Crafty Rita pilfers in bright light

Preface

Rita Young had been long considered a low tier investigator, but got increasingly more cards, that really helped her find her role in the game and be fun to play. This deck list is not supposed to showcase her best possible way, which is likely still enemy management, but to give her the task of a cluever, which has not been covered by other decks to my knowledge, and I found to be surprisingly viable as well. The core concept is the new "zero shroud payoff" introduced with Shed a Light in "The Scarlet Keys Investigator Expansion", and supported by several cards of the same cycle.

I initially played her in "Return to: The Forgotten Age" on standard. (We normally play on hard nowadays, but there is a particular dislike of this campaign by somebody in our group, and he opposed to that this time.) This was more of a flex deck, and I will cover the differences later, but we won forging our own path and turning back time. The showcased deck is from our "blind run of the added content" of the "Return to: The Dream Eaters" fan campaign (the variant by Mimi61/ Stefanie on BGG, not the version by DerBK which had not been released or even announced at that time), and I played her yet again with a very similar deck on an "Arkham Nights" Epic Multiplayer event of "Machinations Through Times". Both of these runs were successful on hard difficulty. My 3 gator group does not play with taboo, yet I tend to avoid tabooed cards, so this deck is compatible with the current list.

The Level 0 deck

... is in generally a level 3 deck with In the Thick of It, 3x Easy Mark and 2x Gumption. I skipped this option in "The Forgotten Age", due to plenty of traumata and plenty of XP handled out by the campaign itself, but in any other case it is clearly worth it, in particular with Rita starting with 9 health. If you want to go basic 0 XP, you can get your resources from classic Emergency Cache and Sneak By. Instead of 2x Gumption, I had a second copy of Disguise and a one off Cheap Shot as filler.

Consistency

Crafty is the big card of the deck, which consists mostly of expensive Tricks and (comparable cheap) Tools. It's the main reason, I took Short Supply, to improve the odds of getting them out of the Discard with Resourceful, or have a slim deck to draw into them early enough, should I not get them in the mulligan. There had been worst case scenarios, when both copies hid in the bottom 5 cards of the deck, or were discarded aside Resourceful, but while the deck gets slower and less amazing in these cases, it still provides enough clue generation to win scenarios.

Zero difficulty

The main enabler is the fantastic new Flashlight (3) which can turn any investigate or evade test (2) into a test (0), or be combined with Winging It/ Impromptu Barrier to crack difficulty (3) or Gumption or (only on an investigation) either version of Old Keyring for difficulty (4). The main payoff for that being Shed a Light and (to a lesser degree) Exploit Weakness. Exploit Weakness is fun to use on Hoods and can save a scenario, but the clue acceleration of Shed a Light is amazing in any scenario, and makes this card the prime target for Resourceful, should you not need it to get Crafty out of your Short Supply.

But why not do all that with Darrell, who has a natural skill reduction baked into his ability? Well, this might be true, but the photographer can't Pilfer in bright light for 4 clues on your location and 1 anywhere. Without fearing the , and getting the Pilfer-card back to the hand, guaranteed at the end of your turn. Note, that an auto success before drawing tokens means, that you don't draw a token at all, and can calculate the outcome of the test in advance. This combo of course costs six resources, but with both Crafty out, it gets easy affordable. Once set up, Rita can gain an incredible speed in clue sucking, any true will have a hard time to catch up. At least with 3+ investigators, where Pilfer shines.

Scavenging

This choice seems odd at first look, as the only cards to scavenge are upgraded Flashlight, (soon upgraded) Old Keyring, and 1 copy of Track Shoes. It is mostly there to further profit from Short Supply, can occasionally recur a discarded Keyring (or Flashlight, if you run out of hand slots or into a Crypt Chill), but won't trigger every time, you succeed by two, because eventually, you will be lacking Items in your discard pile.

Technically, you could improve the rate by replacing Easy Mark with Schoffner's Catalogue, but I have not tested that, and would be cautious about it. The only expensive items in the deck are the track shoes, the others can be covered by Crafty as well, while Schoffner's won't work on Tricks, and the cantrip card draw of EMs, I also appreciated a lot. It might be worth it, if other players have Items, and a harder time to get them into play. But for yourself, I consider EMs the better option, less value from Scavenging aside.

Further Upgrades

Obviously, Old Keyring (3) is the natural first upgrade after the core upgrades, as it gives an additional clue for zero shroud. Peter Sylvestre (2) should follow, then probably Scavenging, to save a few play actions. As a last resort for your unspent XP, you can turn the Disguise and probably 1 copy of Impromptu Barrier into Grizzled. Or take Observed.

The Forgotten Age Flex variant

For this campaign, I soon added Dirty Fighting. This was amazing due to the Harbinger of Valusia, who wants to be hit often, but not hard. Dirty Fighting lets you hit the harbinger for 4 resources on her per turn, first with the evade, then the free attack, followed by 2 regular attack actions. The "Return to" version of this enemy starts with a manageable 2 , versus Rita's 5, including the bonus from Dirty Fighting. Like mentioned before, we played this campaign only on standard, so it mostly hit. I also added a couple of other fighting options, namely Sweeping Kick and Brute Force. For the last two scenarios, the Harbinger is no issue anymore. To get more value out of Dirty Fighting, I needed a weapon then. Rita seems popular with either bow, but I choose Chainsaw, instead. First, because it's a Tool, so payable and boostable with Crafty. (The latter not really being an advantage, as the bows work with , which is natural higher in Rita, but the ability makes it a viable option.) Second, because it's there to live in your hands for a couple of rounds, when you need to help out the goon. The rest of the scenario, you can hold onto your Flashligts and Keyrings like usual. Bows would be meant to be played and stay on you for the rest of the game.

That's it for now. I will likely follow up with a general review of Rita. She is now tons of fun to play. Hope others will be encouraged to try her out themselves.