Will to Survive Combo Wendy (Expert)

Important Note:

Even though it’s an upgrade, I’m still including Will to Survive in the decklist since it is so important to the overall deck. “Look What I Found” is the card I would run instead for the loadout given, and the decklist still functions perfectly well in the first scenario of a campaign as an evasion/clue gathering deck.

Overview

The backbone of this deck is based off of playing Will to Survive to give you a power turn where you don’t need to draw chaos tokens, then performing a skill test you are far above the difficulty on (usually lockpicking a location, but can also trigger off of a Fight or Flight fight check) and committing some combination of Quick Thinking (extend your turn), Resourceful (bounce back Will to Survive and other powerful Survivor cards for further use on future turns) and Double or Nothing (double the effects of the Quick Thinking/Resourceful commits, in addition to the result of the skill test). This combo becomes even more potent through Fight or Flight and a weapon, allowing you to deal a guaranteed 2 damage per action, giving you a potential of 18 guaranteed damage dealt in a single turn with the right combination of cards.

The single biggest strength of this deck is that once you execute your combo, you can go multiple turns ignoring the chaos bag. While you are ignoring the chaos bag, it makes no difference whether you are playing on easy or expert. As a result, this is one of the most effective decks to play on high difficulties, since it can trivialize what would otherwise be imposing tasks. Even outside of the combo, Wendy is still effective as a clue gatherer and evader.

This deck does still have its weaknesses. A major one is that in order to function fully, this deck has to rapidly draw through itself. While the amount of draw in this deck is naturally very high, it still means that you are going to have a bit of a slow start in some games, since your early game is going to be focussed on draw and development.

The other major weakness this deck has comes from vulnerability to certain weaknesses. While cards like Paranoia and Drawing the Sign can be very annoying there are two cards that will devastate you. They are…

• Amnesia: As with any combo deck in any card game, having to discard random cards is cancer, since losing the wrong cards can ruin your entire combo. Amnesia takes discarding to a whole new level, and if you draw it at the wrong time, the effects are absolutely devastating. You’ll also often be near hand limit, making it that much worse. At least it doesn’t kill you…

• Doomed: I have no idea what the designers were thinking when they printed this card, and I’ve taken to just removing it from the pool of basic weaknesses. If you draw this as your basic weakness in a full campaign, it will kill you. This deck draws way too much to have any chance of not drawing it 5 times in 8 scenarios. There really isn’t any counter play to this fact.

Something that I will also mention in relation to this is that I think it would be healthy for the game to have some way of switching your basic weakness, even if it is expensive. Since there isn’t, if you random from the full pool of basic weaknesses, there is a small chance that you will get screwed over before the first scenario even begins.

The Combo (ideal situation)

An ideal combo turn looks something like this. You have Leo and Lockpicks as your assets in play while on a shroud 4 location with ample resources. Will to Survive, 2 copies of Quick Thinking, Resourceful and Double or Nothing are in your hand. You start your turn by playing Will to Survive, then spend your first action to Lockpick investigate, committing all of the skills mentioned as in your hand. Your skill value for this test starts at 7 from Lockpicks, and becomes 11 after commits while the difficulty is 8 due to Double or Nothing, causing you to pass by 3. The result of this pass is 4 more actions, 2 survivor cards bounced to your hand (you almost always want to bounce Will to Survive, then the other card depends on the situation, even though it is often Fight or Flight) and 2 clues. After this, you still have 7 actions remaining, which can be converted into guaranteed investigates on shroud 3 or lower locations (or higher shroud with commits), guaranteed evades or guaranteed scenario actions like parleying.

Another example would be having the same cards as above, in addition to also having Switchblade(2) in play and Fight or Flight in hand with 3 horror on Wendy and a 4 fight, 18 health boss enemy engaged with you (for reference, the Ancient One in all three major campaigns on 2 player have equal or less impressive stats then this). You start your turn with Will to Survive and Fight or Flight, boosting your combat up to 4. Your first action is to fight the enemy, again committing all of the skill cards being mentioned as in your hand. You end up with a skill value of 10 for the check (4 base, 2 from Switchblade(2), 4 from skill commits) against a difficult of 8, causing you to pass by 2. This success causes you to deal 4 damage to the boss with 7 actions remaining. You use all 7 of those actions on fighting, dealing 2 guaranteed damage per action, for a total of 18 damage for the entire turn. You bring the boss from full health to dead in 1 turn without even having that demanding of a setup (Leo and Switchblade(2) in play, 3 horror and 5 specific cards in hand since Resourceful isn't even necessary to pull this off, and could be replaced with any other commit or a 4th horror). Since this doesn't rely at all of the chaos bag, this kill will happen just as reliably on expert as it would on easy.

While these are both "ideal" situations, the combo is still very effective even if you happen to be missing 1 or 2 of the skills.

Piloting/Common Mistakes

Most of the explanation for this deck comes in the card sections. However, I will still go over a couple of general pointers.

• The core of this deck is the synergy between a lot of the cards and this should not be forgotten. If you draw Quick Thinking, you should try to save this to commit in combination with Will to Survive and, ideally, Double or Nothing. If you commit these cards as soon as you get them to random skill tests, you are causing massive detriment to what you will be able to accomplish later in the scenario. Try to avoid this.

• On the other end of the spectrum, you don’t need to wait until you have every single piece of your combo before pulling the trigger. If your guardian is getting dumpstered by a horde of elite enemies and you have enough pieces to kill those enemies but you’re missing resourceful to get cards back into your hand, you should absolutely play the combo early to save your teammate. Cutting corners is completely fine when the situation demands, as long as you don’t lose sight of the big picture.

• While the deck is capable of doing proactive things pre-combo like getting a clue consistently each turn through Lockpicks, the combo is where the main strength of this deck lies. Gathering the pieces of the combo so that it is ready for the middle part of the scenario is something that you are heavily incentivized to do. As such, as the situation permits, you will want to spend quite a lot of actions early on drawing through the deck and committing your card-draw skills to further speed up this process.

• Even though your ability on Wendy isn’t that core to the overall deck, it is still very powerful and should not be forgotten. Losing a card of your choice is usually a fine trade if you draw the auto-fail on an important skill test.

• The general mulligan guide is to keep all assets (except for duplicates) and econ boosting cards. You should not focus on keeping combo pieces.

Cards in the decklist

Signature

Abandoned and Alone: This weakness is an interesting one. The two direct horror usually isn’t that big of a deal, especially since it helps to charge up fight or flight, and it’s easy enough to play around losing your discard pile by just making sure that you are quick about bouncing your key cards back into your hand. However, since this deck draws at such a fast rate, the biggest threat this card represents is if you draw it towards the bottom of your deck, since it will kill you if you repeatedly draw it off reshuffles due to it removing most of your cards from the game.

Wendy's Amulet: For the most part, Wendy’s signature card really isn’t that important, since you generally want your important events to stay in your discard to get dug up by resourceful, and you don’t want your less important cards fattening up your deck while looking for combo pieces. However, this card does serve a very important role in countering your weakness late in the scenario, since it can prevent you from reshuffling your deck and, if played as your deck runs, allow you to repeatedly draw events like Will to Survive. As such, you should consider keeping this card in your hand when you draw it if you are at all worried of drawing through your deck as an insurance.

Combo

Will to Survive: As mentioned, even though you won’t be able to include this card until after the first scenario, it is so core to the overall deck that I’m still including it here. The card effectively guarantees every skill check you take for a turn, provided your skill value at least ties with the difficulty, and is incredibly powerful in combination with the other cards in this deck.

Quick Thinking/Resourceful/Double or Nothing: During the first scenario, these cards can be committed whenever without much concern, with double or nothing allowing you to get an almost guaranteed 2 clues when flashlighting a shroud 2 or lower location. After you upgrade, these cards should only really be used in combination with Will to Survive. Quick thinking extends your power play turn, resourceful rebounds your most important cards back to you hand to be used the following turn, and double of nothing amplifies both of these effects, in addition to any cycle cards you commit. You don’t necessarily need all of these cards before you play Will to Survive, but once you do have them, you should save them for the combo. These cards should never be cut from the deck.

Fight or Flight: For the first scenario, this card can be played whenever you want help securing an evasion. However, once you upgrade, this card can be used in combination with Will to Survive and a weapon like Knuckleduster or Switchblade too turn Wendy into a god-tier enemy/boss killer once you’ve collected the horror for it. Unless you want to forgo combat entirely, this card should remain in your deck for a long time, if ever.

Econ

Lone Wolf: Can be an incredibly strong source of resource gen if you get it out early, even though consistently getting the bonus resource every turn can be a bit tricky when playing in larger groups. Can be switched out for emergency cache if you want to get your resources more reliably. You can also consider cutting this card later on for upgraded econ cards like Payday and Emergency Cache(2).

Take Heart: Finding a skill test that you are very likely to fail usually isn’t too hard for Wendy. If you do a base investigate on a high shroud location, this effectively turns into 2 cards and 2 resources for 1 action. This is incredibly strong, and Wendy’s ability lets her play around nasty chaos tokens. I usually never cut this card since the econ generation it represents is simply too high.

You Handle This One: The main purpose of this card is to give enemies you draw over to your fighter, thereby saving the both of you actions when dealing with the enemy. This effect in addition to the fast resource that makes it almost comparable to Emergency Cache(0) combos for a powerful card. Can still be cut later on for more powerful upgrades, and is obviously a multiplayer only card.

Other Cards

Leo De Luca: Getting an extra action every turn by itself is incredibly powerful, and it gets even better with Will to Survive. I almost always have Leo as my ally throughout the campaign. Flashlight: Helps you to get clues in early scenarios and has major synergy with Double or Nothing prior to Will to Survive. However, lockpicks are such a strong card for Wendy that this ends up getting cut quickly in favour of that.

Lucky!: Even though this card doesn’t hold much synergy with the deck, it’s simply too strong of a card not to run. As such, I always run it and usually never cut it.

"Look what I found!": Can help significantly with clue gathering in early scenarios, especially with its synergy with flashlight. However, once you get Will to Survive, this card usually gets cut soon after and you probably do not want to run this card in single player (Think on Your Feet and Manual Dexterity would be better options)

Elusive: Even though Wendy has high agility, this card lets her get away from enemies and more around the map quickly, without the need for spending actions. While the use of this card varies based on how often you’ll need to run away from enemies and can be subbed for something else if there isn’t much need for this, it can help significantly with some scenarios. Most useful in Forgotten Age and in single player.

Cherished Keepsake: Cheep and reliable horror tanking. Not much else to say. Can be cut later on, and can be replaced with something else if you aren’t that worried about your sanity.

Guts/Perception: These cards are nice since they are easy to cycle, in addition to helping you or your fellow investigators with potentially important skill checks. Both of these cards are cuttable when upgrading, even though I usually try to leave Perception in as long as I can, since it’s so easy to cycle and can help with your combo, generating 2 cards if committed with Double or Nothing.

Tech Cards

Cards which can also be useful in your starting deck based on the situation. If you aren’t sure which cards to sub out for them, You Handle This One, “Look What I Found!”, Elusive and Cherished Keepsake are all cards that can be cut.

Manual Dexterity: Just as with Guts and Perception, easy cycle that can help with important skill checks. The value of this card heavily depends on how much evading you are likely to be doing. If it’s a lot (single player or FA), heavily consider this card. If not, don’t bother.

Think on Your Feet: Pretty much the same thing as Manual Dexterity. If it’s important that you get away if an enemy that spawns on you, run this. If you have a fighter who can easily deal with it, don’t.

Lucky Cigarette Case: Since you often aren’t doing many skill checks before drawing your combo, and you don’t care that much about card draw afterwards, this card usually ends up just missing the cut. I still think it’s a solid card, but I usually prefer Cherished Keepsake when running an accessory.

Knuckleduster: Pure card fodder before Will to Survive is added to the deck. However, once it is added, Knuckleduster can be subbed in using adaptable to amp your damage when you have Will to Survive and Fight or Flight active together. Even if you do adaptable this in, this will still end up being cut in favour of the cheaper and more effective Switchblade(2).

Fine Clothes: Very useful in Carcosa or any other future campaigns which have a lot of parley actions in the early scenarios. Should be cut once you are finished with the parley-heavy scenarios.

Liquid Courage: Great tech for the first scenario of Carcosa when keeping everyone’s horror low is important. Generally not quite good enough to run outside of this situation however.

Peter Sylvestre: Strong ally. His main weakness is that he has to compete against Leo, which is a hard fight to win. As another early Carcosa tech however, you can run him instead of Leo for the first scenario when sanity management is extremely important, then switch him out for upgraded Leo afterwards.

Why not run…

There are a lot of cards that you could make some justification for, so I’m just going to go through the major ones. Feel free to ask about any cards I did not include here.

Scavenging: I used to run this card in the earliest iterations of this deck, since repeatedly bouncing your amulet back to your hand as a skill commit is effective, especially if Elder Sign Amulets were also grabbed. However, since then, I believe the deck slots have become too competitive, and this card is a bit too niche to find room for.

Winging It: I think flashlight is more consistent during the early scenarios, and there isn’t room for this as well.

Backstab/Sneak Attack/Waylay: Popular cards in most Wendy decks. However, this deck doesn’t have much room for cards that aren’t either part of the combo or help you to draw towards the combo. As such, it’s simply too hard to try and support these cards with this archetype.

Rabbit's Foot: I ran Rabbit’s Foot in early iterations of this deck. However, you simply don’t fail skill checks often enough to make get significant value out of this card. If you have access to it, Lucky Cigarette Case is the better option if you are looking to run this type of card.

Live and Learn: Really solid card, I just don’t think it works well enough in this decktype. Additionally, if you fail an important skill test, you can just use Wendy’s ability instead.

"I'm outta here!": Even if you have early resign scenarios, Elusive usually does the job just as well, while being far more versatile.

"Watch this!": Would be a great card in this deck… if it had an intellect pip. Since it doesn’t, it’s too hard trying to commit this card to get full value, meaning I will usually pass on this card.

Upgrades

One card that I am not going to include below, even though it’s a card that you may want to heavily consider, is Adaptable. Adaptable is great at letting you rapidly take out tech cards you might be running for the first scenario, but you have little use for afterwards. Additionally, it allows you to put in cards like Knuckleduster which are useless prior to getting Will to Survive, but heavily amplify the damage you can deal while using your combo. Getting this card heavily depends on the amount of xp you have at the end of the first scenario, and how much you value being able to switch around your level 0 cards. I will usually either get this card at the end of the first scenario, or not at all.

Highest Priority

Will to Survive: Explanation for this card given above.

Lockpicks: You are really going to want to rush down this card. Lockpick skill checks are by far the most reliable way that you are going to pass a Double or Nothing/Quick Thinking skill test by 2 or more to combo with Will to Survive, and getting +4 to an investigate every turn with a 1xp asset is massive value. I usually cut flashlight for this card.

High Priority

Switchblade: Can be bumped down a little bit if you adaptable in Knuckleduster. This will serve as your main weapon throughout the campaign when fighting with Fight or Flight/Will to Survive. Even if you do put in Knuckleduster, this is fast, costs 1 resource less, has a stronger effect and only costs 2xp.

Rabbit's Foot: I don’t have a high opinion of Rabbit’s Foot(0), and that is largely because you don’t fail skill tests that often with Wendy. However, this card is a bit of a game changer since intentionally failing skill tests with this card provides something far more powerful then drawing… searching. Picking which card you want to get from an array of options is great, since you can use it to help secure your important assets early and your combo pieces later. It can also be used to intentionally draw weaknesses at times when they are manageable.

Leo De Luca: It’s Leo, but he cost 1 less. Surprisingly valuable.

Pay Day: Can either be used early for what is usually going to be 4 resources, or in combination with quick thinking for 6 or even 8 resources. High value card which can be put in over a previous econ card.

Medium Priority

Relic Hunter: Lets you put both Rabbits Foot(3) into play for high value, in addition of giving you the option of playing out Wendy’s Amulet while leaving a foot up.

Lucky!: In a deck that loves cycle, that extra card draw is significant. Can also be bounced back with Resourceful Emergency Cache(2): Same as above. 2xp is more then a fair price for a draw a card in this deck.

Peter Sylvestre + Charisma: This is a fairly expensive upgrade to run, especially since it doesn’t give you resources, cards or increased combo potency. However, running Peter makes you even more consistent at will and agility checks, while making you incredibly resistant to horror loss. Often ends up being worth the price, but you don’t always need to run this.

Low Priority

The Red-Gloved Man: Fight or Flight usually has you covered when you need to buff your combat. Additionally, since Fight or Flight is a Survivor card, it can be bounced back to your hand through resourceful. However, Red-Gloved Man still is worth a bit of consideration since he requires no setup beyond taking up an ally slot and is more versatile since he can buff your other skills and serve as a tank. Potential late campaign alternative to Fight or Flight, and also becomes more appealing if you forgo Peter.

Alter Fate: I don’t like this card as much as I thought I would, since it’s quite a bit more niche then a revelation-block. However, it still certainly has it’s uses, and can be taken along late game. Great card to run in Dunwich, since it can be used to deal with Beyond The Veil

Other Significant Upgrades

A Test of Will: I didn’t know where to put this card on the priority list, so I’ll write about it here. This card doesn’t hold much synergy with the rest of the deck, but being able to block treacheries is incredibly powerful. If you are going into a scenario with some nasty treacheries, you can put this in for a scenario to help you significantly. Later on in a campaign, I will permanently keep this card in my deck once I’ve acquired the other main upgrades.

Devil's Luck: Important tech option for Dunwich, even though a bit less so now that Alter Fate is also an option. This deck draws so quickly that if you draw Beyond The Veil, it is probably going to proc on you at some point, and this card is a cheap way of dealing with it. Usually not necessary outside of these circumstances though.

True Survivor: The fun little combo you can run with this card is to play this card to get 2 Quick Thinking and a Resourceful from your discard, and then, with Will to Survive up, commit those cards to your next skill test for a refund action on the skill test, an additional action, and to bounce back True Survivor. You can then play True Survivor with your additional action, thereby creating a theoretically infinite combo. This is very much theoretical however since you pay 3 resources every time you play this card, which will usually run you dry quickly enough. Payday can be used though to refund a large portion of your spent resources though, making this a semi-viable combo.

Elder Sign Amulet: Peter is usually the better option if you want more horror tanking. If you really want to run a Scavenging variation of this deck, this is a useful card to have because of it’s commits. Outside of that, there are going to be better options.