This deck offers a flexible Wendy that is not completely dependent on Wendy's Amulet, by using Sledgehammer to fight. She also uses Flashlight and Lockpicks to get clues. Crafty, the theme of this deck, connects fighting with finding clues.

The main theme is making use of her off-stat , using various temporary buffs such as Jury-Rig, Hard Knocks, and Crafty. Challenges lies in managing 2-handedness of Sledgehammer to switch between fight and clue works, and managing actions required for the hammer with help from Leo De Luca.

► About "2 Packs Deck Guide"
　A series of decks made with the new distribution model in mind, requiring a Revised Core Set box + just 1 more Investigator Expansion box. ❄ character on the deck's name means the additional box it uses is Edge of the Earth Investigator Expansion.
　It maximizes the chance of newcomers being able to build and learn to play the game, enjoying the story on Standard difficulty ASAP. They can then get into deck-building later if they wished to do so. See other decks in the "2 Packs Deck Guide" series here.

2 Packs Team Compositions

2 Packs Deck Guide : Edge of the Earth series is now complete with the following decks :

• Daniela Reyes: ❄ 2 Packs Deck Guide : Burning Bruiser
• Daniela Reyes: ❄ 2 Packs Deck Guide : Tanking Cats and Dogs
• Norman Withers: ❄ 2 Packs Deck Guide : Double Icons in the Stars
• Norman Withers: ❄ 2 Packs Deck Guide : Norman the Miskatonic Tutor
• Monterey Jack: ❄ 2 Packs Deck Guide : The Underworld Bullwhip
• Lily Chen: ❄ 2 Packs Deck Guide : Lily the WILL AGI Battle-Mage
• Bob Jenkins: ❄ 2 Packs Deck Guide : Short Supply Scavenging
• Roland Banks: ❄ 2 Packs Deck Guide : Roland the Real, Authentic Spy
• Daisy Walker: ❄ 2 Packs Deck Guide : Guns and Books
• "Skids" O'Toole: ❄ 2 Packs Deck Guide : Destiny Draw
• Agnes Baker: ❄ 2 Packs Deck Guide : Agnes the "Mahou Shoujo"
• Wendy Adams: ❄ 2 Packs Deck Guide : Wendy Lovecrafting

To help assembling a party made entirely from just 2 packs, I have a tool that let you browse team compositions for 2 players, 3 players, and 4 players, that has manageable amount of card overlaps or even none at all. The result is sorted from low to high overlaps. Click here to see all team comps.

Upgrade guide

Main

Personally I would go in this order. "Extras" can be slotted in earlier or later as you like, in any order.

(View at arkham-starter.com)

✷ By putting down Crafty, holding Sledgehammer, and having Talisman of Protection, you can achieve 5 class icons for Cheat the System and Strength in Numbers. That's why they are immediately purchased right after. Strength in Numbers is an excellent card that make you feel like superman for a test. Somehow this kid could do it all!

❂ Wendy's 3 is not enough for vanilla investigate on 2 shroud 3 clues location. Lockpicks kind of overkill those locations too. If you don't have any better clue getters in your party, consider purchasing this earlier. (Perhaps in place of the 2nd copy of Crafty, for the same price.)

✧ 1x of lower version Sledgehammer is left in the deck. In the end, you will have 1x of each version, for both fight flexibility and cost saving.

✰In my run, though Scavenging possibility is tempting, I found its 4 play cost a bit too much when Cheat the System is not quite working. Look at your campaign whether the latter half seems to have a lot of Hazard treachery or not in deciding whether to get this, or skip it.

Guts removal can be changed to Overpower if you want, look at your party's balance. Overpower is retained here so Wendy leaned towards hitting the hammer more.

You suffer no Exile consequence when using Burn After Reading in the final scenario, because you won't continue playing after that. Highly recommended if you have a spare 1 XP towards the final scenario.

Lastly, the not-so-exciting Lucky! (2) (Not in the side deck) is also an option. Drawing bonus is cool on Wendy since maintaining several cards on hand means more chances of chaos token redo.

Making use of the off-stat

Sledgehammer's main attraction is the "quality swing" which may cost more actions (and losing out to some other weapons attacking multiple times) but is accurate and hits hard.

The main theme of this deck is getting her 1 to be over 5 , through mainly temporary boosts. Sledgehammer has special synergy with this style of fighting and especially with low combat character, since it "compresses test" to fewer times letting you virtually do more for your one-time boosts.

Considering we are making a character with 1 works, where previously it looks like the game is telling you to use other stats to do the job. It means the other high stats are still there to play with. This Wendy do really well against the unknown! Be it blind run, true solo play, or slot into any party that need different kind of help.

Turning temporary boosts to reliability

The glue that connect Sledgehammer, Lockpicks, and Flashlight together is Crafty. A replenishing source of temporary boost.

It improves "Tool" trait playing discount as well as efficiency on their ability. Hammer starts hitting things, and "Crafty investigation" will help with Scavenging as well. We purchase as many as 2x Crafty in this deck to highlight this play style.

The usual "offensive Tactic event" for Wendy such as Backstab and Sneak Attack are not in this deck at all, giving unusual flavor of playing her than her Revised Core Set deck.

Jury-Rig is a nice 0 cost Event compatible with the amulet, to improve hammer's accuracy to respectable range. Early scenarios will need some pumps from Hard Knocks, later on Crafty can support your hammer swings.

Two starting events Scout Ahead and Ethereal Slip can be discounted by Crafty while playing with the amulet. Nearing the end of campaign, we add a bit more of these fun Insight/Trick Event such as Fend Off and Burn After Reading.

Challenges

The main challenge is to deal with 2-handedness of Sledgehammer, which prevents equipping Flashlight or Lockpicks at the same time.

Scavenging and Professor William Webb can help get the hammer back after an intermittent clue works are over, but also Abandoned and Alone is always around the corner to make your discard pile gone.

A constant bumping in and out of these Tools is also important for bringing used up Jury-Rig to the discard pile for further rigging via the amulet should it comes later.

Campaign tips

1st scenario

She will not win fight with without Crafty. At this stage, finding Hard Knocks and Jury-Rig is critical!

Pay a bit more and you will see 3 HP enemy explode, which is also an HP number most investigator don't want to deal with. Payment can be obtained with using Resource action with help from Leo De Luca. Do not afraid to use Resource action a lot instead of your 4th action, since Leo is great for anything test-less.

To beat a big enemy solo in the first scenario without Event + amulet play, try rigging the hammer with Jury-Rig and have Hard Knocks ready. Performing gets you 3 , try boosting it to 6 each time with 1x rig + 1 resource Hard Knocks. The final action, try Evade and hope you can do it again the next turn.

2nd-3rd scenario

With Crafty Wendy is able to finally do meaningful things a few times per turn. With Lockpicks, she can now survive longer with Scavenging. Remember to use Crafty with Flashlight as well to improve Scavenging chance.

Keep your horror in check as Talisman of Protection is your only horror defense, and it could be triggered only at the final blow. The only other horror soak is Professor William Webb. For health, we have Leather Coat and Bandages.

Try make use of the useful Synergy cards : Strength in Numbers and Cheat the System. With Sledgehammer + Talisman of Protection + Crafty, you have all class icons.

Towards the end

Finally we move on to higher Sledgehammer. We still retain the lower level hammer as well, sometimes is just right.

The higher version can also be thrown for commit for a whopping , and of course get back with Scavenging or Professor William Webb. (And hope that Abandoned and Alone is not coming when it is out of hand.)

When story ask you to add optional story asset to your deck, remember that it also reduce consistency of the deck as well if you accept too many new cards. At some point, you may stop seeing the Sledgehammer or Crafty together for an entire scenario!

How to use Sledgehammer

Normally, Wendy is an "Event fighter". That is quite costly and bursty, depends on discard pile as well as Wendy's Amulet, as well as if Abandoned and Alone ruined your plan or not.

The "high fight" option ( or ) will lose out compared with regular fighter attacking multiple times with a +1 damage weapon. However, table is turned with Wendy because she has only 1 . A weapon like Fire Extinguisher that is otherwise great on other Survivor will do nothing without accuracy.

The hammer and especially Sledgehammer (4) version gives her sufficiently accurate hit with Crafty and Jury-Rig to get out of sticky, Event-less situation, when playing solo.

With Leo De Luca, it opens up a variety of new combo such as move it and whack, or whack and evade and move out, etc. Where previously you lack actions to do so given the clunky nature of the hammer.

In the end you would have 1x of each version. Sometimes it is useful to keep using on the smaller hammer for action efficiency, then throw the bigger hammer from hand for icons. (And try Scavenging the bigger hammer back for more commits.) Double hammers attack!

Mastering Jury-Rig

The 2x of this card is the key of hitting your Sledgehammer swing. We have to master every aspect of it!

It is an Event. (At first glance it may looks like an asset!) Therefore, Wendy's Amulet can play it from discard pile. Nice thing about this is that it is 0 cost! Usual Wendy is broke from playing all the events, this one is quite agile to play.

Getting it to the discard pile

The next mission is how to get the rig to the discard pile once the durability worn out. Note that the card does not say it is going to discard automatically (unlike e.g. Bandages).

Therefore it is important to try bumping an entire hammer out with Flashlight or Lockpicks to take out the rig altogether, once you feel that the battle settled down. This is the reason this deck keeps 2x Flashlight and adds 1 more Lockpicks to improve the chance of "tearing down" the rig.

Rigging non-hammer items

Lastly, you can also rig Flashlight and Lockpicks if you want. For Lockpicks, it has a clause that discard itself once supplies runs out, making it useful to take the rig to discard pile.

One rule to note is that you cannot intentionally discard Flashlight by playing Lockpicks while you still have free hand available. Therefore, look for Sledgehammer to bump out rigged Flashlight. (This is when you love it being 2-handed!)

Multiple triggers

It is easy to miss that can be triggered multiple times, potentially getting you +4 or +6 for your skill test (!). This is the same rule as pump cards like Hard Knocks.

When you only found Jury-Rig but not others such as Crafty, Hard Knocks, Strength in Numbers, or Overpower, sometimes you may have to go for multiple durabilities in very important swing, such as last-shotting a boss which missing it results in boss not dying and 2/2 you, or turning your friend engaging with the boss to pulp.

And often the rig came when you had already used some supplies out of your Flashlight or Lockpicks. Using multiple durabilities can make it go out of use at the same time.

Errata

Wendy's Amulet had received errata in the v1.9 : This card’s Forced ability should read: "Forced – After you play an event or discard an event from play:…"

Jury-Rig is an Event that attaches instead of going to the discard pile. Original Wendy's Amulet's Forced ability cannot trigger on it at the moment you play. Unfortunately, with the corrected text, the rig goes back to the deck after you managed to bump it out. ("discard from play")

Errata is not a taboo (it is a print correction), you should follow it instead of choosing whether to follow it or not.

Crafty

This card holds the deck together and is also the name of this deck. Try to get it on your mulligan hand!

Incidentally both Sledgehammer and Lockpicks mentioned both have "Tool" trait! This card fits perfectly to boost / accuracy, or ensuring that Lockpicks lasts long.

Flashlight is also a Tool, which is never removed from this deck to act as a semi-Lockpicks to trigger Scavenging. Jury-Rig can add more to the investigation chance.

Playing these Tool can also be discounted as well. Both Sledgehammer and Lockpicks are now 1, and Flashlight is free to put down.

As a bonus, when using Wendy's Amulet, this card can help paying Insight and Trick cards that are Event. This deck does not include her usual Tactic events such as Backstab and Sneak Attack for this reason.

Finding the 2nd copy can be put down so you are even more efficient at everything (4 discounts/boosts to allocate!), or commit it for nice in a pinch.

Other items to scavenge

Other than Sledgehammer, Lockpicks, and Flashlight, you should use Scavenging/Professor William Webb for :

• Talisman of Protection : Prevents dying. (Even from Abandoned and Alone direct horrors!!) Despite being "talisman", it is an Arcane and not clashing with Wendy's Amulet. This also ensure you have class for Synergy.

  Also remember you can equip to teammates. In my run with Roland, he often get the talisman at the start of the game and it is always helpful given his 5 sanity + some Cover Up trauma! Mid scenario where it finally breaks, you can scavenge back for personal use.

• Leather Coat, Protective Gear •• : Prevents dying. Protective Gear also gives class for Synergy, when your hand slot is on the "Lockpicks phase" instead of "Sledgehammer phase", as well as soaking more horrors.
• Bandages : Also prevents dying (lol).
• Wendy's Amulet : Notice that it has very good icons. If you have Scavenging or Professor William Webb, you may as well commit it as Unexpected Courage when discard pile is currently not looking great.

How to use Professor William Webb

• Take note of low shroud location and use it to drain clues from nearby harder locations. (Note that this is way better than Pocket Telescope, since that one uses the target location's shroud.) You can Investigate low shroud location that is already out of clues in order to trigger his ability (to find "hidden connections").
• It is a Scavenging that does not require +2 over-succeed. It can be clutch if you don't have access to easy shroud location or is lacking commits or Lockpicks to get things back in time.
• If you have Scavenging down, you can even get 2 Item from one Investigate action! Try putting Webb down when many soaks are used up (Leather Coat, Protective Gear, Bandages) to ensure the most digging target other than Sledgehammer and Lockpicks before Leo arrives.
• This deck does not include Charisma, so plan to use up his 3 charges liberally and make him die so you can replace with Leo De Luca, your life-long friend.

Dealing with Abandoned and Alone

This card encourages not hogging tons of Events in the discard pile for Wendy's Amulet play, otherwise you risk losing all your precious memories! The same goes for Items that are waiting for Scavenging trigger. By using Wendy's Amulet's often, you sent some of them goes hiding in the deck safe from this weakness.

• 2 direct horrors :
  • Talisman of Protection : It is ideal to prevent sudden defeat. But remember that it needs to be a killing blow that you can activate the talisman. The 2nd copy can be given to teammate, such as Roland Banks.
  • Plucky ••• : Direct horror will pass through this card. Sometimes that is a blessing since you want to keep your permanent stat boost going.
• Jury-Rig : This event card attaches to your Item instead of going to discard pile even when out of use, effectively "avoid" being removed from the game from this weakness for some lucky turns.

Other tips

• Fend Off •••, Ethereal Slip ••, Scout Ahead : These Crafty-compatible events has good icons! Making it more likely to ended up in discard pile for amulet play. Note that Fend Off replaces Scout Ahead in the upgrade, retaining commit icon balance.

• Cheat the System • : It maybe easy to miss that this is also an Event that amulet could use. Use it to obtain funding to play more events from the discard pile or play expensive card such as Leo De Luca or Protective Gear. Try playing it vanilla before putting down the amulet to get rich fast. It also "opens up" the discard pile so that the thing under it is effectively the "top" of discard pile, due to its 0 play cost and Fast keyword.

  When hogging it in discard pile waiting for more class Synergy, beware of Abandoned and Alone at the end of round removing it. You have your final window at the beginning of Upkeep Phase before you ready stuff and draw.

• Burn After Reading • : If you want to go for "level 2" burning to slow down doom (the lowest cost to repurchase), this deck got : Ethereal Slip (2), Protective Gear, and Professor William Webb (2). Anyways, burning level 0 card is also good on insane location. Remember that this card itself exiles, and so you cannot use amulet to play a 2nd time. Try committing its icon before playing from discard pile with amulet.