UFO 50: Party House - Scenarios 1-5 Optimized

While earning the Gold Cart in Party House is in and of itself a monumental achievement that you should be congratulating yourself on daily, there are some who will be unsatisfied leaving it at that. For us, a simple win is not a true win. Only a 10 days left+ result is a true win. Behold:

Beautiful, isn't it? Ignore Scenario 5.

Not only is all of this possible, it's easy. Follow this guide and you will never again be blown out by the 3x Wild Buddy instadraw RNG. Take these lessons to heart and together we will voyage boldly on into the random scenarios with the thinnest decklists and fastest wins humanity has ever seen.

Final Decklist:
1 Rockstar
1 Hippie
1 Auctioneer
4 Driver
3 Comedian
4 Alien

The first two scenarios in Party House are showcases for how powerful the fetch ability is. Drivers allow us to consistently obtain the exact cards we want in hand, reducing our odds of getting screwed by multiple bad turns. Furthermore, Drivers are extremely cheap at only 3 popularity each, meaning our list can effectively contain multiple copies of an expensive card like Auctioneer, without all the investment.

First, we'll get 1 Rockstar. His statline is so strong that even though he's added Trouble, drawing a "bad" hand consisting of say 1 Rockstar and 1 Wild Buddy still gives us plenty of resources in the early turns.

Next we'll buy 1 Hippie. Even without Rockstar, the starting deck has so many trouble cards that you'll frequently bust trying to fill the house, so Hippie is a cheap way to improve our worst draws.

Then we'll get 2 Drivers, for more functional copies of Rockstar and Hippie.

Next we'll get 1 Auctioneer and 2 more Drivers. Ideally we want to see the Rockstar and Auctioneer in each hand so we can expand the house. We'll use the Drivers to fetch a Hippie if we get two troubles early; otherwise, save them until you've mostly filled the house, and grab the cash.

Next we'll add the 3 Comedians, and transition our strategy to generating around 20 popularity per turn with them and the Rockstar. With the Drivers, we grab Rockstar first, then as many Comedians as we can afford, sometimes prioritizing a Hippie when the party is getting out of hand. The Auctioneer is lowest priority; in the earlier turns he helped grow our house, but now we should be using him only when we're going to run out of cash. In this phase, notice that Drivers help fill out the party to trigger Comedian's "Full House."

With the list finished, we'll purchase 4 Aliens whenever we can afford them, ideally every other turn. Once this is done, we have the Drivers to help us find them. Then, any extra popularity can be spent on Security Guards for added insurance against trouble; if no trouble shows, they can simply kick themselves out.

Best Result: 10 days left

Final Decklist:
1 Gambler
1 Cute Dog
1 Spy
1 Grillmaster
4 Private Eye
2 Writer
2 Superhero
2 Mermaid

Similar to scenario 1, our plan here will be to use fetch cards, in this case 4 Private Eyes, to assemble our ideal hand consisting of Writers and Trouble cards.

We'll start with 1 Gambler. She's worth the price over Gangster for higher total stats, as well as the fact that Gangster providing 0 popularity can frequently force us end the party without enough pop to buy anyone new. This can happen multiple turns in a row and get us pretty jammed up.

Next we'll add 1 Private Eye to fetch the Gambler if it isn't drawn naturally.

Then we'll add 1 Cute Dog and 1 Private Eye. Cute Dog is even more vital than Hippie in the last scenario; we'll fetch it whenever we're in too much Trouble to fill the house. As for the Private Eye, the basic pattern is that we're adding them in tandem with the targets for them to fetch.

Now we'll add 1 Spy and 1 Private Eye. We need an extra cash source to pay for the Private Eyes, and Spy is one with no downside and a useful ability as bonus.

Next comes 1 Grillmaster and 1 Private Eye. With so many fetches, having access to 1 Cute Dog and 1 Grillmaster provides us with a nice toolbox; if we've drawn the Gambler and maybe some Private Eyes or Writers already and simply wish to mitigate trouble, we can grab Cute Dog. Or, if we've drawn 2 Wild Buddies early, or just too many weak cards like Old Friend, we can fetch Grillmaster and reset.

Now we'll add the 2 Writers. While there are all sorts of new cards in this scenario, the solution here is conceptually identical to Scenario 1: we're going to use our 4 Private Eyes to build our hands, this time consisting ideally of 1 Gambler, 2 Wild Buddies, 1 Cute Dog and 2 Writers. Adding up all the popularity from these cards and the Private Eyes we used to fetch them, we should be yielding around 30 popularity per turn.

Finally, we'll buy 2 Superheroes, followed by 2 Mermaids. This buy order balances consistency and speed. An additional Grillmaster and a few Wrestlers can be added with surplus popularity.

There are other strong strategies utilizing the synergy between Climber and Grillmaster, but the Writer approach is consistently the fastest. Climbers are expensive and take several turns to build up, whereas Writers straightforwardly produce 5+ pop per turn right away.

Best result: 10 days left

Final Decklist:
1 Rockstar
1 Stylist
1 Counselor
2 Athlete
4 Photographer
4 Cheerleader
4 Dinosaur

Our plan this time is to use Stylist to upgrade a Rockstar, and take pictures of him with the Photographer. This escalates insanely fast in conjunction with the Cheerleader, who refreshes the ability of every non-Cheerleader in the house.

We'll grab 1 Rockstar first, then 1 Photographer. Ideally, we can use the Photographer's ability to score the Rockstar for a lot of early resources.

Next, we'll pick up 1 Stylist and 1 Athlete. In the ideal turn, we'll upgrade the Rockstar with the Stylist, and then score the Rockstar with the Photographer. To facilitate this, we can use the Athlete to try to dig for our ability cards.

Now we'll add 1 Cheerleader, the final combo piece. After first upgrading and then scoring the Rockstar with the Stylist and Photographer, we can use the Cheerleader's ability to refresh everyone in the party and do it again.

Adding 3 more Cheerleaders and 3 more Photographers is where this circus goes next. With all of these cards in our deck, generally we'll want to try to use as many abilities and Cheerleader refreshes as possible.

Add 1 more Athlete. Remember that Cheerleaders also refresh our Athletes. We can check the Rolodex to see how many Cheerleaders and other abilities we have left in the deck once the house fills up; if we've still got a fair amount of goodies in there, it's generally worth it to use our Athletes to dig them up.

Add 1 Counselor to the mix somewhere along the way. If you manage to clear three Troubles with it, which is possible because its ability can be refreshed by the Cheerleader, you will make your redraws with the Athletes completely safe. With the potential to take sixteen pictures of the Rockstar, we should easily be hitting close to max popularity and max cash every turn.

Finally purchase 4 Dinosaurs, ideally 2 per turn. We can use the Counselor to clear the troubles from the Dinosaurs as we draw them-- this complication while not trivial is compensated by the immense savings we get on popularity over the Genies.

Best result: 14 days left

Final Decklist:
1 Gangster
1 Cute Dog
1 Athlete
2 Stylist
4 Photographer
4 Private Eye
4 Dragon

This scenario is a bit of a hybrid between Scenarios 2 and 3 in that we have both cheap fetches and the Stylist + Photographer + cash target combo.

Start with 1 Gangster and 1 Private Eye. Ideally, we draw the Gangster every turn to expand the house quickly.

Add 1 Cute Dog and 1 Private Eye. The safety Cute Dog provides is useful again, with how deep we sometimes dig for our unwieldy combo.

Add 1 Stylist and 1 Private Eye. We need Stylist early because Gangster won't give us any Popularity on his own.

Add 1 Photographer and 1 Private Eye. Ideally we want to upgrade and then take a picture of the Gangster every turn. Private Eye is indispensible in making these awkward puzzle pieces fit.

Add 1 Athlete, 1 more Stylist, and 3 more Photographers. The plan is relatively straightforward; upgrade and then score the Gangster as much as possible. We'll fetch the Athlete to reset bad hands as needed.

Finally, add 4 Dragons, buying 2 per turn. With extra popularity, an additional Athlete can be added to help draw them.

Best result: 13 days left

Final Decklist:
1 Auctioneer
2 Celebrity
4 Greeter
4 Cupid
4 Introvert
4 Ghost

Fun fact: Did you know that if a Greeter greets a Celebrity, he also scores the two guests that Celebrity brings? Neat tech, isn't it? Too bad it's no good, if I can't get the Introverts I'm looking for...

First, save up for 1 Auctioneer. Our strategy relies on Introverts, which are scored based on the number of empty spaces in the house; the larger the house, the greater our scoring potential.

Next add 2 Greeters. We'd like to hit an Auctioneer with their ability, but they provide solid value no matter what they hit.

Next pick up 1 Celebrity Now that the house has expanded a few times. Celebrity is an underrated card with an amazing statline. Sometimes we will be forced to stop drawing early, but usually we have many chances to draw it in time. The more we draw it, the more it expands the house and remedies its own problem. If we can manage to hit it with a Greeter, and that chains into an Auctioneer, needless to say we're extremely happy.

Now add 4 Cupids. Cupid's powerful and unique ability to remove two cards from the party really ties the build together, easily clearing troubles, and cleaning house for Introvert and Celebrity.

Add 2 more Greeters. It helps when using their ability to say "Come on big money big money" out loud.

Next add 1 more Celebrity. With the house having expanded to roughly 10+ capacity, we can manage it. It's stretching the tolerance to the limit, but it is needed to give Greeter more jackpot targets.

Now we toss all 4 Introverts in. Our plan is to score Introverts early on with Greeters while the house is mostly empty. Failing that, we can end the party if we draw 3 Introverts quickly enough. Getting fewer Introverts than that yields only 2 pop per empty space, which is not much better than simply filling the house with guests. Ordering matters: if it's possible, use the Cupid's ability before the Greeter to absolutely JUICE our Greeter into Introvert procs.

Unfortunately, we then have to buy 4 Ghosts. They're a fairly expensive star, which slows us down tremendously, but at least they're kickers so they don't interfere with our strategy too much. And once we've gotten 4, we can buy Magicians to find them quickly.

Initially, this strategy seems high-variance relative to the others in this guide; Greeter only has 7 jackpot targets. But the sheer number of times we roll the dice with him lends us consistency, and the mansion we build off Auctioneer and Celebrity money means even a houseful of weenie Old Friends and Greeters isn't that bad.

Best result: 8 days left

If you can provide alternative strategies for any of these scenarios that yield equivalent or faster results, please post them in the comments. Really that's the main reason to publish this guide in the first place; I'm really curious if these results are approaching the true records, especially if I've missed some hidden tech or synergy.

Why is it so important to know the fastest strat, and not simply be satisfied to clear the scenario in time? Because the fastest strat is also the safest. The more days left at the end, the more assured we are that someone given the same list can win even with multiple turns of bad RNG and mistakes.

Better results than these can be achieved with the same lists-- just with a bit of buy order adjustment, more grinding and better luck. Hopefully if people try them out, they can manage to squeeze out some extra days. Good luck out there soldier.