Daredevil Darling after 23's/25's FAQ - Sledgehammer Ed.

This deck is based on the almighty Daredevil Darling of @chirubime, just updated with the 23's taboo and 25's FAQ.
I have recently played this deck in a couple of events in a successful way, taking Wendy to unknown limits and leaving the people at my table perplexed, at the very cheap price of only one personal mental trauma per game for handling such a crazy deck.

Warning: It is a combo deck that has an extremely delicate set up. Although you can assemble it alone, there is some risk that your key cards come out late and the deck takes a while to start, or directly just run at half throttle, so I strongly recommend having the support of a Seeker investigator in the group that can help you with a No Stone Unturned or something like that.

If you want more consistency in the set up, see the recommendations in the last section: “Not so daredevil, please”.

Daredevil Darling decks are based on abusing the Advanced version of Wendy's Amulet. Once the Amulet is in play, you just commit Daredevil to any test, discarding your entire deck as a result and playing events from discard pile. Yaotl is used to discard Weaknesses right after playing Daredevil.

After 23's taboo, committing Daredevil does not return your Weaknesses to your deck, but instead you have to draw all of them, including the Advanced version of Abandoned and Alone, removing your entire discard pile in the process. As a result, now we need to find Abandoned and Alone before committing Daredevil.

After 25' F.A.Q, you can not play Swift Reflexes endlessly, so now the deck is no longer infinite and you can only play 7 actions per round, which your teammates are very grateful for.

As said, this Daredevil Darling deck needs to find Abandoned and Alone before discarding the deck with Daredevil.
You want to find it as soon as possible, but first you need to have at least one useless card in the discard pile, otherwise the weakness will return to your deck.

Step 1 - Something in the discard pile

My preferred option is an empty Backpack.
Best first turn's action is to play a Backpack that will go to the discard pile as soon as possible, so take care not to fill it too much, in fact it is better to leave it empty than to fill it with things that you can not play immediately.
The best play is to put inside just a second Backpack that you can play in your second action, and this time you can fill it with stuff.
It is also nice to put the Wendy's Amulet in the Backpack and play it immediately to discard the backpack.
In case you do not get a Backpack in the hard mulligan, you do not find it neither with Black Market and your hand fills up; you can be forced to discard a non-critical event, although you will reduce the deck's power.

Step 2 - Deal with your weakness

Once you have something you no longer need in the discard pile, the sooner you find Abandoned and Alone, the sooner you can get down to real play.
Your Friends in Low Places look for Madness trait and they have the Experienced upgrade for looking at the top 9 cards.
If that did not work, just draw, draw and draw until you find Abandoned and Alone. But try not to discard nothing (do not play more events until you have Wendy's Amulet in play).
At this point is when a No Stone Unturned from a friend can help you a lot.

When you draw the weakness, you take 3 horror and remove the discard pile from the game. These 3 horrors are the reason for you to take 2 physical traumas when purchasing In the Thick of It.

Step 3 - Discard your deck

Next step is to find and commit Daredevil, for that you have little option but to draw, draw and draw. Again, a Seeker friend can help you a lot.
In case you have Scrounge for Supplies in hand, you can use Yaotl'ability to discard cards looking for Daredevil, recovering it later from the discard pile. Once you have found the skill card, keep in mind that before committing it, you need to have in hand (or played) the Wendy's Amulet or have Salvage in hand (to be able to play the discarded amulet).
With either option available, commit Daredevil to any test.

Warning: After committing Daredevil you will draw the rest of discarded weaknesses, so you should have some plan to deal with them. For example, if you have an enemy weakness, leave yourself some free action to evade it.
Some weaknesses can break your deck, so if I were you I would not include them in the weakness pool when getting them at random.

Step 4 - Finish the set-up

Once you have discarded your deck, play events quickly, as you should never be left with an empty deck, because if you draw a card at that moment for any reason, all the discard pile will return to the deck, including Abandoned and Alone.

• 1) - Play Scrounge for Supplies to recover Resourceful from the discard pile and use Resourceful to recover Yaotl.
• 2) Play Scrounge for Supplies or Salvage to recover or play your items from discard pile.
• 3) Play Scrounge for Supplies to recover Leo De Luca.

Once the set up is done, play Cheat the System and Money Talks constantly.
Use Yaotl's ability every phase to discard a card from your deck.
In a short time, you will have too many resources and Money Talks will allow you (and your teammates) to pass any test.
Gain 3 extra actions each turn thanks to 2 Swift Reflexes and Honed Instinct.
Do not take a Move action anymore, just play Call for Backup instead of moving, and since you control 5 classes, apart from moving you will:

• discover a clue
• heal damage and horror of anything
• deal 1 damage
  

Soon you will have healed your physical traumas and the horror from Abandoned and Alone so you can start healing all your friends' cards until everyone is feeling fresh as a daisy.

If your deck is again full of events, you can discard all of them again by playing Scrounge for Supplies to recover Daredevil, although I prefer to play Black Market to have the top 5 cards available; also for your teammates, so they can get some resources playing your Cheat the System and they can get actions playing your Swift Reflexes.
You can also play Black Market at you teammates' decks in case they are looking for a card.

You can investigate from a distance with the Pocket Telescope, and you better try to miss it by 2 or less to play "Look what I found!" to get two clues at once. Remember that Wendy's ability allows you to reveal another token in case you pass the test by mistake.

You can cancel Treacheries from Encounter deck with Counterespionage. You can cancel also Treacheries drawn by your teammates, and since you are richer than chocolate cake, be generous, for only two more resources you can make them really happy by letting them draw a card from their deck instead.

Destroy enemies with +5 damage Sledgehammer blows. For those who are too weak, a single hit and a Call for Backup is enough.
If many enemies appear or they are Aloof or they have Swarm, you can allways Stir the Pot to see them kill themself while you fly away, actually you can do this every turn. Remember that you are very rich.

Once you have finished one area of the scenario move to the other side in the blink of an eye by playing Scout Ahead. You can also pick up enemies along the way and then Stir the Pot with them.

Finally, as you have money to burn, fill the bag of blessings with Keep Faith, so that your teammates do not suffer so much.

To improve the consistency of the initial set up, you can make a simpler deck by changing the Sledgehammer for a simple Switchblade.
This change makes each Cheat the System only gives you 4 resources instead of 5 and you do not dealt damage with Call for Backup, but you do not need the Tool Belt anymore and, since you will not needing so many actions for the Sledgehammer, you can do without Leo and Charisma.
Maybe in your scenario you do not need Stir the Pot or you do not want to play with blessed tokens.

In that cases, you may exchange these cards for others that give you some draw but that are useless once you have the set up: Take Heart, Perception, etc. They can help you a lot.

Be careful not to draw too much before you have something in the discard pile, it would be very sad to commit Take Heart in the first action and draw Abandoned and Alone having nothing in the discard pile.

Thanks for reading and I hope to see you soon in another crazy deck explanation.

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