Lola Hayes the Aviator (Winifred Habbamock)

Reference: Winifred Habbamock

This is my version of a deck mostly developed by others. They deserve all innovative credit. I wanted to build something fun for my 4p that I would enjoy and share it with you.

Lola will at some point during the game choose the Mystic role and will then play Transfiguration and become Winifred Habbamock. Her role will no longer have any effect on her ability to play cards. She will be locked into the Mystic role outside of her Signatures and Weaknesses. Those cards will still interact with her role.

With the new watered-down versions of the Lola cards, the riskiest asset here will be the Astronomical Atlas. The usual Lola tricks apply. Play the valuable asset then switch roles to protect that asset. Once we are Transfigured, there is a distinct possibility that the deck draws it's weakness while we are still a Mystic from the Transfiguration, and then demand tribute in the form of a Mystic card. And on that sad day, the Atlas will have to go. Potential solutions are to hold onto a Mystic card to discard, which there are not very many of in this deck, or to use a Signature card to switch classes to a safer class.

Jank Galore (Core Combo)

Once Lola turns into Winifred, there are three major combo enablers in the deck and about a bajillion tiny ones. The result will be an insanely fast deck of pure jank.

1st Major Jank enabler: Astronomical Atlas draws a card as a free action and stores it to be committed to a skill test. Winifred, of course, loves this. Commit one card from hand and one card from the book. Committing these two cards to the test triggers Wini's ability to draw a card. If the skill test is successful, then you also get the book card added to your hand. The net result is gain two cards, spend one card, and gain whatever effect any skill cards generate. Nice.

2nd Major jank enabler: In addition to just converting any skill's icons into wild icons, Bestow Resolve lets Wini commit a second card to a friend's skill test at the cost of a charge. This would, of course, trigger Wini's ability to draw a card. The bestow assist can be done remotely as well, meaning that Wini can still trigger her ability by also committing a second remote skill card to a friend, like Fighting Lessons or Long Shot. Also, since icons are converted to wilds, you can commit Vicious Blow to your ally's Wither or Deduction to their Pilfer.

3rd Major jank enabler: Enraptured. Bestow is limited by charges, which might appear to be a limiting factor, however there is an updated Enraptured in The Drowned City which adds 3 charges instead of just 1 and would also be super fun to combo with another charges style item like the The Red Clock. This could be any fancy item, I just like the idea of Winifred "gotta go fast" Habbamock using The Red Clock in this build. With the Astronomical Atlas and Practice Makes Perfect letting us replay Enraptured multiple times per shuffle, we can maintain a constant charge on our kit, much like how we used to sustain Luke's Gate Box with charges all game back in Ye Olde Tymes.

The Good Stuff (Upgrade Options)

Ancestral Knowledge is a very expensive upgrade that will make the first deck cycle even faster and gives instant access to five of our skills at random. This is generally astounding as it essentially increases our starting hand by those five skills without them actually being in our hand, making them immune to the Redacted and similar. The drawback is that our best skills, the ones we really want to hit with Astronomical Atlas and Practice Makes Perfect, might also end up here, which limits the combo potential through the first deck cycle. Speaking of which, the extra deck limit Ancestral Knowledge gives us will also make that second and future deck cycle longer and less consistent. My simple take on this upgrade is: @1-2p? Get it, the game will be shorter and the Bestow stuff less useful. Having access to skills prix fixe is more impactful than sustaining Minh Thi Phan kind of assistance throughout the scenario with extra charges on Bestow. Wini thrives in solo going as fast as possible. @3-4p? Skip it. The game will be longer and the Bestow kit far more valuable. I recommend spending this exp on something else like Scrapper or Keen Eye.

Overpower, Perception, Manual Dexterity are amazing upgrades in the Bestow build, since we can convert them into wild icons. DRAW MORE CARDS!!!1!!

Peter Sylvestre Kinda boring, but helps makes Track Shoes more consistent and has soak we like with our "1" willpower. Also, in the svelt, trim Knowledge-less versiuon of the deck, deck cycling is the name of the game and Peter is a great way to manage attrition.

Friends in Low Places Lots of options here. Give it the Ritual or Practiced trait or both. Make it fast or dig through 9 cards or add skill icons. Please be aware that Lola can only purchase 6 total dots. My personal choice was both traits and 9 cards, as this minimizes the time spent pre-Transfiguration while also giving it something to do after.

Scrapper Lola is very talented, so I suggest a talent. Any one of the non-Mystic ones will do, but the Survivor one is my favorite today for whatever reason. This is a resource sink for an inexpensive deck. This might not be necessary in faster games with lower player counts - this exp should be spent on Ancestral Knowledge in that scenario. Even then, if we are puff puff blowing on The Red Clock enough, even 1-2p might want a good resource sink.

The Bad Stuff (How to Level Lola)

If we are playing 1-2p and grabbing Ancestral Knowledge and filling our decks with 5 more skills, then that makes Ancestral Knowledge a priority early choice as then Lola's deck building management becomes much more trivial. In 3-4p, or if the sad old Research Librarians only giving feet and soak bother us, we have to be a bit careful at first.

Lola has unique deck building requirements that require at least three different classes at 7 cards. Lola can change which three she is specializing in throughout the campaign, but we need to make sure we accommodate these requirements as we upgrade. Traditional methods of managing this, Permanents and Multi-class cards, are not really on the table here, so we should look a bit closer to make sure we'll be alright. The first few upgrades are the toughest and once we start replacing neutral skills with the class specific versions, the bonds loosen a bit.

Current class counts: Guardian: 7 Seeker: 8 Rogue: 2 Mystic: 3 Survivor: 9

So if we have a good first scenario and want to buy our Astronomical Atlases first, we cannot cut the starting game chaff like Enchanted Blade right away because we would be violating the Guardian minimum we previously established. We would need to cut a Seeker card or 2 Survivor cards. This might be very uncomfortable with cutting cards we need to keep and increased demand for hand slots.

We could also choose to grab our Bestow Resolves in which case we actually could cut our Enchanted Blades immediately, since we are replacing Guardian with Guardian and Mystic isn't a pillar class at the moment. Those poor Research Librarians, constantly getting pushed into snakes and nothing to read.

So I'd like to use the Research Librarian as soon as possible, so what's the fastest route to books? I think a 5 exp first scenario is reasonable in most cases, and thus +1 Astronomical Atlas and +1 Overpower, replacing -1 Enchanted Blade and -1 Overpower seems pretty ideal.

The second Astronomical Atlas can wait or even be ignored considering how quickly this deck draws, so now the limitless unwinding tapestry of upgrading a Lola deck stretches before us. Some people really like an Adaptable when they first run Lola. It can be a great purchase. Adaptable helps relieve one of the only thumb screws a Lola deck encounters with it's class requirements by allowing more card swaps between scenarios. But generally, Lola decks are Flex decks. Be the investigator our team needs and upgrade accordingly.

Cards on the chopping block: Guardian: Enchanted Blade and Take the Initiative These cards were added because I needed another class at 7 cards. The blade seemed a little more utility than say, a Book of Psalms, even though the book would enable the librarians immediately. Also, since the blade is multi-class, it puts us 4 count away from 7 card Mystic, which is 2 Enraptured and 2 Astronomical Atlas away from 7 card Mystic, just in the case that's a viable upgrade path, considering those are core upgrades.

Seeker: Deep Knowledge is fun for the whole family, but probably won't make the cut for long. Besides the Perception upgrade, there isn't a lot of card count movement in this class. If we are purchasing the Ancestral Knowledge, we can immediately drop both Deep Knowledge and add seven level 0 skills from other classes, as Ancestral Knowledge counts as a Seeker card in our deck. Seeker is just great cards that fulfill at least a 7 card pillar at all times during the entire. Very solid.

Rogue: Do not cut Quick Thinking. Wini isn't slow. Pfft. There are exactly 5 other Rogue cards this deck wants to upgrade into and then Rogue can be a static 7 card pillar. They are expensive so no rush.

Mystic: Once we get the full Mystic kit, there are only 6 cards in it, but all a core parts of the deck. That's okay. The Enchanted Blades are there so that they fill out this class to seven until the dust settles. Or shop around for another card. Lola is the best.

Survivor: "Look what I found!" + Lucky!. These combo with Flashlight to make high shroud cheese-able at 0 exp. As Enraptured and Deduction and Perception get upgraded, these become less important. Take Heart, especially in some campaigns (Looking at you HM Innsmouth) can be more trouble than value. I envision Peter Sylvestre, Track Shoes, Unrelenting and Scrapper making a pillar of 7, if playing 4 player.

Thank You

Have a wonderful time playing this lovely investigator.