Sefina Rousseau Archer 29xp

This is my take on a solo Bowfina XP deck. It’s been tested on Black Stars Rise, standard difficulty, and performed admirably.

Get Lola Santiago and Ornate Bow out ASAP and do everything you can to make money (hopefully you get Hot Streak or at least Emergency Cache in your opening hand!) You’re going to need a lot, because this deck aims to use Lola to pick up almost every clue. The only times you’ll use regular investigation is when you need to pick up 2 clues in one turn, which won’t happen often, and then you’ll use Streetwise. The action compression on this is huge, and you will move swiftly.

I initially had Lucky Cigarette Case in the accessory slot, having previously loved using it with Lockpicks, hoping to use it to help me find those all-important cards (although this isn’t a huge issue due to Sefina’s excellent consistency). But here I found it was almost never triggering, and feeling the need for a bit more , Holy Rosary seemed like the best choice. You could probably go for St. Hubert's Key instead but I like that rosary is cheaper, and I think even if I had higher I’d still be using Lola as often as I could, just for the speed.

I realised I now had a buttload of sanity lying around doing nothing, which led to the inclusion of Forbidden Knowledge. Not sure if I’d go so far as including 2 yet though. It can also be used to ditch David Renfield if needed.

Calling in Favors is also here for clearing Renfield’s doom, and can also search for Lola if you draw him early and not her.

Premonition is to make sure your bow doesn’t miss, though with additional XP I’d swap this for Time Warp, which I love.

Narrow Escape can be used to reload at point-blank range, something I haven’t had to do, but if you think you might you could consider making this a 2-of.

I’m unsure yet whether I might want the upcoming Coup De Grace, either alongside or instead of Cheap Shot (the end your turn part is potentially quite limiting). Being able to deal 1 damage is actually pretty important in dealing with 1 or 4 health enemies.

Quantum Flux was included just in case both your Lolas or bows get discarded somehow. Of course, then you’d have to dig like mad for them, which wouldn’t be fun.

Backstab is your backup bow but it’s super expensive to use so may not get played unless you’re faced with a nasty enemy before you have your weapon or if you’re fighting a major boss and your quiver is empty.

This is of course a 29XP deck, so you probably wouldn’t get to use it till the later stages of a campaign (in standalone you can drop Charon's Obol and Adaptable and put 3 XP somewhere else). If building towards this in a campaign I’d probably still start with a standard Spellfina deck and adapt as I go. Although I’m not usually a fan of Rite of Seeking in solo I guess it does fit with Renfield/Rosary and is better than buying lockpicks which you ultimately don’t want. You’d want to lay the groundwork of permanents and hot streaks first before picking up the major players Lola and bow.