Snowball Lily

[Deck Guide] Snowball Lily: The XP Avalanche Lily Chen is notorious for her slow-rolling starts. Often, she spends the first few scenarios of a campaign scrambling for her Disciplines and weapon setup, lagging behind while other investigators hit the ground running.

This deck completely flips that narrative. By combining the customizable tools of The Drowned City and The Scarlet Keys with the massive XP-ramping engines from Edge of the Earth, this build turns Lily into an unstoppable, self-sufficient powerhouse. If you enjoy starting a campaign with high-tier assets, optimizing slot usage like a puzzle, and hitting for 3+ damage with fully customized weapons, this is the build for you.

The Snowball Engine: How the Ramping Works The core philosophy of this deck is to generate and exploit virtual XP as aggressively as possible, bypassing Lily's typical development curve. We establish this from the very beginning using three permanent pillars:

In the Thick of It: We start the campaign by taking 2 trauma (highly recommend 1 physical and 1 mental) to gain 3 immediate XP. The Great Work gives us a reliable way to accelerate our setup and consistently bank extra XP. Down the Rabbit Hole: This is our primary engine. It reduces the XP cost of your first two card upgrades between scenarios by 1 each. While it penalizes you with a +1 XP cost for purchasing completely new cards, our deck is designed to upgrade existing Level 0 cards, rendering the downside entirely irrelevant. The Golden Interaction: Between scenarios, you start with a baseline of 3 virtual XP for free (1 from The Great Work and 2 in discounts from Down the Rabbit Hole). This means you upgrade your deck at roughly three times the speed of a standard investigator

The Four-Armed Monk: Dragon Pole + Runic Axe Lily is a martial artist, and this build takes weapon mastery literally. We run two heavy-duty, two-handed weapons that seem to compete but actually create a devastating synergy:

Dragon Pole: A weapon that occupies 2 hand slots but grants you +1 Arcane slot. It gives you +1 Combat for each occupied Arcane slot, and if you have at least 2 slots filled, it deals +1 damage. Runic Axe: A powerhouse customizable weapon that also occupies 2 hand slots. How do we wield both at once? Bandolier. At Level 0, Bandolier gives us +1 hand slot for weapons. However, as soon as you upgrade to Bandolier (2) (which costs a mere 1 XP due to the Down the Rabbit Hole discount), you gain 2 additional hand slots for weapons.

With this set up, Lily has 4 hand slots to play with. You can have both the Dragon Pole and the Runic Axe active simultaneously—the ultimate blend of runic damage and martial arts defense.

Filling the Void: The Mystic Engine To maximize the Dragon Pole's stat and damage bonuses, we need to fill our Arcane slots quickly and cheaply. We fill them efficiently with:

Familiar Spirit: While it occupies your ally slot, it grants you an additional Arcane slot specifically for Spells (pushing your maximum to 4). Breath of the Sleeper & Eyes of the Dreamer: These assets from The Drowned City occupy your Arcane slots and serve as your main utility: Breath of the Sleeper provides reliable combat utility and spell options. Eyes of the Dreamer is your clue-getting engine. It allows Lily to investigate using Willpower and lets you spend charges to reveal extra tokens and choose the best outcome. Lily becomes a high-efficiency hybrid seeker who can comfortably clear high-shroud locations.

Consistency & Set Up Deploying a multi-asset setup requires getting key cards into play during Turn 1. The deck runs a tight, optimized suite of Guardian support cards: Backpack [x2]: Almost every central piece of this deck is an Item asset (Dragon Pole, Runic Axe, Bandolier, Holy Rosary, Hunter's Armor). A starting Backpack almost guarantees you'll draw your essential combo pieces immediately. Ever Vigilant (1): Your absolute first priority upgrade. It lets you play up to 3 assets from your hand for a total discount of 3 resources. Playing Backpack, Bandolier, and your weapon in a single action on Turn 1 is the ultimate high-roll opener. Prepared for the Worst: An excellent backup finder to pull your Runic Axe or Dragon Pole if your backpacks miss. Mulligan Guide & Piloting

Ideal Opening Hand: Backpack (Non-negotiable; mulligan hard for this). Ever Vigilant. Dragon Pole or Runic Axe. Emergency Cache.

Early Game Strategy: During your first turn, focus entirely on setting up your board. Play Ever Vigilant or deploy your assets. Once you have Dragon Pole active along with two spells in play (Breath of the Sleeper or Eyes of the Dreamer), you will be attacking with massive Combat values and dealing 2 damage per swing without spending any ammo or charges.

If the trauma from In the Thick of It catches up to you, play Meditative Trance. It heals 1 damage or horror for each filled Arcane slot. With your spell-heavy board, a single play of this card can fully heal Lily for just 1 resource and 1 action.

Upgrade Path & Customizable Tricks Here is where we abuse the official FAQ rules. Gasting XP to check boxes on a Customizable card's sheet is officially considered upgrading a card in your deck. Therefore, Down the Rabbit Hole's discount applies, allowing you to buy customization ticks at half price!

Intermission 1 (Suggested Spend: 2 XP):

Spend 2 XP on the Runic Axe sheet (e.g., ticking Accuracy or Power). With the Down the Rabbit Hole discount, this only costs you 1 XP. Spend 2 XP on the Hunter's Armor sheet. With the discount, it only costs you 1 XP. Result: You gain 4 custom ticks of value for only 2 actual XP.

Priority Upgrade Progression:

Bandolier (0) -> Bandolier (2): Costs only 1 XP (discounted). Essential to unlock the four-handed combat setup. Ever Vigilant (0) -> Ever Vigilant (1): High-priority economy and tempo accelerator. Safeguard (0) -> Safeguard (2): Crucial utility. Allows Lily to move along with the team without wasting precious action economy. Prepared for the Worst (0) -> Prepared for the Worst (2): Allows you to search your deck for your weapons as a fast action.