So, everything I read says Rachel gets a major edge regarding putting hits on suspects... but I can only find two cards that let her do this, and only once each. Is the other advantage the fact that she potentiall gets access to a wide variety of favours and can use them at Humanity Labour? Or is she just not as good at the hits thing as has been let on?

Well, two cards plus a good number of favours... that is the exact 3 hits you need to kill a suspect. I know this is not much (certainly not a hardcore suspect-killer combo), but it is much more than any other character can hope for. So maybe this is the catch.

Well, there are other circumstances. Remember that Rachel is not the only one to put hits on suspects. Several conspiracy puzzle pieces allow anyone to do so. Also, there is the human labor major location.

In our games, at least one suspect always ends up with one hit, more than not, two or three hits are dealt out. If you are Rachel, you can use this to your advantage to deal the final killing blow when the other players distribute the hits evenly.

The only game I played with Rachel, we also got the murder where you need only two hits to kill a suspect. Coupled with the above mentioned, it makes Rachel a highly dangerous hunter. I put down two of four suspects in this game!

I'm beginning to suspect we played the game wrong somehow. In our game, a grand total of two hit tokens were played, and nobody went through their Light Deck all the way (I had 6 cards left before a re-shuffle at the end of the game).

Granted it was a first play, and we did start pretty late in the evening. I know for a fact we were playing the Conspiracy tiles wrong.

Ah, well, lesson learned.

Thanks for the response!

deadlytoque said:

Same thing happened in our first game, but dont worry, you may not be playing it wrong. We didnt uncover all of the conspiracy in our 1st game, meaning only 2 of the baggage puzzle pieces with hits on came out, nobody went to Humanity Labor, and despite Rachel being out, she either didnt get the right cards or chose not to use them.

And none of us drew through their light deck. In fact, in my 4 games now, I've only done that once.

Despite some of the opinions I've read elsewhere, we've now played the game extensively with a variety of player setups and chars and universally Rachel has been the poorest performer.

Yes, she's amazing in the one murder where 2 hits kills people, but you don't get to always play that murder ;-)

in a 4-5 player game she's almost useless, because killing the 1 suspect you are able to kill easily will only benefit you if you are right behind the leading player for guilty hunch and you kill the leading player's hunch. If you are NOT the next in line, all you have done is piss off the leader and give the guilty hunch to someone else.

They probably will thank you for this, it's the least they can do considering you just cycled your deck for those cybernetic hit cards and parted with a bucket of time and favours to make it happen. Pity that their thanks gets you 0 VPs....

And yes, we have had several situations in which she's even killed 2 or 3 suspects in a 5 player game, because of the 'ambient' hit tokens placed by consipiracy or events. The problem with these 'ambient' tokens, though, is that SHE DIDN'T ALWAYS PLACE THEM! So, sometimes you're just killing them off for the hell of it, in the hope that it might deny Mr 1 AND Mr 2 in the murder stakes, leaving you a small hope in hell of becoming Mr 3 (she pretty much sucks at the evidence game compared to everyone else). This is pretty unlikely, however, as Mr 1 and Mr 2 then make it their sole mission to destroy your manipulation of the evidence so you don't take the hunch. It's the least they can do to thank you for denying them victory...

All in all, this character SHOULD rock. She SHOULD be terrifying, she SHOULD be respectable. All it would take is some Louis-style evidence manipulation in combination with the hit counters and she could hold her own. In reality, she's pretty much forced to cycle her deck for NPC favours, which she'll use to frantically acquire Jinteki/Haas or hopefully cash in if the other people who are GOOD at the puzzle make the favours worth something. If they DON'T... well, hope you take some satisfaction in ruining Mr 1's day....

As I recall, tactic how to play against Rachel is to force her into killing some other players suspects, so killing one is not for her good i think, you must take your own target ... use jimmy to look how suspects are doing and if it helps you, then you can kill the winner(so far). Otherwise it is only wasting your time ... I havent played her yet but if i will i wont kill any suspect early in the game as there is no garantee that it is useful for me ... If suspect will live, other players will weste some time to put evidence on that suspect (high for player who has guild hunch and low for others)

You can always bluff, never tell(or lie about it if it helps ) others who you want to kill, so they dont know until late of the game... if they waste much time on placing evidence, you can kill the someone(not in your innocent hunch) anyway and make other players lose some extra points from hunch cards. I think this is the greatest power of her ... if you have to put a hit ... you can always put hits on different suspects to never reveal who will eventually(if ever) die.... Also remember that Louis can change his hunch card by playing light card (done this in my first game when my suspect died).

i dont recall cards for her but it seems right ...