Wendy Adams: The new Seeker

This is a deck whose primary role is to investigate and secondary role is to deal with enemies by evading them when necessary. Her high is usually sufficient for that, but there's also Trench Coat to help.

So, for our primary role, the goal is to get Lantern and The Skeleton Key out as soon as possible so that we can investigate any location at shroud value of 0. Since you will be investigating at shroud 0, you only fail on a , so once you get your Key out, assuming you also have Lantern, you will be very reliable at your investigations, even on expert! So the primary goal after we get our basics on the table is to get the Key in our hands as soon as possible. How do we do that??

The Rabbit's Foot + Double or Nothing + Try and Try Again combo:

This is the most reliable way to get the The Skeleton Key in our hands, as well as other important cards.

How the combo works: You make a vanilla investigate on a 3-or-higher-shroud location and throw Double or Nothing, fail the test hard and use Rabbit's Foot to dig into a lot of cards from your deck. Then, after the (failed) test ends, you use Try and Try Again to take Double or Nothing back into your hand, so that you can perform this combo again on your next turn. Note that Try and Try Again is not absolutely necessary for the combo, but you will want it most of the time, so that you can perform the combo multiple times, as well as retrieve Double or Nothing for future use. Also note that the value of this combo increases if you play on higher difficulties.

So, other than that, Rabbit's Foot, Pickpocketing and Take Heart can also help towards drawing the Key or other parts of the combo. With Try and Try Again, you can also use Take Heart multiple times if you need to.

Early in the game, before you have The Skeleton Key, you can still investigate with fairly good odds of success. With Lantern, you 're basically at 4. Then, Newspaper can help speed things up, "Look what I found!" will help with high-shroud locations and Winging It can net you a fair amount of clues.

Once you have the Lantern and the Key, investigations will become bread and butter. Newspaper will still be useful (for the extra clue), Winging It becomes food for your special ability so that you can use it directly from your discard pile for the extra clue (playing it from your hand will be of no use there), and "Look what I found!" can either be fed to your special ability too, or be used for the icons (not too helpful), or on a during investigations. Note that since you will be investiagating at shroud 0, Double or Nothing can also net you easily an extra clue since you don't increase the difficulty of the test and it becomes even better with a Winging It played from your disacrd pile, in which case it will net you 4 clues!

Leo De Luca is very important in this deck because you need a lot of actions in order to work with The Skeleton Key. He will definitely be one of the targets of the combo, if you don't already have him.

Trench Coat is there to boost your evasion attempts, which you will very likely be doing a lot, since you don't have any other means of dealing with enemies. It also makes triggering Pickpocketing more reliable.

Mulligan priorities: 1) The Skeleton Key, 2) Leo De Luca, 3) Lantern, 4) Rabbit's Foot, 5) Newspaper.

Combo target priorities: 1) The Skeleton Key, 2) Leo De Luca, 3) any card that helps you investigate (prioritising Lantern and Newspaper), 4) any other card that helps you draw.

Other Upgrades:

• Emergency Cache (2), Lucky! (2): We need all the draw we can get!

• Pickpocketing (2): This is nice to have, not absolutely necessary, but it's useful (especially after you've drawn your key cards). The extra icon can also help.

• Try and Try Again (3): This is helpful. Not of your main upgarde priorities, but it's useful. It allows you to play the combo infinitely and take back your Take Heart, without needing to worry about losing a precious "try".

• Will to Survive: This card is totally not necessary, because we have no means to fight, but it's worth adding in this list, because it's just so good. 4 actions and 4 resources for 4 guarranteed clues from almost any location if you 're missing your Skeleton Key is not a bad deal. The bad deal is that it will not be of good use if you already have the key. I guess, you can always feed it to your special ability, no?

• Scrapper: This is also not necessary, but you can take it if you like it. It can help boost your evasions, as well as trigger Pickpocketing more reliably. Starts looking better if you choose to upgrade Pickpocketing.

Alternatives:

• Backpack: This card got a lot of thought. I should proabably be having this instead of Trench Coat, because it's a good way to get your things out more quickly, especially The Skeleton Key. The bad deal though is that if you draw it mid-late game, you will proably have most of your things out already and the items it can find will not be of any use (if it even finds any items at all). You would rather have those items in your hand to commit them to tests or feed them to your special ability. Still, it could be useful for The Skeleton Key alone. I mean, even if it finds you just The Skeleton Key and nothing else it's still totally worth it!! But I prefer the Trench Coat, because it fills the secondary role of the deck better, it works nicely with Pickpocketing (which also draws) and hey, I just like the card! You can definitely, though, add Backpack instead of Trench Coat, if you find it more appropriate. I don't recommend cutting anything else other than Trench Coat for Backpack, because both of these cards take up the body slot, plus every other card has its usage.

• Lockpicks instead of Newspaper: This card also got some thought. Lockpicks will actually help a lot with investigations while you 're missing your Key. The problem with it though is that once you get your Key it's going to be totally useless and that's the reason Newspaper was preferred over it. You can definitely try Lockpicks though if you find it more solid.

• Charisma and Cat Burglar instead of Trench Coat: Cat Burglar can also boost evasion as Trench Coat does, but he also provides a very useful effect and gives you a bit of extra horror soak. You generally want to be avoiding enemies, so it's a good deal. It does mean you get less value from your Pickpocketing though, but if you choose him instead of Trench Coat, he can save you some actions and get you out of difficult situations. He is definitely worth considering.

• Perception instead of Unexpected Courage: This card got some thought as well. It will help with your investigations when you 're missing your Key while also providing some card draw, which is what this deck wants. The bad deal with it, is it will be almost useless if you have the Key, unless you want the card draw. Ultimately, I prefer Unexpected Courage, as a more staple and flexible card, but you can use Perception instead of it if you fancy it. It's totally viable.