Dark Horse Lola Plays 'em All

This is the first Lola deck that I've seen that makes sense to me. I can understand why you had some brain meltdowns trying to put this together (I can't even begin to wrap my head around her), so kudos for a well thought out deck!

I do have a few questions though:

• Is "I'm outta here!" in there for theme and to give her at least 1 card from every role? I haven't played Carcosa yet (and still have 1 scenario left to go in Dunwich) so maybe it has more uses than I'm aware of but it seems of limited use and could be better as another card. If it's theme that's cool too; easy to swap to something else if a player is so inclined.

• Having the sole 2 cards from Survivor be Dark Horse is incredibly smart and make complete sense as it protects it from her weakness. However, how reliant is the deck on running it? Since it's only 2 out of 40 cards, your odds of getting it are pretty low, even if you aggressively mulligan. The deck also has limited card draw. I assume you are using the permanents and skills to pass skill tests reliably. I feel like she might have a hard time in the first scenario or two until she can get Blood Pact (smart use of the card by the way) and Keen Eye.

• Similar to the above, you only have 4 "weapons" + Prepared for the Worst in a 40 card deck. Do you find that's enough? Many people put 5 weapons in a standard 33 card deck to ensure they can reliably draw into a weapon. I guess I worry with such a big deck and limited card draw that you'll find yourself without a weapon quite often. Maybe your experience tells you otherwise.

• Have you considered Fieldwork? It seems like it could work well in her given her even stat line, but the role situation might make it unusable (again, I haven't really tried her yet).

Again, cool deck, I look forward to trying it out (and tweaking it some) in solo play in the near future.

@0bs

1. I'm outta here has a few uses besides flavour/theme. It's a great get out of jail free card in a number of scenarios (I won't comment on Carcosa to avoid spoilers), especially in multiplayer. It gives a good boost of agility icons of needed. Finally, you can always rotate it out via Adaptable for scenarios where it isn't usable.

2. For Dark Horse, the across the board stat boost is fairly important though we can survive without it. You're right that it is just 2 cards of many, but besides our mulligan the neutral skill cards and improvisation can help shrink our deck. Worse comes to worse, we can dig for it via no stones unturned. Luck won't always shine on us though.

3. You're right that this deck can struggle a bit till we have Blood Pact and/or Keen eye up and running. This is when getting dark horse out ASAP is at its most important, but thankfully the game tends to be somewhat merciful on scenario 1. I tried it against all the "scenario 1's" and my experience was mostly positive.

4. Like dark horse, we hope our deck shrinking cantrip cards or our tutor cards (PFTW and no stones unturned) will help find us a weapon if we don't start with one. I'm my experience this is enough most of the time. We aren't aiming to murder the board in a 4 player game, but simply hold our weight. Also don't forget vicious blow can help take out an enemy in a pinch!

5. I have considered fieldwork. The main reason I avoided it is I want to avoid juggling between 3 roles since this would clog up our ability to use Blood Pact/Keen Eye/Vicious Blow and otherwise participate in combat. Maybe I'll give it a try though; it can definitely be of use when we don't have dark horse out.

Glad you liked the deck!

was working on a very similar lola deck. Have you considered making use of lone wolf in a similar way to dark horse? Potentially gives you more freedom to play 2 cost cards without forcing you to take the resource if you don't need it.

@stetson I did, and I like Lone Wolf in most Dark Horse decks, the problem is it's a reaction; you'll have to stay (or switch to) Rogue to take advantage of it which can put a lot of pressure on your role switching.

Nice deck you have. Lola'a´s been giving me headaches too, i haven't come to a good solution for her weakness yet.

I think key to her deck is that your hand cards are uneffected by Crisis of Identity. So i'm going to build a deck with assets from 1 or 2 classes with "always on" effects, while include mainly skills/events from others. After setting up assets, i'd never look back to asset classes and focus on events. Not sure how well this works in practice, however. The game does not have many "direct damage" cards in one class (Dynamite Blast and "I've got a plan!" comes to mind).

Wait you're not playing the combo Ace in the Hole, Leo De Luca and Will to Survive?

I want to include card draw in lolas deck, because it's so big. But that may draw me Crisis of Identity...

Can you change classes during a test? Wouldn't that make you unable to use the card that initiated the test?

Some ideas that may help you:

Alyssa Graham to spy on your own deck and bury Crisis of Identity

If no one else has Leo De Luca, would you include him? He's very expensive, but worth it if you get him out and don't change back to .

I 'liked' this deck because you tried to make a Dark Horse Lola deck!! Not an easy thing to do. Kudos!

@Djangoswitching factions mid skill checks is perfectly legal. By the time you switch, the action has already been legally initiated (it doesn't immediately fizzle out when you switch).

Alyssa Graham is a great idea; we don't be able to consistently use her of we don't switch to Mystic however, but that's not to big of a burden in this deck. My main other concern would be her cost. Another good ally to consider is guard dog and beat cop (replacing dodge).

I would definitely consider Leo if he is available. The trick would be getting him out, so I would maybe pick up a couple flares eventually. I wanted this deck to avoid the popular unique allies to avoid conflicts so that's one of the reasons he isn't here.

@jamjams32thank you for liking it!

I am trying something similar with having Leo as my only green and dark horse as my only red. I run 2 copies of scrying to keep a look out for the weakness. I run no yellow assets so I don't have to discard anything when my weakness hits. I haven't actually played it yet... It's all theory crafting right now

Delve Too Deep, it's one of my favourite cards, but even so I'm not sure I'd include it for just one scenario. Wouldn't you want to either keep it for longer or go without it entirely?

@meathook @MOTUX Lola's going to like any allies with passive abilities and skill boosts. Upgraded Peter Sylvester seems like a strong play to me as well, even without being able to use his trigger that often.

@MagnificateI've also played around with switching blinding light to moonlight ritual, and then upgrading delve too deep to blinding light (2) (or whatever your poison is) when it's no longer needed.

The trick is solo games where you may not have that much time to play delve too deep. If I can play it a few times over the first couple scenarios I count my blessings. Multiplayer is a different story. You're certainly right that you should consider hanging into it longer than one scenario, just not too long (and in any event, if you are able to use it 2 to 4 times you're coming out ahead).

@stetsonIf you include too many of these bonus cards, you're likely to run out of money and your setup time is too long. With a larger deck you're also less likely to even draw them.

@MagnificateDelve is really great. I played dunwich with daisy and rex. Each of us used them twice for 4 extra XP each scenario. Draw accelaration stuff from deck made this possible.

Bandolier is a passive ability, right?

Neutral weapons can be used by Lola Hayes at any time, like Kukri.

When using Ever Vigilant, can you switch rules while playing the cards?

Her role restirction on roles does not apply to Sleight of Hand or Flare because they don't "play" the cards but "bring them into play"?

@Django Bandolier is passive. Sleight of Hand and Flare can put into play any eligible card regardless of faction, but of course Lola would have to switch to the appropriate role to use any triggered, etc abilities on it.

Not sure about Ever Vigilant. The initiation sequence entry in the rules reference makes me somewhat doubtful that there's a player window to switch roles, however.

I think tutor cards like No Stone Unturned, Prepared for the Worst, Old Book of Lore and Flare can be used to avoid her weakness, while searching for important assets. Not sure about the old book though, as it's rather expansive at 3 ressources, occupies a hand slot and requires an action to use each turn.

I was thinking about Lola for about a week now and came to very similar conclusions but did not test them.

I am going to play her in a three player game in which I got told to make a "balanced deck, leaning towards investigating" and ended up with the same weapon/spell combination. However without the "leaning towards investigating" I would add one of the handguns.

I also seem to be more afraid with the size of the deck :) I feel that a second No Stone Unturned is necessary to search for the missing Dark Horse or Machete/Shriveling. This is also the reason why I prefer Lab Assistant over Maleson (although here I am a bit afraid that she will end up drawing the weakness).

I initially had two copies of Lucky! but after seeing your approach I cut them for the reasons you stated.

I ended quite excited about the concept of the deck and will test it this evening :)

My version: arkhamdb.com

one question about Dark Horse. is it active the entire game or only if u are in the survivor role? pretty complicated rule managment with lola....

@leikos Lola's card text restricts you from (essentially) using , , on cards, or committing cards to skill tests, that are your current role. For example, you cannot use Machete or Shrivelling unless you are Guardian/Mystic respectively because they are a . Passive effects like those on Dark Horse and Magnifying Glass are always in effect regardless of your role; Lola' s text does not limit their use.

@MOTUXthx for the clarification. she is rly a awesome but somewhat tricky investigator

sry for the double post but what other investigator would u consider as a good partner for lola?

I have had a test of this deck, albeit swapping out Seeker cards for Survivor, since I was teamed with Minh. Has worked well so far, so thanks for the ideas.

I'm a bit confused about Dark Horse, though. Can't you only include 1? And this deck was so cheap, I ended up with so many resources it would have been hard for me to use them up if I'd gotten Dark Horse in the second half of the scenario. Things that use resources for stat boosts would help that, when I get access, although timing and role juggling could still be issues.

@ashamel

1. The limit on Dark Horse pertains to the number of copies an investigator can have in play, not the number of copies s/he can have in his or her deck (unlike cards with the "Exceptional" keyword)

2. Re: boosters/getting poor, if you have difficulties ditching your resources, you could use Physical Training and Arcane Studies (there is more space for the latter than the former in this deck).

3. What Survivor cards did you swap in? I haven't experimented with Survivor too much with Lola owing to the fact that many of their cards are inherently reactive and difficult to use with Lola.

@MOTUX

1. Well, I've been doing that wrong for quite some time, but now you mention it, it does make sense.
2. Fair enough.
3. It's a bit of a random selection of cards with on-going effects: Leather Coat, Newspaper, Scavenging and Peter Sylvestre. It does help out with a bit of investigating (when my partner is not around) and damage soaking, but not a lot of synergy. There are more such cards than there is in the Rogue deck, at least, although (as @Django said), Leo De Luca is always tempting.

Shriveling Seems really bad here. I mean really really bad. Without committing to a card to it, you are, at best, hitting with a Combat of 4 or maybe 5 with Dark Horse. Same with Machete.

Dr. William seems iffy here too unless you are just using him for the damage and horror soak which isn't terrible but seems sub-optimal.

My biggest problem is that you are relying on too few cards to get you where you need to be without adding extra redundancies. There is a genuine fear where you draw the wrong part of your deck at the wrong time and this happens to me while playing Lola and I'm using a much more specialized build.

I also don't like Blinding Light as I don't know why I want to evade monsters 90% of the time and pretty much the same thing with "I'm out of here" although I can see the wisdom in it for some scenarios.

You're upgrades though seem perfectly reasonable

@Dagorha Both shrivelling and machete are designed to be boosted by blood pact which easily puts Lola in passing range for most tests. Otherwise there is skill cards. Lola otherwise doesn't have a ton of other options for offence, but maybe you have thought of something I haven't.

Yes, Dr Maleson is simply a soak, which I mentioned in the deck description.

By all means sub out blinding light. Lately I've just been going straight for moonlight ritual. However, in solo evasion is incredibly strong and criminally underrated.

I am confused - isn't this an illegal deck? I thought you were supposed to include at least 7 cards from a class if you decide to include any. "Additional Requirements: Your deck must include at least 7 cards each from 3 different classes" All other decks seem to follow this rule-they don't include only 1 or 2 cards from a class.

Once you have 7 cards from 3 different classes, the rest does not matter. You could only include neutral cards at that point, or cards from any other class like this deck does. Also arkhamdb would indicate if the deck was not legal.

Side note, even permanent cards count toward the 7 card minium.

The key here lies under the Deckbuilding Options section, where it says that you can play all 5 classes with xp 0-3. The Additional Requirements section then adds the detail that you brought up: you must include at least 7 cards from 3 different classes. You are free to include any other cards at your discretion from the other classes, save for experience limitations. I hope that helps.

@Django @meathook got it now, thank you for clearing it up so quickly! It makes sense as well. English is not my native language, and this sentence proved too much :)

I did not know that arkhamdb checks for legality either. This site is really great! Such a great community as well.

"Ever Vigilant" is useless with Lola, since you have to play three Guardian supports.