Wendy Adams' School of Hard Knocks

Evading enemies should only be a last resort, as this costs you actions each turn. I once played Wendy as the main fighter of a 2 player group and fared pretty well. Her ability really saves the day.

Add 2x baseball bat and another derringer to the deck, while removing costly event cards, like cunning distraction. backstab and Sneak attack also arent very useful, if you kill enemies right away.

You should also add 2x Leo de Luca to any rogue deck, it's one of the best cards in the whole game.

For starting hand, you should mulligan for 2 of these cards: Leo, Hard Knocks and any weapon (in this priority).

Nice deck but maybe with too few weapons. Maybe another flashlight would be useful, especially in locations with high shroud values.

Thank so for the feedback. I'm surprised Wendy could pull off being the main fighter. Admittedly I've played her just the once, but in the few other games I've played, it seems better to augment a character's strengths than try to shore up their weaknesses. So I was trying for a less fighting, more evading tack. I'll keep tinkering...

It was our first game and i was VERY lucky drawing. I was playing wendy with starter deck (all cards 1x). I had leo and hard knocks on starting hand in szenario 1 and 2 and drew the baseball bat in first 5 turns.

However her ability is amazing, it guaranties success most of the time, if you can get to +2 in a test in standard difficulty. Compared to other investigators, wendys actions are more efficient as you're more successful (however the other investigators save actions in other ways).

However we played the last scenario wrong, so i don't have any experience with that. We forgot to remove the boss from the encounter deck and spawned him in turn 4, but were totally unprepared.

I tried the deck with the Scenario 1 and won without any particular problem. Got 7xp. But I'm having a really hard time figuring out what to remove and what to include... I'd like to include one Flashlight, one .41 Derringer and either one Bulletproof Vest or Elder Sign Amulet. I think we could remove 1 Cunning Distraction and 1 Leather Coat. What do you think? And what other possibilities could there be?

Szenario 1 very easy compared to 2 and 3, so it's not a good benchmark for your characters build.

I'm not sure about Elder Sign Amulet, as it conflicts with wendys amulet, but you should rather upgrade 2x Lucky! and 2x Leo De Luca (or add him to your deck if you haven't).

If you're playing alone, get rid of any evasion cards and replace them with weapons. See my first comment on this deck.

I played a second time last night, substituting another .41 Derringer for the Cunning Distraction. I survived scenario 1 this time, and I'll see how it goes.

The guys from the Mythos Busters podcast keep mentioning you don't always have to fight to win, so I'm going to see if it's possible to get past the second and even the third scenarios without much fighting. I'm not hopeful but I am curious. And the scenarios don't take that long solo.

I got through the first scenario without any problem, especially thanks to Backstab, and a combination of .41 Derringer and Hard Knocks. I got 7xp but could not really decide how to spend them all properly. Just like desertmonkey, I substituted one Cunning Distraction for another .41 Derringer and one Leather Coat for one Flashlight. And I kept 5xp. I tried the second scenario, only managed to get rid of 2 cultists without fighting once. I got 6xp (which, including the remaining 5xp from scenario 1, gave me 11xp) and upgraded the deck by replacing the 2 Rabbit's Foot with 2 Bulletproof Vest and the 2 Lucky! with 2 Cat Burglar. I will try Scenario 3 with these changes and see if I can win.

Thanks for your feedback, i'm really interested in your final result. Also, do you have a specific goal in mind? Like see if you can get to the end or get as much XP as possible?

In my opinion, the main problem with wendys base deck is, she's good at surviving (passing encounter deck tests, evading monster), but none of this contributes to winning the game. Basically in all missions you must gather clues like hell, while the encounter deck throes challenges at you. If you don't kill monsters, you have to evade them each turn, which reduce the amount of actions you have, to gather clues. So you must customize the deck, to compensate for this.

On a side note, which ending of szenario 2 did you get? Did you resign or did the last agenda end it?

I'd say that my main goal is to try and win, which I don't often achieve though... The end of scenario 2 was brought about by my getting killed by the The Masked Hunter and a Cultist spawned by the Encounter Deck a few turns before which had a doom token on it. I was trying to find a way to kill the Cultist, remove its doom token and trigger the Parley action with Herman Collins before the number of doom tokens reached 8. Unfortunately I had not taken into account the fact that the number of damages would be enough to kill me during the Monsters Phase...

Just to be sure, you know that all doom tokens disappear, when the agenda advances? So cultists in play also lose theirs, when the agenda advances and they don't contribute to the next agenda. Cultists and wizards of the order don't advance the agenda on their own, so after spawning them, you have 1 turn to kill them (or more, if the current agenda is at it's start).

The masked hunter has speed 2, so he should be easy to evade? Enemies refresh during the player upkeep, so enemies will not attack you and "hunters" will not follow you, during the turn you evaded them.

To kill the masked hunter, you could attack him and evade on your last action, so he can't counter during his turn. Repeat until he's dead? However he has fight 4, so assuming you have a baseball bat, you should have additional +3 fight on each attack or you'll likely fail.

Tonight I just squeaked by the Midnight Masks. I barely escaped with just 3 VP. The Masked Hunter got away unfortunately. I had upgraded Lucky! and Leo De Luca and swapped out Stray Cat to Aquinnah, which helped a lot. I got to kill off both Hunting Nightgaunt by deflecting The Masked Hunter damage onto them before poor Aquinnah went insane.

My beef with the Baseball Bat is it occupies both my hand slots. But after playing these two scenarios, it seems that might not be much of an issue for Wendy, as I never had both hand slots occupied during the two scenarios. Maybe I'll try it out after I run through The Devourer Below.

Django, you're right. Maybe I had overlooked that aspect of the rules about the doom tokens on cultists... Maybe I could have won...! Anyway, evading was not a problem.

@Delta: I played zombicide and arkham boardgame a lot and often realized, after the was too easy, we forgot some rule or made timing errors. So when i'm new to a complex game, i reread the rules after 1 or 2 sessions, or when it was too easy. I often find our mistakes and get new tactical ideas this way. For example, on my 2nd reading of the arkham lcg rules, i realized that playing arcane initiate during the turn the agenda advances anyway, her doom token won't make a difference. She's like the cultists in this regard.

@desertmonkey: Aquinnah is one of those cards that sound powerful. But once you're in the game, you hardly have situations where she's really helpful, if you kill all enemies quickly. As an ally she occupies the same slot als Leo De Luca, on of the most powerful cards in the game (together wird Old Book of Lore). Compare Aquinnah with the Guard Dog, Beat Cop or Agnes Baker's ability. They trigger much easier, to kill stuff. Aquinnah either requires 2 enemies to spawn in same round, or for you to keep an enemy alive to trigger her ability. But this costs you actions each round to evade, unless you let them hit you. Most of the time, it's better to kill enemies. She also does not redirect horror to other enemies.