Winnsmouth

Hey Friends,

It's a Winifred "The Woman Without Fear", aka "Wini" Habbamock deck!

This deck, for reasons I may or may not get into, should probably be renamed:
Wini "Why do you always have 10 assets in play" Habbamock

... These intros will always be awkward.

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The Inspiration

Knew we'd be playing through Innsmouth
Knew we'd have Daniela Reyes and Mandy Thompson
Wanted to be The Game's Clear Best Class™
Wanted to throw cards at problems and draw lots of cards without it feeling boring (i'm looking at you Patrice Hathaway + Cornered)

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The Deck

The new Edge of the Earth investigator box brought a lot of new cards I'd been eager to try since the spoilers dropped. Most of them (surprisingly) didn't contain green in color. I did have a couple things in mind to try when making this Wini deck, aside from the fact that this is my first real time running Wini through a campaign.

Core

: I went into Wini figuring she'd be played best as a hybrid (doing both clue gathering and fighting), but noted Mandy Thompson's incredible ability to pick up enough clues for an entire team through Archaic Glyphs and Deduction + Practice Makes Perfect, and leaned a bit more heavily into combat.
To this end...

: Mauser C96 Mauser C96 were a must (mostly because it's my favorite weapon in the game).
: Lonnie Ritter + Delilah O'Rourke would help Wini get to a respectable 4 in .
: Manual Dexterity Manual Dexterity + Nimble were fantastic for evading and allowing a big lead on Pilfers.
: Pilfer Pilfer and Lockpicks were the only sources of clue gathering for Wini (which turned out to be all she needed).

Mulligan

: There is a single card you need to get your deck going. It's Lucky Cigarette Case. Find it, and you'll find everything else fairly quickly. That's it. End of section. Lucky Cigarette Case is great. 'nuff said.

Testing Goals:

Knowing Wini to be a reliable investigator by virtue of built-in card draw and decent stats, I figured I could get away with testing some new cards in EotE.

: Heavy Furs + Lonnie Ritter seemed like a logical thing to test seeing as how the , , and tokens in hard mode tend to deal damage and horror regardless of success.
: Savant is the new skill card for Rogues that has grown on me more and more. A great tool for Jenny Barnes, but also another 2 copies of Unexpected Courage are fantastic for Wini (in addition, she gets a big boost to tests).
: Crafty seems like an interesting idea for economy when going for recurring Pilfer and Backstab. [More on this in a below section]
: In the Thick of It helped kick-start Wini's draw with 2 Savant and 1 Lockpicks, as taking the level 0 version seemed dicey in Hard mode.
: Copycat. Ah, the real reason we're playing this deck. Reusing Deduction and Perception has never been sweeter.

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The Experience

Wini is fantastic fun. She's versatile, resilient (ehehe thanks, "You handle this one!") and Adaptable. On top of that, she's wealthy in both resources and cards. What's not to love?

Notable Omissions

: Backstab Backstab would have been a fantastic include and taken some emphasis off having to get the Mauser C96s down to do anything.
: Switchblade is a hell of a card. Even errata'd, being fast and also 1 resource is probably better than paying 3-4 resources for a Mauser C96, then getting the refund later. This will certainly be a change going forward.
Overall Change to combat suite: -2 Mauser C96, +2 Backstab + 1 Switchblade.
: Intel Report was a last-minute cut due to how good Pilfer is in 3-player, but could definitely be used in 2-4 player counts.
: I did want to test out Momentum and Daredevil, but wasn't completely certain the direction I wanted.
: THE CHARIOT · VII was another consideration, but the deck is very xp hungry and I noticed a lot of my time was taken up by setting up assets early on (which was a mistake in building this deck, imo, and next time will be less asset-heavy).
: Sawed-Off Shotgun is a favorite weapon for Tony Morgan, and could have seen play here, but I feel Wini's strength is her . Due to this, focusing on the aforementioned Backstab and Pilfer would be the more clear direction i go for next time.
: Sharpshooter is a very cool card, and something I could lean into if i end up in the Backstab + Switchblade route.

Test Results:

: Heavy Furs + Lonnie Ritter turned out to be pretty cool, though a little unnecessary once Daniela Reyes was able to more reliably handle enemies and Wini got her draw on to hit those "You handle this one!"s more reliably.
: Savant turned out to be fantastic. two icons are so, so great for her versatility. Highly recommend getting these as soon as you can.
: Copycat Holy cow. This card is so. Fun. Easily my favorite card of all-time. Praise aside, this card does fail to stand out if you don't have friendly investigators with good skill cards. User beware... OF ENDLESS FUN.
: Crafty I didn't really get much time with this card-- at least not as much as i'd hoped to get. I really like the concept of this card, at least as it pertains to Pilfer, Lockpicks and potentially Slip Away + Cheap Shot. Not to mention it efficiently powers up Cheat the System.
: I was actually kind of surprised that The Red Clock felt kind of clunky. This might be a bias from sitting across the table from a Mandy Thompson with Pendant of the Queen infinitely teleporting, evading (anything) and scooping clues up wherever. I'm not salty about spending 9 xp on something that moves you 3 spaces when a can spend one and do all those things...

The Campaign

Innsmouth was fun, but made a truly fun experience due to 2 Accursed Followers. They really brought out the spirit of Innsmouth, and had it not been my first time wanting to play a "pure Wini deck" (whatever that means), I would've teched more heavily into dealing with the curses (and probably thrown more curse-based cards into my deck). I'm almost at the point where I'd put one in my deck whenever playing Innsmouth just to have that bag pressure. It seriously gave the campaign so much personality. Or should I say, onality. Sorry, not sorry.

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Hope this write-up was helpful. I do enjoy detailing these, so let me know if this amount of detail and these thoughts are helpful. If you're into watching playthroughs or listening to folks talk about the game, check my cast: Miskatonic University Radio out on Twitch or Youtube!