Lola, for Cowards (Hard/Expert)

Just how cowardly are you?

It seems that the design intent is to play Lola as a roller-coaster ride, playing a bunch of cards, losing them all to Crisis of Identity and then starting over again. I don't like that approach. I prefer calm and safety.

The basic plan here is to never draw when you could lose assets to Crisis. This means ending most turns in Seeker, which turns on your Higher Education for the Mythos phase. This means you'll be Seeker for most of the game.

You have a few extra ways to get cards in play. The first is the Mulligan. You can start in whatever colour you like, play a card, then switch. Second is Improvisation which (assuming you don't draw a Crisis with it), allows you to jump to a colour, play a card, then switch back to Seeker. You also have Alyssa Graham, though note you need to be in Mystic to use her ability. You can play Alyssa safely with Improv just in your hand, checking after the play, and Improving' out to something safe if you need to. Once she is in play, you can check for safety, switch-and-play if it's clear, and switch back to Seeker or Mystic next turn. Lastly there is the number of Crisis's actually remaining in your deck and Crisis itself. By changing colour for you, they allow a play the following turn, followed by a safe switch back to Seeker. (In practice, this doesn't always turn out that nicely as there is a high chance of a Crisis making you Neutral or Seeker, or switching you to another colour that you don't need right now, but it can happen). Once you have popped both Crises, you are safe to switch at will. Once you have popped one, you might (if you are brave enough), risk a single draw to make a play.

You don't actually need to make many colour switches, as you only have 3-4 coloured permanents to get into play, plus switches to Scrapper if you want to fight, or your big plays with Elusive/Delve Too Deep (often at the end of a scenario anyway). It's all fairly achievable and takes the sweat-inducing gambling part of Lola and replaces it with seatbelts and peace-signs.

But what is the point?

OK, so we've got around the Weakness, we now need to do something useful that justifies playing Lola in the first place. Generally this revolves around the three things that Lola likes.

1. Lola likes Passive Buffs as they work when she moves out of colour.
2. Lola is better at clue-finding than fighting, but can do a little of both.
3. The whole point in playing Lola is to get all the best cards.

Given the above, that leads us to the loadout shown, including such fan-favourtes as Beat Cop, Leo De Luca, Scrapper, Delve Too Deep and Ward of Protection. We'd like Dr. Milan Christopher too, but we are idling in Seeker, so it's too dangerous. We do like Magnifying Glass (1) as we can return it to our hand every turn (also helping with Higher Education).

Note that Dark Horse is not incompatible with a pay-to-win deck, as we will be spending our cash on Higher Education, Scrapper or permanents most turns. Even if it is active for only 50% of our tests, it's still providing great value. We never reject the end-of-turn money.

We love the Neutral skill cards, as they can be played in any role, and help thin our deck (or helps allies, who don't have the same issues with draw that we do). Eureka! also performs thinning and is actual safe draw that we can do with our mag glasses out.

Elusive and Ward of Protection round out our power cards, and either can have a huge impact on the board. Obviously both require role-management.

All those XP cards?

What is presented is a mid-campaign or standalone deck, something you are building towards. Things like Machete instead of Beat Cop+Charisma can fill the gap while you purchase what you need.

Adaptable is also extremely strong for Lola, allowing her to swap in things like Logical Reasoning to deal with Frozen in Fear, or Fine Clothes (which you probably start with in the Carcosa campaign), or even "I'm outta here!" if you need to.

Once you get to this state, there are plenty more options for further development. A Counterspell Build (focusing on Ward of Protection, Forewarned and A Test of Will), upgrading the Beat Cop or Leo De Luca, dropping in Peter Sylvestre or Scrying, etc. Lupara is not terrible either.

(There is also Key of Ys, which as well as being ridiculous in everyone, is even more powerful in Lola as it provides passive buffs that are immune to her Crisis of Identity and can be defended with her ally swarm. But we should be aiming to win without the Key, so lets pretend we've not heard of it).