Yet Another Broken Rogue - Alessandra Edition

Card draw simulator

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Aesyn · 552

I don't want to keep it long. Just wanted to highlight the cycling power almost every rogue has in 2024 thanks to Friends in Low Places and Black Market:

1) Draw all your tricks and favors with FiLP

2) The ones included in this deck are mostly high tempo events (draw more cards/gain resources/gather clues), try to exhaust your deck while playing your few but key assets and setting your engine up.

3) Try to avoid your weakness during your first pass through the deck, but if FiLPs and Black Markets were towards to the bottom of your deck, you may not be able to, thats fine. Your goal is to postpone your weaknesses with FiLP's Clever ability, then set aside them with Black Market, then draw enough to reshuffle your deck. Then do it again, and again, and again, while Snitch and Intel Report vacuums all the clues.

What Alessandra brings to the table is the Beguile. They are fast, they are trick traited, and they enable your extra action. Find an enemy preferably with less than or equal to 2 evade value (and hopefully no annoying ability like gaining doom every turn). Use your extra parley action to evade it, with Fine Clothes it is a success except tentacles. Trigger Pickpocketings, use a Snitch paid by Antiquary. If you oversucceeded enough, you drew 2 cards, gained 2 resources, got 2 clues, and this was only your extra action. Snitch feels like a better Shed a Light in this deck.

I played this deck in Return to Forgotten Age. With the addition of other high xp cards like Double Double, Ace in the Hole and other stuff listed in the Side Deck, it exhausted the deck during the second turn in the game, and continued to cycle through it every one or two turns while getting lots of "testless" clues with Snitch, Intel Report and Lola Santiago. It gets faster and faster with every xp addition, but I'm posting the 30xp version for an attainable checkpoint. It does what it aims to do just with these cards, just a little slower. The most critical upgrades are 2x Pickpocketing, Clever+Prompt+Experienced upgrades of FiLP, and 2x Snitch, which are collectively 15 xp.

I started with this deck. It's biggest weakness is that it's a bit lighter on the soak. The best thing you can do that sacrifice your allies to play them later again. However if you in a desperation mode, you can also use Black Market and FiLP (if you get the helpful upgrade, it probably won't draw them anything but you can order their deck with Clever) on other players to find yourself a better soak asset that Alessandra's deckbuilding options doesn't have access to.

I also played Trish with FiLP set to Tricks and Insights, Sefina with Tricks and Spells, and Preston with FiLP set to Tricks and Favors again. I felt Alessandra was the craziest with her Beguiles and easy access to Snitch. Others have better deckbuilding options, it was especially apparent when I tried to enable Cheat the System, Alessandra didn't have much choice. I bet this shell can be transported to any Rogue (FiLP + Black Market + Tricks), and work just fine.

6 comments

Jul 21, 2024 Nightfuego · 43

Oh hey! I'm u/murkey-pea whatever the heck on Reddit. I just replied to one of your posts a couple days ago. Just as I did there, I'll append my primer on how to construct decks like this on the Reddit. Rogues are currently incredibly strong and have been since Scarlet Keys. FiLP is in some desperate need of fixing. www.reddit.com

Jul 31, 2024 captainsqually · 404

Seems really fun, but extremely dangerous to cycle her deck so quickly given how annoying her weakness is. I'm going to try this for myself to see how consistently FiLP + Black Market can filter her weakness. Even with that trick it seems a bit scary.

Jul 31, 2024 Aesyn · 552

Her weakness is definitely annoying at maybe first few scenarios, but afterwards he's pretty much a non-issue because:

  • You can indeed keep him in Black Market purgatory easily

  • If it fails, your monster-handling investigator partner can probably one shot him. Bonus points if they want to kill stuff because they want to trigger assets like Boxing Gloves or Ancestral Token.

  • And in the very very rare case of being unable to deal with him whatsoever: Just plow through the scenario, you can definitely lose a few turns to his doom and not be bothered because you will end the scenario before those turns would ever matter.

In early scenarios, I have Backstab in the deck just in case, but you'll see he won't be that big of a nuisance.

Jul 31, 2024 captainsqually · 404

Thanks for the insight. I am indeed running her alongside someone more enemy capable, but I like to have my own solutions in mind so it at least doesn't appear like I am pawning them off on my partner :D

Out-tempoing Zamacona wasn't something I had considered but it does make sense. Really excited to give this a try!

Aug 21, 2024 Dukesrunner · 1

Thoughts on using Bewitching in this deck? The shuffle after trigger could throw things off with in regard to FiLP (but no more so than black market) but it would also speed the deck exhaustion.

Aug 23, 2024 Aesyn · 552

I tried Bewitching in a scenario. I really dislike you can fail a search and waste a trigger, you don't get much of those (enemy engagements) early. You also have a chance to miss a trigger on your first turns, unlike Stick to the Plan.

However, my negative perception is due to my fault, partly. Just don't get baited by the search option, and get the cards on the Bewitching, easy. -3 cards in the deck and "free" extra draw definitely speeds up your setup, which is something you care about.

But all that said, 6 xp is not that cheap, and there are lots of stuff you could get instead. I spent around 80 xp on this deck before I actually ran out of things to get. Apart from the cards in the main deck, I'd definitely get Ace in the Hole, Streetwise, one of Counterespionage and maybe Double Double, Hot Streaks, Charisma/Lola/Delilah before I'd look at Bewitching (Especially Ace in the Hole, because it is one of the best cards to put on Bewitching). That's a lot of xp.

It's rather hard to actually determine its value compared to other cards, I just valued extra card draw (on top of the goldy amount I already had) less than other Rogue shinies, because Rogue has lots of fun stuff, but more consistency could very well be the right answer.