Pls Nerf ASAP - Infinite Wendy destroys the depths - 39xp

Card draw simulator

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Derived from
None. Self-made deck here.
Inspiration for
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Lord Triloth · 1890

Intro

Wendy has always been one of the most powerful investigators in the game, especially in solo, due to her innate cancel ability and powerful defensive stats. Plus her sizeable 3 that allows both solid investigation and access to fail-by effects.
Im fully aware of the fact that Wendy, and her signatures, where designed in a time of the game where the card pool wasn't as big and Wendy herself didn't have as much card draw to reliably use it with such an abusive potential.

I'm also aware of the fact that most players play this game more casually, without the intent of breaking the game, and to have fun. For players and deck builders like me, that like to break the game once in a while, these decks can mean allot of fun though and mainly a feeling of success. And at the end of the day this game is still about winning, so the decks that grant you a win on a higher rate are, by this logic, more in the sense of the game than thematic and fun decks.
I still consider that you try this deck out and quite probably carry your whole team with encounter protection, enemies, clues and the foresight of every test taken.

Roles: Full flex with high clue acceleration and powerful enemy management through evasion and straight up killing.

Card/Resource Engine: High end resource and card draw engine that solves any problem.

Soak/Healing: Infinite horror soak with Peter Sylvestre(2), and also has access to Jessica Hyde that does the same thing with damage, if you get to that xp level.

Encounter Protection: Very high due to high defensive stats and recurring A Test of Will(0)

Complexity: Probably the highest this game can have. Requires allot of general game sense and understanding of the game to do the right decisions in the right time.

-Main deck-

Mainly this deck consists of a few neat combos that grant Wendy insane amounts of acceleration, together with recursion of every single card in the deck, without drawing your weaknesses multiple times. Not forgetting that you know the result of every. single. test. your preforming beforehand due to the not-discarding Premonition.
Additionally you have allot of generally good cards like Granny Orne(3), Track Shoes, Lucky!, Live and Learn that can help you succeed at every single test you don't intent to fail, while being on a 6416-stat line.

First and foremost, to get the whole deck started, you need to get your Amulet out and thin your deck to only events, filtering your extremely brutal signature weakness out of your deck. If you're able to reach that point, you can recycle all the slightly overpowered events this deck has to great extent.

1. Combo: Fail-By-suit; the first cards that interact with each other are the fail-by suit, consisting of [Grisly Totem](/card/05195(3), Rabbit's Foot and Drawing Thin, in addition to Live and Learn to redo the test again and "Look what I found!" to find the clues you'd not get anyways. Keep also in mind that Take Heart returns to your hand, after that test ends. All this knowing the result beforehand and with the possibility to cancel the token twice with LAL. Then you also have the Track Shoes-test that can trigger all of this off, if your foresight shows you anything as bad or badder then a -3. All together this first combo grants you 4 cards and 2 resources or 3 cards and 4 resources a turn, likely without spending any of your actions, through Track Shoes and A Test of Will(0).

2.Combo: Markings of Easiness; Easy Mark itself is both a combo enabler and a combo in itself. Taking in account the fact that it is a great card in itself for only 1xp and that you can play multiple of in a single action, which isn't unlikely with the high amounts of card draw this deck has, it is a super solid card to keep the deck running card and resource wise. Another thing is that Wendy can use her Marks to cancel tokens and then play them from the discard pile, all three in an action, as long as they are the top events in the discard pile and her Amulet is in play. Finally ,and probably the most broken part about it, is if you get to a point that the Marks are the last two cards in your deck and you've got the last one available (with your amulet in play o.c.). At this point you can play that one and draw the next one form your deck, because Forced percedes s you put the one you just played on the bottom of your deck, then trigger the reaction and just loop them into the infinite. If this should work, and I'm not 100% sure about it rules wise (please correct me if I'm wrong in the comments section, if need be), you can bring your resources up to a 1000 and then never get into troubles with resources again. Then, if more team support is what you're looking for, one of your teammates can play Teamwork and make this status something for everyone.

3. Combo: What a True Survivor is.; All seven skills in this deck are Innate-traited and can thus be recurred using True Survivor. Your main targets here are Sharp Vision, which is another clue-acceleration card next to LWIF, just turning the fail-clause into a succeed-clause and the action engine Quick Thinking. Succeeding by 2 on those test shouldn't be that hard, because you know the tokens beforehand and your stats are quite good in general.

4. Combo: Knowing is not enough!; Another core set card that can have unforeseen potential in the right hands is Will to Survive(3) with both recurring Swift Reflexes and Quick Thinking. Making most of your turns 5-6 actions. You already know ever single token that comes out of the chaos bag, but if you want to make sure every single test hits on crucial turns, this is not to be slept on. High action + WtS(3) has always been a good combo (with Ace in the Hole in Rita Young for example), but Wendy brings this card to another level through her infinite recursion of it.

5. Combo: Blocking, Aloofing and Annihilation; Here it is. The part you've been all waiting for. You've surely all seen the good ol' Rifle looming on top of the deck list and wondered how a 1 investigator could possibly make use of it. But to start form the beginning, this deck uses evasion as it's main tech for dealing with enemies, and it's 6 is a good place to be on for that. In addition to that you have a self-recurring and Amulet-recurring Slip Away(2) to block some enemies for multiple rounds and a Hiding Spot to not even make them engage you. This, together with Track Shoes, may lead to you not ever having to directly face any enemies. But there may come times, and there certainly will, when Victory-Enemies appear, then comes the time when you Sleight of Hand the Old Hunting Rifle and play a Will to Survive(3) and just completely clean the board of enemies or playing a major part in chucking down a boss. With the boost of the rifle itself your on a 4, which is the fight value of most enemies, keeping in mind that your not revealing any tokens. And if the fight should be higher, you still have your standard suit of Live and Learn, Lucky! and Granny Orne(3).

Campaign Mode, Standalone and other options

This deck isn't as powerful on it's one early campaign and until it is set up, all though Charon's Obol can help with that, because it needs some time and xp to set up.
I suppose that you try this deck out with this Harvey Walters-deck. It has No Stone Unturned(5) to fish out your weakness early and Farsight'd Guidance to make Wendy's turns last even longer.

Like already mentioned, this deck is optimized for standalone and specifically The Depths of Yoth to outlive it's full potential. The Harvey-Wendy duo reached depth 18, with Wendy still alive and 31 doom on the last agenda, after Harvey died long ago. But if you want to play it in campaign mode, you'd probably need more of a fighter to assist her and things like Lockpicks, Waylay and Last Chance to replace the xp-cards. Then I'd also include Adaptable to prepare for some scenarios more intensively. And this deck also has allot of single copies, so you'd probably want to cut down a few cards to make the deck more reliable in a campaign.

To signify her upgrade path I've created a few standalone decks that I'll link:

  • the 18 xp version is basically all you need to make the deck shine.
  • the 29 xp version the original version of the deck, still adding a few sweet toys, like Versatile'd Premonition, but the ...
  • 49 xp version just makes this deck pure insanity. Another Charisma and Jessica Hyde while basically prevent her from ever dying to anything and your just seeing all of your weaknesses once, so the xp amount in standalone is not that important.

Then over to the additional options:

  • The taboo'ed Scroll of Secrets is a another good Versatile target for this deck, for instantly replaying an event you put on the bottom of your deck.
  • For maximal jank potential, you can also add Swift Reload for an even bigger damage output with the rifle. This could also be an potential upgrade for Sleight of Hand and then just keep the rifle on the board.
  • Because this deck always struggles a bit with hand size, Dream-Enhancing Serum can always be an option for more card draw and an even bigger hand.
  • Moonstone in exchange for a single copy of Rabbit's Foot is also an idea to bring your stats even higher, but your missing out on a card per turn for that.
  • If soak isn't much of a concern of yours, Leo De Luca is of course an option for even longer turns and even more value out of Will to Survive(3).
  • Upgrading to Lucky!(3) and "Look what I found!"(2) are definitely options for more team support earlier on.

Intro:

As always, thanks allot for reading until the end of another of my crazy decks. Like I said at the beginning, this surely isn't a deck for everyone, but if you have any thoughts or questions on this list, please let me now in the comment section.
That's all from me, cheers and have a great time.

21 comments

Nov 22, 2020 Django · 4854

So your basic idea is with Wendy's Amulet in play and the last line of Premonition's effect discards it (ignoring the amulet's replacement to move it to the bottom of your deck), it's always placed on top of your discard pile and you can immediately play it again? Nice find!

Though i guess it's rather inconsistent locating 2 cards with Versatile (5 extra cards9 and survivors aren't known for drawing lots of cards. Backpack 2 could help you searching for the amulet and thinning the deck. Lucky Cigarette Case could also help, especially if you evade a lot.

Nov 23, 2020 NarkasisBroon · 10

Honestly, with take heart, drawing thin, grisly totem, and rabbits foot, the deck is drawing 5 cards off one action every round. I doubt it has much trouble finding combo pieces. You Mulligan hard for Drawing thin and they get you everything else

Nov 23, 2020 Trinity_ · 197

Definitely a good iteration of Premo Wendy.

I don't personally think this deck absolutely needs a taboo hit due to its experience-intensiveness and the fact it isn't as trivial to build into during a campaign - certainly not as easy as cards like Rook and Higher Ed - but if it did end up being attacked, I have to wonder what change would be appropriate. An errata to Wendy's Amulet would probably be the most appropriate.

Thanks for sharing your experiences with the deck! I have wondered just how powerful the combo was but never really wanted to actually pilot it. I suspect that knowing every skill token draw would take most of the fun out of the game for me.

Nov 23, 2020 chirubime · 25324

One of the biggest problems with these Wendy looping decks is having to hold certain hards that need to avoid being removed from the game with Abandoned and Alone.

I think the deck needs to find space for Backpack(2) as a means to both thin the deck of assets AND tutor some of your most vital combo pieces like Wendy's Amulet.

Nov 23, 2020 Lord Triloth · 1890

Y’all seem to like Backpack(2) very much and to be honest I haven’t played with it yet, so it wasn’t on my radar, nor do I know who strong it is.

Nov 23, 2020 Lord Triloth · 1890

Usually I didn’t have problem with enough card draw between all my stuff and at some point you need to decide between including cards that draw more cards or cards that actually have an effect.

Nov 23, 2020 Lord Triloth · 1890

About the her weakness. I should’ve probably explained it a little more, but mainly you need to draw as much as possible at the beginning of the game and hopefully get her amulet out before her weakness and remove all important events from her discard. That’s also a tactic where Backpack could be good. The deck can work very well without some of it’s parts and the combos themself don’t need to be complete to fulfill their purpose. Exept for some really important parts which you shouldn’t discard before you see your weakness.

Nov 23, 2020 Lord Triloth · 1890

@aeongate Oh yeah, about the taboo. I must admit it was a bit of click bait, even though it is pretty strong. I know this game is not really balanced around Standalone and the Taboo generally specialises on balancing Campaign Mode, but this deck works quite well to without having to go infinite, even though it probably needs a bit of support early game.

Nov 23, 2020 Lord Triloth · 1890

I think the taboo should at least hit the Amulet, so that the Premonition isn’t possible. Change it to something like: “After it’s effects resolve place it on the bottom of your deck, instead of in the discard pile.”

Suprisingly this deck doesn’t need that much xp to work. Only really things like Granny Orne and Drawing Thin, consider you have access to Charon's Obol

Nov 25, 2020 Bloviator · 7

This is a really strong deck, but I wonder if it's really as game-breaking as you're describing. 40xp Seeker, Mystic, and Guardian decks are also very strong imo and this deck isn't nearly as game-breaking as "Delve-too-Deep" teams, Double-or-nothing combos, or myriad draw-combo shenanigans; which all actually broke the game.

Nov 25, 2020 Lord Triloth · 1890

@Brian_Bolton The big difference to those is though it that they are all Taboo’ed and this isn’t.

I admit that this deck is not as good as something like Pre-Taboo Mandy, even though I think it is definitely over curve of most other decks I played, due to its pure flexibility in clueing, passing tests and encounter protection. I chose to display the 40xp version of this deck here to better explain all its combos, but you’d be suprisred at how much it losses in lower levels.

Breaking the game, at least in my terms, means that you trivalize big aspects of the game and/or play in a fashion that is not intended by the designers. This is definitely something this deck does, through completely having the chaos bag in its pocket and usually doing 4-5 action turns with Will to Survive. Plus I also consider having infinite resources as broken.

Nov 26, 2020 Bloviator · 7

@Lord Triloth I think it trivializes aspects of the game only insofar as the designers didn't intend for Premonition to be recurred ad infinitum. I think the designers expected that with Wendy's passive and signature asset there would be all kinds of shenanigans like you've clearly shown above. If something gets nerfed, I imagine it's probably going to be a mutation on Premonition that removes it from the game or places a "once per round" limitation on it. I don't think this is necessary and totally support your right to engage in shenanigans with your discard pile. You're an orphan, you deserve some fun.

Nov 27, 2020 bluephoenix42 · 1

I think Rabbit's Foot(3) could also be a very good upgrade. It helps you find your weakness and combo faster and with Drawing Thin you are guaranteed to fail some tests by a high amount.

Nov 28, 2020 Lord Triloth · 1890

@Brian_Bolton I didn't seem to be able to convince you of the power of this deck with words, so I would say you should try it out for your yourself!

@bluephoenix42Rabbit's Foot(3) is also a great card for this deck, if you don't know where to put your exp. If your really out for the pro play you can even exactly know which card your going to want to draw, because of Premonition, when you get to a point where the deck consist of only events. The reshuffle can also be nice.

Nov 29, 2020 madcircus · 126

I really liked the deck, and the writing too, very interesting guide about combos you can make with wendy.

But then I have to disagree about some things, you're totally on the clear about RAW, but I think that RAI, Premonition would get to back in the deck regardless. Technically it might go to the discard pile and recur forever but we can all agree that's cheesy, plus, there's something to be said about cheesing: Drawing Thin on Track Shoes feels like cheating, that's a classic combo and led to the tabooing of those cards.

Nonetheless, thumbs up on the deck, I don't mean no disrespect, just felt the need to remind that there would be some tables that this deck would be frowned upon.

Nov 29, 2020 Lord Triloth · 1890

I'm glad you enjoyed the write up, took quite a while to put all of this together.

I'm still of the opinion that these decks should rather exist then not, because it can be fun sometimes, maybe in a standalone, to try out overpowered decks alone or even in your game group. Allot of cards in this deck can feel like cheating, if not most of the deck, and I totally understand why people leave their fingers of of these decks.
A 1-Fight investigator should not be able to destroy enemies with a gun. Nobody should be able to predict every token from the bag (even if the every token clause doesn't work, this deck can probably still play a Premonition every turn).

May 13, 2021 LeFricC'estChic · 86

I'm feeling like there might be a tiny little possibility of a tight spot here for Henry Wan to shine.

From the point where your combo is set up you could use an action a turn to activate the action on a non-symbol token and reactivate each time you draw another one. You know when to stop and even can manipulate the odds with Wendy's ability. From this point (with starting NotZ standard bag), you have roughly 67% 2+ resources/cards, 26% 3+ r/c, 15% 4+ r/c, 8% 5+ r/c, 4% 6+ r/c, 2% 7+ r/c, 0.7% 8+ r/c, 0.6% 9+ r/c and 0.2% 10 r/c. On average, it makes a gain of 2.67 resources or cards or combination of both. You can discard to approximately double your odds each time, might not always be worth it though.

If you want to draw more cards a turn, it seems nice.

If you want resources, you could play Dario El-Amin.

Or On Your Own.

Poor Henry Wan.

Jun 08, 2021 LeFricC'estChic · 86

As @thatwasademo made me realize, there is no player window between the token draws, so you don't know beforehand from the 2nd token you'd pull that way.

Aug 18, 2022 galge · 16

i have a question just for rules clarification. Wendy's Amulet says "after you discard an event from play" and Premonition "put Premonition into play" and after the forced ability, discard it. Isn't Premonition then discarded from play so the amulet would place it at the bottom of your deck?

Aug 18, 2022 NarkasisBroon · 10

Yeah the "or after you discard an event from play" text was added as an errata (and in the revised core reprinting) essentially to shut off this deck

Aug 18, 2022 Lord Triloth · 1890

what i asked in the title got fulfilled ig