Parley is your weapon | Expert | Solo

Parley is your weapon, resources are your skill!

Before Game Start

Trigger Bewitching to select:

• Snitch
• Stir the Pot
• Vamp

When Game Starts

We need to find these key cards:

• Fine Clothes: Reduces the difficulty of parley.
• The Red Clock: Provides additional actions.
• Leo De Luca: Provides additional actions.

We should keep these cards to help find and play the key cards:

• For Resources:

  • Unscrupulous Loan
  • Hot Streak

• For Drawing Cards:

  • The Gold Pocket Watch
  • Ace in the Hole
  • At a Crossroads
  • Black Market
  • Friends in Low Places

Discard other cards rather than these if they are in your starting hand.

Asset Cards Priority

1. P0:

   • Fine Clothes

2. P1: Additional actions and resources

   • The Gold Pocket Watch
   • The Red Clock
   • Leo De Luca
   • Unscrupulous Loan

3. P2

   • The Black Fan: Play only when you have more than 15 resources.
   • Double, Double

4. P3:

   • Eldritch Sophist: Play only after The Red Clock is in play. Using his ability to keep The Red Clock maintain with 1 charge for move 3 times or 2 charges for 2 additional actions. It can also use his ability to move charges between Eldritch Tongue and The Red Clock.
   • Eldritch Tongue: Play it only if you want to play cards from your discard pile.

5. P4: Generally less useful

   • Well Connected: Use only for tough skill tests.
   • Delilah O'Rourke
   • Lantern
   • Matchbox

Event Cards Explain

• Ace in the Hole: Play whenever it's in your hand.
• At a Crossroads: Typically select to draw 3 cards.
• Black Market: Play whenever it's in your hand. Notice, this card can only be played when you have at least 5 cards left in your deck, so keep at least 6 cards before your turn ends.
• Counterespionage: Use to cancel encounter cards you can't defeat or if you have 19 resources, 15 for The Black Fan and 4 for this card itself.
• Friends in Low Places: Aim to draw as many cards as possible, even if you hit your max hand size. But keep in mind to keep enough resources.
• Honed Instinct: Take 2 actions and remove this card from the game to avoid cluttering your deck.
• Hot Streak: Keep in mind that you need an action to transfer resources from Family Inheritance to your pool.
• Lodge "Debts": Keep this card in hand; it only reduces your hand size by 1.

Parley Strategy

You must have Fine Clothes in play to effectively use your Parley cards. The parley cards are Stir the Pot and Vamp. Although you have only one copy of each, there are multiple ways to draw them:

• We can find them by Friends in Low Places, this fast card does not trigger attacks of opportunity, and with "Swift" upgrade, you can play them immediately after you draw it.
• We can play them from Black Market.
• We can play them from discard pile by Eldritch Tongue.
• We can get them by trigger Bewitching.

Using Bewitching

When using Bewitching, searching the top 9 cards is usually sufficient. If you are sure your deck doesn't have any parley cards:

• Draw Vamp to attack an enemy and gain a clue.
• Draw Stir the Pot to deal damage to multiple enemies.
• Never draw Snitch.

Combat Strategy

With Fine Clothes in play, all tests from your parley will automatically succeed unless .

• Play Vamp: Select a target, test to evade them, move them to another location, then test to discover a clue there. Finally, test to deal 2 damage.
• Play Stir the Pot: Target an enemy with a combined damage and horror value of less than 2. If no such enemy exists, play "Where's the Party?" to draw one.
• Play "Where's the Party?": Find an enemy with a combined damage and horror value of 2 to draw 2 cards.

Dealing Additional Damage

• Trigger Double, Double to play that parley card again.
• Trigger Eldritch Tongue to play a parley card from discard pile.
• Trigger Delilah O'Rourke to deal 1 additional damage.
• Discard Lantern to deal 1 additional damage.

Additionally, you can trigger Snitch to gain clues.

Investigating

Investigating is not a primary action for this deck, but if necessary, use Matchbox to reduce shroud and Lantern to investigate.

What to Do If You Draw an Enemy Without Fine Clothes

• Play "Where's the Party?" to draw more cards.
• Play Friends in Low Places to search for and play Fine Clothes.
• Trigger Streetwise to evade the enemy.

What to Do If You Encounter a Tough Skill Test

Play Hot Streak, then trigger Double, Double to double the resources, and finally use Well Connected to improve your skill.

What to Do When You Hit Max Hand Size

• Discard Black Market if your deck has less than 5 cards.
• Discard any item cards, as they can be drawn by Friends in Low Places.
• Discard any P4 cards.

What to Do When You Run Out of Cards in the Deck

Use Fine Clothes to take that horror if you are sure another copy of Fine Clothes is in the top 9 cards of your deck and Friends in Low Places is in your hand.

We don't need Money Talks, we have Well Connected

We don't need The Skeleton Key, we have Lantern + Matchbox x 2, in fact, we don't even need to do investigate.

Don't upgrade Stir the Pot, 2 damage is enough for Fine Clothes