Jenny Barnes Rocking Dunwich on Hard Difficulty

This is my current best effort to make Jenny playable on Hard difficulty.

The deck is intended to evolve significantly as Jenny gets experience points; in particular her splash cards change as she improves her base class offerings. I'll be writing a play-by-play as she campaigns through Dunwich.

Jenny is lacking in clue-finding ability and she also lacks options for healing physical damage. I've put Flashlights in to address the former, and Guard Dog is intended to help a little for the latter, providing a high-class damage soak.

This deck tries something innovative. The theory is that Dark Horse actually can work well with Jenny because she generates such a steady stream of income [3 resources per turn with Lone Wolf) that she does not mind emptying her piggy bank using Physical Training, Hard Knocks, or (later) Streetwise.

This deck is intended to work with an investigator who can find some clues and help a little with monsters. I'm playing her with Agnes, but Pete would fit the bill as well. Jenny should also be fine playing with Roland Banks, but in that case, I'd switch out some of her cards to give her less combat focus and more clue finding. I'd switch in two copies of Magnifying Glass, switch the Machetes out for switch-blades, and switch in Arcane Studies for Physical Training.

Note that one significant synergy Jenny has with Agnes Baker is that she can pack a double Liquid Courage to help remove horror from Agnes, improving Agnes' direct damage ability.

Playthrough Notes and Upgrade

First Scenario: House Always Wins

Jenny got both Leo De Lucas in her first hand, but we were playing like we did not know what was going to happen, so she mulliganed one of them away. She brought out Lone Wolf relatively early---always need to put something out cheap before Leo in case you get hit by something in the encounter deck that makes you lose an asset. You definitely do not want to bring Leo out on turn 1 to lose him to Crypt Chill or Pushed into the Beyond.

Agnes got Dark Memory on her second turn, meaning we only had 3 turns before the gangsters turned on us. Jenny was not paying attention and choose to use her resources to bring out Dark Horse instead of Machete, meaning she had no weapon out when the doom advanced.

Agnes saved her bacon by discarding Peter Sylvestre to advance the Act deck, then made a bee-line down the corridor to open up new rooms, allowing Jenny to Elusive her way to a clear room and have a breather.

That breather was all Jenny needed. With some key, timely help from Agnes (using Painkillers and Forbidden Knowledge to do direct damage), Clover Club Pit Boss, Conglomeration of Spheres, and Servant of the Lurker were all soon dispatched.

Agnes almost ended up dying from horror because of all the direct damage she had to do. Bizarrely, she never drew either of her Shrivellings or Rite of Seeking, relying solely on a few hits from Fire Axe and Drawn to the Flame to pick up clues.

We ended up saving Dr. Francis Morgan, but Delve Too Deep was the bottom card in Agnes' deck, so we only got 4 xp.

Upgrades: Agnes grabs 1 upgraded Peter Sylvestre and 1 Song of the Dead, replacing one Fire Axe. It might be more normal to grab both upgraded Peters, but Agnes' weakness was Indebted, so she needed ways to reduce her resource load. Fire Axe is a resource hog.

Jenny grabbed Streetwise and Adaptable. Using adaptable we switch out Hard Knocks for a second Physical Training and Guard Dog for a second Think on Your Feet. Note that Physical Training complements the skills pushed by Streetwise, which is a permanent.

Extracurricular Activities

This one was frustrating. We never drew a single VP creature and the only main location with victory points on it got a locked door. We try to play as though we do not know information about undisclosed locations, so we ended up getting clues elsewhere. Also, Jazz was practically at the very bottom of the deck. On the clue we used to get to him, we ran out of cards for the encounter deck.

Agnes grabbed lots of clues and found Jazz in the Administrative offices. Jenny won him over and then Elusived straight to the Student Union (avoiding the The Experiment. Agnes had taken a fairly substantial amount of damage so she was not able to make it through to help get clues off the Dormitories---or, rather, she could have but it would have meant betting the farm on an Arcane Barrier break. So she resigned one turn early. Jenny, with Leo De Luca, had 8 turns to find 6 clues and search for Izzy. She almost made it. She got the clues but failed the very last chaos draw, so she took a mental trauma for Izzy.

In the end that meant only 1 xp, so no power-ups. Agnes took Dr. Henry Armitage.

Miskatonic Museum

Jenny and Agnes did pretty well here. Mostly trying to ignore/evade/work around Hunting Horror once it became evident that it would get more powerful if we just killed it each time.

The scenario started out very rocky for Agnes. She has Indebted as a weakness, so she only starts with 3 resources. The initial location for The Miskatonic Museum does not allow you to gain resources and there is no way to leave unless you find the clues or break into the security office. This meant she could not play her Rite of Seeking to find the clues. Luckily, Jenny was able to get them so we did not get crushed on the first location, unable to do anything.

We found the Restricted Hall on the fourth location, which was good in that it let us easily finish before time ran out, but it also meant forgoing some VP. Jenny had Beyond the Veil and only a few cards left, so she needed to resign or end the adventure soon. Agnes probably could have cleared at least one more location, but we decided not to risk it. We had 4 rounds left on the doom clock and Agnes had a full Rite of Seeking left.

We ended up with 4 xp, plus the 1 left over from Extracurricular. Jenny grabbed the The Necronomicon.

Jenny bought 1 upgraded Switchblade, switching out Machete. This let her swap Dr. Milan Christopher in for a Flashlight. She also picked up Charisma, as she had 4 qualities allies now in her deck.

Agnes used two xp to get upgraded Peter Sylvestre and used one xp to switch in a flashlight for the Newspaper, which really did not turn out to be useful.