Lone Wolf: Wendy Adams, the Urchin
Last investigator from the core set, Wendy Adams is printed with a 4W 3I 1F 4A statline and a 7/7 health/sanity split.
Elder sign: +0. Autosucceed if Wendy’s Amulet is in play.
This gives nothing more than passing the test, and sometimes, +0 will not even guarantee it Yuk!.
Ability: Once per test/ability, Wendy can discard a card to cancel a chaos token, return it to the bag, and reveal a new one.
Her ability is hard to evaluate, as what you can get out of it really depends on the circumstances. Using it to investigate at +1, draw a -2, and discard a card for another shot has not a lot of value, while using it in on a Backstab test with Manual Dexterity and Quick-Thinking committed where you drew the Autofail prevents a huge tempo loss and can even save your scenario in some instances.
Overall, what Wendy’s ability brings is consistency. Effects that enables to cancel an Autofail are very rare in the game. As a nasty Auto-fail can ruin a scenario, Wendy‘s has a built-in safety net that no other investigator can play with.
Her ability does have the cost of discarding a card, but this cost can be minimized by running cards that have value when discarded (Moonstone, Winging It…).
Deckbuilding: Survivor 0-5 / Rogue 0-2
Every time I see Wendy, I wished that our Rogue 5/Survivor 2 was not Preston. These two classes pair very well together. The main reason is that Rogue has a lot of cards that care about using agility, and Survivor has the best level 0 assets to boost that agility. And the Rogue class can provide the resources to fund these assets.
Additionally, the Survivor class has many archetypes that Wendy can interact with: lower test difficulty – discard synergies – neverfail, while Rogue offers her a lot of economy options, and the ability to manage monsters despite her horrible fight score. Rogues also like to adopt a “high risk high reward” playstyle, for which Wendy’s ability is a perfect fit.
Signature Kit
Wendy’s Amulet is maybe one of the most unique signatures, and one of the most potent ones. It is so powerful that it is almost a second ability on itself.
Being able to play events from the top of the discard pile means that you can purposely commit events or discard them with Wendy‘s ability to play them right after. It is an easy way to negate the card cost of the ability for a lot more cards.
The events played are however no longer discarded but placed under your deck. This has several consequences. For starters, if you already have drawn your weaknesses, you can play without cycling your deck and having to see the weaknesses again. Moreover, if you manage to keep a small remaining deck, you can see strong events over and over again. Wendy is known to be able to generate infinite money that way with Easy Mark, and has access to wacky true infinite combos (that I will not discuss here).
Abandoned and Alone is a high variance weakness. The direct horror is mostly something to be aware of, but not threatening unless you do cycle your deck.
The stingy part is that this card will erase your discard pile, but not itself. At the worst, it could erase all your deck and then inflicts 3 horrors per round as you draw it every round after that. As long as you don’t draw it too late, and if it doesn’t hit your amulet, it is fine.
This card mostly makes playing Short Supply a high variance gamble, and creates a game within the game where you are actively trying to fetch both your amulet and your weakness as early as possible.
Preformance review for True Solo tasks
Clue Gathering
With a base 3 intellect, it is possible for Wendy to use it to collect clues, but it will require some support.
Fortunately, survivors are quite good at attempting test they are not guaranteed to succeed at. It is often ok to attempt tests at +1, having Lucky!, Live and Learn, “Look what I found“, or even Wendy‘s ability in case of failure.
Alternatively, Wendy can play a high agility build ( Survivors get tons of assets to boost it) and use Rogue tools such as Lockpicks(1) or Thieves’ Kit to investigate at very respectable values.
Both builds are quite viable, and can even complement each other. Having ways to progress the game even if you missed your tools in a bad mulligan is quite nice.
Wendy’s ability is not nearly as relevant for clue gathering as it is for enemy management or treacheries, but can still be worth to use. It for example shines in the Circle Undone due to the Haunted mechanic.
Enemy Management
Having a 1 in her fight skill, Wendy doesn’t strike as a very competent fighter.
You could attempt to make it work, with Fire Axe and a lot of money, but it is much better to turn to her agility to handle enemies.
With a base 4, she can already evade decently. Adding Pete Sylvestre / Track Shoes / Moonstone / Sparrow Mask can push it above 6, at which point she can evade most enemies.
To deal with hunters, VP enemies and boss fights, Wendy gets plenty of support from the Rogue pool in the form of the new British Bulldog, Backstab, or Dirty Fighting.
Her ability is however the cornerstone of what makes her good at managing enemies. Autofails rarely matter, but they do when you are dealing with an enemy. A failed evasion can lock you in for the turn with the enemy. A failed fight can cost you two enemy attacks (from retaliate and during the enemy phase). Having a “do over” option to save precious actions / ammo / events is invaluable in these situation.
Mythos Defense - Survivability
Wendy starts with 4 willpower and 4 agility, and a 7/7 health sanity split, which is a very robust chassis to build on.
Her full access to survivor makes her extremely resistant to the mythos deck. Pete Sylvestre(2) is enough to push her to 5W 5A, and if you want to go the extra mile a Moonstone (that she discard with her ability) ramps it to go to 6W 6A.
On top of these amazing defensive stats, Wendy’s ability can negate Autofails on the worst treacheries. In hard and extreme difficulty, her ability can also help to avoid the nasty effects of some scenario tokens.
Overall, the combination of her skills, cardpool and ability makes her on of the most resilient investigators in the game.
Action efficiency - Economy
Before any other consideration, Wendy‘s Rogue access means that she have access to great resource generation, and a fair number of ways to gain additional actions.
Discussing the added value of Wendy‘s ability is challenging, as it mostly depends on how allergic to variance you are.
If I look at what actually caused me to fail scenarios, while I occasionally have decks that fall a bit short for specific scenario challenges, more often than not, it is a streak of bad luck that throws the game of the rails. An it very often involve autofailing one/some critical test (s).
Having the ability to drop the probability of an Autofail from 1/16 to 1/256 is quite significant in these instances.
Value wise, Wendy‘s ability is average, if not slightly below average. But an investigator with an average ability, decent stats and a full card pool can beat most scenarios if built properly. Wendy brings something that few other investigators have: consistency.
Deckbuilding ideas
Wendy is agile
This deck is aims to capitalize as much as possible on Wendy‘s 4 agility.
The deck uses 2xPete Sylvestre, a Sparrow Mask and a Track Shoes to reach 5+ agility and get regular boosts if needed. This agility is then used to either get clues (Thieves’ Kit, Breaking and Entering), or to dispose of enemies (British Bull Dog, Backstab, Waylay).
The economy of the deck is supported by Faustian Bargain and Easy Mark.
The deck includes a few cards with high action economy value, such as Elusive (that can be worth an evade and a move for 0 action), and Nimble (useful to move multiple times, even engaged. It also features some of the best generic cards from the survivor pool, in the form of Lucky, Live and Learn and Resourceful.
At level 0, this deck focuses on reliability and resilience rather than seeking to optimize a combo around Wendy’s Amulet.
Notable new entries are Drawing Thin / Black Market to increase the deck consistency by providing additional draw. Because skills have a countersynergy with Black Market, the deck drops a few skills to make room for these new cards. The last substitution is to replace the Waylays by two copies of Think on Your Feet(2). This card is basically a 0 cost Elusive, that can also avoid the attack of a hunter enemy entering the location. The fact that is is not limited to revealed location makes it quite valuable in Solo, to advance the game while managing the enemies and keeping the fight cards (British Bull Dog and Backstab) for elites with VP.
Wendy has blessed bows
This deck is a bit more janky than the previous one. The idea is to build toward around the two bows available in Arkham Horror: Enchanted Bow and Ornate Bow. Both have a significant drawback, which is that they shoot once with high accuracy, but then either exhaust or requires an action to reload. It means that any enemy that is not outright killed will become an issue.
To manage this issue, Wendy will be mixing evading and fighting. The deck being an Underworld Support deck, it only features two weapons at level 0: Enchanted Bow and a temporary British Bull Dog.
Evasion is well supported, with agility boost supplied with one of the two Masks, Pete Sylvestre if you play him over Leo, and Breaking and Entering should you meet an enemy with high evade value. The deck also features Pickpocketing, as a payoff for evasion.
Both hands being dedicated to hold a bow, the deck also have to find ways of getting clues without an asset support. For this reason, the deck features a Fox Mask, “Look what I found”, Lucky!, a Winging It that can be discarded with Wendy’s ability, and Breaking and Entering for high shroud locations.
The deck is rounded up with cards that provide burst damage (Long Shot, Backstab), economy cards (Emergency Cache, Faustian Bargain, 21 or Bust, Cheat the System), and action generation (Leo De Luca, End of the Road, Swift Reflexes).
The deck should work scenario 1, but is mostly geared for its upgraded version.
My evaluation of Wendy True Solo power level
Wendy is an undeniably strong investigator. I make this statement without taking into account the broken infinite combos that she achieve.
Her main strength is consistency. She has great defensive stats. Her access to Rogue allows her to actively use her agility, which is even easier to boost for Survivors than for Rogues.
Her ability doesn’t generate as much active value than a lot of strong investigators abilities out there, which is why I don’t think Wendy can compete with the best investigators at high player count. However, what she does is unique as she can lower the variance of the game. Most investigators, with the proper deckbuilding, can do the “Work” part of the game at a fast enough pace. However, a lot of them, especially in Solo, could crumble on a single autofail drawn at the bad time. Not Wendy.
Overall, despite her consistency, the lack of built in extra action efficiency would keep her near the top of A+ for me. She does however also have access to Charon’s Obol, and that is enough for her to be the first investigator to sneak into my S tier.