"The saddest part is that co-operative games don't get balance updates" -Tsuruki23's review of .32 Colt.

Not anymore they don't! With the introduction of the Taboo List, which was introduced after Tsuruki23 made his review, Machete has been yeeted out of the 0xp pool, giving other weapons, like the .32 Colt, a chance in the spotlight. That, plus the introduction of .32 Colt (2), means it's time for a re-review:

First, this gun might as well be renamed Harrigan's .32 Special. Arriving in the same expansion that the Colt came in, The Soldier doesn't need boosts to and the Colt doesn't provide them, instead putting that value into being a cheaper, longer lasting gun than the .45 Automatic. Mark can feasibly carry this gun late into a campaign and still find reliable use for it.

Second, if your an investigator with 3 or less , you can forget about including this card. So Carolyn, Skids, Jenny, Culver, Diana, Ashcan, Rex and Lola don't want this card.

As for investigators with 4, Zoey Samaras, Leo Anderson, and Tommy Muldoon can probably pass on this weapon, as their in-built resource acquisition or access to rogue cards means they can afford the more powerful weapons with less uses, such as .45 Thompson, .45 Automatic, and Enchanted Blade. That leaves three investigators that might consider this card: Roland Banks, William Yorick, and Joe Diamond.

Third, if you're including this card in your deck, you should healivy consider "Eat lead!" (and it's upgrade). Eat lead's downside is more severe the less ammo in the firearm you're using and the more boosts the firearm provide when attacking. Guess which gun has the most ammo and the fewest boost?

And that's about it. I wish I could go into more detail about how, in my opinion, William Yorick is the second best investigator for including .32 Colt, but I'll leave that for a deck description, rather than here.

This has very quickly become my favorite investigator specific weakness in the game.

The Watcher looks incredibly menacing. 5 fight? 5 evade?! Poor Patrice only has 2 and 2 , how is she somehow supposed to not fail a test against it? Worse, if she does fail, it'll chase her the entire scenario unless she somehow manages to hit it for 2 damage.

The Watcher has two main routes through which it threatens you while it's in your hand. Firstly, it will clog up your hand, dropping Patrice's precious 5 cards per turn to 4. Second, it will hit you for 3 damage every time you cycle your deck. So your options are to either A. deal with the Watcher to free up your hand and eliminate the threat or B. leave it in your hand and tank the damage when it comes. I've found that option A is much better than option B, but it is perfectly possible you draw this card really late and have no answer in the moment, so we'll go over various ways you can either successfully toss this guy aside or tank the damage.

Here are some of the ways I've found you can most easily deal with the Watcher:

• Fight: Patrice has several methods of fighting at her disposal. You can stack using Holy Rosary and David Renfield, then use a Shrivelling or Wither attack, ideally boosted considerably with cards (depending on your difficulty). Alternatively you could use Fire Axe, which, with 3 resources and a bit of combat boosting, can easily push you where you need to be to hit this thing. Remember, you don't actually need to hit it for 2 damage while it's in your hand, you just need to hit it. I like Shrivelling and Axe also because they do allow you to hit for 2 damage should you fail the first test.
• Evade: As above, you can stack and use Mists of R'lyeh to evade. Patrice also has solid access to boosts being a Survivor class investigator. Peter Sylvestre, Track Shoes, and plenty of solid cards like Waylay, Dumb Luck, Survival Instinct 2, and (for multiplayer) Hiding Spot. I particularly like Survival Instinct 2 as a method of evading both Watcher and any other enemies at your location.

(For both of these options you could also take the relevant cat from Miss Doyle. Hope lets you evade at base 5 while Zeal lets you fight at base 5 ).

• Tanking: Sometimes you just don't have time to respond to the Watcher. In this scenario, it is important that you planned ahead and brought some means of soaking damage. David Renfield, Madame Labranche, and Leather Coat can all soak 2 for you, and as long as you played them when they showed up, you've got nothing to worry about damage wise.

A quick note about Stray Cat, Cunning Distraction, and automatic evade/fight. Currently the ruling based on Harbinger of Valusia is that automatic evasion/fighting does not count as successful since there was no test done. Matt Newman however did recently suggest that you could evade the Watcher using Stray Cat, though it's not clear that this is meant to say it discards the Watcher. For now, until the ruling is made clear, I will be playing as if these cards do not discard the Watcher.

The last thing you need to know about the Watcher is that you want it dealt with as early as possible. The reason for this is because of Patrice's effect: "+1. After this test ends, you may shuffle all but 1 card from your discard pile into your deck." What this means is that you want Patrice to continue taking as many tests as she can just for the opportunities to draw the token. Once she does, you can leave Watcher in your discard and reshuffle everything else into your deck, thereby preventing it from clogging up your hand for several more turns. You could elect to use Olive McBride to find it more reliably, though I personally don't think it's necessary unless you want to do a seal based support Patrice.

Four deluxe cycles later, Fire Axe remains one of the best level 0 weapons in the game, though its role is incredibly different from something like a .45 Thompson or a Shrivelling. The point about this card's accuracy has only gotten more true over time: with the exception of a three+ action'd Chicago Typewriter, there is no other weapon in the game that inherently lets you boost your by 6, not even upgraded weapons. Reading the card, your instinct might be that the two abilities are at odds with one another. Do I keep lots of resources to hit with accuracy for 1 damage, or do I keep resources low so that I only fight at a modest boost but for 2 damage? Moreover, is it worth it to continually spend resources into a weapon instead of spending them elsewhere? How easily can I manage having 0 resources?

Let's first talk about the economy in place for this card. Ideally you want to run this in a deck that isn't very resource hungry. Your other cards should be mostly 0, 1, or 2 resources in cost. This way you can dedicate more of your pool to fighting. There are now a few cards that can be used to recoup resources quickly but consistently:

• Madame Labranche can refund you 1 resource any time you use your Axe to deplete your pool
• Lone Wolf gets you an extra resource a turn
• Forbidden Knowledge puts 4 resources in reserve that you can take as needed without them counting towards your pool
• David Renfield can work similarly to Labranche, though with added risk from the doom you put on him.

Using these cards, it is perfectly viable to have 2 or 3 spare resources each turn to throw into a Fire Axe test, or instead to recoup the resources from last turn's Fire Axe test to spend on something else. The idea here is that you can maintain the use of this card without sacrificing tempo on anything else you need to be doing.

Someone wielding the Fire Axe probably isn't a dedicated fighter, as sinking and recouping resources to sink into it again is not a very consistently possible thing to do in one turn. Rather, the Fire Axe's biggest strength is it lets people who otherwise cannot fight at all help clear the board or defend themselves. If your Mark Harrigan has to dart all the away across the map to save you just so you can Intel Report safely, you're wasting actions. If your Zoey Samaras has to clear a Wizard of the Order you drew to keep the agenda from advancing next turn for you, you might lose rounds. And if you're playing solo, you're gonna need to fight on your own. How do you manage that as Wendy Adams? Fire Axe is the answer to all of those problems.

This is a card that works best in investigators who A: Would not have a good time taking any other weapon and B. Have the economic infrastructure to use it consistently. This means you want it with investigators with either low or limited weapon access. Here are some investigators who love to hack Eldritch horrors to pieces:

• Preston Fairmont. The 4 resources he gets every turn on Family Inheritance are not in his resource pool. That means you can take more than one test a turn at +2 damage and at least +4 without any resource support; alternatively it gives Preston the ability to both play a card and Fire Axe at +6 and 2 damage in the same turn, in either order. Again, this is before you add in any infrastructure like Madame Labranche or Lone Wolf.

• Patrice Hathaway. Patrice gets a Violin that will often act as an extra Madame Labranche, yielding her 3 resources a turn instead of 2. In fact, with Cornered and Recall the Future, or enough icons like from Last Chance, Patrice can follow up her resource committed Fire Axe tests with card committed Fire Axe tests, meaning even at 0 resources pumped into it she can still hit for 2 damage. As if that's not enough, it's the perfect card to deal with Watcher from Another Dimension. In fact, it even works if you fail the first test, as if you can hit it on the follow up, you'll hit for 2 damage and kill it exactly.

• Wendy Adams. Wendy can rely on events like Waylay and Backstab to do most of her fighting, but her subclass access means she can pile on resources and use the Axe as a way to close out gaps of 1 damage, or go for 2 damage in a pinch.

• Minh Thi Phan. investigators are usually constrained on weapon choice. Mind over Matter and "I've got a plan!" only work as one shot effects, not as consistent defense. Minh however is an investigator who runs cheap, draws lots of cards, and whose is low. Fire Axe is a solid weapon choice for her so long as you're not needing both hand slots for something else.

• Silas Marsh. Silas, like Minh, likes to run cheap, with lots of skill cards and draw. Fire Axe can let him boost his already high to almost guarantee a hit for 1. He probably wants other 2 damage weapons alongside it, like Meat Cleaver, but Fire Axe is a good backup.

Some slightly more left field picks:

• Finn Edwards. His base is 3, but he often dislikes fighting with other weapons, electing instead to do damage in the same way Wendy usually does damage. He can make great use of Pickpocketing 2 and Hatchet Man (which is already thematically fitting) just to follow that up with a Fire Axe test for 2 or 3 damage.

• Marie Lambeau. She can take Forbidden Knowledge and David Renfield to use Fire Axe as a means to fight without using a Shrivelling charge.

• Jenny Barnes. This depends heavily on what you want your version of Jenny to be doing, but the cost of boosting the Axe is lower for her than most investigators, so it can be a great closer of 1 damage in the right Jenny deck.

Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Dark Horse. This is a card whose most consistent application is to turn your +6 tests on Fire Axe into +7 . Whether that's worth the tempo loss of 3 resources, a card, and an action depends heavily on the chaos bag (and therefore the difficulty as well as the campaign), the investigator you chose, and whether or not you can follow up a Fire Axe attack with a test in some other stat. For example, a Preston Fairmont deck might use skill pumps like Dig Deep to get most of its work done, in which case Dark Horse can be used to great effect on or tests (admittedly tends to be more narrow in its application mid round, but there are treacheries where this is relevant). Alternatively, Preston might choose instead to buy most of his evades and clues, via Lola Santiago, Intel Report, and Decoy. In this sort of deck, Dark Horse loses value. So think critically about how much you need that +1 boost, how often you can get it, and whether or not the other boosts are worthwhile. We often call resource low decks "Dark Horse" decks, but in reality Dark Horse has become less and less valuable of a card among them. Fire Axe, meanwhile, has only gotten better.

Fire Axe is the weapon of choice for non-fighters. It keeps your weakest investigators alive and saves them time to do the things they're naturally good at doing. It's for that reason that it's managed to become my personal favorite weapon in the game. It's not always easy to use, but it's well worth it.

INTRODUCTION

Hello all, with the release of the new Dream Eaters Deluxe, Patrice has easily become many people's favorite investigator. Her deck-cycling ability opens up new possibilities, making you re-evaluate cards you may have not even glanced at since the Core and think about deck-building in a whole new way. And most importantly, she is incredibly fun!

This is a brief review with some general deck-building guidelines. It is not meant to be comprehensive, but it is meant to get you thinking like a Patrice player.

SUMMARY

Patrice is easily one of the most versatile investigators out there. You can make her into a deadly monster-killer with Fire Axe, Madame Labranche, Patrice's Violin, and Last Chance, or Shrivelling and Wither. Or you can create a powerful cluever with Winging It, Drawn to the Flame, St. Hubert's Key, Sixth Sense, "Look what I found!", and Fortuitous Discovery. Or you can make a well-rounded Patrice that includes all of the above, able to transition from clue-getting, to enemy management, to test-taker at a moment's notice.

Patrice's signature asset, Patrice's Violin, is a hidden superpower. It allows you to dump useless cards from your hand for another card from your deck, or ditch Improvised cards (Improvised Weapon, Impromptu Barrier, Winging It) so they can be played from your discard pile, or ditch them for a resource. Do not underestimate the latter. Between Madame Labranche and Patrice's Violin, Patrice can earn up to 3 resources are turn without expending any actions!

Patrice is an amazing solo investigator who also does just as well in multiplayer. She can flex to fill whatever is needed from turn to turn, and even use her icons to support her fellow investigators. She is highly versatile and can do anything you need her to.

But how do you go about building a Patrice deck? Below is a short guide that will give you some insight into how she works, followed by a brief list of some of Patrice's favorite upgrades. This summary references the deck build I originally included it in (https://arkhamdb.com/decklist/view/15698/the-desperate-violinist-1.0), which showcases a lot of Patrice's strengths. However, the actual deck building guidelines apply to anyone building a Patrice deck of any kind. I hope you find it helpful.

GENERAL PATRICE DECK BUILDING GUIDE

Regardless of how you build your Patrice deck, you need to be mindful of 4 main things:

1 - CARD ICONS

Let me introduce you to an idea that is central to Patrice: Average Hand Icons per Round (AHIR). As a general rule, the more usable icons you have in hand each round, the better Patrice will do. As I explain below, you cannot rely on having your key assets out in any reasonable amount of time--and there may be games where you have few opportunities to put them in play. See below for why.

1a. Watch your Icons!: I cannot stress this enough. The single most important thing about building a Patrice deck is to WATCH YOUR ICONS! Patrice cycles through her deck within usually about 8-9 rounds, without draw help. This means you want to commit every card possible in her hand every turn, except for the assets you are going to play that round, which means you want to ensure your hand is filled with usable icons. It can be tempting to include a lot of No Icon cards, but even with only 8 (Take Heart x2, Lucky! x2, Emergency Cache x2, Winging It x2), this means on average you will only have 4 cards with icons in hand--make that 3 if you are holding the Watcher or another hidden card. So be mindful of just how many of these you include! Ask yourself if you REALLY need them. For example, I didn't include Emergency Cache in this build because (a) it takes an action to play and; (b) Patrice doesn't really need it. Both Take Heart and Lucky! were left out because in this deck Patrice doesn't typically fail a test unless she draws a Tentacle. I'm not saying don't include these cards, I'm just saying to always watch your icons! When you're playing your Patrice deck, keep an eye on how frequent your icons appear in your hand and use that as a way to calibrate your deck. Whenever you include ANY card, always look for good icons. If it doesn't have good icons, then it better have good reason to be in the deck!

1b. She Likes It Wild: Patrice LOVES wild icons! Cards with plenty of wild icons like Last Chance, Unexpected Courage, Prophesy, and the level 3 Rise to the Occasion are amazing in her. But even in this deck, having single wild icons cards can help, such as with Defiance. You can use Wild icons for any test, so the more, the merrier. However, just be careful not to fill you deck with too many single-icon cards. If you can use double or triple icon cards, then do that instead!

1c. You Don't Have a Plan: The Improvised cards (Improvised Weapon, Impromptu Barrier, Winging It) are a bit of an exception. They can clog your hand with no icons, but since they can be played from the discard pile, they essentially extend your hand size and allow Patrice to keep them for when she wants to use them. Besides, they can be discarded by Cornered or her Violin.

2 - NUMBER OF ASSETS

2a. Don't be Greedy: So many assets look delicious in Patrice and it is so easy to build her deck with a lot of assets. Don't do it! But how many is too many? Here's some general advice about assets in general. They are powerful, yes, but assets generally require a lot Resources and an action to play. You can easily fall into a trap of endlessly putting down more and more assets, sometimes accruing something like 3 full rounds of nothing but play actions! Even in this lean deck, a full rig is 5 assets (Violin, Peter Sylvestre, St. Hubert's Key, Sixth Sense, and Mists of R'lyeh)--7 with Cornered! 7! That's 2 1/3 entire turns of nothing but play actions! That's a huge dent in tempo.

2b. Tempo - Presto Prestissimo!: One of Patrice's greatest strengths is her fast tempo. First turn: drop an asset into play and start taking tests! Every asset you play takes a chip out of this tempo. As a general rule of thumb I plan my decks so that the investigator can do their job with only 1 asset down and be mostly loaded with 2 assets out. Carefully consider what assets Patrice actually needs to fulfill her function and try to ditch as many as you can for cards with better icons. If you can avoid Emergency Cache, please do! It has no icons and requires an action to play. Meanwhile, between Patrice's Violin and Madame Labranche you can earn up to 3 Resources a turn for NO ACTIONS.

2c. Iconic, but not Really: Remember how I said to WATCH YOUR ICONS? Guess what assets typically don't have? That's right, not that many icons! Most assets typically only have a single icon. So the fewer excess assets you include in your deck, the better icons you will have in hand on average.

2d. Can I Go Out and Play?: Patrice is unique in that she will see every single asset in her deck likely twice. So she has to maintain a pool of resources to allow her to play the asset she needs when it comes up. There are times when she needs an asset and it's in her hand, and she even has the Resources to play it, but the scenario and/or Encounter deck have other ideas. I have had games where I couldn't put Cornered down until the second time through her deck! You must keep this in mind when choosing your assets. Even with 2x Cornered, you cannot rely on them to succeed, especially since you may not see them for 7-8 rounds!

2e. Out of Rotation: Almost contradictory to everything else I've said before, it's important to realize that every asset you put in play is taken out of Patrice's deck rotation! This makes you more likely to draw powerful skill and event cards, like Ward of Protection and makes fast assets or events that stay in play like Open Gate and Premonition absolutely delectable. I'm sure someone will use this concept to make a killer Patrice deck!

3 - RECURRING CARDS

3a. Keep 'Em Coming!: Due to Patrice's unique deck cycling, she will see cards more often than any other investigator. This means that (a) she is guaranteed to see every card in her deck at least once, usually twice; and (b) she will have the opportunity to use a single card 2-3 times a scenario...which means if you are packing 2x of something like Ward of Protection x2 you may get to use it 4-6 times in a scenario--that's amazing in solo! So this means the faster she cycles through her deck, the more often she will see her most powerful cards. This is a good reason to include cards with card draw, such as the Neutral skills, and keep her deck as lean as possible. I'm sure someone will figure out a way to thin out her deck and leave only a small cycle set left, enabling her to play powerful cards 7,8 and even 9 times.

4 - CIRCUMSTANTIAL CARDS

4a. Chance & Circumstance: Cards that are circumstantial in any other investigator become highly circumstantial in Patrice. Because of this, you will want to stick to cards that have a wide range of use, such as Ward of Protection, Defiance, etc. It is for this reason that I did not include the level 0 Rise to the Occasion--it's too circumstantial. As you play your Patrice deck, pay close attention to how often you use certain cards. If something ends up being a dead card or too circumstantial from turn to turn, cut it!

Conclusion

I hope you enjoy this deck and/or found some good advice in the deck building guide. Patrice is my favorite investigator and I want everyone else to experience the amazing fun that is Patrice Hathaway!

TOP UPGRADES

Cornered: considered Patrice's second signature, Cornered x2 allows her to optimize her card icons every turn.

Peter Sylvestre: the +1 and +1 can make a big difference. Peter also allows her to be more liberal with how she handles horror, especially if you are using Shrivelling.

Miss Doyle: the Cats of Ulthar help Patrice supplement her lower stats and, since she will see her cards more than any other investigator, she will see them often!

Survival Instinct: this is one of the best solo Survivor cards. In Patrice, it allows her to evade the Watcher in her hand AND all the enemies at her location AND move. 'Nuff said.

Rise to the Occasion: The level 0 version of Rise to the Occasion is too circumstantial, but the upgraded version is often no less than 3 Wild icons. Wow!

Defiance: Ignore bad stuff tokens? And with how often Patrice sees her cards? Yes!

Ward of Protection: Same as Defiance. It's just good and she can take the horror. The level 2 Ward of Protection allows her to help her fellow investigators out.

Alter Fate: Again, Patrice sees her cards often, so she can get a lot of use out of this card. Especially in higher count multiplayer, there is always someone who could use this.

True Survivor: do you know what's better than playing the same great card twice in 8 rounds? What about 4 times using Resourceful? Do you know what's EVEN better?!? What about 6 times? What about 8 times?! Patrice can play her favorite Survivor card twice, pull both of them back with two copies of Resourceful, then pull back both copies of Resourceful with True Survivor...and do it all over again. By the time she's done she will have drawn into True Survivor again. What about 2x True Survivor? The potential is dizzying! Patrice has access to a lot of great Innate cards, one of which is the incredibly amazing Rise to the Occasion, which is Innate, meaning it can be targeted by True Survivor, which can be targeted by Resourceful...which can be targeted by True Survivor, etc. Have fun :)

It's ok in decks who have insane drawpower but it's pretty mediocre or outright terrible when you don't innately draw quickly.

Fortuitous Discovery isn't good when you get just the one copy, you need to find the second and the third to make it do anything at all, and the payoff is SLOW, the first copy does nothing, that's terrible, you drew a card only for it to do nothing?! Winging It is'nt a bad card but that first play for just -1 on an investigate difficulty is a hard sell, there's also no skill icons, how annoying. The second copy is a 1-cost Deduction, for a conditional benefit that's still just strictly worse then Deduction I'm having some serious doubts here. The third copy, 2 resources for +2 and grabbing +2 clues, huzzah, it's doing things now! Cool things sure but the ride was so bumpy that it's hard to actually enjoy the result now that it's finally here.

So, either it's just OK, or it's seriously BAD, but what if you use some strategy?

• Lucid Dreaming obviously helps by drawing an extra copy, not a bad plan if you're using Lucid Dreaming for something else to start with (Mandy Thompson + Shards of the Void comes to mind). Still I cannot help but wonder if this is at all work the hazzle.

• Resourceful can grab the 3'rd copy and you can play it over and over, this really sounds and feels good, but after several attempts I'm usually all out of Resourcefuls recovering a Lucky! or Eucatastrophe by the time the third Fortuitous Discovery hits my discard.

• Self inflicted discards can help, Yaotl and Key of Ys will speed things up. Patrice Hathaway is a natural combo.

Frankly. I seriously believe that this card got kicked in the nuts in the final stage of development, somebody said "Fortuitous Discovery costing 1 resource base and discovering x+1 clues is too good", the light on printing this thing was green, the art commissioned, so it was too late to back out and print something else, so we got.. this thing....

Right now the standout good place to put this thing is Minh Thi Phan with as much drawpower as she can muster, we're talking Grisly Totem Minh Thi Phan with some classic skill cards. Even then, I can think of much more useful things to do with those 3 card slots. Winging It to start with.