I always love your descriptions, lol

Like a moron, I forgot to include my Covenant for the base deck when copying this over from my private decklist, so: I always run Ancient Covenant on OG/OG Djinndy, because it shuts down Blurse strings when I'm not using Eye of the Djinn and can help me guaranteed-pass certain Djinn tests if I'm really desperate.

For II/OG, I'd absolutely stick with Ancient, because you have a much more powerful Favor of the Sun printed on your permanent.

For OG/II Cursed, Blasphemous is probably the way to go, since it lets you continue reveal-strings AND double up on a Curse you reveal on a non-evasion test. If you're running both Bless and Curse (like this deck), a case can also be made for Paradoxical, because Wendy can make it extremely reliable.

For OG/II Blessed, Sacred is likely the play, since you want to avoid ANY Bless waste–unless you have Nephthys, in which case probably back to Paradoxical (if you also have Curses) or Ancient (if you don't).

For II/II, your decision points are more or less the same as OG/II, so Blasphemous/Sacred/Paradoxical depending on your needs and focuses.

@ThatLittleVoice you're too kind! I spend a lot of time on them lol. Normally I'd include more thematics/vignettes/explanations of how I role-play different cards in the deck, but I knew it was already going to be long and wanted to get right to the meat of Parallel analysis. Stay tuned though–once ArkhamDB has II Wendy implemented I'm planning to do a longer version of this article on our blog, strengthinnumbersarkham.wordpress.com including my personal builds for each of the four variations!

As a sidenote, I've just had someone point out how good Black Market would be for OG Back versions–you could have al-Abyad help your other friends with Ríastrad and Faustian Bargain, or ask for their help saying a prayer or invoking greater powers!

I've been told I didn't talk enough about actually boosting your evade stat for II Front, so here goes:

For II Front/OG Back, you'll definitely need more evasion support than you can see in the OG/OG decklist above. Fortunately Survivor/Rogue has some good potential for this, including the evasion events, automatic evades, and Blur I mentioned above. You might also consider The Moon • XVIII, an additional ally (like Delilah O'Rourke, Lola Santiago, or even Cat Burglar) or the ever-classic Scrapper (honorable mentions to Streetwise and Moxie).

For II Front/II Back you'll likely struggle a bit more, since you're missing all the Rogue evasion boosts. But you can use the unlimited-double-Fey strategy I mentioned above, or Shroud of Shadows to ignore Agility entirely. I missed this on an earlier pass but II Back Cursed can also run Justify the Means, a PHENOMENAL curse generation card that also handily helps with passing tests you have no right to be passing. And of course Scrapper, Expeditious Retreat, etc. haven't abandoned you.

To my eternal shame I missed Peter Sylvestre, our most faithful evade-boosting sanity tank, in my analysis of Agility boosts. Sorry Peter, I'll make it up to you by not stringing you along on the edge of madness throughout another life-threatening field trip for...at least a week?

An erratum and an update:

In my Agility-boosting comment I suggested that Delilah and Lola would be helpful for increasing your Agility. This was foolish, as no version of Wendy has access to either of them. Once again I must beg Peter Sylvestre's forgiveness and ask him to heroically step in.

As for the update, I originally intended to make reference to Hallow and A Watchful Peace as a possible strategy for II Back Bless, but neglected to do so because I got distracted ranting about Nephthys. These two cards hardly need introduction, but whether you're playing Taboo or not Wendy is a phenomenal user of them. With II Front you can even seal all your precious tokens on enemies before triggering one of the two events, making it far easier to save up to the huge surges of power they represent.

Update IV:

Since this was a writeup about Blurse variants, I neglected to touch as much on non-blurse-related cards that her new back offers her. Here are some interesting new picks that II Back Wendy can take, if you're less excited about Djinndy or II Front and want to explore some other synergies:

If you'd like to take a bag-controlling approach rarely seen outside of Mystic, Counterspell, Protective Incantation, and The Chthonian Stone can make Wendy a powerful little witch-in-training, especially with her OG Front. Pull whatever tokens you want, when you want them–this secretly synergizes quite well with Blurse too!

If you're like me and have an unhealthy obsession with building low-Combat characters into fighters (see my Harvey and Ursula decks for recent examples), Wendy can now take some really out-there combat tech cards, including The Hungering Blade (which probably needs help from Scrapper or Eye of the Djinn), Custom Ammunition (for a sharpshooting Old Hunting Rifle deck)), and Empty Vessel (which combos well with bag control).

And finally, if you're interested in making an already-glutted Relic slot even more overfull, Hallowed Mirror to become a team healer, Grisly Totem to make you the only investigator who can activate both Totem upgrades simultaneously (though why you'd want to I have no idea), and Decorated Skull to support either a combat build or a run full of swarms can all boost your economy in interesting ways.

Love the deck - could you outline a lvl 0 starter deck, and prefered upgrade path? Would be greatly appreciated

I would say that Suggestion might even by the safest evasion passing for OG back. You are gonna drop charges off the spell left and right though.

How do you fight in scenario 1 with this deck?

@Skagen42 I've just published my level 0 with an upgrade path writeup, as requested. Here you go: arkhamdb.com

@dubcity566 As you can see if you check out the above deck, I'm not QUITE insane enough to try and make Wendy a fighter at level 0. Instead I use her as a backup cluever with evasion potential, then upgrade into combat once I have enough XP for the Eye of the Djinn. I'm really fond of decks that "evolve" or give a sense of character growth and transformation, so this makes me happy, even if it does require a little more flexing from the rest of the party at level 0.

For other examples of evolving characters, you can check out my Joe (who goes from a gung-ho Practice Makes Perfect hybrid to an asset-based primary cluever) or Harvey (who goes from a cluever/draw support to a lethal primary fighter).

@chirubime That's a good shout, and my playgroup has a Wendy expert/main who has used Suggestion to pretty solid effect before. I would worry about only being able to evade with it once per turn...but then again, a lot of the time there aren't more than one or two enemies to evade, and it would certainly buff your consistency. II Front/OG Back probably takes it, maybe even over Blur.

I love this deck. I may have to play it on stream sometime!

@Saej thank you so much, I would be honored! It always makes me happy when my decks bring other players and groups joy.

She'll probably make her way into one of Strength in Numbers' streams or Campaign Logs eventually too, if I can get through my content backlog!

Nice write up @ElseWhere. Youve clearly looked into this a lot more than I have. Im trying to find a rules clarification about the second ability on Tidal Momento. Basically is the token considered "revealed" or is it just resolved, and is there a difference? I note the wording on a lot of the blessed cards like Jacob Morrison which wants the token to be specifically revealed from the chaos bag during the test, others just say "revealed" or "resolved". I dont suppose you have come across anything?

Panic over! after a bit of chat with some rules gurus, it turns out it doesnt matter if there is a difference between the terms. They recon that because tidal momento says "instead" it would work as a reveal either way .

hi, great article, and thanks for sharing lv0 investigator, is that the same for parallel/parallel version? @StartWithTheName: was that guru a FF guy? i had the same question in my mind, thanks

Hi @Tarok No it wasnt anyone formal from FFG, but it was basically a lot of people who are usually a lot more right than I am on discord so im happy to be outvoted. Plus they make a fair point about the word "instead" there making the matter somewhat moot. There is technically a grammatical ambiguity where someone neurotic like myself can read the instead as skipping the reveal stage and going straight to the resolve, but the gurus said something complicated about rulings on cards which look for revealed tokens really caring about the ones that were resolved not revealed. Otherwise Grotesque Statue gets a bit overcomplicated (and risky) with a lot of mystic spells when its meant to be protective. The other side of it is that it doesnt look like it would break the game with some infinite combo as I was worried about by cycling the same token around. At least not any obvious small rig combo. This is partly because you will run out of things to evade in a turn, and partly because a lot of key cards like Jacob Morrison or P Wendys itself specify that the token needs to have come from the bag not somewhere else. So at least on paper it looks balanced enough with the stronger version of the effect. I feel like this question will come up a lot among players simply because the word reveal and resolve both appear on the same card (or at least set of cards that were written together), so it would be useful for FFG to clarify the intent just to save people like myself digging around as much. But well.. tbh as long as the game is fun I wouldnt care if i got it wrong. Im just as likely to avoid an interaction between cards that trivialises the challenge of the game as one that doesnt function, so it all works out in the end :)

thanks for the quick reply, so Tidal works with Jacob

@Tarok. So this is where I should probably let the gurus talk, but i think Tadal doesnt work with Jacob, or anythign that specifies that the token has to come from the bag, otherwise you could use it with Wendy`s own ability and just circle the same token over and over. There are only a small number of cases where the card specifies revealed from the chaos bag though. That is my understanding, and having gotten lost and scared in that dark and terrifying rabbit hole im afraid to go back into it hehe

@StartWithTheName thanks for bringing this to my attention! I've consulted with the rules gurus (many of the same that talked to you, lol) and I believe you're right. Jacob is a no-go, but Grimoire, Blessing of Isis, Eye of the Djinn, and Armageddon/Shroud of Shadows/Eye of Chaos are all still good.

Jacob is a necessary sacrifice to prevent her from permanently reusing the tokens with her evasion, because she could transfer the tokens from her exhausted enemies to a new enemy, getting effects over and over again as long as she kept evading. Fortunately, due to the "as if" wording on the Favors, she can still use those with her first ability and get double duty out of the tokens–but the exact wording prevents you from getting MORE than double duty out of any token before returning it to the bag or pool.

You pretty much said all of this yourself, but I just wanted to reinforce it and express my gratitude for you putting in the work to figure it out AND post your very helpful explanations here! I really appreciate it.

@Tarok The level 0 version would probably be VERY different for full Parallel (not least because full Parallel doesn't have access to many of those Rogue cards), and I'm looking forward to building that soon. I have to decide if I'm using the curse spells or not, but I pretty much have the rest of my plan locked in.

Also, like StartWithTheName said, Tidal does NOT work with Jacob or II Wendy's own ability, but it works with pretty much everything else printed so far.

@ElseWherewhy is Jacob a necessary sacrifice? Oh, you mean the way Jacob was ruled was because the logic to rule him a different way would enable Wendy to reuse her own tokens?

I'm still having trouble figuring out how, and why, the deck works the way it does. I feel it might be useful to have someone actually do a let's play/tutorial video of a deck with most of these effects, just so that it's easier to piece together what the heck is going on. Especially if she decides to go crazy with... eye of the djinn + bless and curse on every test = absolutely tons of extra actions at base 5 skill. She could have like 7 actions pretty casually during some turns, right?

Also, in my perspective, it seems confusing how she sometimes reveals a token from the bag but ignore it, which some abilities card about care about; she sometimes draws tokens from other places besides the bag, which some abilities can and can't utilize, depending on their wording; and who knows, maybe in general, I'm confused on revealing-- if she uses olive to reveal 5 tokens, can she use blessing of isis to immediately succeed? Furthermore, confusion on sealing-- if she uses blessing of isis on her OWN sealed monster tokens, then it says to cancel one of those bless tokens. If a token is canceled, does it go back to where it came from, such as the sealed monster? Also, it specifically states those tokens go to the bag, so is that where they go? BUT THEN, can Wendy choose to instead have them seal BACK on an enemy she just recently evaded because her reaction ability says she can do that, which replaces the return to the bag effect?

It's kind of rules soup, and, while I feel I know the answers to these questions, I also feel it's one of the leak "rules knowledge" required in estimators that they've released to date, right? That and maybe silas' obtuse rulings... Lol

Wait... Nobody mentioned Token of Faith yet? I'm trying it in a Cursed Spell Wendy with Paradoxical Covenant and both Favors. Its working out immensely well as a passive blessed generator for a blursed build.

Another card that didn't get mentioned about Cursed Wendy is Eucatastrophe. On ||Wendy's front, you can use Euca to pull out the blursed tokens and tap that Paradoxical Covenant for a pass after a train of curse tokens set you to 0.

Oh and also Live and Learn is also something that should be mentioned for Cursed Wendy.

@chirubime I love Live and Learn, and you're absolutely right that it should be in the Cursed version–but I think it should be in ALL versions, because it combos beautifully with Eye of the Djinn (and I did include it in the base form). Token of Faith is also a great callout for generation, I would just struggle with the accessory slot glut a little–but that doesn't mean it's bad at all, and there's always Relic Hunter!

The Eucat strategy is super sweet, and should definitely be included if you go Paradoxical! I'm interested in hearing more about how your playthrough is going, too–II Wendy is someone I feel needs a lot of field testing for us to really understand her math.

@FlarkeFiasco well, you're not wrong–there is some DEEP and often bizarre rules knowledge necessary to execute some of these abilities, and I'm probably not the right person to answer all your questions...but I have a solid enough understanding that I'm down to try.

Yes, I meant that Jacob had to not work with Tidal Memento so that II Wendy's main ability would also not work with Tidal Memento.

I've tested the old deck but not the II versions yet, and I can say with a high degree of confidence that the deck is crazy. Not only do you crank out the actions, but you generate enough bless and curse for the entire team to feed on. Turns where I didn't manage to get at least one extra action were rare, and with II Front everything should skyrocket into the STRATOSPHERE as far as bag consistency goes. I expect your seven-action-turn postulation to be well within the realm of possibility (except in Curse Spell builds where you're probably spending your curses more in chunks than spread out).

Importantly, she doesn't IGNORE the tokens revealed with her Elder Sign, she ignores their EFFECTS. If she ignored them it would be as if they were never revealed, but because she only ignores the effect Armageddon, Eye of the Djinn, Paradoxical Covenant, etc. all see that blurse tokens were revealed and thus trigger all their own abilities. Importantly, if the Elder Sign is drawn on a non-evasion test, the fact that she ignores the tokens' effects means that they then return to the bag instead of being returned to the pool like any others you drew and resolved. But on an evasion test, they are then eligible to be sealed on the enemy, the SAME as any she drew and resolved.

When she draws a token from somewhere other than the bag, it still counts as being "revealed" and "resolved". It does not, however, count as being "revealed from the chaos bag", so she cannot seal it using her ability or use it to ready Jacob Morrison.

Honestly, I'm not sure if resolving Blessing of Isis in the middle of Olive McBride's resolution effect would work, but I think so–if it did, you would convert the blessing you revealed with her (or one of the two, if you revealed both blesses using her) to an Elder Sign, then choose to resolve two of the tokens (presumably including the new Elder Sign you made) revealed off of Olive to resolve. Then you would get your Elder Sign effect once all the token manipulation stops and you can get to token resolution.

Blessing of Isis is...a special case, one I've had a lot of rules chats about and one I'm still working on fully understanding as far as II Wendy goes. The complexity with II Wendy is not about revealing tokens–we're pretty much masters of all the weirdness with sealing these days. It's more about the specific nuances of her wording, which is unique in the game. When you trigger Blessing, you have a baseline of 2-4 blesses and 0-2 curses in play. One of those blesses has become an Elder Sign, revealing the extra 2 tokens of either type. If the other was revealed using Tidal Memento on an evasion, you CANNOT seal it on an enemy–it must return to the bag. In fact, because of Blessing's wording and the way object searches work in this game, even if you DO seal it Blessing will force it back into the bag after the test, due to its non-optional effect.

When a token is cancelled or ignored, it always returns to the bag, never to someplace it was sealed. So of Blessing's two triggering blesses, one is cancelled and always goes back to the bag, while the other is returned to the bag by the Blessing itself. That leaves two left, which can be either Curses or Blesses, and (since you pulled them from the bag) if this is an evasion test they can be sealed on the enemy.

So Wendy can set herself up to trigger Blessing every turn, assuming she reveals two blesses with her Elder Sign effect, but she cannot accumulate extra tokens so it's only a guaranteed pass and some bless-reveal (which sadly doesn't have nearly as cool effects as curse-reveal, although having Eye of the Djinn automatically readied is nice).

Does that make sense? I realize it was a massive info dump and if anyone has superior rules knowledge to me, feel free to point out any mistakes I might have made. If you have any more questions feel free to ask!

And finally, although I probably should have mentioned this sooner, this deck will absolutely be played on-stream at twitch.tv/some_where_else, though I was planning on saving her for the next campaign to be released. If it would be helpful to the community I can put together a standalone run to show off the deck, either solo or with members of my team. Or I can swap my plan and run her in a different campaign that goes up sooner. I really love this deck and would be thrilled to share how much fun she is to play with the community.