NLTL also benefits certain Lola decks, the forgotten Survivor. Specifically her skill heavy builds. Pitch her hand to skill tests, draw into Ace in the Hole/Will to Survive and the money to play it or feed into Scrapper. Go Ham.

Actually, this card benefits any skill heavy build, really. Our version of Patrice is the 1 of each asset, Cornered, Last Chance, Resourceful, Rise to the Occasion type build and NLTL is essentially a second turn this instant for that build.

Puzzle boss fight for the win!

Also, am I the only one with a great urge to find exciting and creative ways to circumvent Nyarl's ability?

1 hour ago, Iuchi Toshimo said:

NLTL also benefits certain Lola decks, the forgotten Survivor. Specifically her skill heavy builds. Pitch her hand to skill tests, draw into Ace in the Hole/Will to Survive and the money to play it or feed into Scrapper. Go Ham.

Actually, this card benefits any skill heavy build, really. Our version of Patrice is the 1 of each asset, Cornered, Last Chance, Resourceful, Rise to the Occasion type build and NLTL is essentially a second turn this instant for that build.

It's not really a 2nd turn though because it doesn't give you actions. Replacing your hand is arguably a bad decision since she'll get a new one the next turn and you may pick up something you want to play and have no actions to play it. It just comes down to how many skills you need to do the job. I've had no issue with my Patrice deck that is running much like the one here, but I think we're playing on easy.

On a harder difficulty, you may end up pitching all 5 of your skills/cards on a single test and then want a new hand. I still think that 10 cards for skills on just 3 actions may be overkill though in most situations.

I foresaw Patrice's resource issues and started my deck with few spells and Alchemical Transmutation. Between that and her violin, she never had any issues. Alchemical is nice because you can let it sit until you want the resources. Unlike Emergency Cache which you HAVE to play if you are holding it with Patrice or say goodbye to it at the end of your turn. Emergency Cache also has no pips for committing if you decide you no long need the resources. It's just a dead card without cornered.

11 minutes ago, Soakman said:

On a harder difficulty, you may end up pitching all 5 of your skills/cards on a single test and then want a new hand. I still think that 10 cards for skills on just 3 actions may be overkill though in most situations.

I do end up regularly pitching my entire hand before the end of a turn, especially if a test comes up in the mythos phase. However, for a hand refill to be handy, you need to be in a situation where you'd get a significant benefit from refilling your hand up to 5, where you have a spare action that turn, and on the turn on which you drew NLTL. That's an uncommon confluence of events to be spending 3 exp on.

Edit: And in that situation I think you'd be better off with A Glimmer Of Hope, since that can be played from discard. Not sure if Glimmer will end up being good on Patrice but time will tell.

23 hours ago, Allonym said:

I've played Patrice through two campaigns so far and found her to have huge resource problems, my next Patrice decks will be trying out Dark Horse and avoiding some or most of the core Mystic assets, which I think might be a better approach than Shrivelling (0) and Rite of Seeking. If that approach ends up being good then Nothing Left To Lose won't have much benefit for her (she would be the Survivor who least wants it), but if it ends up lacking raw power then NLTL will be solid to solve her resource problems, even if it still has the problem with Patrice and events. Time will tell.

I noticed she was on the card, but got my mis-impression from FGG’s description of it.

I have built a deck for Patrice and gave her a whirl for the first scenario of Dream Eaters and then put her aside. We decided to wait for a couple of the Mythos packs to release before diving in. What tips do you have for her deck? I’ve included Drawing Thin, which is a bit of a double edged sword for her, but at least guarantees resources and another card and Quantum Flux was very effective. I don’t think I have Dark Horse, but that is a good idea. Any other thoughts of what worked well and what didn’t? If you don’t mind me picking your very knowledgeable brain!

25 minutes ago, Mimi61 said:

I noticed she was on the card, but got my mis-impression from FGG’s description of it.

I have built a deck for Patrice and have her a whirl for the first scenario of Dream Eaters and have put her aside. We decided to wait for a couple of the Mythos packs to release before diving in. What tips do you have for her deck? I’ve included Drawing Thin, which is a bit of a double edged sword for her, but at least guarantees resources and another card and Quantum Flux was very effective. I don’t think I have Dark Horse, but that is a good idea. Any other thoughts of what worked well and what didn’t? If you don’t mind me picking your very knowledgeable brain!

So, in response to someone asking for people's initial Patrice decks when she first came out, I wrote up an initial outline of my deck for her with some notes here: https://arkhamdb.com/decklist/view/15690/fugue-in-g-minor-1.0

That's still a pretty solid deck; with a bit more experience, I wouldn't recommend doing the Rite of Seeking route, as it's more expensive (stick with Sixth Sense (0)), and I wouldn't recommend Recharge (ignore that part of the upgrade path). I also wouldn't recommend replacing Madame Labranche as she ended up being a cornerstone of the deck and its economy noticeably declined when I replaced her - Peter Sylvestre (2) is still a very solid option but I would recommend taking Charisma and taking both. Miss Doyle is good but a luxury card, and being a 3-cost 1-of in the deck, often I found I couldn't play her the turn I drew her; she's not key to the build.

For more general observations, she completely changes the valuation of a lot of cards. Many of the Survivor power-cards are middling-to-poor on her - you can't save up Will to Survive until you can afford it and need it, and cards like Deny Existence of Ward of Protection, you simply use (or commit or discard) the turn you draw them, making them less useful than they are for other investigators (you can't hold back your Ward of Protection until someone draws Ancient Evils, for instance). Lucky is far worse for Patrice than any other investigator and honestly I wouldn't recommend taking it at all. Same with "Look What I Found!". Another thing that's missing from the writeup is Alter Fate - I took two copies and found them to be fantastic, because they're reactive cancels rather than proactive. Improvised Weapon and Winging It are utterly core cards for Patrice and are among the best cards in the game for her; I don't think I would ever make a Patrice deck without them. Same for Last Chance. Cornered is ridiculously useful for her and would be my first 4 exp every time. Lantern (2) and Gravedigger's Shovel (2) are awesome. If you're going down the spellcasting route, Patrice's Violin is great, and in a pinch you can use it to cycle a card to try and topdeck a solution. Also great for helping out allies.

That said, you can take situational or weird assets and events and even skills because if they don't end up being useful when you draw them, you can pitch them to Cornered or whatever and if worse comes to worst, they only took up 1/5 of your turn's draw and they're gone by next turn; the fun of playing Patrice is the utterly different playstyle - with any other investigator, you have your cards in hand and you come up with a plan like "I'll keep this for when an enemy spawns, and play this now, and have this in my back pocket..." whereas with Patrice, everything's going away in the Upkeep phase so you end up piecing together plans on the fly, adapting the cards in your hand to your immediate situation rather than planning out your future moves based on your current cards

My next Patrice deck is going to use Wither and maybe later Song of the Dead for attacks, and investigate using intellect with Guiding Spirit, Hemispheric Map and Lantern (2) - the idea is to have next to no cards with a cost greater than 2, and go Dark Horse with Madame Labranche. If that approach works out, my next experiment is going to be attacking with Combat and a Fire Axe. The reason for this is simple: With a base willpower of 4 and bad Combat and Intellect, the obvious approach is to use spells to do things. However, these are expensive and the good spells are all level 3 and higher - being shackled to Shrivelling (0) as your only combat solution for an entire campaign is extremely limiting. So I want to try out different approaches and see if apparently unconventional approaches are more consistent and could allow previously overlooked cards to shine.

Thanks so much for taking the time. Those are great thoughts. And you always have such great analysis of cards and their compatibility to investigators. Cornered was always going in. Madame LaBranche was also in my initial deck. I was wondering about Mrs. Doyle. I was hoping if you got her out reasonably fast that the rest of the cats would go have a chance to go into the discard pile pretty quick and then she could swap them out for a solid skill check. But I haven’t built a deck with XP yet. What are your thoughts on Drawing Thin? I know it adds 2, bit of she is going to fail it anyway there’s compensation.
It’s true that a lot of skill cards would be tough to get when you need them. Pendant of the Queen? The Onyx are Fast to put into play and you may find them quick enough to put Pendant in. Would FireAxe work well with the resource issue?
I hadn’t thought of Lantern 2 and Gravediggers Shovel 2. Duh! Those really were written for her!!

I wouldn't take fire axe as a backup weapon for a deck using spells to attack (probably would use Wither if I needed more than Shrivelling), but I'm going to try it out for sure with a low-cost non-spellcaster build. It's an extremely effective weapon in general so I have high hopes (might even be a reason to use Jessica Hyde, though the 3 resource cost is a problem)

Mrs Doyle is pretty great if you can get her into play, but I wouldn't rely on her. Zeal and Hope are excellent counters to Patrice's weakness and they generally add a lot of value, but since Patrice has the weakest mulligan and major economy issues and can't keep cards in hand, you can't rely on Mrs Doyle every game. Not really worth the extra 3 exp to reserve a (second) Charisma slot for, unless you're completely swimming in experience. But you can pull off some very cool plays and it's awesome having your army of cats.

I haven't tried Drawing Thin on Patrice. Never found the slot or exp for it, and I don't think it's all that good for her. It partly suffers from the issue of needing to be played the turn you get it, and you need to use it twice before it shakes out better than just Emergency Cache (0); Patrice is really not well-suited to complex setup or playing the long game. But if you're playing on Standard or Easy I imagine it would end up being pretty strong, as Patrice can sometimes hit numbers high enough that you can pass on the worst token in the bag even if you use Drawing Thin. I'm skeptical about it, but it might be an answer to her problems.

Onyx/Pendant are seeker cards so Patrice can't take them at all.

On Patrice at least, the Shovel (2) and Lantern (2) basically let you bank an event for later while providing a decent boost in the meantime, giving you options that are compatible with her discard and draw effect. The idea for playing Patrice without investigation spells came about after I was forced to use Lantern for investigating over several turns when Rite of Seeking failed me.

Patrice is threatening to become my favourite investigator so I have a lot to talk about when it comes to her!

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6 hours ago, Mimi61 said:

Mandy is my other investigator for that campaign and I have the Pendant in her deck. (I have 3 decks currently built and can’t keep it all straight!) Do I have the wrong card in mind for Drawing Thin? Isn’t it 0 level 0 cost? I haven’t used it yet, but it seemed when I was building Patrice that even having to increase a skill test by 2, getting 2 resources and drawing a card on tests she would be doomed to fail anyway, is pretty terrific compensation and the ones she can pass, even better! I hear what you are saying in regards to Emergency Cache, but the extra card draw every time you use it on top of the resources, could be a game changer for her with her hand size limitation, especially if she uses it in the Mythos Phase.
I just looked it up and didn’t realize it was put on the taboo list since I originally built her and now costs 3XP. Still, it might be worth trying...

Quantum Flux is also a card I liked on my first go round. I know it seems kind of counter intuitive for grabbing things out of the discard pile, but some things you can’t get back and shuffling it back into your deck can give her another shot at them. Especially if it comes up early-ish.
I have also wondered about Backpack. Having a couple of items or supply cards to count on would be nice. Have you tried it for her?

I have never used Lantern, because I usually pick up Hemispheric Map pretty quick and have better use for my hand slots. I am going to give that a closer look for Patrice though. I am really kind of excited to use cards I normally overlook.

Funny that you mentioned going the more non magic weapon route. I am playing Agnes right now in a second play through of dream eaters and tried an experiment. I gave her one attack spell and two weapons. Song of the Dead, Meat Cleaver and Fire Axe. I got SoD and Meat Cleaver out in Wages of Sin and was surprised how well they worked together. I used them in tandem on enemies, which gave her more power over damage assignments and the ability to conserve on spell charges. (Agnes has the same fight value as Patrice). I did also have Jessica, so that helped. I think it could work to use a spell and Fire Axe together. I like Wither, because it’s cheap and has no charges, which could offset the resource need with Fire Axe, but who knows? Like you say, you can plan all you want and 98% is going to fly into the discard pile anyway. So much is out of her hands!
I am pretty excited to try her out again, especially as the beneficiary of your experience. I remember how much I liked having to think on my feet with her. Necessity is the mother of invention, and I have a feeling she could have some legendary moments!

Thanks for your thoughts!

1 hour ago, Mimi61 said:

On 12/4/2019 at 3:20 PM, Allonym said:

I wouldn't take fire axe as a backup weapon for a deck using spells to attack (probably would use Wither if I needed more than Shrivelling), but I'm going to try it out for sure with a low-cost non-spellcaster build. It's an extremely effective weapon in general so I have high hopes (might even be a reason to use Jessica Hyde, though the 3 resource cost is a problem)

Mrs Doyle is pretty great if you can get her into play, but I wouldn't rely on her. Zeal and Hope are excellent counters to Patrice's weakness and they generally add a lot of value, but since Patrice has the weakest mulligan and major economy issues and can't keep cards in hand, you can't rely on Mrs Doyle every game. Not really worth the extra 3 exp to reserve a (second) Charisma slot for, unless you're completely swimming in experience. But you can pull off some very cool plays and it's awesome having your army of cats.

What about taking Versatile and Occult Lexicon? She’d get 5 more cards in her deck and Blood Rite. Discarding cards to either gain resources or deal damage seems right up her alley. You have played her. Is that making her deck too big?

23 minutes ago, Mimi61 said:

What about taking Versatile and Occult Lexicon? She’d get 5 more cards in her deck and Blood Rite. Discarding cards to either gain resources or deal damage seems right up her alley. You have played her. Is that making her deck too big?

Hmmmm...you know what, I could see that working. I could also see it not working, because it reserves your hand slot and you only have one in deck and it's relatively slow and it is generally a poor card for most investigators and any situational events are a problem for Patrice as she can't reserve them until needed and the hand filtering is pretty irrelevant to Patrice. But I could see it working. I'd be happy for a second good reason to take Versatile.

55 minutes ago, Allonym said:

1 hour ago, Mimi61 said:

Hmmmm...you know what, I could see that working. I could also see it not working, because it reserves your hand slot and you only have one in deck and it's relatively slow and it is generally a poor card for most investigators and any situational events are a problem for Patrice as she can't reserve them until needed and the hand filtering is pretty irrelevant to Patrice. But I could see it working. I'd be happy for a second good reason to take Versatile.

The hand slot had me worried too. But since resources is one of the two options Blood Rite gives her, it seemed like there was a pretty good chance she would be able to use it when it comes up, if she has the action and obviously dealing damage that requires no skill check, (if she happens to have an enemy) is pretty nice. I also was thinking that Versatile with Lone Wolf could be a resource solution for her. My investigators are always taking off on their own... so reckless!

I am working on her right now, since Thousand Shapes of Horror will be here on Monday and we are finally going to start Dream Eaters. I looked at your initial deck online and had a lot of the same cards in my first build. After this discussion though, I’m curious about a couple that you hadn’t mentioned one way or another since playing her. I would assume that means they were fine, but am curious as to how Take Heart worked out? I also hadn’t thought of Premonition for her, how did that go?

28 minutes ago, Mimi61 said:

The hand slot had me worried too. But since resources is one of the two options Blood Rite gives her, it seemed like there was a pretty good chance she would be able to use it when it comes up, if she has the action and obviously dealing damage that requires no skill check, (if she happens to have an enemy) is pretty nice. I also was thinking that Versatile with Lone Wolf could be a resource solution for her. My investigators are always taking off on their own... so reckless!

I am working on her right now, since Thousand Shapes of Horror will be here on Monday and we are finally going to start Dream Eaters. I looked at your initial deck online and had a lot of the same cards in my first build. After this discussion, I’m curious about a couple that you haven’t mentioned. I’m assuming no news is good news, but how did Take Heart work out? I also hadn’t thought of Premonition for her, how did that go?

Well the issue is that if you use Blood Rite for resources, you're using a card and an action for 2 resources. Or in other words, it's half the benefit of Emergency Cache. Patrice's Violin lets you turn 1 card into 1 resource as a free triggered ability. So while resources are an option for Blood Rite, it's not a competitive one. The deck-space benefit (one card in your actual deck for the 3 cards of benefit) is irrelevant for Patrice since you have loads of room, not to mention that it is completely eliminated if you're using Versatile to get it. And finally, the initial 1 copy of Blood Rite will probably go to waste - you'd need 2 spare actions on the turn you draw the Lexicon, one to play the host card and the second to play the Rite, and that's impossible to guarantee. I don't see it working out very well.

Take Heart is fine, especially if you're not running Dark Horse so resources are good. Taking a test you know you'll fail just to Take Heart is much weaker for Patrice because the card draw is far less impressive (will probably go to waste since you've already used an action purely for Take Heart, so unless you draw like an asset you really want to play, you'll end up with more cards than you need for your last 2 actions), so instead I tend to put Take Heart into tests even if they have a decent chance of passing (e.g. draw Crypt Chill, good chance of passing the Will test, but commit Take Heart anyway because if you do pass and Take Heart doesn't go off, no big deal, it's just one of your 5 cards you draw every round). I've not used Take Heart in the campaign I'm currently playing in, where I'm basically the primary fighter as Patrice (rest of the group is Finn, Mandy, Luke so they are all excellent clue gatherers, I can't compete on that front, but I have huge survivability and Fire Axe is working out better than I could have hoped, I'm actually about to take Jessica Hyde), since it's a Dark Horse deck, and I don't miss it. It's a take it or leave it card, really.

Premonition, on the other hand, turns out to be amazing for Patrice. Just play it the turn you draw it and give huge value to your team or yourself, without the usual downside of a card lost. And it can save you a lot of cards and resources since with Patrice you often start at low skill levels (e.g. 2 Combat for Improvised Weapon) and commit skills and spend resources and discard to Cornered to bring yourself up to par for tests, so knowing exactly how much you need to put in is great since you have so much scope to finesse your abilities. I'd include it in any Patrice deck and never get rid of it. That said, it's hardly central to the deck so I wouldn't feel substantially disadvantaged if I didn't have it.

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57 minutes ago, Allonym said:

I'm currently playing in, where I'm basically the primary fighter as Patrice (rest of the group is Finn, Mandy, Luke so they are all excellent clue gatherers, I can't compete on that front, but I have huge survivability and Fire Axe is working out better than I could have hoped, I'm actually about to take Jessica Hyde), since it's a Dark Horse deck, and I don't miss it. It's a take it or leave it card, really.

Patrice is the primary fighter? I love it! I mostly play seekers, but Survivors are fast becoming my favorite class. Rita was my first survivor and even she ended up being surprisingly canny at defeating enemies. We actually couldn’t have won our first time through TCU without her.

I had decided that if Fire Axe was going in my deck as a primary weapon, Jessica would have to as well. I think there is enough possible XP in that first scenario for Cornered, Jessica and Charisma. So the more Survivor, less Mystic route is working? I do see the issue with Blood Rite for resources. Economy of actions has to be doubly important for Patrice. What about Versatile/ Lone Wolf? (I really want to like Versatile..)

I have tried Premonition in the past and never really had the results I was hoping for. But it is going in. Her mechanics are so different, everything has to be looked at with fresh eyes.

31 minutes ago, Mimi61 said:

Patrice is the primary fighter? I love it! I mostly play seekers, but Survivors are fast becoming my favorite class. Rita was my first survivor and even she ended up being surprisingly canny at defeating enemies. We actually couldn’t have won our first time through TCU without her.

I had decided that if Fire Axe was going in my deck as a primary weapon, Jessica would have to as well. I think there is enough possible XP in that first scenario for Cornered, Jessica and Charisma. So the more Survivor, less Mystic route is working? I do see the issue with Blood Rite for resources. Economy of actions has to be doubly important for Patrice. What about Versatile/ Lone Wolf? (I really want to like Versatile..)

I have tried Premonition in the past and never really had the results I was hoping for. But it is going in. Her mechanics are so different, everything has to be looked at with fresh eyes.

I'm worried about the resource cost of Jessica Hyde, but then Dark Horse isn't doing much for me since I have so little investigating to do. Definitely not a cookie-cutter build. Will see how it goes. Next up is probably going to be Charisma x2 and Guiding Spirit, and I wish I had Brute Force. Picked up Stargazing first because I love it so much.

With Versatile I think you need a really good reason to take it for it to be a worthwhile choice. So far the only one I've found has been Astounding Revelation on Mark Harrigan, but I could see a few other possibilities with build-defining cards like Dark Horse or Scavenging. I definitely wouldn't take it for Lone Wolf.

The value of Premonition really depends on the difficulty you're playing on. For Hard and Expert, where you might regularly commit multiple cards and use temporary boosts and it can save you a lot of effort, limited resources or other trouble, it's a great card. But these issues are less prevalent on lower difficulty. I find it to be a good card especially for Patrice's weakness - if I get a particularly nice token I can safely test to deal with the Watcher, but if it's a nastier token I can get on with something else instead.

2 hours ago, Allonym said:

I'm worried about the resource cost of Jessica Hyde, but then Dark Horse isn't doing much for me since I have so little investigating to do. Definitely not a cookie-cutter build. Will see how it goes. Next up is probably going to be Charisma x2 and Guiding Spirit, and I wish I had Brute Force. Picked up Stargazing first because I love it so much.

I love Stargazing too, but it usually seems to come up when I am either up to my eyeballs or the encounter deck is on fumes. I was actually looking ahead at Guiding Spirit earlier this evening for Patrice.

Jessica is costly, but I have her right now with Agnes and she has been really key. I have come to like her a lot. Agnes doesn’t have a lot of health and we have recently kicked up our difficultly level and are getting way more hammered. So I think I will try Premonition. I actually just put it into Agnes’ deck to see if it helps there too. I have been meaning to ask of you’ve tried Open Gate, since it’s fast and cheap. But it may be too situational?

Patrice could never be cookie cutter and that makes me happy. I had been waiting and waiting for her to be released and was really disappointed when I first saw her stats. It took that first run through for me to see her potential. I have often noticed that our strengths and weaknesses are two sides of the same coin and that is definitely the case with her. She is going to be completely worth the effort and I appreciate the help in making her shine!

I just drew her weakness and am cracking up. Amnesia. I ask you!

If you're going for the more straightforward spells with willpower route, Peter Sylvestre is the obvious choice.

I haven't tried Open Gate - Patrice can quickly assemble a gate network but has less control over where it gets placed. Worth trying if you're interested!

Amnesia doesn't do much to Patrice at all, whereas Drawing the Sign, or any weakness that stays in hand, really mess her up.

True. I have Peter and Jessica with Agnes, but have actually used her Meat Cleaver as much, of not more than her attack spells and together very effectively. So Jessica has been great too.

I thought that particular weakness was just so ironic!
Open Gate would just be one of those things that works totally randomly every time. Which could be very fun. I can envision that sometimes it could be amazing and other times totally useless. But at least she has a chance of drawing them all.

On 12/7/2019 at 8:04 PM, Allonym said:

and I wish I had Brute Force. Picked up Stargazing first because I love it so much.

I’m sitting here looking at the two new survivor cards. Brute Force is awesome! Only 1XP

On 12/5/2019 at 12:59 AM, Mimi61 said:

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On 12/5/2019 at 6:20 AM, Mimi61 said:

On 12/8/2019 at 2:43 AM, Mimi61 said:

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On 12/8/2019 at 2:43 AM, Mimi61 said:

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Don't worry, I've been where you've been.

The trick is to not click the submit button more than once even if it doesn't load.

On 12/10/2019 at 7:06 AM, 987654321 said:

On 12/7/2019 at 6:43 PM, Mimi61 said:

On 12/7/2019 at 6:43 PM, Mimi61 said:

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Don't worry, I've been where you've been.

The trick is to not click the submit button more than once even if it doesn't load.

😂😂 It’s maddening! Thanks for the tip.

Part of it is my new phone. Put it down wrong with an app open and it submits or sends random texts or whatever else it desires!!
I do wonder if there is any way to delete one of your own posts?