Analyzing Rita, you're naturally going to draw comparisons to the two other Evasion-focused survivors, those being Wendy Adams and Stella Clark. All three have mediocre-to-poor investigate and fight stats, but while Wendy and Stella have powerful abilities to offset their weakness, Rita's ability goes all-in on her strength, evasion. This is...a little strange.

5 agility is the best in the game at the time of writing, and her ability grants a free move action or free damage out of an evasion test once per round. That's great. If you have to evade, you almost always want to move away or inflict damage as well. If her ability was an asset, it would be an auto-include for any high-agility character. Where she falls frustratingly short is how she applies that agility when there's no one around to evade.

Her biggest handicap is that survivors have precious few cards to capitalize on 5 agility. Those are almost exclusively in the rogue pool, which Wendy Adams has vastly broader access to. Rita has better agility, but cannot Backstab. She cannot use Lockpicks to mitigate her poor investigation. She cannot use Pickpocketing for draw economy. She cannot use Suggestion to easily evade anything in the game. She instead has a pool of (currently) 16 cards outside of the survivor role, all of which are rogue, and only two are not also available to Wendy.

So what does she have instead? In terms of card access, Ace in the Hole and the upgraded Pilfer. Ace in the hole is very good (and combos amazingly with Will to Survive), but a single card that you may never draw isn't exactly compelling. Pilfer is useful, but incredibly expensive. Without rogue money economy, she'll be hard pressed to actually use it after bouncing it back to her hand.

In terms of card utility, she has one major advantage over Wendy, and that's her fight value of 3. The survivor pool is a little thin compared to guardian or rogue, but she can make decent use out of a few clutch options. She can even spring for something more substantial if necessary. Evasion is helpful in a pinch, but the ability to remove a threat completely can't be understated, and Rita has a consistency there that Wendy can't match.

As for the Stella comparison, that's a bit more nuanced. Their statlines are nearly identical, with Rita getting a bonus point in agility, but Stella having a whopping 8/8 health/sanity pool. While Rita will stay glued to Peter Sylvestre for dear life, Stella can take whatever is thrown at her. Rita has the (slightly) better card pool, with access to Sleight of Hand if she's using her guns, or to get more keys out of Old Keyring. She can Swift Reload her hunting rifle, and like Wendy can fleece Easy Marks for an economy boost.

Stella on the other hand has the much-lauded combo of Drawing Thin and Track Shoes. While Rita can also use it, her higher agility (much higher if running Pete) means you'll actually have a hard time intentionally failing the test on track shoes, and usually run right past your target. Stella tests flat, and gains a bonus action from failing. Point to Stella; that's some of the best economy in the game. Stella's ability also wrings more efficiency out of the suite of failure-specific survivor cards like "Look what I found!" or Dumb Luck. Stella's signature cards are universally useful, while Rita's is situational at best. At the time of writing, I think they come out about even; Rita has the edge as a multiplayer evader, while Stella excels as an all-rounder.

In summary, if you want to lean 100% into sneaking and tricks, you'll like Wendy. If you want to get your hands dirty sometimes, you'll prefer Rita. It you want to draw autofails all day while singing "ain't nothin' gonna break my stride", go with Stella.

Rita is not the 'best' survivor. She lacks Wendy and Yorick’s ability to continually reuse cards they like. (She has access to Resourceful and scavenging, so she’ll get them back, but it often takes an action to replay them.) She doesn’t have the deck manipulation of Patrice, and she doesn’t have Duke to help her sniff out clues.

But she’s my favorite, because she has something no other character has: the complete ability to avoid her problems. Luke might be able to hide in his gate box, but he has to explore new locations before he can access them.

Solo Rita is an exercise in Benny Hill comedy. While her iconic card is "I'm done runnin'!", It should really be Track Shoes. With it, she can turn her first action from evade into a jaunt through an enemy-controlled zone, and to a third location. Nonhunter enemies take one action from you, max. That keeps your hands free from weapons, and while a meat cleaver will be helpful to deal with your low sanity, a newspaper and an Old Keyring mean that you can get all the clues you need. (If you’re going for a cleaver, team up with the other student athlete.)

In multiplayer, you’ll probably want to add more damage, locking down enemies for guardians and basically removing the “retaliate” keyword from the deck. And as you go, you’ll gain access to high-level survivor cards that benefit the entire team. But you haven’t lived until you’ve run around the mad planes of Carcosa, with three enemies and two weakness cards chasing you.

All the “return to“ campaigns seem to have extra special spaces for the characters that come with the set. By that means, RTTCU has boatloads of agility tests and sprawling maps that are designed for Rita. Pack some guts and go for it! And some sanity soak, it comes fast and furious.

I think Rita Young is a very good pick in a multiplayer group, particularly at 3-4 player counts, where each investigator is given a role, therefore not having to deal with picking up clues, which is one of her weak points, so she can focus on dealing with enemies. Her abilities and card pool offer a wide variety of options on how she can be built and make for a solid investigator in any group. The first fighting tool one can have in mind for her is Ornate Bow, but even though she has the highest base Agility in the game, I'm not sure it is quite as good for her as it is for other investigators with high Agility. The reason is that she doesn't have access to cards that support the Bow like other investigators do. She doesn't have access to Leo De Luca, Venturer, or Narrow Escape, cards that make reloading the Bow less painful. She does have an inbuilt deal-1-damage mechanic though, which helps a lot with the Bow, but, still, I'm not convinced it's quite that good. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's bad for her; I'm just saying it's better for other investigators than it is for Rita.

Alternatively, in multiplayer context always, she can play Baseball Bat , a decent card for her, which allows her to fight with a base combat of 5, which is decent in most cases and, with the help of her special ability, deal with 1-or-3-health enemies easily. She won't be always fighting anyways. She can use her skills to leave enemies in the dust and zip across the board to help where it is necessary. She can also use Resourceful as breakage insurance, Cheap Shot and Stunning Blow as an alternative way to deal 2 damage in one action, or Gravedigger's Shovel as a back-up weapon. She can even nab a clue with it!

With enough experience, Rita can become a monster. She can use Old Hunting Rifle, a card which Rita is the best-suited investigator to use in my opinion, because she has alternatives in case it jams, and it becomes even better if she can pull it out with Sleight of Hand. She can combine Baseball Bat or Old Hunting Rifle with Will to Survive in order to unleash heavy loads of damage in a single turn, not to mention that she can also use Ace in the Hole. Ace in the Hole + Will to Survive, the ultimate combo!! It has only been available for Lola Hayes so far!! When Ace in the Hole and Will to Survive are combined with cards like Baseball Bat and Old Hunting Rifle, some serious damage output can be dished out in a single turn, allowing elimination of hoards of enemies or big bosses!! Consider this: Rita Young is engaged with a 15-health boss and she has a Baseball Bat in play. She plays Will to Survive and Ace in the Hole. She attacks 3 times with Baseball Bat, then she plays Sleight of Hand to put an Old Hunting Rifle in play, attacks 3 times with the Rifle and plays Resourceful to get the discarded Baseball Bat back into her hand. The result?? The boss is dead and Rita has both Baseball Bat and Old Hunting Rifle in her hand, allowing her to use them again in future turns. Well, that is best-case scenario of course, and requires having the right cards in hand, but I gave this example trying to showcase Rita's ultimate power with the right cards, when the stars align.

So, why use Ornate Bow, when you can make use of such powerful card combinations?? Ornate Bow is still good, but if I'm given the chance to play Rita Young in multiplayer, I'd rather go shooter style with Will to Survive and Ace in the Hole!!

Just played my first campaign with Rita, and I love playing her.

At first I got to admit I was a little confused about how to actually use her. She's not great at investigating or combat, and her deckbuilding is extremely limited.

What I realized was that her deckbuilding was a tip for how to use her. Rita is built to utilize the underappreciated Survivor trick cards better than anyone else. I loaded her up with lures, snare traps, hiding spots, etc. From there she kind of operates like a Guardian, bopping back and forth, using her evasion and tricks to keep enemies distracted and locked down.

True, there are other investigators who like to run from their problems like Rita, but they usually have better synergy with cards other than the tricks. Rita is probably the only character I'd see myself going all in on Tricks with and it gives her a really unique and fun flavor. Then just round out the rest of her deck with a few weapons or clue-aids depending on what the team needs.

At time of release, Rita was considered a low tier investigator, with her best stat being the comparable weakest, and no great card pool. Evading and doing a bit of damage, with her ability and the Ornate Bow, was the best she seemed to be able to do. But her access to Tricks shaped out several ways, she is interesting to play nowadays. The events from the Winifred Habbamock starter deck, namely Pilfer and Sneak By, gave her a first option to investigate using her great stat, and some economy to play this card. Although she also got Easy Mark in "The Dream Eaters", Pilfer was still too expensive for her, in particular in the upgraded version, that can be potentially played once per round. Innsmouth (more precise regarding the old release model: In Too Deep) came and brought Breaking and Entering (0), as a cheaper option, that was also more suitable for lower player counts, and synergizes well with her ability.

"Edge of the Earth" added with Crafty finally a reasonable way to pay for the endless replayable on oversuccess suite of Wini-Tricks (aside Pilfer (3) also Cheap Shot (2) and Slip Away (2)) to investigators with no access to Chuck Fergus. It also gave Rita a fancy new bow, that does not need reload actions, and several new Tricks, the greatest for her being the Sweeping Kick.

And then came "The Scarlet Keys". It added Breaking and Entering (2) to the set of "recurable event upgrades", introduced the first Trick assets with Disguise and Dirty Fighting and made "investigating with " a thing feasible for her, thanks to expanding the options for zero shroud. I tested her mainly in the "main cluever role", you can check my deck here. But I think, she should also fit nice into "main goon" or "flex". Disguise outclasses either version of Slip Away for her, and Dirty Fighting boosts her to 5 (or with a bow to 7 or 8), as long, as she does, what she's supposed to do anyway, while also giving her the action back, she took evading. I think, she grow now an excellent investigator, who can be built in many different ways to fun and successful results. A good example of how somebody can grow with their card pool.

Looks like Rita will get a new lease on life with all the fun Trick cards in Hemlock Vale. She's always been one of my favorites, and I'm really looking forward to testing out some "made for Rita" economy actions like Grift to Snitch. Bewitching seems like it was made for her. She'll get good use out of False Surrender (Done Runnin' indeed!) and can Vamp to get maximum results from an easy (for her) evasion test. Now I just want to see Rita doing some running in her Fine Clothes!