"Quick Rig" Jenny Barnes - Discussion Thread

Interesting take. I was also considering Preposterous Sketches and Prepared for the Worst in a Jenny deck to aid with finding the missing pieces. I wish the current Rogue card set was just a little stronger (1 or 2 solid cards would make all the difference) and I think Jenny would be really good.

Have you considered Fire Axe and just giving up on being able to pump Willpower (not take Physical Training)? This is something I've also been toying with, but the encounter deck Willpower checks are holding me back. I feel it works well with Prepared for the Worst (maybe you could even take 2x and drop Preposterous Sketches altogether and pick up another 1x splash card?) and is one less piece you need to be combat ready, since it's a weapon and the booster all rolled into one card.

I have indeed tried Fire Axe in Jenny and its not terrible. I had a similar idea with 1x Arcane Studies rather than 2x given that you only loose will and some chars get along fine with base 3. See here if you are iterested. at the time I was debating Machete vs Fire Axe in the deck and I came down quite heavily on Machete for the damage. You could always get the damage from Fire Axe when needed, but you werent as able to stockpile resources on quiet turns if you wanted to keep that option open. I really like the idea of using Prepared for the Worst as a tutor for Fire Axe though, tutoring the booster and the weapon in one move is "quick rig" indeed. If instead you only find The Twins i wouldnt call that a miss by any means. I think you still want a Physical Training for late game to boost whatever damage dealing weapon you have (so probably the The Twins or Machete) but it does free up an OOF slot to grab something intereting

you know what, thats wrong isnt it. You dont just loose will from Arcane Studies. scrap that bit sorry! I clearly didnt realise what i was duplicating with 2x Hard Knocks there. Anyway the just 1 x Physical Training thing might work here for that principal. Think i need my coffee this morning!

This is an interesting idea, i've also had Speed problems in a 2man game with Jenny often being too slow. I've been thinking about either Preposterous Sketches or Prepared for the Worst, but i did not consider adding both.

Do you have any gameplay experience with this deck? I'm unsure about how many ressource Cards are too many for her, considering Emergency Cache. Burglary, Lone Wolf and Hot Streak.

Thanks @Django,

Ive not used this deck specifically. This was really just meant as a list of option designd to instigate discussion. But i have been experimenting with an as yet unpublished variations around the concept based on @0bss idea above of using Prepared for the Worst to tutor for Fire Axe. Basically decks similar to this deck if you are interested.

The principal seems to work ok. Its quite constent so far other than one game where against all odds no assets or Prepared for the Worst turned up for several turns. But i suspect that was an outlier. I should say though even with the key parts in hand early on there is still a bit of a delay getting them in play. Each of those take an action to play, two if you count the one to play Prepared for the Worst. Plus the cash. So you still get the tempo loss you get from decks with 10+ assets but not as bad as needing to dig hard for your Hard Knocks etc, well Physical Training these days.

The other problem is still how to deal with game 1 before you have Streetwise down. Prepared for the Worst can only go so far and it does little to help you start investigating early. But anyway. its early days im still playing about with ideas. If you have any thoughts or experience i`d love to hear them

I realised after your comment that i might not have been explicit about what i was trying to say here until the very bottom. Ive now added a short paragraph to the bottom of the introduction to clarify it a bit earlier for any future readers.

On friday, we continued or campaign and completed "blood on the altar" (we played core campaign and all other dunwich missions before that). I wanted to share some experiences.

I used the "coroder" jenny deck as basis (how do you post links to decks?) and also because Leo De Luca is used by wendy. I noticed from the start, the deck is too slow (unless you're topdecking). It depends on too many cards (which cost ressources) and after that, takes to long to gather ressources again.

Luckily some of the new cards from Blood on the Altar help with many of these problems, as with Streetwise you only need one other talent to push fight (Hard Knocks in faction) and new ressource cards (improved Emergency Cache and Lone Wolf) help with... ressources.

I always had mixed feelings about Burglary, costing actions, ressources and the test might fail... Lone Wolf is a very good replacement.

Having played all these missions means lots of XP, both investigators have Adaptable x2, Charisma and several high XP cards from their respective classes.

However even with these, the deck was still too slow in some missions and Jenny has 3 mental trauma (she kept lita) and wendy 2. So she needs something to compensate for this too... After seeing your deck, Laboratory Assistant occured to me as a good compromise between Elder Sign Amulet and Preposterous Sketches, without the limitation of the latter (+Charisma x2).

We also tried Old Book of Lore in this deck, but outside Daisy it costs too many actions and only gets you one card per turn, so not a good idea.

We're still unsure about weapon choices, though. The other player does not like jennys weapon because of the ammo limitation and high ressource costs on switchblade (though in last two games, she had tons of ressources left). Currently the last flex slot is Machete, but i think for next mission we'll upgrade to 2 Switchblades and try out Prepared for the Worst.

I think next time we'll try the max card draw acceleration, 2x Preposterous Sketches, 2x Laboratory Assistant and 1x Prepared for the Worst.

Cheers @Django. Hearing other peoples experiences is really helpful.

If you want to put in non card hyperlinks, you have to put the name as you want it to appear in [square brackets] (and the url in round brackets) - but without the space between the sets of brackets ie ")[". Then you can use the url for a deck or anything else you feel like....sorry.

Anyway - No idea how i missed Laboratory Assistant. I guess Preposterous Sketches appears on paper to supersede it since it game another card and doesnt block a slot, though i hadnt considered the sanity soak when trauma'd, and in fairness sketches has the clue restriction. I guess Leo gives you two sanity as well, but your right, with charisma you can indeed have both, and its not impossible that someone might want to consider splashing for both sketches and assistant. I perhaps should have included it in my cards not used in this build section for completeness.

Thanks for sharing your experience of Old Book of Lore, that's not actually a concern I had thought of, but its good to know.

Im interested that fact that the builds both you and @0bs propose seem to want to go Hard Knocks over Physical Training to get the OOF slot back. Certainly this is appealing, but i worry about encounter deck cover with only Guts and Unexpected Courage to prop you up in an emergency. I wonder if I am I over compensating here perhaps? I might give the Fire Axe/Hard Knocks set up a whirl one day. Unless perhaps you have some experience you can report on? I note that rogue cards in general are lacking in pips so its not likely you`ll have say an event you could choose to sacrifice in a pinch. Perhaps the addition of more wild symbols might be a solution. Quick Thinking looks really nice as either a back up or as its intended bonus action tempo boost/panic button. Another option might be Lucky Dice, and just keep it for nasty encounters.

I know what you mean about ammo restrictions. It never feels good to have such an key/expensive card be temporary. If your the main damage dealer those are going to run out much faster that if there are a few people pitching in. And paired with Wendy i would imagine you are doing most of the fighting. Certainly grabbing an Upgraded Switchblade or two go a long way to providing a more permanent back up should the need come. The only other alternatives i know of are Contraband which is a bit over priced imo, (but i guess your jenny - your rich 4 creds for say 3 ammo is a poor return unless you only need 3 more shots) or some crazy Scavenging combo (but would add even more layers to this big rig problem).

The other way of looking at the Twins though is that with Physical Training/Hard Knocks down you can always deal single damage hits reliably so you should be ok to deal with small mobs and rogue has alot of burst damage alternatives (Backstab, Double or Nothing, and maybe Sneak Attack) for larger mobs. So if you do go out of ammo or dont find the twins you can have at least some means at your disposal.

Regarding Links thanks, i got it.

I replayed 3 scenarios from dunwich (museum, train and Altar) with wendy and jenny, using this deck.

I really like the resulting deck, as the draw acceleration gets rid of many of the speed problems the deck had (unless all seeker cards are the last 8 cards of the deck, which also happed once).

Regarding weapons, Switchblade 2 is the way to go, as jenny has all the ressources to reliably pay for the damage bonus. Jenny's Twin .45s is only a temporary solution until you get the blade.

As a side note, Wendy isn't a bad fighter, if you build her around Fire Axe and Dark Horse. Adding Overpower and Rise to the Occasion helps to beat bigger stuff.

If i'd need to choose between Laboratory Assistant and Preposterous Sketches, i'd go for the sketches. Drawing more cards is more important and the condition of clues on your location wasn't an issue in my games. To clarify, this assumes you help solving the scenario from turn 1 or 2 (spending 1 or 2 actions each turn to move/gather clue). So you often move to new locations, which have clue.

Regarding will tests (how did you create icon links?), these often result in horror. But even with 3 mental trauma you can often do these tests with no bonus (just suck it up) and place horror on the one or other soak card. However commiting Guts or Elder Sign Amulets to real important tests. Draw acceleration makes sure, you always have them in hand.

The new Lucky Dice is also a real winner in jennys deck, as she has the ressources to use it multiple times (you don't return the drawn token to the bag until the test is complete). It's funny to draw some real bad tokens from the chaos bag and still succeed: Autofail, -3, -4, -3, -1

Too bad you can include the dice only once, but again, draw acceleration helps with this.

Oh to add symbols just prefix with $ sign and a little list comes up in the same way # gets you cards.

Still testing and tweaking my build. Had 3 good games with it so far with Fire Axe as main weapon. I agree though, ill be upgrading to Switchblade 2 once i have enough xp under my belt then Adapting in Preposterous Sketches i think.

Re sanity i have decided to keep with Physical Training for now. I see what youve done in your build turning Elder Sign Amulet into Guts 3 and 4. but thats alot of xp to be spending early campaign i think, and without any trauma just yet im hoping to get away with paying to avoid horror from checks. Maybe later in the campaign i`ll have to consider things like that.

yeah Lucky Dice are definately on my radar for a later buy as well. I play a "never fail" wendy build as part of a 3p campaign and its so nice to look at a chaos bag draw and have the choice to just say no. I think the only issue with Lucky Dice in jenny is she has quite a few early high priority upgrades to consider. Streetwise, Adaptable, Switchblade 2, Hot Streak etc. They will be great, they will just be a late addition possibly. That said ive not actually used them yet, im just making assumptions based on my experience as wendy who doesnt have the same option to pay to go high on skill tests so the comparison might not be ideal here.

I tried Lucky Dice in my Dark Horse wendy deck, but you simply can't use it with only 1-2 (Lone Wolf) new ressources each turn. Most of the time, i used them on combat checkes with the axe or "wasted" them, to get the horse online when investigating.

How's your experience with the Axe in jennys deck? I considered it, but it forces you too often to spend all ressources to get the damage upgrade, so i didn't try. However you usually want to save some ressources for big or tests.

Sorry @Django i managed to put my reply to the axe question on your decks thread. arkhamdb.com for anyone following this.

Quick C&P of the response here: "Im still not sure about it. It does work and it does set up very fast but it also burns your resources quite heavilly. The thing to note about it is that it doesnt have to be used to get the bonus damage. Its an accuracy weapon. And an enabler for for things like Double or Nothing, or Quick Thinking, but there are plenty of times your left wanting for that bonus damage. Afterall if you get leo down you have the extra actions to attack twice etc. You do have the option to go all in to get the damage ofc, but doing so can be an over commitment on some occasions leaving you cash short the follwing turn. In fairness this happens less often than you would expect perhaps.

But as I say im trying another direction just now with the Machete/.41 Derringer settup. Obv Switchblade 2 can sub in for derringer once xp is available. It is slower but the derringers/switchblades basic +2 is usually enough to land hits on their own if not to reliably get bonus damage on its own. They really want even just 1 resource spent on a Physical Training/Hard Knocks to get good odds on landing the damage in most cases (and thats on standard). To compensate for this ive put in 2x Hard Knocks and 2x Physical Training which seems to work alright, but you are back to being dependent on drawing and playing one of them and a weapon. Which ofc goes back to the deck being a bit slower and its alot of deck slots, but maybe thats where the balance has to lie for now. Perhaps the advent of Streetwise means that Jenny is meant to be quick to set up for investigating and evading (and rogue evasion based burst damage like Backstab) but slower for combat. Certainly in games when ive paired her up with combat chars it has worked better than with seekers."

I see, i hadn't considered the extra action from leo (he's in another deck for my jenny game), that could make it worthwile attacking for only 1 damage.

Another thing, did you consider Baseball Bat? I know the risk of losing it on exists, but it might not be so bad for a +2 attack/ 2 damage weapon?

I must admit i didnt even consider it. This might be because pre-streetwise i often include Flashlights. but I think once youve got Streetwise down theres less need for it so you can afford the other handslot. I think Jenny certainly prefers +2 to compensate for base of 3. So on paper it looks ok as a filler weapon while your digging for something that wont eventually break on you. Afterall your in rogue. you have a few good burst damage event options to fall back on while you dig if needed. I think its main competitor is probably Machete though, which in fairness is a pretty solid long term solution despite its +1.