Float like a moth

Drawn to Flame

And sting like a

...Radiant Smite?

Introduction:

This is my Lily Chen deck going into the final scenario of The Forgotten Age. Was paired with a blursed parallel Wendy so there is a slight blessed lean. With this deck Lily is meant to be primarily an event slinging fighter. The deck has low setup time and can blast things right out of the gate if the need arises.

Table of Contents:

• Overview

• Main Strategy

• Card Choices

• Upgrade Order

• Breakdown and Card Considerations

Overview:

Main Strategy:

• Mulligan for Prophetic and Boxing Gloves.
• Manage your Discipline wisely.
• Choose the appropriate event for the job.
• Start blasting!

Card Choices:

Scroll of Secrets is amazing draw in a vacuum. It also gives symbols for Gang Up, and less importantly is an asset to toss to treacheries and to occupy a hand slot for Bandolier willpower.

Boxing Gloves makes events which already boost combat even more likely to hit. We almost always have 10+ in combat checks even without Well Prepared or resources from Prophetic. Perhaps more importantly it insures that we trade in the event we used to kill one enemy for a fresh event. Also while this deck only runs a single weapon that has a Fight action it is important to note that the +2 also applies there as well as default attacks.

If Boxing Gloves is the bread then Prophetic is the butter, singlehandedly smoothing out the econ side of combat and giving Gang Up a massive boost in both stats and damage. It's arguably more important than the gloves as between Scroll and Discipline and just a high concentration of events, the draw side of things is more redundant.

Well Prepared can boost or for extremely difficult circumstances, but more importantly it can allow Lily to flex cluing or help pass treacheries given the right story assets.

Drawn to the Flame is simple clues because of fighting capabilities and high . Lily is very capable of handing personal encounters and we can always Ward of Protection stuff that would make the scenario harder such as Ancient Evils.

Stick to the Plan, On the Hunt, Ever Vigilant, One-Two Punch is a very expensive package, but worth every penny. It cuts our setup time a lot, sets up our initial econ, and makes sure we can kill something large reliably right out of the gate. It also helps allies with setup and snags an enemy that might cause problems if it spawned at an inopportune moment.

Gang Up does 5 damage under ideal circumstances, but as long as we have either Scroll or Prophetic it will do 4. Radiant Smite and Fang of Tyr'thrha also reliably do 4. Tons of Firepower!

Ward of Protection and Promise of Power are always going to be good. Appreciate your Mystic roots!

Upgrade Order:

The first things we want to get are Radiant Smite if we are running with a blessy character and Sweeping Kick, these are great spirited cards for both their experience cost and resource cost meaning we can put them in early when experience is light and before we have Prophetic.

Prophetic is definitely the first big upgrade we want, it should have plenty of targets between our newly acquired spirit cards, One-Two Punch if we started with it, and any Mystic spells we began with. It will also make the following upgrade, Gang Up, amazing.

After we have all our core spirit events we want to get the Boxing Gloves. I advise against starting with the 0xp version as it's significantly worse and our deck will be significantly less spirit dense. If you are running with a blessy character it is highly advised to get Sacred Covenant, probably even before Gloves.

The next big upgrade is the powerful opening package of Stick to the Plan, On the Hunt, Ever Vigilant, and One-Two Punch. In total this is a whopping 18xp. You can handle these upgrades incrementally and also use cheaper tactics and Stick to the Plan will still be great. You can get the tactics you want before Stick to the Plan as well, but I would advise against getting Ever Vigilant till afterward as it is it can be an awkward topdeck.

The rest of the cards I would not consider part of the core deck and can be upgraded with more flexible timing or replaced with something else. Something like Well Prepared is going to be story asset dependent and what assets we want to run in nonhand slots are very flexible. I mostly got Observed because of Damned as my random weakness as well, completely unnecessary but fun. Fang of Tyr'thrha is very strong but very expensive and not a spirit, still a worthwhile upgrade if swimming in experience.

Breakdown and Card Considerations:

The difficulty of the deck is mostly in knowing how to best utilize actions on Disciplines as well as managing restoring disciplines. For some Lily builds Discipline can be extremely powerful but it doesn't shine much in this deck because we don't run a lot of permanent fight options like weapons or Brand of Cthugha (but both of these are considerations) and a lot of our events hit like a truck anyway. This is also a very easy Discipline to restore because sometimes we just won't get enemies during encounters, so it is good Burden of Destiny fodder if we don't anticipate needing the for something. Discipline is one of our best actions because if managed correctly it can give us all the survivability we need. It's also a very easy Discipline to restore, but flipping it is still something we should think about because is arguably our second most important stat. Discipline is a wildly powerful effect, a draw engine that we start with in play. A very good use of this is immediately after playing assets out with Ever Vigilant or after chucking cards to skill tests following a bad mulligan (no Prophetic/Boxing Gloves/Scroll of Secrets). It can be tricky to flip back if we like our cards but it is important to keep in mind that the deck has a lot of redundancy in fight options so we can toss things as commits, worst that happens is we'll need some more firepower and have to flip it again for the draw. Finally Discipline, our most important stat, at least before we have our assets in play, and a very hard Discipline to restore due to the randomness of the encounter phase. It's also awkward because it adds an action cost to whatever test we are trying to pass if we want to use it. Flipping this Discipline can still be very clutch though nearly being an automatic pass on a skill test, mastering its use is important.

It is important to pick the right tool for the job. We don't throw away a Fang of Tyr'thrha for a fight that's Mano a Mano if it is not our only option, it's versatility is in being able to pick off pesky cultists, teleport across map, and save allies who are in the middle of nowhere. Keep in mind that if we don't finish off an enemy with Radiant Smite the bless goes back, so this is a good opener for very tanky enemies. But also if the bless may be gone in the near future and we have an opportunity to use it for a lot of damage then it is even more important to use it so it is not a dead card. Remember if there is no bless yet and we have a Tempt Fate that saving it for when we want to Smite is definitely a consideration. Gang Up is our general purpose big nuke, but we save a lot of resources by waiting till we have Prophetic to play it. Sweeping Kick is for when we specifically need to evade for whatever reason, and it is an excellent opener against high health, high damage, retaliate enemies.

If you want even more firepower there are a few ways to go about it. You can either run a few permanent solutions like Survival Knife, Timeworn Brand, Brand of Cthugha. I would recommend one or none handed solutions as they allow room for Scroll of Secrets and can be stacked for Discipline potency. Alternatively there are more damaging events you can run as well, but they will likely be worse than the ones already in the deck. Also if you are running with a blessy character Nephthys is a consideration!

If clue pressure is higher on you in the campaign there are a lot of good options. Lesson Learned is acquirable via Boxing. Evidence! is a little narrow and not a spirit card but you will be doing a lot of fighting so there should be an opportunity to play it. I'd recommend against playing Scene of the Crime because this deck does not want to play resource intensive events that can't be prophesied and it is also narrow and unfetchable. Read the Signs can be good though, and I would even recommend it in the initial deck when cluvers might have more trouble. It falls off mid campaign, but if you keep it around it should be very good in the late campaign when you have both Disciplines and more boosting assets. I would recommend against the arcane slot spells that use instead of another stat, they can be good for Lily but that kind of deck would look quite different.

If you feel the encounters are extra dangerous you can run Martyr's Vambrace to help your team out. Deny Existence if you are having personal trouble, and I'd recommend starting with this in your deck even, especially if you are considering Delving Too Deep. "Let me handle this!" is definitely an option if you can squeeze it into the 5 0xp Guardian slots we are given, it is a spirit card, can be used from any location, and is no resources and no experience!

Issues with survivability beyond what Discipline can deal with should be handled via assets, the assets for most slots are very flexible, but keep in mind that you might also need the econ to support them. But that leads to "I've had worse…" which helps with survivability, resources, and is a spirit card!

If you need more resources and reliability, and especially if your team needs the same, then Stand Together is obviously an excellent choice, it's even a spirit card! To be honest this would probably have been in the deck if not for my partner running Faustian Bargain and Deep Knowledge. If running with someone blessy consider Rite of Sanctification if they are fine with having bless sealed temporarily. If you need draw it's likely because you want to hit core assets so definitely consider Tetsuo Mori (keep in mind he's 0xp Guardian), Prepared for the Worst, Backpack. Personally I found the deck functioned well even with unlucky draws though.

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