Hey everyone! Ever since Barkham, I have been excited for Kate to show up and after years, I was exhilarated to see her abilities!

This was my first built attempt for the cluver for my group's blind The Feast of Hemlock Vale.

The flux stabilizer loop is interesting and rewards playing a lot of science and tool assets, so I threw geared up in there to start the game out with plenty of targets. Flipping the stabilizer every time felt a little sad, but I noticed that REsearch Notes are Science assets, and that got me thinking.

The central gameplay loop is to use the Flux's +2 to place a clue on an asset, then use Quick Study to drop that clue from that asset onto your location, putting evidence on both of your research notes. This nets you a +5 for dropping one clue. With your Press Pass action, you pick it back up for basically free.

I had a Fingerprint Kit in there to help get your initial clues, but it is expensive, and only +1 clue wasn't that much acceleration for the cost. In later scenarios, I was relying on using Knowlege is Power on an empty research notes to pick up 3 or 6 clues from a location and then dropping them to fuel the research notes. Deduction quickly becomes less useful as you are only taking investigative actions for the Myconid or to pick up a single clue I left on the ground.

I slapped Fine Tuning on Empirical Hypothesis, I don't know if that allows you to double exhaust it for the same window, but if you're testing a difficulty 1 alchemical distillation test or a difficulty 0 research notes test, it's easy to get 3 over, especially with how high kate can pump any skill. You may also take the RAven quill to free up a Research Notes hand slot and then eventually unexhausted Empirical Hypotheis. I didn't upgrade it at all and just let the evidence build up for when I needed to find a card.

Fool me once is in there so I only draw Failed Experiment once since I ended up cycling my deck several times a session.

Gameplay Loop

Hard mulligan for backpacks, then research notes. Geared up those into play. (I had a rogue friend showering me with bank jobs before I stated my turn to afford Press Passes and Fingerprint Kits, if you don't have that buddy, stick to the cheaper ones)

Use Fingerprint Kit / Deduction / Uncanny Growth to pick up your initial clues, or be bold and use a Knowledge is Power to scoop up as many clues as you succeed by.

Captivating Discovery loads up your Notes and gets you lots of cards. Example: Use one of your Research Notes -> Flux +2 to put a clue onto an asset -> quick study drop the clue from that asset onto your location for +3 and 1 more evidence on each of your Notes -> test book 0 with a 9 -> Pick up the 1 clue you dropped and the 3 at the location even if you draw a -5 from the bag -> Now you have 4 clues for one action, your other research notes still has 4 evidence on it so you can keep this loop going, and your press passes made this action free and gained you an action for your trouble.

Perception pushes you higher if you need to pick up a lot of clues. If you have a big location, drop two clues for a +10.

Analysis is clutch if you need to succeed on a skill test and can't risk the Auto Fail or a bad symbol. Just be sure to use Flux to scatter these clues on your assets to get +2s before planning on dropping them with Analysis. This is also a quicky way to fill up your research notes in a pinch.

You can use an empty research notes -> commit analysis -> Flux clues to your assets for +2 -> drop them with Analysis which gives you 2 evidence for every 1 clue dropped -> easily pick up all the clues you just dropped within this same action and still have one fully loaded Notes and one empty one.

Upgrades

If you want to remove the awkwardly geared up / backpack / versatile nonsense, then you can start with a Quick Study with In the Thick of It.

(View at arkham-starter.com)

!!!HEMLOCK VALE SPOILERS!!!

While I really enjoyed getting a geared up turn to have a lot of cheap tool/science targets for the Flux+Quick Study combo with the basically free backpacks and research notes, it really hindered the morning prelude scenarios. I think you can technically have another player go first and then spend Kate's actions on the starting ability since heard up doesn't reduce her actions until her first turn begins, but having one of our players out for the first round every morning meant we talked to fewer townspeople. And because it was a blind playthrough, I didn't know that I would lose all my stuff so I hard-mullaganed for my backpacks, played them during the prelude, and then couldn't find them for the actual scenario's geared up turn.

!!!SPOILERS END!!!