As foretold by the Prophecy, Lily masters every martial arts technique at the speed of light.

Credit: Lin Hsiang

Introduction:

In my previous Lily guide, I was excited about the raw power of the newly-released Cyclopean Hammer. Now that most of us had the chance to take it to the table, we all came to the same conclusion: it is good, but boring.

So I decided to do justice to Lily by giving her one of the most fun decks I've tried in a long time. This deck has a different weapon for every battle, and your mastery of the arts of fighting will determine the fate of life in the universe.

This series is a celebration of the 20k points on ArkhamDB to thank you all for all the support received.
I will release a new standalone-ready deck concept every week on Friday for the following months, so stay tuned and keep pressing the ♥ button if you want to see more!

Let me know which investigators you would like to see next in the comment!

Table of Contents:

• Overview

• Main Strategy

• "Take up to 3 different fight actions"

• Enable your game

• Other Cards

• Upgrade Path

Overview:

Main Strategy:

• This deck has a special weapon for every situation: One single enemy engaged with you, More than one, The enemy is engaged with a teammate, You need to evade, You need to move an enemy, You need to assassinate remotely, You want to deal with an aloof enemy, Or an elite one or just deal an Absurd Burst of Damage.
  For every situation, there is a way.

* Pair this with the Discipline, burst and you have a ridiculous killing machine.

"Take up to 3 different fight actions":

Roughly every other turn, you can deal with a flood of enemies by using your Discipline, which instructs you to take 3 different fight actions, meaning that you cannot use it to spam your Machete. You need to find 3 different attacks among your assets and events.

Assets:

Fight actions performed by different weapons are considered different, that's why we are using 3 of them:

• Now that Machete has been un-tabooed, it's our go-to weapon again, especially when it is Enchanted but has its weak spots.

  • Later we will upgrade the Machete with a Timeworn Brand for more versatility. The 2nd ability of the Timeworn Brand is highly appreciated to compensate for the Spectral Razor's limitation.

• When an enemy is engaged with another investigator, Blackjack (2) takes over, saving engage actions. It will also count as another fight action.

  • Note that the Blackjack (2) works against massive enemies if there is another investigator at your location.

• When there are multiple enemies engaged with you, Brand of Cthugha can help deal with the first one(s), letting the Machete finish the last one.

Events:

Events are fun to play because they are more situation-specific than assets. Finding the best moment for each event makes you feel like a killing machine.

• Gang Up does 4 damage with +3 as soon as you have Prophetic (which conveniently pays for its rather high cost).

• "Get over here!" often finds a moment when it shines, whether it's to bring, engage and start an aloof enemy, move an enemy away from an annoying location, deal with a hunter enemy before the enemy phase, save an attack...

• Spectral Razor deals 3 damage to non-elite enemies, saves an engage action and gives a +3 (4 when you get the Discipline).

• Sweeping Kick also comes with a nice boost and is best when you can't defeat the enemy this turn or when you have 2 enemies engaged with you, and you want to use your Machete on the other one.

• Fang of Tyr'thrha deals 4 damage in one action and allows you to move to the enemy's location, or not! You can also stay at your location and target an enemy across the map. Arcane Initiate finds it, and Prophetic pays the steep cost.

• One-Two Punch (5) brings the burst to another level with a total of 5 damage in a single test which can also target elite enemies.

At a 19xp standalone threshold, this deck can deal up to 15 damage in one turn, and it goes up to 22 damage. This definitely takes her to the top fighter ranks with Tony Morgan.

Enable your game:

• Prophetic pays for every single event in this deck, as well as Brand of Cthugha.

  • It will also allow you to use your extra resources to pump your skill values to the exact value you need to pass each time.

  • Prophetic is so important for your deck's economy that it is your main mulligan priority, followed by Machete and Brand of Cthugha.

  • If Prophetic is late the the show, Voice of Ra (tutored by Arcane Initiate) and On the Hunt (3) will support with resource generation.

• Arcane Initiate helps with the deck's main weakness: draw. By the end of a campaign, she will have 13 targets, including Enchant Weapon, Fang of Tyr'thrha and Brand of Cthugha (4).

  • Out of the many ways to deal with the doom, I prefer to play her on the first witch hour of the scenario. If, for some reason, I played her at a different time, I suggest killing her with an AoO on a move action that would have been needed later anyways or with playing an asset.

• Backpack (2) will find your weapons or commit with decent icons. We prefer it over Prepared for the Worst (2) because it has fewer chances to whiff and can store your weapon until you gather the resource to play it.

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Other Cards:

• On the Hunt (3) is fantastic in this deck to pull an enemy when your hand is loaded with bursting events. Choose an aloof enemy, one with an annoying spawn or go for victory points... it's all up to you.

  • Note that if you use On the Hunt (3) and there is no enemy in the encounter deck, you will not draw another card, and you will skip that part of the mythos phase.

• Deny Existence and Ward of Protection will help you not wasting time with treacheries. They are especially useful in this deck as we plan on abusing Delve Too Deep during the campaign.

• Glory turns what you do into cards.

  • It is possible to upgrade it to Stand Together (3) at the end of the campaign, but it loses the aspect.

• Premonition is used before you trigger a test to know in advance if you need to commit a skill card or not. It acts like a reactive skill card.

• The core set skill set helps with scenario tests and treacheries. They are solid value since day 1.

• If you are going through a campaign with this deck, you will take Delve Too Deep up until the last scenario because it gives additional experience to your whole group and Lily is extremely good at dealing with treacheries/enemies. You can even use it as a way to bring more enemies to the table.

Upgrade Path:

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