Sefina, Spellthief Extraordinaire

I've tried my hand lately at assigning classic RPG archetypes to our friendly neighborhood investigators.

Carolyn Fern | The Paladin

Zoey Samaras | The Berserker

Jenny Barnes | The Alchemist

Calvin Wright | The .... Deprived

And, embodying the multiclass nearest and dearest to my heart, we have:

Sefina Rousseau | The Spellthief

Bye Bye Jenny

I mained Jenny all the way through The Path to Carcosa, including multiple playthroughs of each campaign along the way.

Of course, Jenny's great. Get cash, pump skills, win the game. Physical Training supplemented by Streetsmarts, coupled with her ability to print money and splash cards from any faction, practically guarantees her core engine.

One fateful day, a 3p playthrough with one player as The Fighter and another as Lara Croft left me with a dilemma. Mark fights better than Jenny out of the gate, and Ursula outcompetes her in both early game mobility and definitely clue vacuuming. I needed another niche to fill.

So I decided to try out Sefina.

Hello (Painted) World

Widely regarded as one of the more difficult investigators to pilot, Sefina takes her own unconventional style a step further as the only rogue in the 'verse without built-in action/econ compression mechanics. With low health, low base , and low base to boot, she has issues with direct confrontation and.... actually winning the game. But, lucky for us, the and cards - the latter of which Sefina has particularly deep access to for a non-Mystic - comprise the most versatile and powerful cards this side of reality. What other factions let you straight up Cheat Death and shrug off the encounter deck? Better yet - what other investigator allows you to play them more times than the game allows?

"No." - Sefina, talking directly to Arkham Horror the LCG, after classing up to Shadow Mage

So let's summarize:

Weaknesses

• extremely low health - the preferred stat for staying alive in general
• low base - the preferred stat for killing things
• low base - the preferred stat for winning the game
• is the only rogue to-date without built-in mechanics for economy and action compression

Strengths:

• extremely high sanity - the preferred stat for keeping cool, thematically
• slippery, due to her high base
• resilient against the game itself, due to high base
• rich access to cards that are uniquely versatile and game-bending
• able to copy said cards, allowing usage above and beyond what the game allows
• being able to copy cards also means unparalleled versatility, since deckbuilding uniquely accomodates various 1-of events that can, as the situation calls, become up to 4-of, thanks to Painted World
• unparalleled consistency in spite of her versatility, due to her 13-card opening hand

How to Play

The game plan can be broken down into three main steps:

Step 1: Make money.

Step 2: Keep money.

Step 3: Become an unstoppable force to be reckoned with.

"Screw the rules. I have money." - Sefina, eventually.

"Also, I can rewrite reality at whim." - Sefina, immediately.

"Catch me if you can." - Sefina, constantly.

Spellthief Extraordinaire

Sefina excels at misdirection and defense against the dark arts. Her primary early to mid game strategy consists of stalling out the game itself, using the classic rogue tools to avoid and exhaust enemies and spell events in a pinch to buy time, as she snowballs her resource pool until it universally enables anything.

The thing with Spellthief Sefina is that she only ever has to pay for cards - never for stat boosts. And with up to five copies of Uncage the Soul at her disposal, the average card cost across her deck ends up being quite low.

This means she is uniquely propped to make her money work for her. It should be very easy to work up to 10 resources in the early game barring unfathomably unlucky starting hands, and by the mid to late game she should be floating 18 to 25 resources or even more at any given time. Being Well Connected tends to snowball the longer Sefina remains in the game.

Or maybe a particular scenario is being unusually rough with encounter cards. Then Sefina can ignore it with greater nonchalance than any other investigator. (And I do recommend taking the lvl2 version of that card, by the way. Up to five copies of global protection is kind of insane.)

Make money by:

• playing Lone Wolf
• using Dario El-Amin where possible
• using "Watch this!", opportunistically

Keep money by:

• Uncaging your Soul, all the time
• using Holy Rosary and Dario El-Amin in conjunction with your various spells - at 6 , you'll very rarely find yourself needing to boost your skill value in the early to mid game
• Making your money work, or talk, for you

Become an unstoppable force by:

• Having all the money
• Having all the spells
• And being Well Connected

Really, Sefina's unique positioning to adapt to various game states thanks to the nature of her deckbuilding cannot be overstated. And her ability to lean into particular strategies and combinations via Painted World only serves to elevate her versatility. Avoid and exploit - that's the name of her game.

Upcoming Sections

• Commentary on individual card inclusions
• Different versions and substitutions
• Recommended Upgrade Paths
• The ideal co-op partner
• Solo play