Deja Rousseau

This deck design is actually a 2.1 version. I ran Sefina through Night of the Zealot and Dunwich Legacy campaigns (0.1 and 1.1 respectively), both were solo play. This deck list represents my latest iteration and I am content with the card pool.

Sefina's greatest strength is her starting game card draw ability. I think other decks on ArkhamDB touch upon the theme of consistency with her. She pulls a third of her starting deck (13 out of 38 cards) opening hand and gets to keep in some form or fashion most of it. This gives her a deeper access into the deck to start with, increasing the likelihood of beginning with ideal starting tools such as Lone Wolf, etc. It also gives her more consistency in pulling cards on the opening hand.

Her starting hand draw ability provides action efficiency as well. Where it would take another investigator an extra five actions to draw those cards, Sefina pulls it immediately. And where most other investigators would have to discard down to 8, she can save up to five events for later. This gives Sefina access to the specific card she needs, when she needs it. These events are mostly protected except from Stars of Hyades, so she continues to have access to them.

On top of this starting game efficiency, a number of and cards can be split into two categories: cards with dual actions or cards with free actions. have access to a majority of "free actions" or action adding cards. Pickpocketing is a free card draw, although as a result of an evade action. Lone Wolf is a free resource pull. Leo De Luca and Quick Thinking add to the action pool. Think on Your Feet can be a life saver and, in my experience, can also win you the game with the evade + move.

Where Sefina shines is not in the access to these cards - I think everyone would argue "Skids" O'Toole does the action count better. When you combine some of the free and dual action cards from the set with those of , this deck really becomes powerful. Forbidden Knowledge being free resource pull is amazing. Combine it with Lone Wolf and the drip economy (or economy over time) is really amazing. Blinding Light is an evade + Sneak Attack all in one and the upgraded Blinding Light is even cheaper. Hypnotic Gaze is both attack cancellation but also the potential to do damage back to the enemy without worrying about a skill test. Uncage the Soul has the Fast keyword and reduces the cost of spells, essentially "free" resources to play with.

Finally, The Painted World allows "re-use" event cards under her card. So instead of having just 2 Blinding Light or Drawn to the Flame, I potentially have access to three or more. This gives Sefina continued access to Events over again and without spending the action to draw the original card.

The low stat is a bit of a problem for investigating. Fortunately there are a few cards that help assuage the issue. Rite of Seeking and Drawn to the Flame become the main investigative tools. Given Sefina's high , Rite of Seeking is actually pretty amazing against locations with higher shroud values or locations where you need to pull multiple clues from. Success is fairly consistent. Drawn to the Flame gives Sefina automatic discovery of clues, but she has to pull from the encounter deck. So far this has yet to be a problem since the majority of encounter cards test on . This could be trickier to deal with in Paths to Carcosa, so a single Perception was added as a mitigation tool. Sometimes Sefina will also just need to investigate bare, so Perception and the added Flashlight helps with low shroud, single clue locations. After experience is earned, Flashlight is replaced by Lockpicks

The low stat is also tricky to deal with. Backstab, Sneak Attack, and Blinding Light give Sefina access to some damage causing cards. However Shrivelling is her only consistent fight card. So she really needs to pick and choose when she fights. Some enemies are just brutal, especially with Hunter key word. Hypnotic Gaze should be reserved for when necessary.

There are certain cards that I tend to avoid and are not in the deck that may be common in other decks. Due to the low , Burglary is not as strong of a play as it is in "Skids" O'Toole or Jenny Barnes decks. I personally dislike Elusive since it does not truly evade but only provides a free disengage. Your own mileage may vary, if you prefer it you can definitely replace Hypnotic Gaze with it. Likewise, I am not a fan of Emergency Cache since it takes the action to pull three resources. Upgraded Emergency Cache is better with the added card draw. Mileage may vary though and I recognize that this is a very personal choice.

Missing from common decks is Arcane Initiate. Sefina's card draw at the beginning of the game gives me access to most of the cards I need to start. Pulling specific spells was never really a problem with the deck and the couple of times it was an issue was due to my own bad shuffling from one scenario to the next. The ally slot is also fairly valuable since you want it for Leo De Luca. You can upgrade to Charisma but I think you need some better allies when considering that card.

As a disclaimer, I did use Alyssa Graham in my earlier decks, really to mitigate Stars of Hyades. However I rarely pulled Stars of Hyades that it was almost a non-issue. When I did, it was never game ending. Because Alyssa Graham only bumps , I dropped her in this deck version. If I need to add her back in, I definitely will.

Also, I have two Forbidden Knowledge due to my experience with the Basic Weakness Indebted. I pulled this as my starting weakness in the Dunwich Legacy campaign and boy was it frustrating to deal with. This was one of the few times that Emergency Cache was badly needed but over time, use of Forbidden Knowledge and/or Lone Wolf definitely mitigated that sore starting resource pool. A second Forbidden Knowledge was added for starting hand consistency.

We are about to begin Carcosa so I will know soon enough how the deck fairs.

EDIT: Correction on my thought about Uncage the Soul, less useful than I thought and played actually (my version was incorrect so we will ignore and remove). Instead I have added Delve Too Deep for early Victory/Experience gain. Given the corrections, I have also adjusted Hypnotic Gaze to a single card and beefed up the number of Ward of Protection.