A Feast for Patrice Hathaway

This deck was created for a two-handed solo run of The Feast of Hemlock Vale. The partner deck is for Wilson Richards and it can be found here.

This is the list I settled on for my third run through the campaign on Standard. A number of card selections here are campaign-specific, but to avoid any spoilers I won't go into detail other than to say you will want to be able to handle Aloof and Elusive enemies.

Since this is a deck for Standard, in most cases your tests will be safe if you can cover a -4 token draw.

Since Patrice dumps her hand at the end of every turn, an asset-light build feels like a good fit for her. Not being able to keep any cards in hand between turns means you will want to play your assets as soon as you draw them, so her initial setup can feel pretty inflexible. Situational cards are also an issue, as you can't hold onto them to maximize their impact.

On the upside, cycling your deck at least once per game means you'll see every card in your deck at some point, and Patrice is uniquely suited to taking advantage of powerful cards like Miss Doyle and Last Chance.

For this campaign, Patrice focuses more on investigating and Wilson focuses more on fighting, but each deck has cards to handle both tasks.

Card commentary:

Patrice's Violin: This is your most important asset as it provides economy and card draw with practically no downside, since you'll lose all your cards during upkeep anyway (and some of your cards work better from the discard pile). Most of the time you'll use it to generate a resource or have Wilson draw a card.

Eldritch Tongue: We're packing three different Parley events so it's likely that some of them will be sitting in your discard pile when this hits the table. It's particuarly good when you play String of Curses from your hand for its first effect and then play it immediately again from the discard pile for its second.

Moonstone: Getting one of these into play is a high priority because is your most important stat. Playing this card as a reaction saves you an action too, which is a valuable bonus at the beginning of the game when you may need to play other assets as well (if you can afford them).

Granny Orne: This card provides Patrice with a good amount of horror soak, and her ability is excellent against treacheries which care how much you failed by (and she can protect Wilson as well). She is very expensive though, so you may not be able to afford her the first time you draw her, but that's fine because most of the time you'll want to have Miss Doyle out instead.

Miss Doyle: Extremely versatile and perfectly suited for Patrice. A single successful test from Hope or Zeal will discard the Watcher from Another Dimension, and while Augur can only discover one clue, that might be one clue you had no chance of getting any other way.

Note that you can still commit cards to tests which are automatically successful, so you can commit Resourceful to any test where you discard one of the cats as an additional cost to guarantee you get another card back.

Sparrow Mask: Cheap, useful, and easy to recharge.

In the Thick of It: Two physical trauma.

At a Crossroads: Most of the time Wilson will use this to draw three cards, as he really craves card draw (more on that in his deck list). Sometimes it makes sense to take an extra action, and if you're worried about losing a card to its random discard effect you can always use that action to play that card.

Drain Essence: This one acts like a combined damage-dealing/healing effect but it doesn't actually heal or deal damage, which can be important with regards to certain enemy abilities. Since we take two physical trauma from In the Thick of It, you can use this right from the start of the game. You can also bait the Watcher from Another Dimension into play and deal with it using this, at the cost of an extra action when compared to Hope or Zeal (plus however many card commits it took to pass the test).

Drawn to the Flame: Two testless clues for one action is a good deal, and the effects of the encounter card you draw can potentially be cancelled or mitigated with Ward of Protection, Lucky!, or Granny Orne.

Impromptu Barrier: The additional evade on this card can be used against an Aloof enemy at your location since it acts the same as an automatic evade.

Lucky!: As with Granny Orne, you can use this to mitigate the effects of failing a treachery that cares how much you failed by, and of course you can also use it to pass a test you otherwise would have failed.

Premonition: This is here primarily for the Watcher from Another Dimension, but having played with it for a while now I really like it for Patrice in general. When you only have five cards to work with each turn, knowing how many you need to spend or commit to be able to get something done is very handy, and if you're performing a test that would be costly to fail (like one of Wilson's Ad Hoc actions) it can save a lot of resources. It's an overall efficiency gain.

Read the Signs: Patrice's base combined with her only adds up to six, which isn't very impressive, but since we're boosting her this card becomes a lot more effective.

Spectral Razor: Likewise, this is a potent attack against non-Elites (hitting the critical 3HP threshold) and it also deals with the Aloof keyword. This test uses , so Wilson can commit Vicious Blow to it.

Stall for Time: This card can be used on Aloof enemies without having to engage them, which matters because a lot of them have abilities which only trigger if they're ready. You can also use it on Elusive enemies to prevent them from moving away when they're attacked, and it's a good way to exhaust Elites because it gets around the Alert keyword, and if they're Massive then the lack of a disengage doesn't matter. Also, the fact that it provides an evade-like effect using rather than makes it easier to pull off.

String of Curses: As mentioned earlier, with Eldritch Tongue in play you can defeat any non-Elite enemy with two actions no matter how much HP it has, and you get a bonus clue as well (and recover the resource you spent to play it). Occasionally, an encounter card or scenario effect will force you to place doom on an enemy too, so you can get a free kill and, as with Stall for Time, you can use this on Aloof enemies without having to engage them first.

Ward of Protection: This card loses some value because you can't hold it in your hand until an ideal target appears, but in practice there are still plenty of opportunities to trade one horror for something worse.

Winging It: This is a pretty good two-clue action. Patrice has plenty of ways to get it into the discard pile, and on low-shroud locations you can generally cover it safely. On high-shroud locations it combos well with Premonition.

Last Chance: This is a great Patrice card since she'll generally never have more than five cards in her hand and her game plan is to spend them all each turn. It gets a solid boost when you purchase Cornered since you can then reliably discard all your conditional cards.

Long Shot: Patrice can commit this to any of Wilson's tests as well as her own Spectral Razor tests. When Patrice purchases Enchanted Bow she can commit this to an attack that uses either or , but once Wilson's damage-dealing capabilities expand a bit this is a good candidate to replace.

Promise of Power: I really don't like using Bless or Curse cards in decks which aren't built around them, it just rubs me up the wrong way somehow. I feel better about putting in this deck because Patrice herself has the Cursed trait, and of course it's an undeniably powerful card with a very insignificant drawback.

Resourceful: For maximum value, use this on At a Crossroads whenever you can.

Watcher from Another Dimension: There's not much more to say about this guy that I haven't already covered above other than to say his main impact is that he can block your hand up for multiple turns. Losing one of your five card slots really slows you down, but the deck has several ways to deal with him so most of the time he shouldn't last too long.

Alternative card choices:

Live and Learn: This card is often compared to Lucky!, but I tend to think it's only worth running when you're planning to take advantage of failures (or you're using abilities on assets with limited uses). It also feels like it competes for slots against skill cards, and the deck has enough of those already.

Rise to the Occasion: This card works well when you focus on stat-boosting because it only cares about your base skill level. Patrice can use it on 4-shroud locations or higher, of which there is usually at least one in every scenario, and it can put her at parity against the Watcher from Another Dimension, but there aren't many other use cases for it in the early stages of a campaign, and when I tested it I found I almost always wished it was a different card.

Storm of Spirits: One copy of this could be pretty handy with two or more players in the game since it's more likely for enemies to stack up. The damage from this attack will hit any Aloof enemies at your location, though you do still have to perform the initial attack against one you're engaged with.

Upgrades:

Cornered: Two copies of this should be your first upgrade. As mentioned above, it turns every one of your conditional or situational cards into +2 for any test, and it enables cards like Winging It, Impromptu Barrier, and Moonstone.

Enchanted Bow: This card is the ultimate answer to the question, "how do I deal with so many Aloof and/or Elusive enemies?" Note that you only need to spend a charge when you target something at a connecting location, so it has effectively unlimited ammo for targets at your location. If you use for its attack, Wilson can commit Strong-Armed, and you can commit Long Shot to an attack using either skill.

Occult Reliquary: You will want this alongside the bow so that Patrice can still hold on to her violin. It's easily good enough to justify the 3XP cost.

Hunting Jacket: Patrice has several good options for her body slot but I've been testing this one because it's new, and at a glance it seemed pretty good for her. In practice, it's most useful for holding onto assets that you can't afford to play the turn they appear, and after adding four more to the deck (Cornered and Enchanted Bow) it has proven to be a good addition.

Its main downside is that you can't defeat it on-demand (replacing it with another copy causes it to be discarded so you don't get to draw the cards) but it's a good resource generator, so when you do manage to break it you'll probably be able to afford to play whatever you draw from it.

Unlike the other body slot options, it doesn't grant her any real new capability, but it does boost her setup game and her resource curve, and it does feel like it's providing a meaningful advantage.

Sharp Vision: It's easy to fixate on the additional clue you might get from this card and thus conclude that if you don't get it, it's a complete waste, but consider that the +3 boost will often allow you to succeed on an investigate test that you otherwise would have failed, so you're more likely to still get one clue when you would have got none.

As with Augur, it provides you with options that otherwise wouldn't have been available. And, in practice, it's not that hard to get that second clue.

Persistence: You can discard this with Cornered and then commit it from your discard pile so it essentially acts as a +3 boost to any skill test. It then gets shuffled into your deck so you'll probably re-draw it multiple times per game, which is probably fine for Patrice. I've tested it a bit and it feels good, with the main issue being that there are already a lot of skill cards in the deck so it's hard to make room for it.