Rita Young - Ornate Bow - Hard Mode - thematic

This deck focuses on what Rita does best. She has a 5 that is easily boosted to 7 with Peter Sylvestre and Track Shoes and a 9 for combat with the Ornate Bow. The best part though is that she has nearly infinite Health due to starting at 9 Health and Peter Sylvestre and Cherished Keepsake soak up endless horror.

The first 1-2 scenarios will be a little rough with Rita if you play on Hard Difficulty. The Baseball Bat is a decent weapon for her since she can attack at a 5 but she will need additional skill cards to consistently do damage. Her first upgrade is the Ornate Bow and then she will be able to handle a fair amount of enemy management at near auto pass levels.

I am confident that Rita is fantastic at doing Rita things at Hard difficulty. The issue is what player count and paired with what other investigators

1. True solo isn't a good option imo. Her cluefinding is too inconsistent to be dependable. With this Ornate Bow build, her hands aren't free for Newspaper, Flashlight or the Lantern.
2. Two player is an option but she needs a strong cluefinding investigator that can still kill some enemies. My Evade and Investigate Finn pairing didn't fare too well in Dunwich. Too many Hunter enemies pinned them down and wasted too many turns. My first play with Rita was with Joe Diamond on Standard difficulty and I will setup a new Joe Diamond for Hard difficulty.
3. 3-4 player groups that have a strong monster killer and a for clues might be perfect for Rita.

Cluefinding

She can also contribute a fair amount of clues due to the Survivor success on failure archetype. Winging It combined with Lucky! or "Look what I found!" are essentially testless clues on 2 or 3 shrouds. Belly of the Beast is fantastic and basically an actionless clue costing one resource. The only issue is that Rita can't be counted on to help with clues unless she has the cards and her contribution will be inconsistent.

Important Cards

This deck works if you have Peter Sylvestre and The Ornate Bow. Everything else is optional if you don't have those expansions or mythos packs yet. Track Shoes are great for taking her so high that you don't worry about failing combat or evade skill tests (except for ). Backpack is also a really nice card to find the bow. Resourceful is also a fantastic card for bringing back the useful event cards or Peter Sylvestre if he got discarded.

Economy

This is a cheap deck to play so no economy cards are included. Early game there might be a few actions needed taking resources to get Peter Sylvestre, The Ornate Bow and Track Shoes out but after that Rita only needs resources for situational events. I don't consider Dark Horse to be a good option for this deck. Rita has many situational events that all require a resource or two and you might not know when they will be needed. 1-2 copies of Drawing Thin could be useful since it can be used for resources or for card draw.

Last Cards In and Out

1. Emergency Cache - useful card but not that necessary
2. Fire Axe - useful for the first 2 scenarios until Ornate Bow is added
3. Grisly Totem - could be useful but it never really entered play when I used it last time.
4. Yaotl - Yaotl is fantastic and I included him the first I played Rita at Standard Difficulty. The drawback is that it created a resource crunch during the first 5 turns when I was trying to get all of the key cards played. And it seemed to spread the deck out too much since you can do almost anything if you have the right card. I will definitely be using #Yaotl in a different deck build.
5. Waylay - I am not the biggest fan of this card but it allows Rita to kill an exhausted enemy without needing to reload her bow. It is a little expensive but mid to late scenario Rita is just piling up resources without much to spend them on. And it can be really useful in certain situations.
6. Tennessee Sour Mash could replace Guts or one of the weaker cards in the deck.
7. Belly of the Beast could be unnecessary with the other cluefinding cards since she isn't really responsible for finding clues.
8. Cheap Shot - It would work but it only causes one damage. Not sure what the point is since Rita can already evade easily and do a point of damage (once/turn).
9. Cherished Keepsake might be unnecessary with Peter Sylvestre but it works early in the scenario if you can't find Peter Sylvestre
10. Live and Learn - Kind of like Lucky! but not as good since you have to take any side effects of failure which can include retaliate, encounter card effects or special token effects. Nice to have in the deck but I usually don't miss it if I remove it for upgrades.

Upgrades - It is simple to remember these

1. Ornate Bow
2. Peter Sylvestre
3. Will to Survive
4. A Test of Will - the version of Ward of Protection. It gets exiled but you don't have anything else to spend XP on
5. Stroke of Luck - basically an autopass card. It also gets exiled but you can just keep buying it. Edit - Drawing Thin should be included in this list.