Lola Hayes the Violinist (Patrice Hathaway)

--------------Transfiguration Build--------------

This is a Patrice Hathaway deck in disguise.

So they are printing Transfiguration. Represented here as Ethereal Form Transfiguration allows us to effectively run any investigator in the game with access to Lola's vast card pool. How can we take advantage of this?

Lola will at some point during the game choose the Mystic role and will then play Transfiguration and become Patrice Hathaway. Her role will no longer have any effect on her ability to play cards. She will be locked into the Mystic role outside of her Signatures and Weaknesses. Those cards will still interact with her role.

With the new watered-down versions of the Lola cards, the riskiest asset here is Leo de Luca. The usual Lola tricks apply. Play the valuable passive boost then switch roles to protect that asset. Once we are Transfigured, there is a fringe possibility that the deck draws it's weakness, becomes a Rogue, then draws it's weakness again because we can't switch away anymore. Luckily, with the new versions of the Weaknesses, we can just hold onto a card of that class as sacrifice.

My second idea was turning Patrice into a card draw engine, then hitting every single synergy card over and over again. With a smaller deck, this will make Lola fabulously wealthy with Rogue cards and generate 5 actions a turn with Leo and the Circle. It can clue heavily and defend itself in a pinch, and it chucks a few blesses in for your teammates while healing them. The deck is not a dedicated fighter, but can effectively participate with Gang Up and Scrapper. I am confident that this deck is capable of hard mode play.

------------Synergy Choices------------

For synergy here, we are using Sacred Covenant, Arcane Research, Adaptable, Shrewd Analysis, and Scrapper. There is an option to wait in game for a Guardian asset, Arcane Research, Adaptable, Shrewd Analysis, and Ancient Covenant. This second option gets us to full synergy for 5 less exp, but with no resource outlet for our fabulous wealth. (Being vastly wealthy is a build, though.)

Geared Up is terrible. Stick to the Plan doesn't work with Lola, and Sacred Covenant requires bless investment. If your playgroup is handling the bless generation, then definitely consider Sacred Covenant. Keen Eye is pretty fun, especially once the Transfiguration occurs and we are drawing our Bank Jobs and Cheat the Systems.

Arcane Research causes a 3rd trauma. I recommend a 1 health, 2 sanity spread. This shouldn't be too bad until we can get out our healing assets or upgrade into Spirit of Humanity. There are 6 spells in this deck to upgrade, which makes it worth it in my book (TFA clocks healing trauma at 5 exp.) I considered Forced Learning because Patrice wouldn't care about the increased deck size, but I imagine drawing the initial Transfiguration reliably would require deep investment in card draw which would, in turn, start to feel bad once we are drawing 5+ cards a turn. Besides, it's a 40 card Patrice deck. Wacky fun.

Adaptable is an easy choice. Go Charon's Obol for a hint of danger.

Shrewd Analysis does nothing and costs nothing. Just synergy gravy.

Scrapper becomes a money outlet. Once we are churning and hitting Bank Jobs and Cheat the Systems constantly, Scrapper becomes kind of glorious. Other option do exist. Short Supply risks us losing our entire gimmick on our first turn and I don't like that. I like my ally slot too much to ever run On Your Own. Ancient Covenant is a great choice as well, but that means replacing Sacred Covenant, and the other Guardian permanents are lackluster. We do have Guardian assets and if Scrapper's price tag feels unreasonable, purchasing Ancient Covenant and waiting for a Guardian asset to fully activate synergy is a very reasonable decision.

Lola truly is the best investigator, you'll see!