Lightspeed Trish - 0xp - Legacy Environment

Lightspeed Trish

Introduction

Trish is my favourite investigator. There are a lot of ways to build and play her but the one I have the most fun with is flying through her deck at max speed. There's no special combo here, just straight up value packed into every card of the deck.

Your job is clues, so you play like a seeker. We're using Practice Makes Perfect as the centrepiece here to get more uses out of Perception and Deduction while also generating value with Astounding Revelation and Surprising Find. Unlike many seekers, however, you're totally unafraid of enemies and frequently you actually want an enemy in the room with you.

Clues

Grim Memoir is an absolutely cracked card on Trish. It does everything you want: it investigates, it boosts your intellect and it gets you extra cards. Unfortunately it doesn't get you additional clues like Fingerprint Kit but we can work around that with extra actions and deduction.

For 1 xp, The Raven Quill allows us to ignore attacks of opportunity using our memoir. If you find your quill in the first scenario you'll have this for free from scenario 2 onwards. We only play one of these since it's unique, which sometimes (but rarely) creates an awkward situation when your memoir runs out of secrets and you want to get rid of it but can't because you want to keep your quill attached for the free xp.

Deduction and Perception: these two need no introduction unless you're brand new to clueving. Great cards, held back by only being able to take 2 of each in your deck, which brings us to...

Practice Makes Perfect. This is the main synergy/value generator here. Both deduction and perception have the practiced trait, so PMP is a really cheap way of getting a second use out of them. It also has great synergy with the research cards (Astounding Revelation and Surprising Find, the latter of which we'll be purchasing as soon as we have 1 xp).

Breaking and Entering is a classic Trish card that completely destroys her weakness, and also allows you to get 2 clues from high shroud rooms (using your investigator reaction ability) because you're adding your two highest stats together for the test.

Enemies

Trish likes to have enemies around to get full value out of her ability. Frequently, the encounter deck will provide all you need, but some scenarios are pretty light on enemies and sometimes you have an overzealous Nathaniel Cho partner who won't stop playing "Get over here!" on your pet clue generator so you need to improvise.

Crystallizer of Dreams provides a really weak enemy to work with, the Guardian of the Crystallizer which comes out exhausted, making it even easier to work with. The second benefit of the Crystallizer is tucking your events to commit them to tests. You're not running any static boosts to or so the commits sometimes come in handy for difficult tests. Perhaps the best thing about Crystallizer of Dreams in this deck though is it allows us to tuck 5 cards so they don't get reshuffled. If you're sitting on $30 and your deck is about to reshuffle, leave Grift attached so you don't get a dead draw. If you have all your items out, don't commit "I'll take that!" because you don't need it anymore.

"Where's the party?" functions similarly to get you an enemy, with some bonus card draw and the same exhausted benefit I mentioned above about Guardian of the Crystallizer. Workhorse card, but we only play 1 copy because we have enough enemies and enough card draw already. If you're skipping the Crystallizer you can run a second copy here.

Grift lets you abuse the enemies you already have out for loads of cash. You don't have commits other than the events tucked on Crystallizer of Dreams so you won't see huge numbers here until you can add in Streetwise (3) or similar, but with a single commit you're usually looking at $3 per play. Generally this is more useful as a succeed by 3 trigger for Empirical Hypothesis and Honed Instinct, as you actually generate a lot of money with Astounding Revelation already.

String Along lets you get cards whenever you evade enemies. In most rogues I would rather run Pickpocketing (2), however Trish wants to keep her pokemon with her so String Along fits better here.

Vamp is $1 and an action for 2 clues or 1 clue and an evade. We more or less only use the version since we don't want to move enemies with the test and the movement isn't optional if that test succeeds. is a cheap and easy way to evade elite enemies though. Both Vamp and Grift will be useful if/when you later upgrade to Snitch.

Cards

A lot of the card draw has already been mentioned above with Grim Memoir and Perception doing the bulk of the work.

Empirical Hypothesis is pretty handy if you are regularly succeeding by 3, and I think it's worth adding Fine Tuning to let you get an extra use per turn. I don't spend any experience upgrading this but you could add Peer Review if you're feeling generous and your teammates are struggling with card draw.

I wanted to specifically talk about Surprising Find because it's frequently overshadowed by Astounding Revelation but it is actually one of my favourite cards in the game. The icon means it's flexible when it ends up in your hand, but tacking it on to Practice Makes Perfect means you're getting extra help passing your tests AND extra cards when you succeed. It is just an amazing tool for flying through your deck at light speed, since 3 copies of this amounts to a 6 card thinner deck: 3 because you aren't wasting a draw to get Surprising Find and 3 from the bonus draws they provide. If you get unlucky you might miss 1-2 of those 'bonus' draws per shuffle from either drawing Surprising Find or failing the test, but overall this card is just smooth as butter.

"I'll take that!" saves you actions to play your item assets. Unfortunately doesn't work for The Raven Quill since it's an item event, but we'll survive. The floor for this card when you already have all your items out is a draw action for +1 or on a test, and you'll notice by your third reshuffle you're not really happy to see it. I'm pretty sure you can interpret attaching this card to the item as a replacement for the regular discard, which means you could override the discard replacement with Crystallizer of Dreams's discard replacement effect and lock it in limbo forever.

Dream-Enhancing Serum gives you free card draw, but mostly it lets you hold more cards in hand. Towards the end of scenarios when you have all your assets down and some cards locked away in the Crystallizer, you'll have 10+ cards in your hand and less than 10 in your deck even after a reshuffle.

This amount of reshuffling is going to cost you in horror. Trish already struggles a little with horror due to her 2 and 6 sanity. Luckily, she can run Medical Student and completely trivialise horror. The healing is nice, the soak is nice, and it's only $2. Just don't think too hard about how many medical students you get killed over the course of a campaign.

Upgrades

Surprising Find should be your first xp spent. It can be hard to decide what to remove, but you can pretty comfortably remove single copies of your less important events ("I'll take that!", Breaking and Entering, Grift, Vamp, Astounding Revelation) since with your draw speed you will pretty much always find what you need.

The Raven Quill Living Quill should be your second unless you can get it for free.

Bewitching is expensive but the amount of extra searches you get from it to pull your Astounding Revelations and Surprising Finds makes it a priority upgrade. Banking some of your events is nice, too.

Deduction -> Deduction (2) and Perception -> Perception (2) - Core upgrades. Prioritise when you have 2 xp left over. If you can afford Bewitching all at once early on then delay these until later.

Breaking and Entering -> Breaking and Entering (2) - I really like this upgrade because you can drop your second copy of B&E and deck slots are the hardest part of this deck

Backpack - more search, can attach all your items including The Raven Quill

Hiking Boots - a good stat and free movement. What's not to love? Making room for it in your deck can be a challenge though

Streetwise (3) - luxury but useful

Vamp -> Vamp (3) - luxury but useful. Mostly for evading elite enemies and getting a clue for free

Snitch - very good if you're keeping 2 copies of Grift and Vamp. Close to worthless if you trade those out.

Blur - if you find yourself using regular evade actions a lot, this helps you reclaim an action each turn.

Double, Double - you have a lot of events, so it's pretty nice. If you take this, go ahead and grab Interwoven Ink on The Raven Quill so you can use it twice a turn

Pilfer (3) and Momentum - take these as a pair since your is quite low. PMP momentum on an easy test and follow it up with a Pilfer at -3 difficulty.

Trench Armor - a very Trish card but not really that important

Variants

Remote investigation variant:

Remove:
String Along

Add:
Damning Testimony second copy

Damning Testimony is the only card I didn't talk about in the sections above. I think it's not very good with no xp invested, it's just a way to discard one of your Grim Memoirs if you get stuck with both of them out and empty. Magnifying Glass would be a much cheaper way to achieve this, but I include Damning Testimony because with some upgrades it can actually go off with Trish.

If you're planning to invest xp in this card, run 2 copies of it from the start, since investing a lot of xp into a singleton feels bad. I like blackmail -> fabricated evidence -> blackmail for Trish.


Precision success variant:

Remove:
Crystallizer of Dreams
Medical Student x2
The Raven Quill

Add:
Chemistry Set x2
Artistic Inspiration x2

Priority upgrades: Fine Tuning, Steady-Handed

You use your Chemistry Set as your main investigation tool here. Grim Memoir is relegated to card draw and single clue locations. Steady-Handed and Artistic Inspiration let you modify the success values and Fine Tuning lets your ready them for multiple uses per turn.

Current environment variant:

I'll make this its own deck list as it will have a lot of changes.

Forbidden variant:

Add:
Versatile
The Book of War
Eldritch Sophist x2

Replay Practice Makes Perfect every turn or be invincible with In the Shadows since they're both tactics. Kinda cheesy.