Wendy Adams - Run And Hit

Don't turn your back on this little urchin, she'll take you for all you're worth and leave a knife in your back.

In the conversation about solo investigators the first thing many players bring up is action efficiency. Being able to do more with each action is crucial if you want get everything done in a scenario before you run out of time. Some cards have a lot of value potential but come with a significant setup up cost or opportunity cost, like Burglary and Leo De Luca. Those are two cards that you won't find in this deck because they are slow and this deck is about being fast. Wendy Adams makes your cards more efficient from the first action of the game, because with her ability every card in your hand a better and zero cost charge on Grotesque Statue, in addition to everything else.

With that in mind the goal of this deck is to run around grabbing clues and avoiding all enemies if possible. When defeating an enemy is absolutely necessary, you burst them down with Sneak Attack and Backstab. The key card in this plan is Pickpocketing which, for the low cost 2 resources, will give you an extra card to keep the engine going on turns you hit a bump in the road.

Card Choices:

• Pickpocketing: Nothing like it baby, I would mulligan most hands without this card unless I had two practiced skills to help dig for it or a flash light for quick clue collection.

• Backstab, Sneak Attack: As mentioned in the intro, these are your only way of taking out a big bad, so having some combination of 2 or 3 of these in hand in critical to wrapping up things up.

• Lucky!: An Unexpected Courage you don't have to play until you know you need it, great card.

• Flashlight, "Look what I found!", Perception: These are the best (and only) options in the card pool to make Wendy's investigations more efficient. All are absolutely necessary in solo, and do heavy lifting in multiplayer.

• Survival Instinct, Bait and Switch, Manual Dexterity: This trio is the evade counterpart to the investigation trio above. To take full advantage of Survival Instinct you may need to take an attack of opportunity when you grab the last clue off of location before using it to evade and leave. Bait and Switch, on the other hand can be more map dependent because you need to move the enemy a location that you're not going to be at soon, otherwise you cost yourself time instead of saving it. Bait does have a book and a shoe on it, so it can be useful as a skill pump.

• Emergency Cache: This card turns your card draw into resources, which can be necessary to afford the big damage combos. Don't be afraid to pitch this card to Wendy's ability if you are good on resources. Normally, the catch to Cache is its lack of skill symbols, but Wendy gives it more flexibility.

• Stray Cat: The cat is an evade enabler for the early game, it lets you bank an evade action before things get overwhelming. Mr. Whiskers also makes it easier to use Sneak Attack or to grab the last of the clues in a location where an enemy has just spawned. As a bonus, you get to draw with pickpocketing when use the kitty, regaining the card you spent.

• Elusive: This is just a one of here because, while being very powerful, it also requires the right circumstances to be better than the other options in the deck. It's also worth noting, using this won't trigger pickpocketing because it doesn't say "evade". Still, when you want to disengage with 2 or 3 enemies and move to the other side of the map, all without spending an action, this will be the best card in your deck.

• Scavenging: This is here to be pickpocketing number 3 and should probably be a Rabbit's Foot because that card would trigger more often. However, being able to grab Wendy's Amulet back after using it on a skill test is very tempting.

• Leather Coat, Liquid Courage: These are needed because this is a solo deck and you don't want to die. The underage drinking is definatly doing more than the fashion statement, because the flask heals up to 6 more points, including the damage from Abandoned and Alone. Additionally, the cat can soak up some damage as well, so the second leather coat is one of the first cards I would cut when leveling up. If I was in a multiplayer game where some else could take some hits for me I would go down just one flask and cut the jacket altogether to add a combination of Rabbit's Foot and Unexpected Courage.

• Wendy's Amulet: This is one of the harder cards to use correctly. To get good value from the amulet, you need play it after you have played some events you want to use again. But, play it on turn early to get set up you risk losing everthing to Abandoned and Alone. I don't want to pay for amulet unless I can get 2 utility cards or the one card I really need on the turn I play amulet. Turns like: Backstab from hand -> Amulet -> Backstab from discard or Amulet -> Cache -> Skill Test w/ Lucky! are ones I'm looking for. Once you have amulet and no discard, you can get a little more value if you discard events for skill checks or Wendy's ability before you use them. For example, on a really tough investigation check you can discard "Look what I found!" for the symbols, then even if you fail from a bad chaos pull you can play Look from the discard to get the two clues. If the cards don't line up for big value, just take advantage of the double wild skill icons and save your resources.

For advancements I will post a companion list and a solo campaign log to go with it. Happy Backstabbings!