One question that might have been answered elsewhere: the Taboo instructs that this card costs 3 additional experience, but it's still a level 0 card, right? So, Preston or Marie can use it in their decks.

This card. This freaking card. Hey, did you know that its triggered ability isn't a skill check, so symbol tokens revealed for it don't weaken Seal of the Seventh Sign? And that, as a result, while the token is sealed, there's no risk involved in activating it?

Yeah. This card is far more powerful than they probably intended if there's a Mystic on your team. Even without the ability (because relying on that ability without any chaos bag manipulation is ... not a good idea), a 2 cost story asset that doesn't take up any slots for 3 soak is a fairly strong reward. But the moment you add any chaos bag manipulation, even just a Premonition, Grotesque Statue, or Olive McBride to let you use it once for free, you're getting a massive tempo advantage. And if you actually do the Seal of the Seventh Sign combo I alluded to above, you can use it to take care of the last two health of every enemy that shows up forever... or at least until the skill checks being done to advance the investigation break the Seal.

Of course, that does leave the issue of actually finding the dang thing in its side scenario, since, of course, it's a story asset...

There are a couple of points I don't see mentioned but I think are fairly important to consider when thinking of taking either this or it's lvl 0 counterpart.

The first is that the card DOES NOT protect you from negative effects that would occur even if you succeed. The big ones being the card loss from Mists of R'lyeh, and the action loss from Rite of Seeking. While the FAQ does mention Baseball Bat, that's a card, so I thought it worth mentioning that you will still have to deal with the consequence of a fickle spell cast. If you really can't afford to give up a card or you really need to investigate as your first action with RoS, Defiance will not help you. You will also be forced to spend a charge from Seal of the Seventh Sign.

To explain, Defiance blocks the effects a symbol token attempts to do as indicated by the scenario reference card; it is otherwise ambivalent towards your assets and your cards in general. Which brings me to Ritual Candles.

If you are using Ritual Candles, Defiance WILL NOT impede on the +1 skill boost. In some (albeit unlikely) cases, you may use this in tandem with two candles and then trigger, say Olive McBride or Dark Prophecy, to then turn what would have been a -4 (or , , ) into a +2. That's a significant difference. Part of the reason Olive is useful for this is that she can absorb the hit from the if necessary. And if you have access to say, cards, then you can confidently trigger succeed by 2 effects and other combos with greater assurance. And this does differ from Counterspell which, while protecting you from spell side effects, costs two resources and will definitely prevent candle bonuses.

Lvl 0 Defiance can be used to target a popular token in this way, or to debuff a particularly dangerous token, but the choice may not be so easy, especially on harder difficulties. There is the possibly of it serving the measly bonus of being just a since no such symbol token may be drawn. This upgrade provides the opportunity to play cards that draw lots of tokens or hunt for specific symbol tokens in confidence because the is certainly not going to waste. Just remember that all consequences to symbol tokens from your play area will remain in effect.

No one has mentioned the obvious. This is a pure Roland Banks card. Roland is the only character that can trigger her ability in a non-janky way. Roland kills an enemy, then his reaction triggers, which discovers a clue, and then Alice deals a damage to another enemy. Obviously not a great card in solo but 2 enemies are common enough with just two players and you can tip the scales even more in your favor with "Let me handle this!" and On the Hunt. When there are no enemies, Roland's investigate is up to a respectable 4, thanks to Alice.

As other posters mentioned, Skids and Jenny are probably the next best two options.

Lola is a 'bad' investigator, and you'll probably either love or hate her depending on what you're looking for. She's made for fun and goofy builds, not power combos.

Without playing her, it can be tough to see how limiting her role restriction is. It seems like it would be fun to build a 'rainbow' deck with cards from every color, but in practice, that's a recipe for disaster. Cards that aren't in your current role are almost blanks, since you can't use any , , or triggers, can't play them as events or assets, and can't commit them to skill tests. The more you spread out your colors, the more likely your cards are to be blanks. Your static boost abilities like the one on Magnifying Glass are always active, but you'd be surprised how much of the good stuff requires you to be in a specific role.

You can (usually) only switch roles once per turn, so most turns you're locked in to using only two colors. This is what prevents Lola from pulling off crazy stuff; you can't perform a combo that uses cards of more than 2 colors. For most cases, there's already another investigator who can play the two colors you're comboing, and they have an additional character bonus. Lola's blessing is also her curse: when she can build the deck of any other investigator, she's going to get compared to every other investigator, and I think there will always be someone else who can do the same thing you're doing, but 'better'.

So why do I still love Lola? Because her deckbuilding options give you so much freedom to do stupid stuff that makes you feel clever for trying it. Lola is absolutely not the best investigator for Key of Ys, but only she can play Dr. Elli Horowitz and No Stone Unturned to help you find the Key, Haste and Swift Reflexes for the free actions, and then finish it off with a Will to Survive for 5 token-less tests at 6, in the stat of your choosing!

Is that combo easy to pull off? Not at all. Is it super powerful? No, you spent a bunch of XP, resources, cards, and actions just for 5 autosuccesses. And heck, I didn't even point out how in order to even use it, you MUST start your turn in the role, then switch to , so you can't even do it in back-to-back turns!

But do you feel awesome when it happens? Hastur yeah.

Don't expect anybody to ever add a review here with a "Gamebreaking Combo for Lola!!!", even as more cards get printed, because that's not what she is about. Instead, I'd recommend picking an off-beat concept you really like (Relics! Tokens! The Encounter Deck!), and then using Lola to put all your favorite cards in one deck.