Dark Horse Lola Hayes

Ideas

• Using passive enhancements (Dark Horse, Alyssa Graham, Peter Sylvestre, Holy Rosary) to make Lola's basic stats 4's and 5's across the board as a strong base for skill and event cards to build on.

• Mitigate the effects of Crisis of Identity

• Power up Fight or Flight for the inevitable big turn towards the end of any scenario.

• Use Resourceful in the mid/late game to recycle Fight or Flight if powered up, Lucky! if not. It also has potential to help recovery from an unexpected Crisis of Identity but with planning there are other mitigation for CoI.

• Using Dark Horse means limiting resources where possible. The starting resources should be enough to get some key assets in play with 2x Emergency Cache and 2x Improvisation providing plenty of options to effectively reduce costs to zero or bring 3 resources in for one action when required. Once the assets are set use Dark Horse to avoid accumulating resources although depending on which events are in hand it may be wise to run a single resource knowing that if it is used then Dark Horse will immediately come into effect.

Crisis of Identity (CoI)

This is the biggest threat to Lola's plans, Mitigations:

• Alyssa Graham is the primary mitigation and used to ensure that as far as possible you avoid drawing CoI at the wrong moment! Working in combination with Lola's special ability to switch classes and with Improvisation it will in most cases be possible to either avoid it by burying it at the end of your deck or to draw it when you have no cards in play for your current class.

• Scrying is the second line of defence and primarily for when Alyssa is not in play or when you intend drawing more than one card in a turn through e.g. Guts, Overpower or Perception. Scrying should help find Alyssa Graham and/or give advance warning of Crisis of Identity.

• The third line of defence is to choose a class with no cards in play before you draw a card. Potentially using Lola Hayes free special ability to ensure that if the card drawn in upkeep is Crisis of Identity then no cards are lost. Rogue or Guardian being the safest option given there are no cards of either class in the deck.

• The final defence is that should you draw into Crisis of Identity with Survivor class active then worst case you lose Fire Axe, Peter Sylvestre and Dark Horse.. Pretty devastating but likely to be towards the end of a scenario and Lola still has potential strengths that may see her through troubled times. Holy Rosary and Shrivelling with Overpower still makes her tough in a fight, Fight or Flight may well be powered up late in a scenario and of course the seeker cards will be in play for clue finding. If Resourceful is still available then Dark Horse would be a priority to return to play.

• Ultimately while it needs thought every turn it should be possible to largely mitigate the risk of an unexpected CoI causing too much damage. Once Alyssa and or Scrying is in play it should be possible to avoid an unexpected CoI in all but the most unusual or desperate situations.

Other key Cards / combo's

• Fight or Flight powered by horror generated through Shrivelling and Ward of Protection. Saved for the inevitable big turns towards the end of scenarios

• Resourceful can recover Fight or Flight or Lucky! (if Fight or Flight is not in play or in the unlikely event that horror is not forthcoming to power up FoF).

• Holy Rosary and Peter Sylvestre as shields for horror beyond the 2 or 3 that are ideally needed to power Fight or Flight.

• Seeking Answers for clues at difficult to investigate locations.

• Ward of Protection for encounter deck treachery surprises at the wrong moment.

Initial hand and Mulligan options

Ideal first hand - Alyssa Graham, Dark Horse, Scrying, Magnifying Glass, Fire Axe.

Alyssa Graham is essential to avoiding Crisis of Identity, mulligan everything
other than Dark Horse and Scrying to find her.

Upgrades

Yet to be considered fully but Charisma, upgraded Peter Sylvestre and upgraded Lucky! all come to mind.

Some way to dump resources .. Maybe Scrapper as its permanent and the bumps would be useful.

Someway to manage resources more easily and magic up a resource on demand, Madame Labranche perhaps... even more reason to take Charisma.

First attempt at a published thought through deck, all comments are welcome.