Punk Rock Grandma - The Queen in Green

This is a Gloria deck for hipsters who want a highly non-optimized take on this investigator by stuffing as many stupid green cards in the deck as her restrictions will allow.

If you're going to choose Rogue as Gloria's secondary class, you might as well go big or go home - that's the Rogue way after all! This deck keeps her maxed out at 10 green cards at all time to ensure that you will have killer octogenarian fanfiction material like Gloria jumping over logs in the woods, doing a sideways jump while dual-wielding a cane and a scroll, and maneuvering a car during a high-speed chase - awesome!

The deck is silly, but this is Gloria we are talking about so of course it's still staggeringly effective for solo runs. I forgot what playing multiplayer is like because of the pandemic, but I think there are better Rogue options like "You owe me one!" and "You handle this one!" if you are lucky enough to be under lockdown with someone who will play this game with you.

Piloting this deck is pretty simple:

Mulligan anything that isn't Alyssa Graham, Scroll of Secrets, or Shrivelling. You need one of these cards in your opening hand or you are really going to have a rough go of things. The first two let you filter the enemies out of the encounter deck, and Shrivelling is your backup plan in case you actually need to do some fighting. Scrying (0) is a crutch card if you don't find either of your other encounter deck peeking options, but it's a bit of a tempo hit and is inferior to the other two.

If you find Alyssa or the scroll in your opening hand, that's great! Mulligan for your economy cards because yeah, this deck is asset-heavy and expensive. Faustian Bargain gives you a nice cash infusion with not too bad of a penalty and "Watch this!" can be tossed into a willpower test to give you some action-less resources.

Once you have the encounter deck under control (ideally on turn 1), you can proceed to complete the scenario more or less at your leisure. Puts assets into play as you get the resources for them, and really just try to enjoy yourself. Every now and then, take a moment to scream the phrase TEN ROGUE CARDS!! at your pets and/or roommates. They'll be afraid, but also impressed/aroused.

Let's look at the green cards first:

• 2x Think on Your Feet Our completely arbitrary commitment to maxing out on Rogue cards means we don't have room for luxuries like Ethereal Form. These cards are your panic buttons to get away from an enemy if one somehow manages to dig its way out of the encounter deck. Unlikely, but you'll be happy to have this card if it does happen, especially if your Shrivelling has yet to arrive.

• 2x Intel Report Most of the time, you'll just be pitching this card for its juicy double intellect icons. Gloria's high intellect will usually be good enough to hit even high shroud locations with a little bit of help. But if you have the extra resources, you can get a clue without a risking a test, which is nice. I'd rather have Perception, but what's the point of including cards we like when we can just impose a pointless deckbuilding restriction on ourselves?

• 1x Faustian Bargain It's five resources and boy are you going to need them. The best way to deal with the Curse tokens is simply to forget to add them, but if you're one of those players who "remembers things" then well...they still really are not going to be much of a problem. Hopefully you'll fish them out early when you are doing a will test at like 13 or something and that'll be that.

• 1x "I'm outta here!" Use this card to boost Gloria's agility to 3 and maybe pass a test! No, don't actually do that. This card is really only in the deck because whenever I draw it, I say "I'm outta here!" in the voice of the character Doug from the 1990's MTV sketch comedy show The State.

• 2x "Watch this!" Chuck this into a will test, preferably in combination with another skill card for three actionless resources. Don't draw the , because then your fanfiction is going to be really lame.

• 2x Quick Thinking I like to use this card during tests outside of the investigation phase because taking actions when I'm not supposed to feels very Rogue-ish, which is obviously why you are playing Gloria in the first place.

Your staples:

• 2x Alyssa Graham The bread-and-butter of every Gloria build, Alyssa is the most effective card your arsenal for effectively castrating the encounter deck. Not only that, but she can tank 2 horror for you (you'll never want to put that 3rd one on her) and gives you a +1 to your already high . You'll gnash your teeth however, when the agenda tells you to reshuffle the encounter deck, because there's no player window before you have to draw from it, so you won't get a chance to use Alyssa's ability. But that's ok, because you also have...

• 2x Shrivelling This card has so much value in Gloria because you just won't burn through the charges as fast as you would with other investigators. When an enemy does spawn on you, assuming you don't want to Think on Your Feet, you can just vaporize it, often in a single action.

• 2x Scroll of Secrets Your plan B if you can't find Alyssa, this is just as good and can sometimes even be better. The idea is that you look at the bottom two cards of the encounter deck and move the less scary treacheries you find among them to the top of the deck, thus delaying any enemies you may have drawn otherwise.

• 2x St. Hubert's Key Boosts both of Gloria's main stats, taking her to 6/6/2/1, assuming you have Alyssa in play. Most mystics probably want Holy Rosary here instead, but you're not taking any fancy investigation spells, so this card is generally the better option for Gloria, since her book stat already starts so high.

• 2x Fearless and 2x Guts With two Arcane Research, free horror healing is always welcome. Guts can help you out if your opening draw is particularly bad. The upgraded versions of both of these cards are excellent as well.

• 1x Ruth Westmacott Just commit Ruth to a test to help you crack a high shroud location. Her ability is pretty useless in solo, and she competes for the same slot as Alyssa.

Your contingency plans:

• 1x Scrying Painfully slow, but lets you look at four encounter cards and rearrange them however you want. I think this card's stock gains some value at higher player counts, but in solo it's really your last resort for managing the encounter deck. If your buddy or your magic paper are out, just pitch it for its tasty icon.

• 1x Painkillers Combined with Gloria's high sanity, Alyssa, St. Hubert's Key, and Fearless give you all the horror soak you need for even the lengthiest of scenarios. Gloria's low health is a different matter entirely, so keep this asset around for when things start to get dicey. You never know, sometimes you just end up playing the Forgotten Age without even realizing it!

• 1x Ward of Protection Use it on Grasping Hands and other treacheries that don't realize they are making you test the wrong stat.

• 2x Promise of Power Every once in a while, even Gloria has to take a test where she doesn't have a base value of 6. This is for those.

• 1x Spectral Razor Such a handy escape valve for those times when your Shrivelling is nowhere to be found and the encounter deck refuses to be bullied. Punch that dumb Hunting Nightgaunt into oblivion with your glowing hand blade! Then bop him on the head with your...

• 2x Sword Cane Use it and abuse it before MJ taboos it.

Upgrades:

This deck is easy to upgrade. Simply swap out your Mystic cards for their higher level versions. This includes:

• Scroll of Secrets
• Scrying
• Shrivelling
• Ward of Protection
• Fearless
• Guts

Also:

• -1x Painkillers +1x Bulletproof Vest ••• : I don't care what anyone thinks, Bulletproof Vest is a great card for Gloria. It basically doubles your health and is the ultimate insurance policy against the game putting up a fight.

Don't forget - you want to make sure that you have ten green cards in your deck at all times, so that people will think you're fun and eccentric! With that in mind, consider the following:

• -2x Think on Your Feet +2x Elusive: This one is a no-brainer. Elusive serves as both an panic button when you need it, and bonkers action compression even when you don't.

• -1x "I'm outta here!", -1x Faustian Bargain, -1x "Watch this!" +3x Easy Mark • : With this upgrade, you are losing a bit of resource economy, but are trading it for card draw, and if you are lucky, some action compression as well. You probably won't get all three in your hand at once, but if you can find two, that's pretty darn good. Gloria really likes extra card draw, so anything helps.

Final Thoughts: Highly recommend giving this deck a whirl, so that you can appreciate just how good you had it with Crack the Case and Eureka! in your Yellow Gloria deck.