Solo Wendy on Expert

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CaiusDrewart · 3004

Lately, I've been trying to make solo Wendy work on Expert. There are a lot of obstacles to be overcome. Most notably, Wendy has mediocre Intellect (3) and truly atrocious Combat (1). Those are the two stats you use to actually win scenarios, so this is a problem. I certainly believe Wendy has the worst statline of all 10 investigators. Nevertheless, even on the hardest levels, she can do it! This is the most effective deck I've come up with.

Here are the my results from testing. SPOILERS for the first five Dunwich scenarios below.

Extracurricular Activity: I've attempted this three times and have been able to warn the students in the Dormitories all three times. Unfortunately, this deck cannot kill The Experiment, but I think that is essentially impossible for a level 0 Wendy deck anyway. Saving the students is a perfectly acceptable outcome. Helpful tip for playing this scenario: never end your turn in a location with clues. If you can manage that, Locked Door and Thrall become harmless draws, and that makes a huge difference.

The House Always Wins: I only tried this once (not much point in testing a deck in such a luck-based scenario.) I didn't rescue Peter but managed to get 3 VP and escape, which is OK. I think this deck is well-suited to this scenario because Elusive is extremely powerful here.

The Miskatonic Museum: Two tries, two successes. A very easy scenario for Wendy since there are so few monsters about. It's also just a generally easy scenario. Either evade the Hunting Horror repeatedly or Backstab it. Either works. The scenario is very generous with Doom, so you should have plenty of time to get the clues you need.

Essex County Express: Seven tries, four successes. I started off 0 for 2 and thought this deck might have a real problem with this scenario, but then won four of my next five attempts. Flashlight and "Look what I found!" are the keys here. Backstab is a good solution to Grappling Horror (otherwise a big problem for Wendy).

Blood on the Altar: Tried it once and was able to kill Silas Bishop, though not before two sacrifices were made. Silas Bishop has a mere 6 health and 3 fight, so even for Wendy killing him shouldn't be a problem. If you have Leo De Luca, Baseball Bat, and Will to Survive, you could do it in one turn with zero damage. Definitely go for the combat over the clues. This scenario is not a total cakewalk, as there's some risk of getting overwhelmed by enemies (tip: try not to draw both Nightgaunts.) You might also have to clear out a 3-clue, 3-shroud location, which, yuck. Still, I bet you can win it a majority of the time.

I have not tested this deck in Undimensioned and Unseen yet. That scenario is very weird, so I'm not really sure how this deck would perform. It's a bit lacking in Will icons, but maybe Will to Survive could make it work.

OK, now for a quick explanation of why I included the cards I did:

Fire Axe: We'd like to evade monsters rather than fight them, but sometimes we have to fight--if the enemy has hunter, if the enemy is worth VP, if the enemy is a boss, or if the enemy is simply on an important space. Fire Axe is cheap to put in play and can boost Wendy's combat by up to +6 (at which point it becomes not so cheap, but oh well.)

Flashlight: One of the best cards in the game on Expert. You will automatically get a clue from a 1 or 2 shroud location (unless you get the autofail token, but Wendy can redraw that.) This is incredibly important! Without this, Wendy's Intellect of 3 is way too poor to handle even 1 or 2 shroud locations on expert without burning a bunch of cards. In solo play, the 3 charges go a very long way.

Baseball Bat: Again, we will need to fight sometimes. Evasion is just not a good answer to everything. I like that this card will always give you the +1 damage, whereas Fire Axe can sometimes be very finicky about that (e.g., if you have too many resources.) A very efficient weapon, and Wendy's redraw ability is a good answer to the breakage problem. Combines well with Scrapper once we pick that up.

Leo De Luca: The best ally in the game. Having access to him is a major perk of playing Wendy. Peter Sylvestre is a fine card, but nothing can top Leo. Having 25% more actions in solo is enormously good.

Lone Wolf: Another hugely important card. This will be the foundation of our economy. The deck is very cheap in the level 0 version (save for Fire Axe), but we'll want to pick up Scrapper and Will to Survive before too long. Lone Wolf will turn those cards into powerhouses.

"Look what I found!": A Survivor staple. A fantastic source of clues. You can always use it on 1 or 2 shroud locations if you fail the test. If you combine it with Flashlight, you can guarantee at least 1 clue from a 4-shroud location. That's very helpful, since Wendy otherwise finds high-shroud locations a real struggle.

Backstab: You could maybe put Sneak Attack in instead. That's a more reliable but less powerful card. But I like Backstab's upside of dealing 3 damage in one action; that's really great against 3 health enemies (Hunting Horror, Grappling Horror, Lupine Thrall, etc). You should have plenty of Agility icons in your hand to make this card hit. We'll also pick up Scrapper soon, which makes this card better.

Elusive: One of the best events in the game. Gets you out of trouble and teleports you across the map. The downside is sometimes there won't be any revealed locations you want to go to. Still, when this works, it's very impressive. Decent icons on this card.

Lucky!: The best level 0 event in the game, in my opinion. Its power is pretty self-explanatory.

Think on Your Feet: A pretty good card, especially in solo. Can potentially save you several actions if it gives you a helpful move and means you don't have to waste time and resources evading a monster. Good icons, too.

Guts: These "core 8" skill cards are indispensable. They grant a really helpful bonus, which you will absolutely need to pass tests on Expert, and then they replace themselves! You don't have to pay anything! It's so good. Guts is particularly great since every encounter deck in every scenario is going to throw Willpower tests at you.

Manual Dexterity: Wendy will use Agility a lot more than most investigators (for evading and Backstabbing), so we want this. Again, skill cards rock.

Overpower: Eventually, I hope FFG releases a weapon that lets Wendy fight with Agility. Then she'll be able to omit Overpower. For now, this is needed to make Baseball Bat and Fire Axe connect.

Perception: Vital to help Wendy crack high-shroud locations (perhaps in conjunction with Lucky!).

Unexpected Courage: I usually include this in my decks. It doesn't replace itself, but +2 to whatever test you want is worthwhile. A quality card for sure.

XP Priorities

You want Scrapper. XP permanents are generally great, and this will allow you to actually evade with some reliability. Wendy really struggles to reliably evade on Expert without this! It's very important. You have Lone Wolf to fuel it. Scrapper also makes Baseball Bat and Backstab much better.

Will to Survive: We want two copies of this. Great for dealing with high-shroud locations, great for defeating enemies. Those are two things Wendy is otherwise terrible at (did I mention that she's a bad investigator?)

After that... XP priorities are much less clear. Consider Charisma and Peter Sylvestre II. The Lucky Dice aren't bad either.

A note on some cards we did NOT include:

Scavenging, Rabbit's Foot, Pickpocketing: These cards are perennial favorites in Wendy decks, but I don't like them. They're slow and take a long time to generate a profit. Scavenging is a particularly bad choice because succeeding by 2+ on investigations is not going to happen a lot for Wendy on Expert. You might think Rabbit's Foot would be better on Expert, since the chaos bag is so brutal, but in fact it's not as good as it seems. The best strategy on Expert is to do everything you can to minimize the number of skill tests you attempt, or make them auto-successes, with e.g. Flashlight or Will to Survive. When we do attempt skill tests, we want to boost them with sufficient skill cards that we'll actually pass them. So Rabbit's Foot is just going to take too long to pay off, if it ever does. Pickpocketing is the worst of the three. You have to successfully evade five times to start generating a significant return. Even for Wendy, that's way too tall an order.

Newspaper: I'm interested in any cards that help investigation, but Newspaper is weak and situational compared to Flashlight and "Look what I found!". Reducing shroud is much, much better than increasing Intellect.

Rise to the Occasion: Too hard to use, even for Wendy. Basically the only use of this card is boosting us in combat (there are currently zero treacheries that Wendy can use this on in normal situations). Now, +3 to Combat isn't the worst, but I'd rather have Overpower.

Liquid Courage: Horror can be a real problem for Wendy because of Abandoned and Alone. But voluntarily taking on extra skill tests like this is a nonstarter on Expert. Your odds of passing an unboosted Will (2) test are terrible (probably <30%, depending a bit on what the special tokens do.) You are probably exposing yourself to horrible special token effects, too. Stay away.

Survival Instinct: Surprisingly hard to use. I think it's just inferior to Manual Dexterity. Only getting +1 on the test is disappointing.

Emergency Cache: This card isn't all that efficient, and I think we can skip it with a fairly cheap deck and Lone Wolf.

Cunning Distraction: I actually like this card quite a bit (those icons are amazing!), and I was sad I couldn't find room for it. If you're using Adaptable, definitely swap this in for Undimensioned and Unseen.

Leather Coat: It's not terrible, but I don't think we need it. Health damage is rarely a huge issue for Wendy. If you're playing correctly you shouldn't be taking many hits from monsters.

Stray Cat: I like the automatic, action-less evade. But we want to be playing Leo De Luca on Turn 1, so this doesn't work for us.

Bait and Switch: Situational, and doesn't grant a bonus to help you actually succeed on the evade. Meh.

Burglary: Frivolous skill tests are Expert are a bad idea. Even on lower levels, I think this card is too slow to be worthwhile.

Dark Horse: Interesting, but I would say it's way too hard to use for Wendy. Not worth the trouble.

Double or Nothing: I quite like this card, and it combines very well with Flashlight (acting as a de facto Deduction.) Just couldn't find space for it.

Any Rogue card that requires succeeding by 2 or more (.41 Derringer, Switchblade, Opportunist, Quick Thinking, etc): These cards just really suffer on Expert, where those huge successes are hard to come by. Most of them aren't that great anyway, to be honest.

Advice on playing the deck:

--I usually look for Leo De Luca and/or Lone Wolf in my opening hand. What other cards you look for depends on the specific scenario. Flashlight, "Look what I found!", and Lucky! are almost always good.

--If you have Leo De Luca in play, try to get some other asset in play (ideally, Lone Wolf), so you don't lose Leo to Crypt Chill, Pushed into the Beyond, etc.

--+3 or +4 is usually where you want to be on your skill tests. This almost always means committing cards. Fortunately, your skill cards replace themselves, so you can sustain this :)

--Terrible special token effects are normally a big threat on Expert, but Wendy's special ability almost completely negates this. Probably the best thing about her.

--The icons on Wendy's Amulet are tempting, and I do end up frequently pitching it for those. But it's definitely worth playing if a Lucky! or Will to Survive is on top of your discard pile. This card can also save you from milling your deck in The Miskatonic Museum or Extracurricular Activity (if you've drawn Beyond the Veil and can't afford to do that).

--Horror is a bit of a problem. You have to treat your effective sanity pool as 2 smaller than it is because of Abandoned and Alone. Getting Leo De Luca in play helps a lot. The effective Sanity pool of 7 (or 9 if you don't draw Abandoned and Alone) is usually sufficient.

--If you must clear a location with 3 or 4 shroud and don't have your investigation cards in hand, you have no choice but to draw a bunch of times until you find something. Don't waste time trying tests which you'll only succeed on 1 or 2 tokens.

--Keep your eye on the prize. Make sure that every action you take significantly contributes towards winning the scenario. If you have Think on Your Feet in your hand, you probably don't need to waste time playing your Fire Axe. Don't take resources unless you have a plan for them. And so forth.

3 comments

May 29, 2017 Dreadreaper · 6177

Great write up! Have you tried doing the core scenarios with this deck? I imagine the number of monsters may be too high for Wendy. It's easy to get overwhelmed.

May 30, 2017 Synisill · 783

Thank you for this in-depth summary, i hope a lot of players will read this. Only one point i would argue about is your reasoning for not including Liquid Courage. An unboosted +2 difference is a big deal in Expert mode! The median of all tokens in Extracurricular Activity is at -2, for example, so you heal 1 horror in 100% of all cases and 2 horror in 50%. That's not bad!

May 31, 2017 danielh21 · 1

Really interessting deck. I made a Wendy Solo aswell, and the only difference was that I had a Rise to the Occasion, Dig Deep and Sneak Attack for Manual Dexterity, Leo De Luca, Baseball Bat. But then again Im not playing on Expert. :) I do think that Im going for upgraded Leo after the first scenario.