Patrice Hathaway: molto prestissimo

The idea behind this deck is simple: put out a pile off assets - one for each slot, including spells that let you fight or investigate using will, and a will-boosting amulet - and then use them.

This deck is optimised for anything other than solo play - in the first few turns of the game your stats are going to be low and you're mostly going to be playing assets, so you need a team-mate or team-mates who can fend off monsters in the first few turns and maybe do most of the work towards advancing the first act.

But after you've gone a few turns and you have a copy of each of your spells, and a few other assets, out, you become incredibly potent.

One key piece of advice is that - especially after you've upgraded into slightly more expensive assets - you want to mulligan for your resource fixers - a good starting hand should have at least one of Patrice's Violin, Drawing Thin, Emergency Cache or both Uncage the Soul and one of Shrivelling and Sixth Sense in it.

The initial upgrade path I'd recommend for this deck goes

2: Painkillers -> Cornered
2: Peter Sylvestre -> Peter Sylvestre
4: Resourceful or Leather Coat -> Charisma + Jessica Hyde

(The first 4 XP, in particular, make a really big difference - they take you from will 5 to will 6 with all your assets out, and they let any card be a +2 to any skill test).

At this point you're pretty much invincible once you have your full asset suite in play; I went on to add in Miss Doyle (with a second Charisma), Stargazing and Key of Ys, but if you want to improve your skills or events instead of adding yet more assets then Rise to the Occasion, Ward of Protection or Defiance might be worth looking at.