Patrice Breaks into the conservatory for Late Night Nutcracker Musical

Credit: Fantasy Flight Games

Introduction:

"Wait, this deck doesn't have Cornered??!"
"What are these enemy management cards doing in a Patrice deck??"

What if I told you that you could hack enough tests to make Patrice viable in Expert mode?

With 58 versions of this deck, this is probably my most worked deck and one of the decks I'm the happiest with.
If you don't want to scavenge the Ice Pick (3) again, please feel free to skip them, as this will not undermine the deck's efficiency at all.

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

• Hack the tests

• Negate the Mythos

• Other Cards

Overview:

Main Strategy:

Win in expert mode by hacking tests:

• Reduce The Difficulty To 0

• Get Test Less Results

• Fail For-Ward

• Negate The Mythos

• Push Your Skills For Crucial Tests

• Cycle Your Cards For Infinite Uses

Hack the tests:

Investigations:

• Combining Flashlight (3) to Old Keyring (3), you get 2 clues per test on any location with a shroud of 4 or fewer (unless you pull the ).

  • Since the shroud is 0, why not add an Ice Pick (3) to the party for an additional clue on tap.

• Unless you have Drawn to the Flame or "Look what I found!" in your hand, leave any location with a shroud of 5 or more with and leave the clues on it. Shed a Light and Nature of the Beast will take care of them in due time.

Enemies:

• As the majority of enemies have 3 or less evasion, you can still roam around alone and evade most threats with Flashlight (3) combined with Impromptu Barrier from your hand or discard pile.

• If you turn out to have Exploit Weakness in your hand at that moment, lucky you. Otherwise, you can use Dumb Luck to divert the enemy to the first player.

  • For that reason, as long as Dumb Luck is in your deck, it is best if the team's main fighter is always the first player of your squad.

  • If you have none of these, you can try a normal evasion and start again next turn with 5 new cards. To do so, Hope can help, and with the traits Monster and Humanoid, Grizzled will give you +3 against almost every enemy.

• Very late in the campaign, you could opt for the Makeshift Trap. It is really fun to play. With Explosive Device, it is deals 3 damages to one or more enemies. Improved Timer and Tripwire allow you to drop it on any location 1 time so that it explodes the same turn an enemy enters the location and finally Simple makes it far easier to find a window to play it.

Your Personal Weakness

• To deal with the Watcher from Another Dimension, there are multiple options:
  • The discard abilities (automatic success) of Hope and Zeal work against the Watcher from Another Dimension.
  • You should always have Augur in play to help with triggering Scavenging. When you draw the Watcher from Another Dimension, you can use the discard ability to bring one of the other 2 cats from your discard pile and use its discard ability immediately to get rid of the Watcher.
  • With Flashlight (3) and Impromptu Barrier, you will be testing against 2 .
  • If you have Gumption, you can bring the test to 0 and succeed unless you pull an .
  • Otherwise, you can try to force the test with Last Chance, committing Dumb Luck, etc...
  • Note that Dumb Luck do not work with the Watcher from Another Dimension. That would result in nothing happening.
  • By choosing Monster and Extradimensional, Grizzled and its traits give you 5 against the Watcher.
  • Based on how many copies of Grizzled are in your discard pile and when you draw the Watcher, you can assess if you want to wait for it, use a Resourceful or use a cat.
  • If you fail the test, you could also potentially use Zeal's discard ability with an Ice Pick (3) for a test-less 2 damage.
  • Finally, if nothing works, you can tank the attack with Idol of Xanatos. This is not ideal because as long as it is in your hand, you draw one less card each turn.

Looping your tools:

• Scavenging (0) bring your tools back to your hand if you succeed by 2 or more.

  • You should keep Augur as your main cat to increase your chances of triggering Scavenging. With the bonus of the Ice Pick, you can investigate once per turn with 6 vs (x-4) shroud.

  • As your base skill is 2, the automatic successes from Shed a Light will trigger Scavenging, as well as pulling any non-negative modifier during a difficulty 0 test.

• Astral Mirror gives you one action per turn to play Old Keyring (3) and the Flashlight (3) from your hand, along with a total of 4 hand slots for Patrice's Violin, Old Keyring (3), Flashlight (3) and Ice Pick (3).

  • Thanks to Astral Mirror's free action, we can afford only upgrading 1 copy Scavenging (2), which will be used only for Idol of Xanatos and Schoffner's Catalogue, or if you wish to scavenge more than 1 hand slot in a single turn.

  • Flashlight (3) does not discard itself when empty, so you sometimes need to juggle with hand slots to keep them full enough to discard it by replacing your 4th slot.

• Later in the campaign, the Summoned Servitor will use Dominance to skip using the arcane slot, which will require a Charisma. Note that you can use Ice Pick (3) on its investigation for 5 , potentially 2 clues and a change to trigger Scavenging!

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Negate the Mythos:

Patrice is different from other investigators as she cannot save cards in her hand from one turn to another, preventing her from planning, especially for enemies.

If you draw an enemy during the mythos phase:

• Impromptu Barrier supported by Flashlight (3) help evading the weaker enemies.

  • Add Exploit Weakness when it is in your hand to do your part of the Heavy Lifting.

  • You can reduce the difficulty to 2 to either pass or use Dumb Luck and redirect the enemy to your enemy manager. This is particularly good because it basically means that your fighter will not draw any other card during the Mythos phase, allowing them to plan accordingly.

• You can also try to succeed at an evasion test using Grizzled or potentially Last Chance, bringing you to high skill values, especially when combining it to Hope's 5 .

• You can use Zeal and Ice Pick (3) to kill a 2-health enemy on your own.

If you draw a treachery card during the mythos phase:

• Ward of Protection cancels the revelation.

  • Any card using Idol of Xanatos can cancel the horror from the Ward.

  • By upgrading to Ward of Protection (2), you increase the chances of it being useful every time you draw it.

• Deny Existence cancels the outcomes of a failed treachery test.

• Idol of Xanatos absorbs the damage and horror by discarding all your cards intended for enemy management that you will not use this turn, like Grizzled or Exploit Weakness.

  • Use Take Heart on a treachery test that you are sure to fail and add 2 cards to your hand before choosing which one to discard with Idol of Xanatos.

This is the genius of this deck; it doesn't need Cornered because you discard cards to negate the consequences instead of trying not to have them happen (and most of the time not succeeding in Expert). It means that all your enemy management cards will be either used for their ability, either to negate damage/horror from a treachery test or turned into resources with Patrice's Violin.

• Finally, Last Chance will help with treacheries that induce a test at the end of your turn, like the notorious Frozen in Fear.

Other Cards:

• Voice of Ra is an Emergency Cache-like that you can sometimes commit if you do not need it, and it is more fun to play. It helps finance this rather expensive deck. If you don't like the approach, feel free to swap.

  • Because the deck is quite expensive, and you may have Astral Mirror, Summoned Servitor, and Miss Doyle in the same hand, I strongly advise using Voice of Ra every time you have it, to save up. The same goes with Patrice's Violin, which turns any useless card into upfront resources.

• Resourceful is best used to recover non-item assets discarded because of Short Supply.

  • I would, of course, recommend using it on a difficulty 0 test or, even better, an automatic success from Miss Doyle, Shed a Light or Exploit Weakness.

• In the Thick of It comes with 1 mental and 1 physical trauma. If things start to be rough for you with trauma, you can invest in Bandages and Grimm's Fairy Tales, both Scavenging targets.

• At a Crossroads gives you what Patrice needs most: additional actions. It is sometimes hard to use all your 5 cards in only 3 actions. 4 cards in 4 actions suddenly become easier to deal with.

• For the same reason, Summoned Servitor is really good in Patrice, even though their strength decreases significantly with he difficulty level. They can be played by discarding an almost empty Schoffner's Catalogue or an empty Flashlight (3).

  • Their 4 base will help with triggering Scavenging, and you can use your Flashlight (3)'s shroud reduction on their test too, and even "Look what I found!". They are one of the best ways of adding a virtual "additional" action to Patrice.

  • Every once in a while, Wings of Night will piggyback you, saving a precious action. Note that it can only do so towards a revealed location.

• Premonition is in the early deck as a Patrice staple: free and fast, it gives you an early indication of how to best succeed on any given test.

  • It is best played before evading the Watcher from Another Dimension. This way, you can decide which approach to take and not take any risks.

• Short Supply is now well-known for Scavenging decks by now. The only thing that could go wrong is if your 2 Astral Mirrors are discarded. The fact that you'll cycle your deck faster will compensate for that possibility. All the rest could and should be retrieved.

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Upgrade Path:

Link to the 0xp deck

I give here 3 different paths at the end, as experience is not unlimited. I leave it up to your experience playing the deck and the needs of your team to choose which path to take!

(View at arkham-starter.com)

Link to the full xp deck

Other Cards Considered:

• Of course Cornered could be included in this deck. However, since it is geared towards bigger difficulties, the +2 is not as helpful as for other decks. Also, we are using cards to negate the mythos rather than trying to pass tests.

• String of Curses could be placed in your deck if you are about to start a campaign/scenario with many enemies that doom. As this is impossible to control unless other teammates also use it, I decided not to play it.

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