Ursula gets stoned (Moon Stone / Card Draw)

Disclaimer: This deck is completely untested and probably not very good.

Also Note: for some reason it's not letting me put two Magnifying Glasses or two Deductions, so I put Perceptions in here instead. Please ignore them.

The basic story behind this is that I have noticed that, in spite of her very respectible 4, Ursula Downs tends to struggle to actually evade enemies and especially pass assorted tests. Unfortunately, her only real ways of boosting are Hyperawareness, Manual Dexterity, Trench Coat, Tooth of Eztli, and Quick Study.

In the case of Hyperawareness, it ends up being pretty costly, especially if you aren't running Milan Money, and the boost that you get per resource is also pretty lame. Manual Dex is, of course, an amazing card, but without any recursion you'll be playing it a maximum of 2 times, probably. Trench coat would be great if it just gave you a passive boost, but it only works when you're actually evading, and 3 is a pretty steep cost anyway (though 2 health is kind of nice). Tooth only works against treacheries (though the card draw is nice). I'm a pretty big fan of Quick Study, especially for Ursula, but sometimes 1 clue can actually be kind of a high price, and other times there are just no clues on the board and no clues on your investigator. Also it does cost 2xp (not that that's particularly bad).

Moon Stone, by comparison just gives you a perpetual boost of 1, as well as a very useful boost to in addition to help fortify yourself against Treacheries when combined with The decent number of cards that can help bolster . In addition, it is not unique, so if you get relic hunter, this can allow you to get a cool +2 +2

However, Ursula is neither Wendy nor Pete, so how does she actually play this?

Well, my first thought was just to draw past the hand limit, but when I was looking at card draw options, I was reminded that Blood-Rite actually gives you the option to discard cards after you draw for nice secondary effects. Which brings us to the decklist.

The basic strategy here is to use card draw effects to try to dig for Moon Stone and Occult Lexicon, then use Blood-Rite to play Moon Stone. Now if the only end goal here was to get Moon Stone out, this would really be a terrible deck, but the card draw serves a secondary purpose: Get Ursula's key assets out and thin the deck to recycle limited use cards (e.g. Rook and Guiding Stones) and events/skills. At this point I should probably talk about some of the essential upgrades.

The main upgrades that you want are probably Cryptic Research, for more efficient card draw, Relic Hunter, for the ability to double up on Moonstones), and Guiding Stones, for more efficient investigation. Pathfinder is Ursula's Bread and Butter (along with Fieldwork), so should probably replace Shortcut immediately.

Apart from that I have some ideas, but I'm not actually sure what would work best. One option is to double down on event-based card draw with xp Preposterous Sketches, but I'm kind of leaning toward trying Feed the Mind (if I ever actually play this deck). It's a little slower to start but should allow you to draw through your deck pretty fast. It also gives you a way to force out empty Guiding Stones from that arcane slot. Sadly, it's not technically an "investigate" action, so you can't use Ursula's free investigate for it.

Another idea would be Ancient Stone which, once upgraded, gives you a pretty good option for passive damage from all of the card draws you'll be making. This would add further efficiency to Feed the Mind, thus making it a potentially better buy. Additionally, between Moon Stone, Guiding Stones, and Ancient Stone, you'll have 3 different types of stones in your deck, which I'm pretty sure gives you theme points even if it doesn't have any practical effect.

Studious seems really good in this deck (or any deck), especially if you decide to take Death • XIII

Certainly the upgrade to xp No Stone Unturned could make it easier to fish out the right card for the moment.

Depending on whether the economy in this deck is good enough (will touch on this later), Higher Education is a very powerful card and will help you get a lot of secrets for Knowledge of the Elders (if you do take that), as well as help you pass tests a little more easily. You should have a pretty large hand size with all the card draw.

I also wouldn't underestimate Quick Study, as it allows Ursula to pass tests even when Fieldwork doesn't, but maybe the +2 and Higher Ed are enough that you don't need this.

Charon's Obol might be worth including if you plan on upgrading a lot of stuff.

As for what to cut, I might actually ditch the Deduction (heresy, I know) given that Guiding Stones should allow you to pick up a lot of clues. With Pathfinder and Ursula's free investigate action, you can even do this before spending a in a lot of cases. If you've got sufficient card draw, sufficient resources, and good assets to help boost your abilities (given the untested nature of this deck, I don't actually know if this is the case), you can probably pretty safely cut skill cards, though it will slow you down in the early game, obviously.

One thing to note about the strategy of trying to deck yourself is that playing assets thins your deck, but also takes up actions (This is part of why Eureka and Cryptic Research are nice cards here).

Once you've got a few upgrades the actual gameplay style is pretty simple. You will be evading enemies and picking up clues. Try to get your key assets out as quickly as possible for the best results. Play stuff over empty Rooks, Glyphs, Feed the Minds (if taking), so that you can deck yourself and draw them again.

I am extra concerned about two things with this deck, namely whether there will be enough card draw for it to work, and whether there will be enough resources to play cards.

As for the former, you could always replace Logical Reasoning with Guts (I mostly chose LR due to its versatility). Actually, this is the reason why there's only 1 Unexpected Courage. I figured that Eureka! targets the same stats (because why are you trying to take a test with Ursula?), but gives you fewer icons in exchange for card draw (filtered, at that). You could also replace Inquiring Mind with Perception, but Inquiring Mind is pretty flexible and combos well with Guiding Stones. If that's still not enough, I'm not really sure where you want to go. Backpack isn't very good here, for example, with so few items. It's entirely possible that this deck is actually not playable if the draw cards present aren't enough after a few upgrades. This would require testing to figure out.

Economy might also be tight. There aren't any really expensive cards, but all of those assets that cost 2 and 3 add up over time. Currently, the only economy is Crack the Case (IMO the best Seeker option for this), and Blood-Rite. You could also add Emergency Cache of course, but it might be worth waiting until you can get level 2 Emergency Cache so that you can avoid losing as much tempo. I'm hoping that the card draw and deck thinning will be enough that you can play these cards more than once a game. If this is true, for bonus jank, note that you can use Quick Study to investigate an empty location, dropping and then picking up a clue in order to be able to play Crack the Case in the late game (At least I think this would work. I'm no rules-lawyer). This could even help you to satisfy Call of the Unknown simultaneously. Milan Money is also an option instead of Rook. At any rate, it would take some testing to figure out how well this works.

Outside of getting set up, there's also your basic Investigation/Enemies/Treacheries to deal with.

In terms of strict investigation, I think that Ursula, once set up with Guiding Stones, Pathfinder, etc. should actually be pretty good at this, even sans Deduction. I've definitely had turns where I completely cleared a location of clues before even spending a normal (with my current Ursula Relic-focused deck). It's even better if you can deck yourself, because you can get both copies of Fieldwork and Pathfinder out, and probably recycle Inquiring Mind and Archaic Glyphs. With Occult Lexicon as the only other hand slot, you'll also be able to have 1 Magnifying Glass out. Maybe also Death • XIII depending on whether you take that. Ancient Stone competes with that, but you might not need Mag Glass as much in the late game.

Enemies: The name of the game here is evasion. It probably works best if you're partnered with a fighty dude, then your evasion is just helping to keep them from being overwhelmed. In solo you probably want to take Strange Solution instead of Archaic Glyphs. In either case, the passive from Blood-Rite and maybe also Ancient Stone will be invaluable.

Treacheries: Moon Stone also helps with this, though 4 is a little lackluster for most tests, but two Stones bring it up to 5 at least, and if you take Higher Ed or Quick Study that probably covers most of the rest. Forewarned is also an nice 1xp option. Logical Reasoning could also help in some cases.

As a final note, Trench Coat might still be worth taking if you want to lean into the evasion role a little more (might make sense depending on the team and whether you're playing TFA or not) It doesn't hurt to get that extra 2 stamina. On the other hand another 3 cost card very well might, and I'm not sure what you replace for it.

Would be interested to know if anyone actually tries this.