Time for a 'highly practical combo!'

Get yourself a friendly Leo and equip an upgraded 45 Thompson

Slap two sets of Extra ammo in there, and then double that delicious 11 ammo twice with two upgraded Contrabands to shoot up to 44 bullets.

Then, just hold down that trigger and rake 30 resources in from your 7 card, 5 action, 16 cost combo by playing two Eat Leads. Bonus, you get to keep your gun with 12 bullets left on it, and you force two elder sign activations! What a steal!

I love this. This is such a clever, thematic, and uniquely indirect form of tutoring that's perfect for Survivors.

• Between Scrounge For Supplies, Resourceful, True Survivor, Scavenging, Chance Encounter, and Yorick (for whom this seems like a strict auto-include), you basically get a 10-card pseudo-mulligan after your actual mulligan.

• You can jump-start your discard-powered cards like Fortuitous Discovery, Winging It, Improvised Weapon, and Impromptu Barrier.

• You even have a solid chance of pre-emptively ditching weaknesses, even clingy ones like Caught Red Handed. Now, although this card alone doesn't technically change the overall odds of drawing your weaknesses during a game (you might ditch them, but if you don't then your odds of drawing them just went way up), it DOES give you precious metaknowledge every time that can reduce opportunity cost.

e.g. Imagine having Amnesia or Paranoia in your deck- basic weaknesses that are so brutal, you have to adapt how you play your entire deck until they're flushed. Now imagine that in ~30-40% of your games, you'll be freed of that on the first turn, and in the rest you're much more likely to hit them early and can prepare. Reliability- even for weaknesses- can be valuable in Arkham, just look at how many people deem Mr. Rook's ability to force weaknesses early to be a beneficial.

Downsides:

• Some cards, once in the discard, can't be easily recovered, even for Survivors. Items, Allies, Innate Skills, L0, and Survivor cards can be recovered, and Yorick can recover any asset. If your deck hinges on something that's not in those categories, you may risk burying it first turn.

• On which topic, remember, Signature Cards have no level... meaning they are NOT L0, thus not Scroungeable. So Silas can fish (heh) for Nautical Prowess using True Survivor, and Finn can Scavenge for his Trusty .38... but if Bob plans to be Shrewd or Minh plans to be Analytical, they may want to avoid this entirely.

• Do NOT use this if you're playing the Dunwich campaign. Trust me... your deck will be in the discard pile soon enough.

TIMING QUESTION: Legendary Duke ally Ashcan Pete's inherent ability is, as a fast action, to discard a card and ready any card he controls. Nine Of Rods here is a reaction ability.

You can probably see where I'm goin' with this... can Ashcan use his ability to get 2 re-draws from this during the mythos phase instead of just 1?

The FAQ entry for Beat Cop and Beat Cop and the old comment from 4 years ago below are kind of misleading. I believed for a long time that Beat Cop could only trigger his ability 2 times. In fact he can do it 3 times, because, as it was pointed out to me, when the cost is paid the ability is not interrupted, even if the card leaves play due to being defeated by damage. As stated in the rules: "If the ability being initiated is on an in-play card, the sequence does not stop from completing if that card leaves play during the sequence".

The FAQ entry refers to the situation when lethal damage from enemy attack/treachery is assigned to Beat Cop. in that case there is no window to trigger ability. The FAQ entry does not apply to the situation, when a player deliberately uses ability.

So Beat Cop is even better for me now:)

Hey everyone,

Now that the whole Edge of the Earth has leaked, how about having a new look at our new friend Lily Chen?

Please leave your suggestions for her in the comment section! What are your leads to build her deck?

That being said, it seems like there are 3 different Paths to take:

The Path, the Path and the Path.

1) The full Build:

A] How to get her to match the best ?

• Starting with the Discipline gives you 5 immediatly, which is the same as the best guardians.

• Lily Chen has access to only 5 lvl 0 cards and no Firearm. That leaves us with little choice. Enchanted Blade is not only the best lvl 0 weapon, it also doesn't burn her slots. It can be upgraded in Enchanted Blade (3) for a bit of draw and heal (which are both useful, or so it seems based on the amount of healing cards). The other choice is potentially Survival Knife...

• To have good use of her weapons, she needs to improve her base : For this, the basis would be to use Grete Wagner (0) in addition with Beat Cop (2) once you purchased a weapon. You can finally add a Ace of Swords to go to 8 to be able to use most weapons available to her with a great chance of success.

B] How does Lily Chen compete with other ?

Drum rolls: Her Discipline!

• With this build, you only need 1 Stat: . Therefore you can use all the other Disciplines for their built-in capacities.

The Discipline for example provides exceptional card draw.

The Discipline gives a good burst. Note that you need to trigger Fight on different cards to use the 3 attacks, so one could be from Enchanted Blade, another from Machete and the last from Spectral Razor for example, but you cannot simply spam the Cyclopean Hammer.

The Discipline keeps you alive which is always appreciated.

C] What 5 lvl 0 should I choose?

In this build, it seems like a solid choice would be to have Prepared for the Worst, boring but necessary as even with XP, it's hard to find a better tutor, and the only solid option is Enchanted Blade. Hallowed Mirror is important to heal the damages of Grete Wagner and Beat Cop to get more uses out of them. Finally, Vicious Blow is always a good pick if Grete is too expensive.

D] Overall build:

It seems like in this build the Cyclopean Hammer is the best weapon, the chances of dealing 3 damage are important, even if you do not take the Discipline as you hit with 11 on each attack once fully set up. When choosing a support Discipline, I would advise to go first for the Discipline for the consistency, and the Discipline in the end of the campaign for the burst needed against great old ones or Discipline if you have a lot of traumas.

The Path:

A] Why should you take any in my deck?

There are multiple reasons why a focussed Lily Chen should still think of improving her later in the campaign:

• For solo/flex, a decent with Sixth Sense / Clairvoyance still makes you a good clue-support. Having some Arcane slots filled also make you strong in early campaign with your Dragon Pole.

• For better use of your Enchant Weapon and improving the chances to succeed by 3 on your Cyclopean Hammer, which deals 3 damage in one hit.

• For a better encounter prot as well as an increased generation of tokens if you decide to splash and you purchase the Holy Rosary (2).

B] Cards to consider to improve your

As a second priority, after the purchase of a reliable source of damage, as mentioned earlier, you can look at improving your with cards that have a double use:

• Bandolier (2) that could also allow you to bring other weapons such as your trusted Dragon Pole or an Enchanted Blade (3) for draw and heal, even a Book of Psalms...

• Relic Hunter and a Police Badge, a bit out of theme but still good.

• Holy Rosary also for the soak upgraded into Holy Rosary as explained earlier.

• The Discipline. The Horror soak of the rosary + Heal of the Hallowed Mirror and this discipline allow you to take In the Thick of It without being that afraid.

C] What 5 lvl 0 should I choose?

Same as the previous build Prepared for the Worst, boring but necessary. In this build you will be using Dragon Pole alongside Enchanted Blade so no need to burn a slot on your weapons. Another good card in this build is "Let me handle this!". It helps you to protect your cluever by pulling the enemies or to get the tests especially once you have your Holy Rosary (2). The last one can be one Vicious Blow for a little kick, Glory (my preference) or Daring for a bit of card draw.

D] Overall build:

• This build benefits from having potentially a bit of generation, a better use of the Cyclopean Hammer once you buy it, and a decent clue getting when you are waiting for an enemy (let's not lie, it happens quite often in a 's life, especially when you hit that hard at anything that comes your way).

• Enchanted Cyclopean Hammer gives you double boost for an insane hit that is sure to hit 4 damages... Once per turn. This build can provide 10 damages per turn in the best case, 8 damages in the worst case.

• You can bring Arcane Initiate that can tutor your Investigation spells, attack spells as well as Enchant Weapon and replaces it later with Nephthys, for example.

• Example of a Deck using the [Cyclopean Hammer](/card/08093)

The Path:

A] Why should you take an a Path that leans towards ?

It seems like Lily Chen was intended to be built around and by the Game Designers. Look at Butterfly Swords, Sweeping Kick or the Fang of Tyr'thrha.

• This build is, therefore, more adapted to take advantage of these cards. Especially the Butterfly Swords that allow distributing the damages. It never mentions that your second attack with the Butterfly Swords has to be on the same target. If you are dealing with many even-health enemies, you can simply spam attack and not waste single damage, which can be the most action effective in certain situations like swarms or TFA.

• The Butterfly Swords also make you make a lot of tests. This has ups and downs. The upsides are: you have more chances to draw an Elder Sign which make you more likely to have a lot of uses of your Disciplines and Lily Chen's lets you flip your Disciplines. The impact of a bad draw is decreased: Draw an autofail, and you only cancel one of the 2 attacks instead of the whole attack (though it also prevents you from doing the one-off 3 damage attack).

B] Cards to consider to improve your

• Bandolier (2) to get 2 copies down, you can Enchant both Weapons and the beauty of it is that if you exhaust one pair and then the other, that would count as 2 attacks for your Discipline.

• Use your Enchant Weapon boost on your first attack to give it all the chances to land and trigger the second one.

• Keep Galvanize in hand for an extra burst, or your Fight Events like Spectral Razor, Toe to Toe or Sweeping Kick.

• Combat Training (3) gives you the perfect combination of stats for this build.

C] What 5 lvl 0 should I choose?

Same as the build, Prepared for the Worst is boring but necessary. Then, you will want to maximise the use of your Discipline, so you need to get some Fight events, like Toe to Toe, then Vicious Blow to try to kill enemies using the Exhaust in one . Finally Glory is always good to get better access to your card pool.

You can also choose to take the Black Cat to mitigate the impact of Symbol Tokens.

D] Overall build:

• This build is quite good when it comes to Disciplines, it allows to go first for the one, then the and finally the for the built-in capacity. You also want to look at cards that give you a passive boost as you need to consistently land your first attack with the Butterfly Swords (2) to activate the exhaust action. You can take Beat Cop (2) x2 and Charisma, Combat Training (3), Grete Wagner, Ace of Swords, etc...

• This build is, of course, more thematic, so if you are the role play type, this can be an important point.

• The downside is that it seems slightly less effective and offers a slightly decreased Encounter Prot (unless we have a more TFA style campaign).

• Example of a Lily Deck using [Butterfly Swords (2)](/card/08025)

Overall good cards for her:

A] level 0 cards:

• In the beginning, you will likely want to run the Dragon Pole, so you need to fill in your Arcane slots. The best way to do this is to have some cheap assets that are at least a tiny bit useful: Scrying, Alchemical Transmutation or the new Talisman of Protection that is Fast.

• Spectral Razor is also a good spell as you can use it during the 3 attacks of your Discipline. Promise of Power is also always useful even though it doesn't provide a "special effect" on success.

• Ward of Protection is great to keep your Partners alive in EotE.

• Scroll of Secrets is overall good if you are using the Taboo.

• Holy Rosary gives a bonus for Cyclopean Hammer and Rite of Seeking.

• Arcane Initiate helps you finding Rite of Seeking, Spectral Razor and most importantly Enchant Weapon.

B] Overall good level 1-5 cards:

• Safeguard to offer better protection of your cluever, as well as an insane action compression, especially in this campaign where we expect huge maps.

• Hallowed Mirror (3) with their friends Soothing Melody to provide some good healing to your whole group. Especially good if you take the Discipline.

• Fang of Tyr'thrha will most likely find use in enemies with Spawn at the other side of the map and dooms or bad effects. You can also use it as the first attack of the Discipline to make sure to clean a location immediately.

• Enchant Weapon even if you're not going down the Path will most likely still be an amazing investment.

• Well Prepared to take the best out of the of the Cyclopean Hammer or the of the Butterfly Swords.

• Reliable is a great addition to both Cyclopean Hammer and Butterfly Swords as they Add stats.

• The classic Stick to the Plan with Ever Vigilant, Emergency Cache and Prepared for the Worst.

• Overpower (2) and Vicious Blow (2) for more draw and more burst.

• Empty Vessel is always good especially if you take In the Thick of It or a lot of trauma. It shines especially if you take the Butterfly Swords to capitalise on all the token draw.

• On the Hunt (3) that is a great way to get less bored and make resources for your setup, or make sure to hunt down the Victory Point enemies when you are fully set up.

Conclusion:

It first seemed that Lily Chen was intended to be a mix of and , which was weird as she also started as a ...

Now that we know all the cards, the most surprising is the lack of cards available that boost her , especially with all the multi-class cards that boost agility, but they are almost all for Monterey Jack...

That makes the build good, thematic but not flashy.

On the other side, a more Sister Mary style build with first and second seems to be really promessing and offers an impressive perspective of damages, especially with the release of the insane Cyclopean Hammer. On the downside it decreases the use of Disciplines.

Finally, the full build seems reliable, offers a lot of options to adapt the style based on the campaign you're running and gives the most out of your Disciplines.

How about you, how would you build your Lily to be the best investigator??