awkward at times, but she always had enough left over to be able to pull the boss into the light once or twice to help Lily with the damage, and clearing the final location was never a problem for her.

The Lost Sister: 9XP gained.

From this point on, XP gains will include any earned in the preceding Prelude as well. I had Kate take the bonus 1XP from reading the back of the act the first time, then Lily took 2XP the second time, then Kate took 2XP the third and final time.

Upgrades

Removed:

2 x Eldritch Tongue: It's time to begin dismantling the Dragon Pole suite, and we start here because this card only interacts with String of Curses.

2 x Meditative Trance: With fewer arcane slot assets this card becomes a bit less reliable as a heal, and it's also more of a dead draw if it appears early.

Added:

2 x Protective Gear: We need this card before heading into the mine in Written in Rock, but it's also quite relevant in our next scenario, The Twisted Hollow. And when it's not cancelling treacheries it provides Lily with good soak, which is something she lacks since she isn't spending XP on any allies for this campaign.

1 x Bandolier: The next scenario also has some notable downtime at the beginning where there aren't any enemies (during Act One they all get placed into the Pursuit Area except for the doom rats) so Lily will again be able to play her Scroll of Prophecies and cycle through her deck to put together her Dragon Pole suite.

This card uses the same slot as the Protective Gear, but that card is often consumed quickly and isn't intended to be in play for the entire game. The Bandolier allows Lily to make the most of her Scroll of Prophecies whether it appears before or after her Dragon Pole (or, later, her Butterfly Swords). If there are charges remaining on a scroll when you need to play a weapon, the Bandolier can preserve them, and if you end up playing a weapon first it allows you to still play the scroll later to get value from it.

1 x Emergency Cache: Lily is starting to accrue some expensive cards, so this will help offset the increased burden on her resource economy.

1 x Helen Peters: This is the story asset we gained from achieving the best resolution. Helen provides a valuable stat boost during the day and a still-relevant one during the night, and she also provides a good amount of soak. Her ability isn't generally useful, but it can come in very handy in The Longest Night.

1 x Discipline: Lily has hit the 15XP threshold, so she can add another Discipline to her deck. We take Balance of Body here (the one) because it's the most immediately-useful one for her right now (because of its passive boost, which helps her in combat and in the Mythos phase).

8XP spent, 1XP left.

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Scenario Two: The Twisted Hollow

As mentioned, Lily will generally continue the same pattern of play here where she opens with a Scroll of Prophecies and uses it to find the other cards she needs by the time she needs to fight.

• We take the good lantern here, and Lily holds it to begin with since she'll have a spare hand until right before Act Three when she needs to play a Dragon Pole (the Bandolier can help here too).

• Try to reveal a new location each turn to maximize the lantern's use, and to maximize your chances of finding a Lair location. Note that the investigator with the lantern doesn't have to be the one revealing a new location each time; the lantern's reaction can be used on any investigator leaving its location.

• When Act Two begins and the bear boss appears, run away from it so that it gets sent to the Pursuit Zone the next time the agenda advances. Try to evade any other enemies that appear as well.

• The Stalking Hybrid has the "Prey - investigator with the lantern only" clause, which means if it doesn't spawn at the same location as the investigator holding the lantern, it won't engage (and if you get into a situation where neither investigator is holding the lantern, any newly spawned Hybrids won't engage anyone). This can be particularly important during the final act when you need to roam around the forest looking for the Resign location.

• During testing I had multiple games where all the enemies were clumped up at the bottom of the encounter deck, which made the final act very difficult. I actually started using Delve Too Deep early whenever I could afford to in order to get more enemies into the Pursuit Zone because they're easier to manage in the final act when they're there. Killing a few of them by spawning them during Act Two also made it easier later on, even though the Pursuit Zone eventually runs out and you have to start spawning them from the encounter deck.

The Twisted Hollow: 9XP gained.

Upgrades

Removed:

2 x Dragon Pole: The Dragon Pole has served us well but it's time to cast it aside and embrace the Butterfly Swords.

2 x Talisman of Protection: This is a pretty good soak card but it was mostly here because it provided an arcane slot, and since we don't need those anymore it's getting the axe. We'll hang onto Speak to the Dead for most of the campaign though, because it can recur Ward of Protection, Spectral Razor, and later, Fang of Tyr'thrha.

1 x Promise of Power: Out of the remaining slots in the deck this is probably the most flexible one to pull from if we need to drop something. It does mean Lily has fewer ways to mitigate Mythos phase treacheries, but she generally doesn't need this card in combat because most of her attacks have built-in boosts (Butterfly Swords, Spectral Razor, Sweeping Kick, and Fang of Tyr'thrha), not to mention the Wolf Mask.

That's why I haven't added Overpower to the deck (and also because she has a lot of draw power from the Scroll of Prophecies and Quiescence of Thought). It will make an appearance before the end though.

Added:

2 x Butterfly Swords: I always thought this card would suffer because more attacks means more chances to trigger bad symbol token effects, and this campaign has a lot of really awful ones. In practice, though, that wasn't really an issue, and I think it's because you do have some control over exactly how many of those bad tokens get added to the bag.

I tried skipping The Twisted Hollow a few times, which meant adding an extra Tablet and Elder Thing token to the bag, and I really did notice a lot more bad pulls in general, so I dropped that idea and returned to the Hollow. I should also note that the Butterfly Swords probably aren't the best choice for a main weapon a lot of the time but they're very good in The Longest Night, which easily justifies their inclusion here.

2 x "I've had worse…": This is a dual-purpose economy/soak card that is never short on targets. You can also use it against Lily's Burden of Destiny weakness if you really, really don't want to break a Discipline.

1 x Emergency Cache: The second copy.

10XP spent (9XP + 1XP leftover), 0XP left.

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Scenario Three: Written in Rock

I chose to do this scenario because blowing up the Vale with fireworks was the only ending I hadn't taken, and in Kate I finally had an investigator with good who could benefit from having Simeon along (and pass his tests reliably).

Hopefully Lily got one of her Hazmat suits (Protective Gear) in her opening hand because it makes a huge difference in this scenario (there are a LOT of Hazard treacheries in this encounter deck). Having a weapon that can attack for 2+ damage immediately is also important here, because Lily's job in Act One is to collect as many pieces of scrap as she can, and the encounter deck is filled with ghouls.

• If Lily draws one or two Power treacheries in Act One she will have enough resources to play all of her expensive assets and also use the Act Two ability to slide locations around. Her job is to do that plus take care of any enemies, since Kate will be focusing almost exclusively on discovering clues.

• Lily got the bonus 2XP from reading the back of the Act in the preceding Prelude, which means she begins this scenario with The Hemlock Curse in her opening hand. This is actually really annoying and hard to shake despite the fact that it can discard itself at the end of the turn. Toe to Toe with a ghoul enemy to attack is the ideal way to get rid of it, but that isn't always an option. Fortunately, she can use her Scroll of Prophecies to recover if she had to discard a few cards.

• If I ever ran over one of the rail locations that eats a switch at the end of the round I usually consumed that switch to move past it since it would be lost anyway. You do need to use some switches to speed up your movement from time to time, especially if you want to grab the Mineral.

• If you play this scenario a lot you will learn to recognize the possible VP locations by looking at their unrevealed side. You'll often also be able to recognize which locations cause direct horror damage to your Resident allies at the end of the round (depending upon which other locations have been revealed). I usually tried to grab the VP locations when I could, but you do need at least one switch for each one unless you're packing some tech which lets you discover clues at locations other than the one you're at.

• Kate was never short on clues here so I was able to plan a route and stick to it most of the time. I have had some bad ends here, but I think it mostly does come down to how efficiently you can discover clues. They're important for setting up your path and also for correcting any issues caused by the enemies that move the locations around, which you'll inevitably draw several of each game.

• Kate's Aetheric Current: Yuggoth is great here because you can move an enemy to the Rail Exit location in the top right corner. It doesn't connect with any other location so you can choose to leave an empty space there until the very end, and as soon as you enter it the scenario ends.

• If you have Simeon in the cart and zero switches left it's probably better to avoid using his power until right before you need more switches because you might draw the Tablet token and lose one (you will always draw the Tablet token and lose one).

• The extra combat tests from the Butterfly Swords have an equal chance to remove or grant a switch by pulling either the Tablet or Cultist tokens. The swords giveth, and they taketh away...

Written in Rock: 13XP gained.

Upgrades

Removed:

2 x Delve Too Deep: The next scenario is the hardest one in the game, and it's also the main target of all my recent deck experiments (including this one), The Longest Night. We can't afford to take greedy cards like this into that scenario, but it has provided us with a lot of XP up to this point so it's done a good job.

Added:

2 x Butterfly Swords: The upgraded version of this gives you two attacks per action spent (in the previous version you could only get an extra attack once per turn by exhausting it). It's a good upgrade, and this card will make short work of all the enemies in The Longest Night which only take one point of damage at a time.

1 x Dynamite Blast: I always try to include a copy of this card in any deck that can take it. The fast version of it is particularly valuable here because our actions will be at a premium. For the damage reduction enemies, there's Butterfly Swords; for everything else, there's Dynamite Blast.

1 x Fang of Tyr'thrha: Great mobility plus a solid 4HP hit, which is enough to kill some of the Elites in the next scenario in one hit. This card also has a great interaction with Helen Peters if your target is Elusive and/or engaged with another investigator, as she can exhaust and disengage it before you attack (provided you used the teleport, of course).

1 x Discipline: Lily has hit another Discipline threshold, and this time we add Quiescence of Thought (the one). This one is good for restocking her hand after she plays a bunch of combat events, and it's good for mitigating any discard from The Hemlock Curse.

She can also handle that weakness by using Theo's parley action in the next scenario to discard two cards (if the curse is the only card left in her hand at the end of her turn it discards itself) and it can also help flip Quiescence of Thought back to its unbroken side.

Kate added the Prismatic Shard to her deck. We'll swap it out for 1XP in the next prelude though because we won't be using its story option in the finale.

13XP spent, 0XP left.

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Scenario Four: The Longest Night

All of our card choices have been made with this scenario in mind. I'm still finding it to be a fun and rewarding challenge to create a pair of decks that can consistently beat it with zero damage on The Captives (and thus score the maximum five bonus XP). Lily and Kate have fared a bit worse than my last duo, Jenny and Carson, but honestly not by much, and my test runs have been mostly successful.

• Lily begins at the same location as the bear boss. Hopefully she has one of her weapons in her opening hand, or at least one or two ways to pump some damage into it so that a trap or two can finish it off. If not it can be a bit awkward for the first few turns playing chase with it, but it shouldn't last too long.

• Kate begins at the South Outer Fields. It could have been any of the others (well, not the boss one) I just picked this one. I place a decoy here, a trap at the location adjacent to the bear boss, and a barrier at either the North or East side of the Farmhouse.

• Lily has Theo as an ally and Kate has Simeon because, due to our scenario choices so far, they were the only two available. Theo's extra move is very good, and Simeon's decoy placement can come in clutch if, say, one of the Aloof birds is about to enter a location that's on fire but it isn't safe to place a decoy there yourself.

  I usually pick Gideon because of his ability to simply discard an enemy for the cost of two actions, which I think is the best codex power out of all of them, though Leah's is similar (deal three damage to the nearest enemy).

• The most important thing to do right away is to find the Fire! locations and set them alight. Kate will usually be the first one to start revealing locations, but if her opening hand seems like it will let her grab a few easy clues I'll spend an action or two setting up first before she moves out.

• Lily will usually recur Ward of Protection with Speak to the Dead to increase her chances of being able to nuke the treachery that makes you choose whether to either damage The Captives, remove one doom, or take three direct damage and three direct horror. It also protects her from Frozen in Fear and Rotting Remains.

• Both investigators have tools for stalling, killing, and tanking. These include: String of Curses, Helen Peters, Transmogrify, Aetheric Current: Yuggoth, Dynamite Blast, Protective Gear, John & Jessie Burke, and Surgical Kit.

• Most of the time I try to barricade the Fire! locations and burn the Elite enemies down while ducking out to deal with the Aloof ones as necessary, but being proactive and killing everything you can pays off if you can afford to do it (not least because an unlucky Incursion could ruin your day).

• If you're engaged with an enemy and you move into a location with a decoy, it will trigger and exhaust (and disengage) that enemy. You'll still take an attack of opportunity for doing this, but it can be a useful trick.

• You don't need to kill everything, you just need to prevent any enemy from hitting The Captives. This means that if at the end of round ten there are five enemies at the farmhouse all engaged with Lily and Kate, and they're both on death's door but everyone's alive, then that's a win. Your health and sanity are resources to be used, not saved, so make the most of them!

I decided not to sacrifice one of my Resident allies at the end of this (mostly because I couldn't sacrifice Simeon if I wanted the fireworks ending and I'd lose 1XP from the next prelude if I sacrificed Theo) so both investigators gained one mental trauma. At this point, Lily has 2PT and 1MT, and Kate has 3PT and 1MT.

The Longest Night: 7XP gained.

Upgrades

Added:

Removed:

1 x Promise of Power: Removing the second copy.

1 x String of Curses: This card's utility has mostly run its course now, or at least it isn't as useful as the cards which will replace it.

Added:

1 x Stand Together: Lily could use another economy card, and it provides a valuable boost for Kate as well.

1 x Fang of Tyr'thrha: The second copy.

7XP spent, 0XP left.

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Scenario Five: The Silent Heath

Out of the remaining scenarios, this one is the best choice. Hemlock House is very heavy on clue discovery (Lily doesn't really have the throughput to bring the house down by herself so that option isn't really on the table) and The Thing in the Depths would have been fine but it doesn't have as much XP to offer as The Silent Heath.

• The encounter deck is very large here so it's entirely possible you won't see an enemy until the first agenda advances, which forces one to spawn. This means that, once again, Lily is free for a few turns to play a Scroll of Prophecies and cycle through her deck.

• Her first task, though, is to activate Prescience of Fate and reveal the Ashen Slope. She has a good chance of passing the test (+5) to avoid taking two damage. Later, she will probably be the one to parley with Mother Rachel, again using Prescience of Fate, to claim her 1XP.

• If any insect enemies do spawn before the first agenda advances it's a good idea to kill them so that you can spawn the boss and get it out of the way early.

• And when fighting the boss, try to leave at least one other insect enemy alive while you fight it, otherwise the Tablet token can be deadly. It forces the nearest insect enemy to ready, move, engage, and attack, and if the boss is the only one at your location, well...

• Note that any enemy that does get triggered by the Tablet token will exhaust after it attacks (because it attacks as though it were the enemy phase) so it won't attack again later that round.

• When Act Two began I had Lily use her actions to draw the encounter cards beneath the three starting locations so that Kate could focus on discovering clues.

• This scenario can put out a lot of damage and horror, especially with the Day Three encounter set that adds more treacheries to the encounter deck. I typically recurred Ward of Protection every time with Speak to the Dead.

• One big advantage to doing this scenario on Day Three is that Dr. Rosa Marquez will be in your deck (in this case, in Kate's) and her codex power is extremely good here. The first time you use it you draw three cards, and the second time you use it you get to reveal all of the cards beneath a Lair location and remove the non-story asset ones. It saves a huge amount of time.

• You don't need to send each story asset to the victory display one at a time; if you can soak the damage and horror from carrying them around you can save some time and resign with them at the end, which adds them all to the display.

The Silent Heath: 19XP gained (including from the Day Three and Night Three preludes; I don't spend any XP before the short Night Three prelude).

Upgrades

Removed:

2 x Scroll of Prophecies: It's time to say goodbye to Lily's favourite draw cycler. She will need to get set up quickly in the finale, hopefully finding her Butterfly Swords right away so that she can spam combat tests.

2 x Speak to the Dead: We need slots for new cards and it was either this, Spectral Razor, or Ward of Protection.

1 x Bandolier: It feels odd removing a card that costs XP, but without the Scroll of Prophecies this card loses a lot of utility, and it made more sense to replace it than any other card.

1 x String of Curses: Removing the second copy.

Added:

2 x One-Two Punch: In Act One of the finale you reveal cards from The Abyss by the amount you succeeded by when you perform a skill test, and when a test "automatically succeeds" the difficulty of that test is considered to be zero. Also, you get an ability which lets you double the icons on one card committed to the test, and you can still commit cards to tests that "automatically succeed."

What this means is that One-Two Punch (and Toe to Toe) provides an extremely powerful effect in the first act, especially when you consider how many terrible tokens there are in the bag (we take the option to add a Tablet and an Elder Thing token because having three Cultist tokens is really difficult to deal with; they make you randomly discard a card each time you pull one, and your hand size is critical during Act One).

And One-Two Punch is just a great card in general, although if you use it on a ready Elusive enemy they'll run away before you can hit them with the follow-up attack.

2 x Overpower: As mentioned, doubling the icons on a skill card in Act One that you've committed to a test that will automatically succeed is a very strong play.

1 x Stand Together: The second copy of this will help make up for the loss of draw power from dropping the Scroll of Prophecies (and so will Overpower's guaranteed draw), and it's just a solid economy card in general in multiplayer games.

1 x Prepared for the Worst: This is almost like having a third copy of Butterfly Swords. Either way, Lily needs to find them quickly and this is the best card for helping out in that regard.

19XP spent, 0XP left.

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Scenario Six: Fate of the Vale

During the first and second acts here, Lily will sit at the Mirror Nest that wants you to fight and she will repeatedly hit it with her Butterfly Swords. In my final run she ended up at the location where the Cosmic Entity has a fight value of four, but that still allowed her to test at +5 on her first attack and +10 on her second, and with six potential attacks each turn this can provide a steady stream of cards being returned to each investigator's deck (it can also provide a lot of Cultist tokens which cause her to randomly discard a card, but on the whole I think it was worth it).

Lily is no slouch when it comes to burning through The Abyss to find both "true" investigator cards, but Kate's deck was made for this task. In Act One she can use the icon doubling effect on Survey the Area and The Eye of Truth, plus Higher Education and any clues she may have to test at very high amounts.

Consequently, it usually only took two turns to advance to Act Two, at which point she ducks into the first Cavern location she can find to get away from the Cosmic Entity which she usually can't afford to evade (she sits at the Mirror Nest location that cares about investigate tests).

Lily also handles any enemies from the encounter deck during the first two acts, though I usually ignored the Aloof ghosts because its fairly expensive to deal with them in terms of actions, cards, and resources, and because they get discarded when you advance to Act Three anyway.

• As mentioned earlier, Lily can use Toe to Toe and One-Two Punch plus Overpower to over-succeed by large amounts in Act One. And if you pull the Calcification treachery you can use its auto-success option to do something similar.

• During Act Two, Kate can get +4 from each clue she spends by first moving it to one of her assets using her free trigger ability (though only at a Lair location).

• When Act Two begins, Lily takes Leah and Kate takes Simeon. The only other option I had available was Theo, but Leah's passive was much more valuable than his extra movement action, and she had better codex powers too. Kate needs Simeon for his boost and his Act Three codex power which helps us burn down the Vale.

• During Act Three, Lily deals with any Resident enemies and Kate moves around collecting clues and placing kindling. Whenever possible, I tried to have Lily actually start the fires because Kate is under a huge amount of action pressure here (for some reason the kindling ability doesn't let you spend clues as a group or Lily could've helped there too).

And that's basically it. This scenario attacks your hand a lot but both investigators have enough draw power to compensate for it. I didn't ever consider taking down the 10HP Elites that hover around in Act Three because it didn't seem worth it, but it would be an interesting challenge to do so in a future run.

One of the main changes I would've made to the starting deck if I hadn't done The Eternal Slumber first would have been to include either Scene of the Crime or Breach the Door, as the one thing Lily lacked for the entire campaign was the ability to discover clues. But Bolas proved to be too essential for consistently getting through TES and it was ultimately the better choice.

And for a final note, the basic weakness I pulled for Lily on my final run, The Silver Moth, wasn't too relevant most of the time because her accessory slot was completely free, but its sanity reduction did force me to spend actions removing it in some of the scenarios. It turned out to be a great target for the Fungal Rot treachery too, because it doesn't say it can't be attached to weaknesses and it blanks the item's entire text box.

Let me know if you have any questions. You can find Kate's deck here.