Daniela Goes to Night School (Solo, Quick Learner)

An Arkham challenge: How to play solo with Daniela?

How about using a pair of the Quick Learner permanent, giving you a once-per-turn -2 to any test difficulty that stacks with Flashlights and Keyrings. All you have to do is permanently concede the initiative, playing around skill tests in your first action.

I won't get to actually play this until I have the cards in hand so it's all academic for now. Feedback appreciated!

This deck is built around buying 2 Quick Learner as soon as possible and then planning turns around investigating on the third action where any tests have -2 difficulty. With a Flashlight or Old Keyring in hand, any location up to 4 shroud can be cleared each turn, allowing for steady, if slow, progress against the Act deck. The third action -2 can also help for hurdling tricky scenario tests or just beating on enemies.

The permanent +2 difficulty to all tests during the first action is a challenge but can mostly be played around just by moving or playing cards during that action. When enemies spawn, there's Toe to Toe, Scene of the Crime, or just whaling away with the Mechanic's Wrench at 7 , +2 difficulty be damned.

Meanwhile, Flesh Ward and Guard Dog work with Daniela's ability to mitigate enemy attacks and score lots of testless, actionless damage while her solid 4 is dealing with the encounter deck.

Three big challenges for this deck:

• Bosses: Taking a few gratuitous 1/1 attacks throughout the scenario is fine but what happens when they're dishing out 2/2 or more and you're already softened up?
• Action Compression: There's potential for Daniela to handle enemies very quickly when her [Wrench](/card/08002) is handy but outside of that, there isn't much speed here.
• The Scenario I (and II) Blues: Soloing with a 2 'gator is tricky enough. At 1 , there isn't much use trying to pile [Perception](/card/01090) or [Unexpected Courage](/card/01093) onto investigations. Every clue shroud 3 and above will need to be nabbed with testless events [Evidence!](/card/01022), [SOTC](/card/04103), or [LWIF](/card/01079). I plan to purchase [In the Thick of It](/card/08125) and bank the 3 XP in order to have one [QL](/card/60530) by the second scenario and hopefully both by the third.

Decklist:

Flashlight
Old Keyring
The backbone of the deck. Already powerful on their own, they let you grab a clue from any 2 or less shroud location. With 2 Quick Learners, any 4 shroud clue is easily grabbed. They can be a little action-intensive, requiring 4 actions for 3 clues or 3 for 2, but every pull should be "everything-but-the-." 2-clue 2-shroud locations can be cleared on the second and third actions with just one supply or key.

Mechanic's Wrench
Daniela's signature is incredible for solo enemy management. When a non-hunter enemy spawns on you that you don't care about because you just grabbed the clue on your location with the third action of the previous turn, just use the Wrench to make it attack you and automatically evade it with Daniela's ability. No actions required, just a little blood and guts.

For hunters and other irritants, you have to take the attack and then can swing throughout the turn at the equivalent of 5 skill (+2 , +2 difficulty), 7, then 9 (+2 , -2 difficulty) for two damage each. Between her ability and Guard Dog, there's a lot of flexibility to kill up to 4 health enemies with 1 absorbed attack and 1 or no actions. If an enemy has even health, skip the and take an AoO to power up the wrench.

As fun as the Wrench is, all this attrition will start to build up...

Flesh Ward
To help mitigate all those attacks! Up to 6 total soak.

Guard Dog
Handles 1 health enemies actionlessly with an AoO and 2 health enemies when combined with Daniela's ability in the enemy phase or with the Wrench. An extra horror soak for icing.

"Look what I found!"
Not the most fun pick for the second level 0 Survivor splash but a workhorse here. Especially needed for muddling through the early scenarios. Later on, it provides action compression and protection from the autofail. On your third action with 2 QL, can grab 2 clues from a 4 shroud, easy peasy, no Flashlight necessary.

Scene of the Crime
Also essential in the early scenarios and then later on to grab a clue against any shroud during the first action when you'd usually be useless. Not the most synergy here: once you have 2 QL set up, clues will often be cleared on the third action making the chances of a serendipitous 2 clues pretty rare.

Toe to Toe
A bomb card for Daniela, doing 3 testless damage with her ability for the cost of an attack, not caring a whit about the +2 first action difficulty from QL. Stacks with Guard Dog and Vicious Blow for serious stopping power.

Glory
Much needed card draw help early on. Upgrade into Backpack (2).

Evidence!
Mostly just for clue help to get through early scenarios pre-QL. Icons aren't much use for Daniela. Upgrade target along with Glory.

Second Wind
Not the most efficient card, taking an action, but a nice cantrip effect that helps you stay alive and save Flesh Ward charges for horror. Plays around the +2 difficulty from QL.

Emergency Cache
An actionless resource solution like Clean Them Out would also work but Cache being a future target for Backpack (2) gives it the edge.

Guts
Overpower
Test insurance and deck thinning.

Take Heart
Wish I could bring two. Should be easy to score off a or encounter.

Vicious Blow
Damage!

Unexpected Courage
You never know! (But mostly to shore up 3 or 4 tests from the encounter deck.)

Priority upgrades:

Quick Learner (4)

Backpack (2) - Flashlights and Keyrings make this deck go while the Wrench is huge for enemy management. With 8 targets including the other Backpack and Caches, this should draw 3 on most attempts, a huge boost to a deck without any consistent draw that needs the Wrench to really sing.

Brute Force (1) - Great damage card. Especially tough to miss with this if you can use it third action. Almost definitely the next purchase after Quick Learner and Backpack. Maybe before Backpack.

Some interesting options after that:

Unexpected Courage (2) - and tests on encounter and scenario cards are pretty common. Something like Malfunction can cause a scenario-ending bottleneck for Daniela. I've never purchased this before but it could be a lifesaver here when you just have to spam a difficult test on a weak skill. Alternately, throw it at every or test until you get lucky and pass one. For 'lose by' treacheries, you can blunt the damage and keep the UC.

Dauntless Spirit - 5 or 4 icons, pretty nice!

Fend Off (3) - Actionlessly dealing with a hunter for 2 resources is pretty nice, especially with a Flesh Ward charge to dull the blow, but it doesn't take advantage of Daniela's ability and is useless against Elites who pose the biggest problems for her.

Dig Deep (4) - Put the encounter deck in a chokehold testing at 6 or 4 with the option to pay for more. Quite a bit of XP, though.

Plucky (3) - A no-cost actionless bit of soak with a boost that will help in the Mythos phase. Guard Dog and Flesh Ward can help keep it around.

Aquinnah (3) - Aquinnah should be a great fit for Daniela but the numbers don't quite work out compared to Guard Dog. For your run-of-the-mill enemy doing 1 damage and 1 horror, Aquinnah will do 1 damage to the enemy, take 1 horror to herself, and leave you dealing with 1 horror. Guard Dog will dole out 1 damage and take 1 damage to itself, also leaving you 1 horror. More or less equivalent. For bigger enemies attacking at 2/2, Aquinnah performs a lot better, doing 2 damage and taking a horror while you deal with 2 more horror, much better than the Guard Dog who will still only do 1 damage and leave you with 1 and 2 to absorb. Even bigger bosses tip the scale further and I worry about bosses for this deck but I'm not sure Aquinnah is the answer there at 3 XP and 4 resources when Guard Dog is already strong.

Outside of these, many of the classic upgrades like Lucky! (2), Alter Fate (3), and Nothing Left to Lose (3) will also slot in just fine. And yes, Peter Sylvestre (2) is a great fit, but he's enjoying retirement...

Thanks for reading!