Patrice and the Eternal Hounds

While a complete level 0xp guide, and playable from the start, this deck starts shining once we get the hound combo into play.

It is reasonably low-setup, high impact deck that does very well in most scenarios I've played it.

Eternal Summoned Hound

Summoned Hound (1) is a good card, letting you investigate and fight with a base value of 5 as a action. However, Unbound Beast is a terrible treachery as it not only replaces your hound, it fully removes it from play, preventing you from ever getting it back again.

The answer to this is A Chance Encounter (2), which lets you put the hound into play from your discard pile. As the hound is "put into play", rather than being actively "played", we forego the Unbound Beast weakness, and we have a hound that stays in play forever.

With Charisma (3), we can have 2 of these in play concurrently, providing us with 2x Fight/Investigate at a base value of 5. This is superb action compression.

• 2x Summoned Hound (1) - upgraded from 2x Madame Labranche
• 2x A Chance Encounter (2) - upgraded from 2x Read the Signs
• 1x Charisma (3)

Total cost: 9xp

Cornered

Cornered is a staple in Patrice, as it allows her to boost a skill check by dumping a card from your hand you won't be needed this turn. As her hand refreshes every turn, discarding does not carry a penalty for future turns.

• 2x Cornered (2) - upgraded from Spectral Razor

Total cost: 4xp

Hunting Jacket + Forbidden Knowledge

In order to get the hound into play, we first need it in the discard pile, and a copy of A Chance Encounter (2) in our hand. We might get lucky and start with the hound in the discard pile, curtesy of Short Supply, and A Chance Encounter (2) in hand, but often we are less fortunate.

The Hunting Jacket (2) may help us here, while also supporting our economy. If we draw events we might have a use for later, like A Chance Encounter (2), we can stash it under the jacket for a few resources. At the same time, if we have Forbidden Knowledge in play, we can damage the jacket and get a resource that way too.

So the trick then, is to load up the jacket with 1 horror, so that we at a later turn can use Forbidden Knowledge, to defeat it on demand. When it is defeated, we get the cards to hand, and can play them. The strategy may be useful for any event, but especially to get the order of the hound and its summoning right.

• 2x Hunting Jacket (2) - upgraded from 2x "Look what I found!".

Total cost: 4xp

Improvising

The three Improvised cards:

• Improvised Weapon
• Winging It
• Impromptu Barrier

really shine with Patrice as it is quite easy to get them into the discard pile. Either by simply not playing them. Or by discarding them to Patrice's Violin or Cornered (2).

Finally, to help out with her somewhat low stats, we have Ritual Candles which we can put in one hand, while she carries the Patrice's Violin in the other. While not super powerful, it tends to grant you a +1 roughly 1/3 of the time in a normal chaos bag. Slightly higher towards the end of a campaign.

And Moonstone is an easy pick as it can be played as a free action when Patrice Hathaway discards her hand at the end of the round.

Finally, she carries a bunch of skill cards to help out with whatever comes her way.

Luxury upgrades

• 2x Brute Force - upgraded from 2x Overpower
• 2x Sharp Vision - upgraded from 2x Perception
• 1x Relic Hunter