Wendy Adams Tempts Fate (After breaking both of Fate's legs

Card draw simulator

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Derived from
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Kejardon · 41

Alternative Wendy has a unique ability with persistent, on-demand and and a unique effect. Used ruthlessly, these can turn some of the unreliable bless/curse cards into absurdly overpowered effects triggered repeatedly at will. This deck focuses on those effects, offering to keep enemies delayed forever and also tackle the hardest skill tests the scenario throws at the team, while other investigators can dig through the busywork and clue gathering in peace, or take potshots at enemies that won't fight back. Since Wendy wants plenty of bless and curse tokens available though, this is primarily useful in a team that is happy to have the token bag full of such tokens and able to keep at least a couple in there for Wendy to utilize.

Scavenging?

Scavenging is useful for Wendy to recur Matchbox and Bandages, especially early on in the campaign when she doesn't have good stats for fighting or harder tests. They're by no means vital though, and if you want to play with taboo to chain them, Scavenging can comfortably be replaced with plenty of other options, probably whatever skill cards that draw more cards allies would want you to play for them. There's not really anything important to scavenge either - non-item options can have comparable and repeatable effects once you're set up. The only 'important' thing would be to bounce Wendy's Amulet in and out of play (along with other accessories) so you're able to double-up on Events the entire game, but that would require a scenario to go extremely long. Most of the time Wendy is not drawing and playing enough cards to reach that point.

Spells?

I've included all three applicable spells Wendy may want, but more likely you will want to drop one to double up on another option, depending on what your team is doing. Armageddon and Eye of Chaos are straight forward options, when your team needs a little more fighting or clue gathering. Shroud of Shadows can actually be a significant boost alongside Wendy's engine, giving her free movement and making it easier to manage her engine.

Wendy's Signature Cards

Despite its potential, Wendy's Amulet does not actually accomplish a lot in this deck. It's nice to put off playing it for a little while, so you can play Events twice, but the threat of Abandoned and Alone means you want to be a little aggressive with playing it earlier, with only maybe 3 events in the discard. After that, remember that you can discard Events for their icons, and then play them shortly afterwards, to get as much out of them as you can.

Token of Faith actually ends up a much more powerful card and is worth dropping the Amulet for, providing a very steady method of generation thanks to Wendy's ability.

First Game

Wendy is a bit slow out of the gate, as the key piece absolutely needed for this deck's engine can't be gotten for the first scenario. Instead, starting out Wendy is more likely to rely on supporting the team, playing slotless Survivor items to help teammates do their thing and keeping threats evaded. She can get a handful of clues herself, especially with Control Variable or Old Keyring. Depending on how your allies are set up, you may want to be more cautious with the tokens you add to the bag - they're a lot harder for you to use well and a large number of them in the bag can mess with more tests than they're worth.

Upgrades

The single most important card in this deck is Eye of the Djinn, and it's absolutely the first card you should buy if at all possible. You want to find it quickly too, making a Backpack or 2 probably the next choice of upgrade.

After that, there are a couple of things you may want to focus on next. In rough order of personal opinion

  • Broken Diadem and the second Blessing of Isis are also valuable parts of the engine, which will boil down into more extra actions and auto-successes.
  • Paradoxical Covenant itself is also an autosuccess, and with the engine set up you can guarantee it at basically any time. It is less preferable to the other parts of the engine, but it's a permanent and cheaper on experience and certainly still worth if when you have experience to burn.
  • Occult Reliquary makes the accessory slot a bit easier to manage - it can also switch to a Hand slot as needed to hold the ever important Eye alongside keyrings and whatever else the scenario may throw at you, so depending on your situation it may be better than Relic Hunter. If you don't have any concerns about your hand slots, Relic Hunter would be better since it works with the un-upgraded Token of Faith.
  • Speaking of, Token of Faith is also an amazing support card you can use from anywhere to repeat a test where someone's drawn a , though that usually doesn't help during the mythos phase. Lucky! is similarly a great support card that can help in different cases. You're unlikely to be using it for yourself once you're set up.
  • Armageddon and Eye of Chaos are decent 'nuclear options' if Wendy needs to do more investigating or fighting, but this can take a lot of curses out of play and back to the token pool. If you have Twilight Diadem in play though, the upgraded spells suddenly become far more powerful for every-turn use and won't drain the chaos bag.
  • The base Shroud of Shadows is probably plenty, but if you find it running out of charges too often and needing you to spend more actions than you'd like to move yourself, Shroud of Shadows will be able to carry you through a scenario and never run out of charges.
  • There's a lot of other fun options, such as Seal of the Elders, which may fit in a niche better sometimes depending on what your team is running into (e.g. not enough resources to spare on armageddon or eye, but want to help just a little more with fighting and clues each scenario).

Belly of the Beast and a Pelt Shipment are the first cards to drop. Otherwise most cards are direct upgrades.

Gameplay - Mulligan

Tempt Fate gets the tokens your engine needs and replaces itself without costing an action, so it's worth keeping one in every mulligan.

First off, you need Eye of the Djinn. It is the core of what makes this deck flourish instead of struggle. Mulligan aggressively for that and Backpacks. This helps with tests and gives you extra actions.

Second off, you want a Blessing of Isis preferably, and later in the scenario Broken Diadem. Really you want to get all of them in play, but the Blessings rev your engine up faster and the Diadem makes your engine pay out more efficiently (and Backpack can find the Diadem). A single Blessing is worth keeping, everything else should be mulliganed if you don't have the eye or a backpack.

Deep Knowledge is probably worth keeping if you don't have Eye and another part of the engine. Token of Faith is tempting but probably not worth keeping most of the time, unless you have generation and the rest of your combo already.

Gameplay - Setup

Some support stuff is always welcome, like Token of Faith and Bandages and Matchbox, but if you don't have your combo up you should probably be digging for it instead of trying to do most other things. Track Shoes or Peter Sylvestre are reasonable to help you evade as well, if it looks like it will be a while before your engine can get online.

You will want to stockpile two tokens on an enemy to prepare for Blessing of Isis (if you somehow end up with only Broken Diadem instead, you will want to stockpile a bless and a curse instead of the second bless). This will take evading a non-elite enemy twice, and using Wendy Adams ability to seal those tokens from the chaos bag on success. If you have the engine in hand or ready, consider being aggressive with using Lucky! and similar things to get those tokens sealed sooner - once the engine is on you don't have to deal with any RNG on important tests so you want to get it running as quickly and smoothly as possible.

Gameplay - The Engine

The engine is officially on once you have Eye of the Djinn, Blessing of Isis, two tokens sealed on enemies, and more and tokens available in the bag or sealed. At this point, you essentially want non-elite enemies to engage you all the time and leave your allies alone. Late in a scenario (with both Blessings and the Diadem in play) you profit most with 2 or 3 enemies engaging you every turn, and if needed you can keep around 5 enemies evaded indefinitely without any RNG, and still have your normal 3 actions for other things

To charge the engine, evade a non-elite enemy, activate Eye of the Djinn, use Tidal Memento to resolve two sealed tokens (and when necessary, a also), then use Blessing of Isis to convert the second to , and reveal two more tokens from the bag. Ignoring any other cards, this results in a 5+2+2=9 for your skill test and will successfully evade basically anything. The second is not a anymore according to the game rules and has to be returned to the chaos bag, but all other tokens can be sealed onto the enemy, netting 1 more token sealed than you started with. Eye of the Djinn is ready again because of and you get another action because of , which also charges the Broken Diadem. The only things 'lost' are that you are no longer engaged with the enemy (and thus cannot evade them again without engaging them first), and Blessing of Isis is exhausted. It's worth noting you can also use Paradoxical Covenant to guaranteed evade an enemy with Eye of the Djinn and a sealed and and only really spend exhausting the Covenant, or try only with Eye of the Djinn and a and if you want to gamble with the chaos bag. These methods do not increase the number of sealed tokens, but let you evade without spending actions and also charge the Broken Diadem.

There's several ways to pay out with the engine. The ideal method is with Twilight Diadem. Spending only one sealed token, you can immediately get an and reveal a and from the chaos bag, which combined with Eye of the Djinn results in an automatic 7 on any skill test on your turn while giving you an extra action back. All the tokens involved will return to the chaos bag, meaning you can almost just alternate this with a single evade on an enemy and Blessing of Isis indefinitely. Slightly less ideal is using Blessing of Isis and two sealed tokens for an automatic 9. This takes more to recharge than the Diadem though, with 2 sealed tokens returning to the bag. Both of these may be good to use with upgraded spells too, as you can use the to reveal two instead, getting significantly boosted effects and/or charges on the spells while keeping all the tokens in play, and if it's your last skill test of your turn you may not need a resolved to ready the Eye of the Djinn so you could keep Twilight Diadem's efficiency (remember, the token you change to a does not trigger Eye or your other cards). Lastly, you can simply use sealed tokens and Paradoxical Covenant for an autosuccess on any skill test (and without losing an action on your turn with the Eye), but this is the most expensive option as the tokens will be returned to the token pool instead, and need other cards outside of the core engine to be replenished.

Other Gameplay

Token of Faith can be used every turn to keep the blesses full as well - Tokens revealed by a still count towards it (although a that has been turned into a will not). There's also nothing stopping you from evading an enemy, resolving/revealing as many curses you can and at least 1 bless, and using Paradoxical Covenant to say you succeeded anyways - as long as you're evading, you can keep all the tokens sealed and available for later use with Twilight Diadem or a massive upgraded curse spell. Many teams might want you to keep the blesses mostly in the bag to share and curses sealed too, making a nuclear-spell build a more likely option if Wendy is the only one that wants curses.

If you're really hurting for non-skilltest actions, remember that Eye of the Djinn doesn't refund your action, but gives you an extra action. If you can trigger tests that don't take an action, you can get more actions leftover than you started with. The best way in this deck as-is to do that is with Shroud of Shadows and Track Shoes. The Shroud is an evade action, which is part of the engine anyways, and then on revealing a you also get to move. Because you move, Track Shoes gives you a test to move again which the Eye can also apply to - and if you don't actually want to go anywhere, you can just move back to the room you came from. The engine is not very efficient at this kind of thing though; not counting the incidental benefit of keeping enemies evaded, the whole engine isn't much better than having a single Leo De Luca out for extra (non-skilltest) actions.

2 comments

Sep 08, 2024 Django · 5032

I'm planning to play // wendy soon. Do prefer Paradoxical Covenant over Ancient Covenant because the difficulty is considered 0 on auto success? Just wondering because ancient is easier to trigger while you're not set up.

Sep 08, 2024 Kejardon · 41

Ancient is nicer when you aren't set up, but if you're using the taboo you can't help others with it (I should emphasize this is very much a sort of support deck that expects a cluer and fighter alongside it), and after you are set up you likely want to use curse tokens for Eye of the Djinn and curse spells anyways.

I was split between Ancient, Paradoxical, and Blasphemous Covenants when coming up with the deck but I went Paradoxical and haven't regretted it. I can see fair arguments for preferring the other two instead though, depending on what situation you're in. It helps that I was playing with someone using Kōhaku Narukami and a few people using Favor of the Sun/Moon, along with keeping the token bag decently full, so other people had occasional opportunities to trigger my Paradoxical (or even a Blessing of Isis) for critical checks.