Wendy has Nothing Left to Lose... Not even a family.

Credit: Matthew Cowdery

Wendy Adams is probably the most complex investigator to wrap your head around. Her Amulet can introduce many strategies, and it is hard to really understand to what extent it can change the game.

I wanted to propose an alternative to Chirubime's Daredevil Darling deck that uses the Original Amulet for people that don't play online or didn't order the Parallel Wendy. Some of the strategies here are inspired by her deck and the comments under it and adapted to the context of only accessing the topmost event of your discard pile.

Following the success of the 20k Series, this 30k Series will focus on the investigators that are much harder to solve. Expect some jank, some outside-of-the-box thinking and hopefully some love for the underdogs of this game.

Click here to see all the previous decks. I will keep releasing a new standalone-ready deck concept every week on Friday, so stay tuned and keep supporting the Series by pressing the ♥ button if you want to see more!

• Overview

• Main Strategy

• Early Game

• Time Your Events and Your Amulet

• Other Cards

• Upgrade Path

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• Dual wield Lockpicks to get clues easily as you set up your engine.

• With the OG Wendy's Amulet, cycle events endlessly to Get clues, Fight or Ignore the Mythos.

• Refill your hand and pockets with Nothing Left to Lose to fuel your engine.

The first stage of the deck is simple: draw through your deck as fast as possible and set up your Lockpicks to start advancing the game.

Mulligan:

• Mulligan out anything that is not one of the following:

  • Backpack (2)
  • Black Market
  • At a Crossroads
  • Take Heart

Set up your assets:

• Seting up at least one Lockpicks helps triggering "I'll take that!"

• "I'll take that!" is preferably used on the Backpack (2) and on any item you find during the same window.

  • When succeeding, you can play Backpack (2), and "I'll take that!" is attached to it.

  • Once the search is done, you are still in the same window, so you can play "I'll take that!" on an item on the Backpack (2).

  • This is possible because "Cards attached to Backpack may be played as if they were in your hand.".

  • Even if you only succeed by 1, you save 2 play actions and 2 resources.

• By digging through that deck fast, you access Track Shoes and Peter Sylvestre rapidly, increasing your , boosting the Lockpicks as well as events.

• Black Market reveals a wide number of cards, accelerating the set-up.

  • Unintuitively,Black Market reveals cards one by one, but doesn't trigger At a Crossroads because it respects the Dilemma rules, which says that it resolves only when it is drawn or enters your hand.

  • Black Market shines in this deck thanks to the low number of Skill cards, making it very likely to get 5 playable cards or a weakness.

• Talisman of Protection is here as a panic button but mostly for its fast, additional colour for Cheat the System in a non-competitive slot.

• And of course, as for most Wendy decks, the Amulet is the main reason why we are digging through the deck so hastily.

Many OG Wendy strategies are quite complicated, taking bets on when you play your events, with the hope of finding the Amulet early enough to play them once again, taking the risk to see them all removed from the game with Abandoned and Alone. This deck takes a much simpler approach.

Before you find the Amulet:

• Place your assets and start using your Lockpicks to get clues early.

• Play your Skill cards that will be placed in your Discard pile even with the Amulet in play.

  • Take Heart should be played on a treachery test, a 4-shroud location, or a fight action on an enemy. Careful with the last if you are not engaged with the enemy.

  • Resourceful is used either on Take Heart or on At a Crossroads to further accelerate your deck digging.

• At a Crossroads is also technically not played so it won't be affected by your Amulet entering your discard pile anyways, so nothing to think about.

• Certain events are also here just to accelerate your setup and can be played before finding the Amulet:

  • Easy Mark is not meant to get infinite money in this case (see other decks for this), but rather as a deck thinner that gets you resources.

  • Black Market is also really strong with the Amulet in play, but it is strong but not needed in the later stage, so no worries with throwing one or even two during setup.

  • One Backstab can be used earlier in the game. It is best to keep both copies, but one can serve as an early panic button.

  • Same goes for Cheat the System, one copy is key to keep, and another copy can be used if necessary to set up.

All these cards can be removed by Abandoned and Alone without impacting the deck too much.

• Here is a list of all the events which should, as much as possible, be kept in hand until you find the Wendy's Amulet:

  • One copy of Backstab
  • One copy of Cheat the System
  • Counterespionage
  • Both copies of Nothing Left to Lose
  • Pilfer
  • 2 copies of Swift Reflexes

With the Amulet on the table:

• You can start shooting your events:

  • Cheat the System is fast and goes straight to the bottom of your deck.

  • Backstab uses your 6 to fight.

  • Counterespionage uses the overflow of resources to cancel treacheries.

  • Pilfer compensates for the slow early turns by accelerating considerably your clue/turn ratio.

  • Swift Reflexes uses the additional flow of cash to buy yourself some actions.

  • The on Swift Reflexes is chef's kiss. Commit it to a Backstab/Pilfer first, and play it from your discard.

• Finally, Nothing Left to Lose will refill both your hands and pockets. It is not hard in this deck to end up with both 0 resources and 0 to 1 card in hand, and Nothing Left to Lose feels like another dime in the jukebox (baby!).

  • As correctly pointed out by @dscarpac in the comments, I didn't read the second ability of the card, which removes it from the game. That is a shame not to get the insane value of this card more than once per copy, but it's still amazing when it happens.

• To increase dramatically your chances of succeeding tests, you have 2 tricks:

  • Commit the next event you want to use to test if the icons are applicable.

  • This card will end on top of your discard, ready to be played.

  • If drawing an unfortunate chaos token, you can discard an event and play it after.

    • Since Wendy's ability asks you to discard the card immediately, this card will be placed under any card you committed to this test. Be mindful of this, as this will "lock" this card until you play the topmost event.

You know the deck is sound when every single card has been mentioned in the guide before reaching the Other Cards section.

Later Upgrades:

As the deck gets more experience, you can add:

• Peter Sylvestre (2) for more horror absorption and better chances against scenario tests.

• Alter Fate to increase the team's protection against the Mythos.

• Scrapper to spend the extra cash and decrease the number of cards you need to commit, to instead only use them to reroll a token.

• Observed if you really run out of ideas.

• Finally, because the deck runs out of upgrades quite early, Fortune or Fate is a great way to use this leftover experience to give your whole team an extra push.

Disclaimer: This decklist is published in the version that I tested. These decks are made to be as versatile as possible, so don't forget to adapt them to your campaign and change the upgrade order around based on your experience.

Link to the 0xp deck

(View at arkham-starter.com)

Link to the full xp deck

To create your own guides, find the template I have created here