Jenny "We Have the Countess at Home" Barnes in FHV (Hard)

This deck was created for a two-handed run of The Feast of Hemlock Vale on Hard, alongside Carson Sinclair.

Jenny's faithful butler provides an extra action which she might like to use on a parley action, or anything else really.

The partner deck can be found here, and the upgraded version (after five scenarios) can be found here.

To provide a solid foundation for the campaign at hand, I tailor my decks for the first one or two scenarios to ensure I can get a good haul of XP. It's important not to focus too narrowly though, but a number of key card choices here really make short work of our opening scenario, The Thing in the Depths.

Here's the campaign plan:

1. The Thing in the Depths.
2. The Twisted Hollow.
3. Hemlock House.
4. The Longest Night.

My current project has been to make decks which have a good chance of getting through The Longest Night with a perfect result (no damage on The Captives) and the two decks here (Jenny and Carson) have been doing pretty well in that regard. This scenario generally requires some specific tech so it presents an interesting deck-building challenge, and it also requires very careful play to get through unscathed. And if you can get through TLN consistently then the remaining two scenarios should be fine as well, provided you've made some allowances for the first part of the finale.

Now for some card commentary, followed by some brief Campaign notes and upgrade choices.

In the Thick of It: We take two physical trauma here, putting that extra point of health or sanity the Dunwich investigators have to good work.

Charon's Obol: The difference between a bad Rogue deck and a good Rogue deck is how much XP you have. The only FHV scenario I would be hesitant to try in light of the death clause here would be Written in Rock, hence why we're not doing it.

Fine Clothes: All of the FHV parley cards were obviously designed with this card in mind seeing as how none of them have any built-in stat boosts. It isn't essential to have this before you consider playing one but it makes a very noticeable difference in the amount of resources (card commits and actual resources) you need to ensure success.

Scrying Mirror: Before I get into the parley suite (or indeed the rest of the deck) I need to cover this card, because it's one of the most important cards in the entire deck. To put it simply, it's an unparalleled efficiency booster. It does three key things:

1. When we purchase Streetwise it will let us boost only when we need to (once per turn), saving a fortune in resources. As rich as Jenny is, she can't afford to blindly cover the -7 token on every important test (FHV's Hard token bag is pretty brutal). Knowing the outcome of a test in advance lets her divert her money to more important causes. Namely, the Green Man Medallion.

2. It lets Carson know whether he needs to commit one of his precious skill cards to the test (or use Practice Makes Perfect). And later, it interacts well with Girish Kadakia.

3. It works amazingly well with "Watch this!".

Grift: The first card in our parley suite also works very well with Scrying Mirror, and with Fine Clothes in play it's a pretty reliable resource generator. This is probably still the least valuable parley event we have, but it's important to have a good amount that generate tests because Snitch is a truly excellent payoff which we'll grab later on.

Vamp: This card's main use is to bypass high shroud, which is a major issue in our first scenario (every location has either 4 or 5). It's also good for evading enemies and occasionally dealing damage and it doesn't require you to engage first so it saves an action when dealing with Aloof enemies (it also doesn't trigger the Alert and Retaliate keywords).

Stir the Pot: This is an excellent source of AoE damage and shares the same advantages as Vamp when dealing with Aloof enemies.

String of Curses: Testless discover effects are particularly valuable in our first scenario, but this is a very good card any day of the week.

Eldritch Tongue: One copy of this ties the rest of the package together. I've been really impressed with this card, most often using it to delete non-Elite enemies in two actions with String of Curses. Having this in play basically means you have all of your used parley cards in your hand.

Kicking the Hornet's Nest: All of our parley actions require an enemy to work with, and this card delivers one along with a testless clue and some resources. A typical use case is to play this and follow it up with String of Curses to grab two testless clues (and a defeated enemy if you happen to grab one of the rat things that enters play with one doom on it).

This is also my favourite card to play with Carson's extra action, as he can immediately take the spawned enemy off Jenny's hands, perhaps going Toe to Toe with it and/or introducing it to his Guard Dog.

Bank Job: This is an excellent money card, and the part where it lets you split the resources with other players is very relevant here even if Jenny does usually take the lion's share. Her extra action from Carson also helps mitigate the Double aspect of the card.

"Watch this!": As mentioned earlier, this card provides a guaranteed three resource boost thanks to the Scrying Mirror, and it doesn't cost an action.

Thieves' Kit: This also counts as an economy card, and its trickle really adds up. If we start with The Moon • XVIII in play it lets us immediately investigate with a skill value of four, which isn't amazing by any means, but it's better than three.

Sleight of Hand: This card allows you to get a bit more use out of Scrying Mirror, and you can use it on Thieves' Kit to end up resource-positive at the end of your turn (which works even better with bonus actions from Guidance or The Red Clock).

Intel Report: In The Thing in the Depths, there are three locations with Victory Points, and most of the time they're the only locations we need to clear (gaining ten clues in total). Some or all of these locations will flip during play, turning them from shroud 4 to 5 and giving them a new Forced effect which makes you draw an encounter card when you enter.

Intel Report's range modifier lets us clean up any remaining VP locations without having to re-enter them, granting a lot of flexibility in the early stages of the game when we might have to move before we've grabbed every clue, and its testless discovery is also very valuable here due to the high shroud.

Small Favor: Similar to Intel Report, this card allows us to protect our friendly mutant turtle thing from the Grasping Tendrils (which each have 1HP) without having to actually enter one of the Open Water locations that forces us to draw an encounter card.

Fox Mask: This card feels a bit feast or famine, but it's another efficiency booster akin to Fine Clothes which will save us resources we would otherwise have spent on Streetwise. Its two charges are also definitely worth the initial upfront cost of an action and a card, but I don't think it's worth running more than one copy.

Green Man Medallion: The ultimate greed card. I love playing it, and you can begin the first scenario with it either in your hand or in play thanks to the opening Prelude.

Sacrificial Beast: Annoying, but Carson can usually handle it with Toe to Toe and/or Guard Dog.

Campaign Notes:

Scenario One: The Thing in the Depths

• The middle location turns into Open Water when the agenda advances, so you can treat it like a free space beforehand by ending your turn there and flipping it early. If it happens to be one of the VP locations then don't bother clearing it because its clue tokens get removed when the agenda advances.

• If possible, try to keep one point of damage on something in play at all times so that the Bloom treachery doesn't force you to spawn a new enemy.

• Judith's codex entry gives you a free kill on a non-Elite enemy, so don't talk to her right away (you should have better ways to deal with the 1HP Grasping Tendril that spawns when you advance the act). Wait until there's a good target, like the 5HP mutant stag or an enemy blocking the turtle's path that you can't deal with any other way. You can even nuke Jenny's weakness enemy, Sacrificial Beast, if you need to.

• After advancing the act you shouldn't have to move much except to handle the titular Thing in the Depths. After adding Small Favor I don't think I ever actually used the act's ability to guide the turtle (it will still patrol through occupied locations if those are its only options so most of the time you don't need to guide it yourself).

Upgrades

This is the upgrade path I took in one particular run, but of course the amount of XP you get from each scenario will vary so don't take it as a strict guide. I always choose upgrades with the next scenario in mind as well as the campaign as a whole.

We replace both copies of Small Favor and one copy of Intel Report here.

Streetwise: Jenny can now buy her way to success on the two types of tests that matter to her, and .

It's worth mentioning here that Rogue doesn't have much in the way of clue compression, so the resource savings from Scrying Mirror, Fine Clothes, and Fox Mask will add up quickly as you spend a heap of actions discovering one clue at a time.

Geas: With Streetwise doing our heavy lifting and Carson supplying us with skill cards we don't really need to commit anything to any tests ourselves. Our promise is only good for our own turn though, so we can still commit stuff during the Mythos phase or during the action Carson provides.

Savant: This is a great Jenny card as it will always provide +4 test value at its base level, and with Geas in play it's an easy +5.

Another Day, Another Dollar: One copy of this helps smooth out our opening if we get a heap of assets in our hand.

Scenario Two: The Twisted Hollow

• We take the good lantern here, and it's best if you can move at least once every turn to take advantage of its effect to negate the Forced effect upon revealing a location. Most of the locations don't do anything if there are no enemies in the pursuit area so you might get a couple of free turns at the start of the game, but there's not much point to stepping outside the light radius so you can't get too far ahead.

• Run away from the bear the first time it appears so it gets sent to the pursuit area the next time the agenda advances. The second time it appears you'll want to take it down, but to do that you'll need multiple copies of Vamp or Stir the Pot (and/or Eldritch Tongue) and a small enemy to be the target of StP. Carson can go Toe to Toe with it as long as he has an ally out, but probably not more than once.

  My initial Carson build took a Lightning Gun heading into this scenario and it was actually really effective here because even with only one copy in the deck, by the time you meet the bear at the end it was pretty much always in hand. Later on it was a lot less useful and it split the focus of the deck too much so I removed it.

• Save Dr. Rosa Marquez's codex power for the final act and use it to reveal one of the corner locations. The first time the final agenda advances you should be able to dump a couple of non-Hunter enemies away from your location, so you do have some breathing room, but it can be a bit of a race to find the Resign location.

Upgrades

We replace Kicking the Hornet's Nest here because despite how good of an enabler it is, it's useless in the upcoming The Longest Night and the finale. We also drop our one remaining copy of Intel Report because we need the space.

The Red Clock: I'd never taken this card until very recently when I tried it out in a Bob Jenkins deck, and it's impressively powerful. Its slot conflicts with the Green Man Medallion so we'll also have to purchase a...

Relic Hunter: The 3XP tax is worth it to be able to play the clock. The extra slot might also open up the perennially-desirable The Gold Pocket Watch as an option later on.

Snitch: This is a fantastic card and it justifies running some less-than-stellar parley events, though I do think all the ones in this deck are good. Note that you can use this on Resident parley tests as well.

Scenario Three: Hemlock House

• We come here because William Hemlock provides a relevant stat boost for The Longest Night, and because there's no boss fight, which is something we're ill-equipped to deal with.

• This scenario really makes plain how inefficient it is to only discover one clue per action, but Jenny's extra actions from Carson and Guidance go a long way to making up for it. Try to save both copies of Snitch for the final room, but use them early if you have to.

• Start by clearing the VP locations before they end up with a Locked Door, and seal the Foyer early so you can make use of its free trigger Move action.

• Try to always end your turn on a sealed location so that the treachery which checks your location always hits you with the random discard. It kind of sucks, but I think it's better than the other options, the caveat being whether there happens to be a ghost enemy hovering nearby (they're Aloof but they'll engage and attack you if you discard any cards).

• Speaking of those ghosts, the only way to deal with them permanently is String of Curses but try to save it until after the second agenda advances so you don't re-draw a copy following the encounter discard pile getting reshuffled into the deck. Vamp works well for rescuing Carson from them too (he fails pretty much every treachery every time).

Upgrades

We drop "Watch this!" here because we need the deck space and it's the best candidate.

The Red Clock: An expensive upgrade but it's very much worth it. Playing the clock on Carson's first turn with his extra action so that Jenny gets to take advantage of it on her first turn feels great when it happens.

Stir the Pot: In a vacuum this card seems overpriced with regards to its XP cost, but I do honestly think it's about right for what it does. I suspect it's probably a niche upgrade in most off-the-shelf decks, but for our purposes it provides the perfect solution to a very big problem in The Longest Night: killing the bear boss. More on that later, but I will guess that it's probably also very good in the finale if you want to kill the giant elites, not least because it gets around Aloof, Retaliate, and Elusive.

Friends in Low Places: We choose the Trick trait here, along with the Prompt and Experienced upgrades so that it gains Fast and searches 9-cards deep. It will help us find the Stir the Pot we need on our opening turn, and it works on the other green parley actions too.

Scenario Five: The Longest Night

• I usually begin this scenario with both investigators split up because it's imperative we find the two Fire! locations quickly, but Carson doesn't really do much of anything by himself so in this case both investigators take the fighter's starting position, which is on top of the bear boss.

• You can try to kill the bear boss by dragging it back and forth over a number of traps and/or fires (note that its Prey instruction, "Lead investigator", only matters for engaging; it will still move towards the nearest investigator whether they're the Lead or not, but if its Prey clause was "Lead investigator only" then it would ignore everyone else even while moving).

  Anyway, giving the bear the runaround can work but I found it to be really costly in terms of actions, and limiting in terms of where you can move each turn. My test runs improved very quickly when it died within the first turn or two like it does when I have a competent fighter on the team. And for these two investigators, Stir the Pot really is the only viable option for getting that done.

  Jenny needs to test at 12 to cover every token except the Auto-fail, and with the passive boosts from Dr. Rosa Marquez and William Hemlock plus Streetwise and Carson's Practice Makes Perfect from his Stick to the Plan, and also potentially a further boost from The Red Clock or Geas, it's eminently doable. Getting it into her hand is also very reliable with a hard mulligan (ignoring even The Moon • XVIII) for either one copy of it or Friends in Low Places, so this gambit is actually a pretty safe bet. If it doesn't happen on the very first turn it's not a total disaster though, but it does need to happen within the first, I'd say, three turns before you really feel the impact.

  So Jenny hits it for five damage, leaving it with 3HP remaining, which is exactly the amount Carson's Dynamite Blast does. It's also under Stick to the Plan, so bear death is guaranteed at this point, but if Carson needs to play other things and Jenny doesn't have a Bank Job on hand to recover the cost of the dynamite it's probably better to run it over a couple of traps to finish it off.

  In the latest update to this deck I added Backstab, which can also be used to finish off the bear, but putting a bunch of damage into it from any of the options mentioned here (plus Vamp and even Toe to Toe with a Guard Dog out) is valuable even if it doesn't kill it right away.

• We take Gideon Mizrah as Carson's companion because he has the best codex power, which is to discard the next enemy you would draw instead of spawning it. Most of the time it takes more than two actions (his parley cost) to deal with any one enemy from the deck.

• Try to identify the Fire! locations as soon as possible and set them ablaze. The main strategy from this point on is to barricade the hell out of these locations and BBQ all the enemies that can't ignore Barriers, and then deal with the rest of them as necessary in any way you can.

• 1-point damage ping abilities are worth their weight in gold in this scenario, and Carson's Guard Dog is a real MVP here for that and for its free trigger engage. You can use that engage to "protect" The Captives if an Aloof enemy moves into the Farmhouse by grabbing it during the player action window after Hunter/Patrol enemies move but before they attack.

• Try to save Savant for Frozen in Fear, as Carson will otherwise find it hard to shake.

That's about all I can think of for now. Let me know if you have any questions about the deck!

Update: I wrote some more campaign notes for the fifth scenario (The Silent Heath) here.