My Own Special Dynamite

Inspired by Primate in the Mythos Busters Discord, thanks Champion.
*Disclaimer: I have not played this deck, but in the next Campaign I play as a flex this is going to be the one. I'll write an update on my thoughts when I finish that game!

She's Quick and Nimble When She Needs to Be
Rita rocks my socks off. She solves problems in a weird way that I love: evading and putting it off til it gets fixed, either very slowly by her or someone else much more efficiently. Hemlock Vale provided her with some sweet level 0 and xp cards that I've been excited to use, but the one that I didn't really consider is Survival Technique. I'm currently running a Makeshift Trap/Dirty Fighting/Sledgehammer build as primary fighter for a 3 player game and I've found it to be remarkably useful, albeit not super consistent.

Fortunately, Rita doesn't need to be consistent. She can solve problems on the fly, she can delay, she can ignore, and all the while keep her friends (especially main clue getter) comfortable, active, and most importantly doing their jobs. In the way that only Survivors can, she improvises and it usually all works out.

This version of Rita is a 3rd position pseudo-flex. The intent is to keep enemies off your clue getter and making sure they can solve the real problem: Winning the Game. However this Rita isn't great at burst damage so there will need to be someone who can still hit hard and consistently when a boss shows up.

Eh, This'll Do
Essentially the deck is "Get out Track Shoes, run", but there's a little bit more nuance if you wanna look for it. Makeshift Trap fixes a lot of enemy-based problems, Ethereal Slip shifts enemies off your friends and into the trap, Disguise gives you 2 rounds of breathing room, which is a dramatic increase. Bewitching is a sick card which I'm stoked to mess around with in a ton of rogue decks going forward, but since it's a Trick this will be my first test run with it. Granny Orne is kinda niche, I haven't decided if the + is more important in this deck than the + Pete gives you, but sometimes you can just get a clue and that can be life changing.

Speaking of that +, Stir the Pot is in here! Your Sick Duds should cover most enemies, but to hold onto that Pseudo-Flex title we'll need to snap up some clues here and there as well. This allows Perception and "Look what I found!" to pull double duty as commits for damage if you need them and clues when you don't. Lure lets you coax hunters away from your friends and into the Trap. If you wind up with enemies on you after that hunt phase, see if you can make a Quick Getaway to not get hit and use your ability to bounce from the location, and the Net Trap prevents the other ones from coming with you! If you're standing in your trap, Ethereal Slip won't trigger Attacks of Opportunity, rips enemies off your friends, and moves the nerd into the trap! (I'm still a little unclear on if you can trigger Track Shoes out of a Slip, but I believe it does and that's usually enough for the rules at my table.) Then you can mosey in at your leisure to use your Cooler Dynamite to clear out the trap. In terms of Economy, Easy Mark has been a pretty stable economy card for most of my Rita decks as I only really need money playing my shoes and ally and then I sort of coast on upkeep dollars until I find more copies of Easy Mark, but now we get into Bewitching.

These Are Not the Investigators You're Looking For
Hot Dog, is this a card for Rita or what? You were engaging enemies anyway, you wanted this to happen, and now you get rewarded for it too?? Genius play on the designers part for making it a Trick. You have put good into this world.

There are a lot of spicy picks you can choose for Bewitching. Easy Mark is a high priority in this deck because you can trigger the search with it at least twice, giving you more value than average. Lure doesn't need to be searched out on the engage trigger, as you only have one copy of it, but being able to pull it into hand when you need it (most of the time) is an incredible boon when your other combo pieces are rarin' to go. Quick Getaway is a bit of a "Get out of Jail" card, a panic button when you don't have a good response to a hunter walkin into your personal space. Sneak By is sort of the opposite, you want to pull it up when you walk into their space. Stir the Pot, not sure about whether you'd want this on Bewitching, but I know I'll regret not putting it on there at some point during this deck's lifespan. I don't think I'd personally put Disguise on there, but I had to mention it because putting Assets on Bewitching is an awesome concept, and there's a fantastic world out there somewhere where you put Dirty Fighting on there to consistently pull it in the early game.

Hey Freakshow! You're Goin Nowhere!
But that's not this deck! This crux of this deck is Makeshift Trap. This card is good, but the heavy lifting comes from the 3xp in Net. It's got Hot Patootie Bless My Soul levels of power. This one upgrade is an immediate delay on any enemies at your location and frees up all of your friends with 1 action and 1 dollar. No Attacks of Opportunity, No Hunter. Your friends can pull a 360 and walk away consequence free.

The trap only gets better with xp but it can feel a bit wasteful putting a bunch of xp into a single event (or two in this case). However, it being a massive sink is okay, you get more use out of xp heavy events than most by virtue of being Red. As soon as it gains Fast you can ignore Hoods too, and that's one of the toughest enemy weaknesses in the game in my opinion. Give it Poisonous to let an enemy have a little damage, as a treat, every round. Remote Configuration often saves you an action, letting you flip the trap out at your friends when they're off in space, and Improved Timer keeps the net around an extra turn, which winds up being very important for the second most important card in the deck:

Oh Heck Yeah, Twigs
Survival Technique is the thing that lets this deck keep going long after it should have failed. Enter the Trap Room on the last round it's hanging out, Bounce the Trap, throw it back down, trigger your Shoes and moonwalk away, letting the monsters stew for another 3 rounds. I think it'd be possible to get by with only 1 Survival Technique, but you'd really like to see it as early as possible. If you want to get really spicy with it, you could even bounce a Lure and keep dragging monsters in circles for all eternity.

The last card I wanna talk about is Expeditious Retreat. This card does some crazy work for your team, letting you evade an enemy off of yourself and a teammate, or just two off of you if things get too hot. This deck is all about making the most of your actions, because Rita needs something to compensate for the fact she delays problems until they "get solved", and this is some of the best compression she gets. Mostly it saves you an engage and evade action, but for 1 xp that's some real good value.

Well Now What?
Rita's an acquired play-style. A lot of her decision-making has to occur spontaneously, but that also means she doesn't need a lot of tools out to be a solid enemy manager. Mulligan hard for Track Shoes. Everything else comes with time.

Spend your early game sprinting from location to location to give as much information to your clue getter as possible. Only draw cards as your first or second action, because drawing Hoods on your last action is pretty close to a death sentence for you. If your Seeker doesn't need low shroud locations to scale their success, try and use Look What I Found on 2 shroud locations. If you're running with Orne(0), you can get away with a 3 shroud location, but Level 3 gives you +1 skill value, and if you drew a -4 on a 3 shroud, you still fail by 3.

Oh, last tip. A fully tricked out trap is so debilitating to enemies that I often forget it's also a stat debuff. Keep that in mind!

Part of playing Rita is having an overwhelming board state for pretty much the whole scenario, but finding the right line of play that maximizes your team's freedom produces so much dopamine that I keep coming back for more.