With the “Arkham Week of Horror” and Halloween fresh on our mind, this is not just a good opportunity to remind ourselves that there’s a spooky skeleton inside all of us, waiting to break out of its shell. But also, to check out some more previews for The Drowned City. Will the cards be sufficiently spooky? We’ll see. There’s actually only one card and I’d usually wait for another one or two before doing one of these roundups, but a) it’s a double sided card, so there’s a lot to check out, and b) we also have a parallel investigator to gawk at. While that’s not strictly related to Drowned City, it does actually touch a bit on things we have already seen to be part of the new set.
A double sided card, with one side being a permanent asset and the other side being … an investigator card? Riiiiight.
This definitely gets some major bonus points for its cool concept and mechanics. Aside from that i have to admit that i am not terribly moved by this card however. This is basically half a Charon’s Obol, giving you a handful of extra XP, but kicks you while you are down should you ever get defeated. It doesn’t completely off you the way Obol does, but since it neuters you to a fairly sad state, you might just wish it would have.
In terms of power level and effect, i feel like this doesn’t really add much to the existing cardpool. Compared to Arcane Research and Down the Rabbit Hole, the other two XP-cheating permanents that Mystics get, The Great Work hands out only half as many XP. They do stack, but that doesn’t really move the needle much either. If your Mystic already gets 50XP in the span where others get 30, then increasing that to 55XP isn’t going to significantly change the discussion. I know that many people will look at this as an autoinclude and just run all five XP permanents in Mystics, but that doesn’t seem like the correct play to me.
However, since this is our 11th campaign cycle, we also need to get in the habit of looking at new cards from the perspective of players who do not already have $1500 in playing cards in their closet. Not everyone owns Down the Rabbit Hole and we shouldn’t assume that doing so is a requirement going forwards. And when evaluating The Great Work on its own merits, it’s a perfectly fine card. Great even. I certainly enjoy this more than Rabbit Hole which i mostly consider to be a bit of a design blunder…
Spookyness Rating: 3/5. Getting replaced by an evil doppelgänger is some top shelf spook. Sadly however, homunculi can not make up for the lack of skeletons on this card.
Parallel Mateo
And another purple card that comes out of left field. We knew there was a parallel coming up but at least as far as i am aware, nobody even guessed that it could be Mateo. As one would expect, Not-Mateo deals in Bless tokens. A lot of those around by now, but he does have a neat spin on it. Sealing a bless token per round on an investigator at his location, he basically hands out coupons for a +2 to a test. It’s very similar to Vincent’s On the Mend in that regard, but also has the potential extra synergies from Bless tokens. This sealed Bless token is taken from the supply, so he conjures up an extra Bless every turn, similar to Mary or Kohaku. That by itself is a really nice support ability, using the Blesses in a more controlled manner than Mary does. It also goes a long way to making his own statline more workable, if he seals the token on himself instead of someone else. Pulling the Elder Sign conjures up another Bless, again very similar to Mary. This seems reasonably strong and definitely a great alternative to the one-shot ability of the original Mateo. Only the overlap with Mary is something i find a bit awkward here.
[EDIT: It has been pointed out to me that the Bless token that Mateo seals on investigators has to come from the bag, he doesn’t actually Mary it from thin air. That’s … not great. The Bless token revealed through the ability is put back into the bag, so there is sort of a backdoor generation of Bless tokens if you squint?]
The first thing to notice about his backside is that it no longer grants the 5 bonus XP that regular Mateo starts out with, definitely a relevant thing to give up. Where regular Mateo has Mystic 0-5 and Blessed 0-3, the parallel version flips that around to Mystic 0-3 and Blessed 0-5. He also gains access to cards that seal tokens 0-5. Seal cards are mostly mystic or bless cards anyways, with Unrelenting being the only relevant extra pickup. We are expecting more seal effects in Drowned City to support Agatha, so i suppose we are going to need to wait a bit before fully able to judge this deckbuilding. With the current cardpool, the trade of the Mystic topend for a couple Blessed cards doesn’t seem particularly worth it however… and that’s before we even factor in the 5XP.
To be honest with you all, Parallel Mateo isn’t really interesting me all that much. Bless investigators are a dime a dozen by now and Kohaku has pretty much perfected the concept for me to a point where another Mystic/Bless character doesn’t move me too much. The backside also doesn’t go far enough to really open anything new. Maybe if there’s an exceptional amount of Seal cards in non-Mystic (probably Seeker) in Drowned City, that can give Para-Mateo some more legs, but right now i am not really compelled to explore him.
That being said, i am generally not a huge fan of parallels overall, so that might just be me.
As usual, we are also getting a set of Advanced Sig and Weakness, to spice up our adventures with regular Mateo and the parallel alike. In the past, i have liked a few of these, so maybe I find more that interests me here.
The new Serpents of Yig is one spicy enemy. 3/4/3 is a much more impressive statline than 2/3/2 and removing all blesses alongside the Elder Sign does at the very least neuter any Blesses still sealed on investigators. Note that this version is also able to pluck the Elder Sign out of a Crystallized Elder Sign or any tokens out of the Codex of Ages. This is a terrifying weakness enemy.
Speaking of the Codex of Ages, what do we get in exchange for powering up our weakness? Honestly, not all that much. Instead of the Elder Sign, we can seal three blesses on the thing now. Giving us three opportunities to replace tests with blesses. But that’s what the investigator ability of Mateo already offers. There’s also the circumstance that sealing the Elder Sign and resolving it will produce a Bless from Mateo’s ability, so sealing three Blesses here basically stands against an Elder Sign and a Bless. That’s not that much better. If it even is better. Resource cost is the same, it still takes a handslot, so not much else changed. It gained an extra icon, but not even one that would stack well with the existing ones. Meh. Doesn’t seem worth it to me. I think i’d just stick with the regular set of weakness and signature, no matter if i am playing old or new Mateo.
[EDIT: It has also been pointed out to me that upgraded book does give +1 to all skills instead of just willpower. That’s actually a pretty good upgrade that works well with his statline. That makes it a much more attractive counterbalance to the upgraded Serpents of Yith and possibly even open ups some deckbuilding. Still need to hope you draw the serpents before you draw the book because the serpent will turn the book into a paperweight now.]
So yeah. Sorry, a bit of an underwhelming first impression as far as i am concerned. Mateo was never terribly high in my esteem and this parallel doesn’t do anything all that exciting that would make me want to play him over already existing options either. There’s nothing wrong with him, but also nothing that actually captures me. Bound to happen with 70+ investigators, but oh well.
Spookyness Rating: 1/5. Blesses? That’s not very Halloween of you. Didn’t even add a goatee to the portrait, either!
We got an update to the FAQ and the optional list of Taboos today, dubbed the “Midwinter Gala” Edition. Those updates aren’t as substantial as they have often been before, but there’s some things to take note of for sure. However, the FAQ document now also contains a section about Ultimatums and Boons, which allow modifying the game for you to tweak your experience. Think challenge runs or achievements in video games and you are close enough. We may also see another FAQ/Taboo update in the near future which i suppose would be the “Drowned City” Edition. This is not 100% confirmed, but something to look out for. Anyways, let’s not speculate about that any further and head into the PDF. I’m feeling chatty tonight, so I’ll be going over the pdf and comment everything.
Errata
The red text in the doc starts off with some errata to Hemlock Vale campaign book texts, removing some edge cases and oversights. Pretty self explanatory, but good to see it written down.
We got errata to the Masks from Carnivale of Horror to use the same phrasing as the ones from Hemlock. Sure, makes sense.
Some templating changes to three specific cards: – Coterie Envoy (TSK): Only stops player card effects from exposing cards at its location. It’s used in Sanguine Shadows and Shades of Suffering, both of which feature a Coterie Elite that repeatedly reveals and conceals itself. Obviously, the Envoy isn’t supposed to stop those scenarios from doing their thing, only stop the players from interfering. – Prismatic Shard (FHV): Now explicitly also works on weaknesses. Not sure about the why, but probably to remove ambiguity about the timings behind when a weakness counts as a scenario card and when not and the inconsistencies that would come with it? – Weed-Choked Beach (FHV): Now counts as a Cave. I am not completely sure about the details anymore, but there was some sort of possible way for the Lost Sister scenario to lock up when no Cave location was revealed at a certain point. Presumably, this change removes that edge case. Fair enough!
Rules
The definition of Signature Cards got extended just slightly by mentioning that investigators can not only not play another investigator’s signatures, but also not commit them. So no leeching of signature skills using Copycat or the like. Not much of an impact to this. Makes sense though.
Basic Action Types. This is an important one to take note of. The rules now define what exactly is a “basic action”. It’s Draw, Resource, Move, Investigate, Fight, Engage and Evade. More importantly, Activate, Play, Resign and Parley are NOT basic actions. Currently, this is pretty much only relevant for the card Close the Circle, which allows taking basic actions. Mostly, this is opening the door for using the term more often on future cards which can only be a good thing.
More clarifications were made on Ignoring costs. The text now spells out that costs for initiating abilities does include things like resources, uses spent or actions used. As a rule addition, Exiling or Removing a card from the game cannot be ignored. This specifically stops Pushed to the Limit and similar cards to work with Fire Extinguisher in a way that would bypass the Exile cost on the ability.
Frequently Asked Questions
Some rule specific questions that were answered:
– One-Two-Punch will connect both attacks, even if the targeted enemy has Elusive despite the enemy changing locations during resolution of those attacks. – The card Foresight can be used with cards that draw multiple cards simultaneously and with cards that search for a card, then draw it. The only stipulation is that you make your guess before you search. This does massively increase the chances to “guess” correctly with Foresight. Personally i wasn’t aware of this being a thing, but it makes sense and that seems like a solid combo. Is it finally time for Lucid Dreaming or Word of Command to shine? – The often misplayed situation around “without playing its action cost” is explicitly called out. To reiterate, cards like Hand-Eye Coordination only ignore one action on multi-action costs. Any further action costs (like on the big Sledgehammer swing) still have to be paid. However, if a card says “ignore all costs”, like on Push to the Limit, then all actions are ignored this way. I predict this one will stay a frequently asked question in the rules channels forever. While it does make sense from a certain point of view, it is one of the more non-intuitive templatings around. – Using Eldritch Tongue to play a card that attaches to something on the board won’t do much good, because that card is still removed upon resolution… which is immediately after attaching. Beguile was used an example here. The same would be true for recycling cards with De Vermis Mysteriis. Actually, this contradicts a 5 year old ruling on De Vermis, but who cares about that. If it’s not in the FAQ, it’s not real and can thus be safely ignored. On a related note, i am not quite sure how the situation is for the Painted World when it copies an attaching event, since it removes instead of discarding, not on resolution. Hm. – Rod of Carnamagos can be used in a free trigger window during a skill test and any tokens revealed will count as “revealed during the test”, triggering for example Sixth Sense or Eye of Chaos with very little effort. This has been a very divisive ruling ever since release of the card. Personally, i don’t like that it works this way as it obsoletes Olive McBride and detracts from the actually interesting part of Rod: The Rots. While also completely breaking those curse spells in half, making them far superior to almost anything else you could do for the same amount of XP and effort. But the ruling is consistent, of course. And it’s at least good to have it written down now as it will stop the constant bickering about it… at least a bit. I’m still not particularly happy about it but i’ll at least try to shut up about it. I’ll try. It should probably be chained with +4XP to match its new powerlevel, though. It’s outrageously strong and as a level 0 card completely displaces any other token manipulation card that could be used in its place. – Damage and Horror tokens cannot be moved to cards without health or sanity. This was generally assumed to be the case, but came up again with the release of Wrong Place, Wrong Time in Hemlock Vale. – Parley is now officially an action type. Not a basic action type, though – see the earlier clarification on that. This was frequently in question due to the reminder text on the card Haste which lists out the action types, but omits Parley from that list. To be clear, you can trigger Haste by parleying twice and thus get a free parley action on top.
The Feast of Hemlock Vale
Some FHV specific clarifications made it into the file.
– Many players were confused about the Prelude that leads into the finale not actually being a prelude. The FAQ confirms that you are meant to clean up the game fully, you do not carry over anything into the finale, unlike you have done on the previous days. – When cleaning up a Prelude, cards that are attached face-down or placed beneath another card will remain in play… provided that the card they are attached to stays in play as well, of course. So you can carry a full Backpack or Hunting Jacket into the scenario, as long as you choose it as the one asset you want to keep. You will also retain cards under Sefina or Diana. Excluding face-down cards from the clean-up does allow a range of cards to work much better in FHV without having to bend the rules, so that’s a very welcome clarification! – The effects of the treacheries Calcification and Psychotropic Spores allow taking a damage/horror to treat the test on them as successful. This is allowed both before or after taking the test. Doing this before the test avoids having to pull a token at all (which could have consequences on reveal in some situations), but usually you will probably want to try the test, then take the damage/horror if you fail to pass after all. This works different from what i expected, i would have thought you’d have to decide on taking the damage/horror before you take the test. This definitely makes those treacheries easier to handle.
Taboos
Not a whole lot here, tbh. No changes to existing taboo entries, but we have these additions:
– Underworld Market is chained with 2 extra XP, increasing its effective XP cost from 4 to 6. I am not sure this was really needed, but it does put it in line with Stick to the Plan, Ancestral Knowledge and Bewitching as another card that provides card selection at the start of the game. I don’t feel strongly about this chaining. I can see where it’s coming from, but i didn’t really have UWM on my radar as a problem. – Ravenous Myconid, specifically the strains that eat treacheries and enemies, have been chained by 1XP. Now, that’s just cute. Those are actual problem cards, in the “trivialize the game by stopping it from functioning” category. Slapping a +1 on them is laughable and at best symbolic. Let’s just assume that it is meant as a symbolic thing, but if there was any intent of actually balancing these cards, then XP doesn’t cut it, not even if it was +4. These need mechanical changes, they are nonsensically powerful.
That’s it already for chainings, here’s the mutations: – The mutation to Hypnotic Gaze to work for all symbol tokens now also includes the upgraded one. Duh. Why wouldn’t it? I assume everyone already played it this way. [EDIT: Turns out this was still red in the pdf by accident from the last time. Hypnotic Gaze(2) already got the mutation earlier this year. Anyways, it was a Duh back then, too.] – Unscrupulous Loan now is Campaign Mode only. Look, the type of person that takes this card in a standalone is already so far gone, i am not sure that any entry on the taboo list is going to pierce their skull. But sure. Yeah. Makes sense :D [EDIT: While we are at it, we should probably talk about Exile, too? Or at least Burn After Reading?] – Empirical Hypothesis can only be triggered twice per round. While i appreciate the callout on one of the more egregiously offenders when it comes to absurd Seeker powerlevels, i am not sure this really does anything noteworthy? I am sure it clips some highend abuse case, but Empirical is notorious not for abuse cases, but for being a slotless Cigarette Case and a slotless Rabbit Foot rolled into one card that can also be enhanced beyond that. It’s the base powerlevel of the card before even considering the upgrade sheet that is concerning and limiting it to “”””only”””” drawing 2 cards per turn (because 3 cards apparently crosses the line for Seeker?) doesn’t really do anything. I don’t really have anything more to offer than a big shrug on this one. Wake me up when it gets mutated to needing 2 evidence to draw a card. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Ultimatums and Boons
The new thing and i like this quite a bit. Ultimatums were a thing before, but not mentioned in any prominent place. Seeing them listed here is a great way of pointing some players towards them that might be interested in these ways of adjusting the difficulty of their game beyond just the different chaos bag contents and/or token effects.
I particularly like the inclusion of the Boons as well, codifying things that were done as house rules before, like starting with bonus XP. This is also a nice way to cater to Solo players who might be interested in having a bonus move action each turn to remove some of that innate disadvantage that comes from having to do everything yourself.
Like the Taboo list, this is of course all completely optional, but i appreciate this even if i am unlikely to actually use it myself as i am mostly regulating my difficulty up and down by playing sometimes more, sometimes less dorky decks :D
Refractions
Where Ultimatums and Boons are difficulty sliders you can apply to your investigator and deck, the Refractions are changes you can apply to the campaign. Many of these are campaign specific. Notably, some of them are taken straight from the Return To campaigns where those “refractions” were just part of the Return To rules.
Most of them are actually scenario specific instead of for the whole campaign and are basically suggestions to make some notably difficult or easy scenarios more in line with the rest of the campaign. This does include giving yourself a more lenient doom clock for Shades of Suffering, Fate of the Vale or Where the Gods Dwell, for example.
Some of these are pretty cool. I especially like the suggestions of starting with all Broods of Yog-Sothoth in play for Undimensioned and Unseen or making it so that Hydra and Dagon in Into the Maelstrom can no longer be exhausted through evasion.
On the other hand, copy/pasting fixes from the Return To boxes is … i don’t know. Cheap? Kinda silly? Got to be honest, reading that “Ultimatum of the Man” which is nothing but a bugfix from the Return To Carcosa, felt weird. Might as well put an “Ultimatum of the Cave” for FHV, saying that you treat Weed-Choked Beach like a Cave when playing with that. It’s silly. It’s a bugfix. Errata the thing properly.
Overall however, this is an interesting way to tackle problems with certain scenarios. It’s not as satisfying a solution as the Return To boxes were, but oh well. What can we do but shed a tear and soldier on. At least this gives the designers a space where they can acknowledge community response to scenarios and suggest how to answer concerns we have. As a result, i am less excited in the specific refractions listed on the page today, and more in the future potential. This could potentially be extended MASSIVELY.
Overall thoughts
The Ultimatums, Boons and Refractions clearly were front and center of this update. Which is fair enough, but it does set expectations for the next update to get back to something with a bit more … meat … for those that are specifically looking forward to the chainings and mutations. This round of taboo changes was a bit lackluster, to be honest. A chain to the Underworld Market and little else to care about from my point of view. The clarifications for some of the FHV stuff was appreciated and i think it should clear up some of the confusion about the things that were a bit more ambiguous. In particular, i am a huge fan of the addition that attached face-down cards are staying in play with their parent asset. Aside from that, my biggest takeaway here was actually that Foresight might actually be playable outside of Norman decks? I didn’t have that on my bingo card at all.
There were a lot of things that the designers for the AHLCG nailed right away with the exceptionally well done Core Set. Sadly, the rogue investigator “Skids” O’Toole was not one of those things. The others are all perfectly well balanced members of their respective classes and well suited to showcasing its strengths. Three of them are arguably even to this day among the most well regarded investigators of their class. Skids however failed to impress for a long time and fell out of favor quick. There was little reason to pick up his cards unless it was in defiance of the odds to show that you can.
I am here to tell you that this has changed. It took a couple of years, but with the recent additions to the card pool from the last two or three investigator sets, we finally got there. In this primer, i want to go over some of these new key cards for the man and also over a few decks. I have played him myself in multiple campaigns now, so this isn’t all theory either.
As a caveat in advance, i will be ignoring parallel Skids. The way i see it, that is a completely different character that has nothing in common with the original concept anymore. He’s fine, he’s generally accepted to be fine, not really much more commentary needed.
Since this is meant to be an investigator primer and not just a deck showcase, we will start right at the bottom, with our boi himself:
His statline is very close to the dreaded 3/3/3/3 of perpetual mediocrity, deviating only by -1 will and +1 agility. This used to be a major factor in why Skids wasn’t competitive, as agility was considered to be a dump stat for a long time. By the time this changed with The Forgotten Age, Finn was already there to out-perform Skids in that role, too. So this statline didn’t really do Skids many favors, especially that 3 fight was generally considered to be too weak. After all, this meant you’d need a gun and a Beat Cop just to reach the 5 fight required to reliably kill ghouls or Nightgaunts. Nevermind something more dangerous. These days, the card pool has many options to mitigate this problem, but of course it’s still a weakness to consider. The biggest change with regards to the statline between back then and now is surely how much more useful a high agility stat is today, both in an offensive capacity and in a defensive one.
His ability promises an extra action per turn, something that is among the best payoffs one could hope for. It does however come at the cost of 2 resources and that is not a trivial ask. Again, i think that today’s card pool makes this a lot more achievable than it was initially. We rogues aren’t really living off Emergency Caches anymore and there is a much better capability to pile that money sky high. Even if we don’t expect an extra action from Skids every turn, the ability to have burst turns when a lot is happening isn’t bad at all. One thing that i think is underrated about this ability is that it can work like an action battery, similar to a Borrowed Time. Everyone knows the times where one plays a fighter but doesn’t have anything pressing to do right now. Instead of just randomly drawing two cards and taking a resource like a chump, Skids can do something like a Bank Job instead. Bank Job costs Skids the equivalent of three actions (2 res + 2 actions) and gives him the equivalent of four actions back (8 res). While it would be easy to conclude that trading a card for a net of 2 resources isn’t a particularly hot deal, this does mean that you can spend an “off-turn” where you got nothing to do and instead take an extra action on each of the following four turns. That’s a significant swing in tempo in practice. And since those extra actions are saved as resources on your investigator card, you can even save them for whenever you need them. That’s a lot of flexibility that can’t really be grasped if all one looks at are the numbers on the cards. This doesn’t just go for something like Bank Job of course. If you just spend and action and a card to play Easy Mark, it will give you an action (well, 2 res) and a card back. In other words, Easy Mark lets you store an action for later at no cost. There’s a lot of play there.
He has 8 health and 6 sanity, the classic fighter numbers. Early on, the 2 will combined with 6 sanity caused a lot of handwringing, but honestly … you shouldn’t be struggling with that on today’s card pool. We have ways to cancel encounter cards, pass willpower tests, heal horror. It’s no biggie, we don’t need to rely on Elder Sign Amulet to keep us from dying to Rotting Remains anymore.
Skids uses a standard 30 card deck, no surprises there. He gets full Rogue and partial Guardian access. Again, it can not be overstated how much better that is than it used to be. The Rogue card pool used to be absolutely horrible for a long time, which in my opinion is a much bigger reason why Skids was bad than his statline ever could be. To make matters worse, the Guardian subclass pushed Skids firmly into a role as a fighter. And his 3 fight wasn’t able to deliver on that promise when he was somehow forced to make do with a .45 Auto and a Beat Cop.
Today, the rogue card pool is pretty amazing and allows Skids not only to use his agility in a variety of productive ways, but also to even capitalize on his 3 intellect and fill a solid jack-of-all-trades role. Guardian isn’t as shoehorned into combat anymore either and Skids can gain a lot of other interesting things there, from healing to encounter protection. Obviously, there is still nothing wrong with Beat Cops :)
His signature event, On the Lam, is one thing where i don’t think perception really changed. It’s just kinda bad for its actual effect. That being said, it’s a fantastic skill card and i’d just use it as that. Honestly, if this was printed as just a skill card with those icons, nobody would even think of it as bad. The weakness, Hospital Debts, is a bit of a pain but similar to how the ability on him got more affordable with better resource events in Rogue, so did the weakness. Still, this takes away a draw and then also takes away three actions worth of money. Kinda yikes, but at least it’s not actively hampering you from taking your turns.
So, the bottom line to all of this is that Skids certainly deserved the misgivings that people had for him, but much of his problems have been mitigated over time through new cards that are either better at previous options (Faustian Bargain vs. Emergency Cache) or fill niches that enable Skids in a new way (Dirty Fighting, Wolf Mask). Today, i would consider takes like “Skids is a bottom tier investigator” to be outdated and wrong.
Let’s check out some of these game-changing cards.
Instead of trying to arrange these cards in any sort of order based on power, performance, importance or whatever, i will just go by release date. And since this is meant to highlight recent developments, i will start at the Wini deck, then head straight into Edge of the Earth. Yes, there are some important early cards too like Lockpicks or even Faustian Bargain, but i want to focus on the stuff that really shifted my view of Skids over the last two years.
The whole damn Wini pack. This pack made sure that the whole “Rogue 0-5” part of Skids is actually able to provide a well-rounded package of cards that allow the investigator to do his job. Ever since that, Rogue doesn’t just have a handgun in the Mauser that is leagues ahead of that silly .45 Auto, but also a two-handed rifle in the Beretta that doesn’t need to shy away from being compared to Guardian weapons. Liquid Courage and Lonnie Ritter are both plugging any problems that might still have existed with regards to being vulnerable to horror. Are any of these cards specifically good for Skids? Well, they are more a boon to the Rogue class as a whole. But they do play a part in why building a deck for Skids is easier to do today than it used to.
Edge of the Earth comes strong out of the gate with Sweeping Kick, Guardian’s equivalent to Spectral Razor. Both evasion and damage, it’s mostly notable for solving the skill value issues of many investigators that can use it. Since it evades as an added effect, it also gains additional value for the investigators that can use it alongside Dirty Fighting (Skids and Rita). Toe to Toe adds more fighting power independent of the combat skill, while Defensive Stance allows Skids to swat away a large number of encounter cards.
The other thing that Edge of the Earth did for Skids is encounter protection. Savant spikes any of his stats to at least 6 for a test, including willpower. Moxie can do even more, but is of course a bigger investment in terms of XP. Counterespionage hands out a free Out-of-jail card, but 4 cost does of course eat into the funds we want to set aside for his investigator ability. Still, since the Edge player card box, there is really no reason to just roll over and die to a Frozen in Fear anymore.
If we want to talk about Skids gains in Scarlet Keys, Dirty Fighting is of course where we need to start. There are a few investigators that really benefitted from this incredible enabler card, but only Rita gets as much out of it as Skids does (well, maaaaybe Finn). Since he already sits on the fence between evasion and fighting, this simply gives him the ability to weaponize his agility for fighting in a way that Sharpshooter never could. There are some other minor pickups in Scarlet Keys like Thieves Kit, Disguise and Guard Dog(2), but nothing that’d be even remotely on a level with Dirty Fighting.
From Hemlock Vale, Wolf Mask and British Bull Dog were the final pieces that put Skids on the map. Both of those cards work incredibly well for him, solving his skill value issues right from level 0, with the Bull Dog even having a very nice upgrade. I also really like how well Bank Job works in Skids specifically because of the way it allows you to store actions from off-turns for when they are more helpful. Hemlock Vale is also notable for giving us two cards that both spawned a specific Skids deck type… but more on that in a bit.
Looking at these cards as a whole, we have general enablers that solve our statline (Dirty Fighting, Wolf Mask), we have encounter protection that solve the whole willpower thing (Savant, Counterespionage), we have good weapons so we don’t need to take a .45 Auto into scenario 8 (Mauser, Beretta, Bull Dog). Also some high powered fight events and money support. This is easily good enough to build some great decks.
Alright, let’s look at some decks then, shall we? I’d like to start by showing you a deck i played through Feast of Hemlock Vale. This was my second playthrough of the campaign and i was using Skids and Finn, as a memey homage to the artwork on Bankjob. I was genuinely surprised when what i intended to be a bit of a meme run ended up finishing the campaign with a win. Something that I didn’t manage to do with neither the team that came before it (Kohaku+Wilson) nor the one after it (Nate+Kate). This is the playthrough that made me become a Skids truther and looking into him further. Here’s the deck i walked into the Hemlock Vale finale with:
The central idea of the deck was stacking the +1 combat allies and Ace of Swords to make up for the mediocre base combat value and then just come out swinging. FHV has some truly horrifying encounter decks, so there is a bit more encounter protection in this deck than i’d usually run. The Cthugha and the EBlade were for a certain FHV-specific enemy, too. So there were some campaign specific considerations made for the list. I am also pretty sure that it’d be better without Underworld Support, but memes will be memes and i like what i like. Also, since i wanted to team him up with Finn, i had a deck where the second copies of Bull Dog, Bankjob, Savant, etc. wanted to go.
All these caveats aside, the deck definitely performed a lot better than i expected it to. FHV enemies are no joke and our boi Skids managed to keep them in check very well. It’s not a decklist i’d advise you to copy, but it did prove the thesis that a generic fighter Skids works and that he works well. So, let’s use this as a base for a decklist that is more something that i’d recommend. Here’s a suggestion using the 29XP standalone breakpoint:
Aside from Underworld Support being gone, the most notable change from the first list is removing the Charisma + Allies thing for stacking combat and instead adding Bewitching and Dirty Fighting. That is a whopping 8XP for the two cards, but it is a really nice enabler suite that doesn’t even need to be drawn from the deck like the allies do. This deck is mostly firearm based, so for higher playercounts you will want more Extra Ammunition and/or Swift Reloads. I threw an ungodly amount of resources into this deck, with a full complement of Bank Jobs, Faustians and Easy Marks. We can use that to make sure that we have a smooth setup, then funnel the rest of the cash into extra actions and/or Delilah.
This is obviously just a rough draft and can certainly tweaked in lots of ways. If you want to add a bit of clue capabilities, you can easily do so by including Breaking and Entering and Lockpicks and cut some of the firepower for it. With Lockpicks, i’d specifically get rid of the Beretta. Breaking and Entering is a Trick, so one neat thing you can do is put a level 2 version on Bewitching and use it to gain a clue while also evading and thus triggering Dirty Fighting. As long as you do this on shroud values you feel confident in oversucceeding, you get a clue source that doesn’t even cost you much tempo. It does however cost you 2 resources each time you play it, which for Skids is almost equal to an action. So i left it out of this decklist, but it’s absolutely a valid option.
Another thing i left out of the decklist is an accessory. I don’t find myself able to make oversuccess a huge part of Skids, so the classic Lucky Cigarette Case is a bit of a shaky card. It’ll still draw a few cards and maybe that’s enough, but i didn’t think it was enough of a priority to highlight it in the decklist. Feel free to add it back in if you can’t live without. Other options include Hallowed Mirror, Cleaning Kit and Eon Chart. If you are swimming in XP, the Red Clock is always available too, of course.
I mentioned earlier that there are two cards in Hemlock Vale that are particularly interesting for Skids because they enable an interesting deck for him. These aren’t necessarily *the best* decks, but they should be good enough to go through a campaign. So let’s talk about Cleaning Kit. And once we are done with that and all the power gamers are in bed, there shall also be some Katana memes.
The idea here is that Ornate Bow which would usually require an action to reload, can also draw ammo from the Cleaning Kit. This allows firing it multiple times per turn if need be. Cleaning Kit gets extra supplies from ECache(3) that can then also be fed into the bow. If you want to go even larger, you can also involve Contraband, but that does honestly seem like overkill to me for most purposes. You do still want to make use of the manual reload when possible, after all we want to use that this thing has basically unlimited ammo. But when needed, the interaction with Cleaning Kit lets you clean house. There’s a couple awkward parts to this deck. For one, it requires a decent amount of XP before it truly gets going. For that reason i decided not to put Bewitching and Dirty Fighting into this one, although that might still ultimately be the right call. I kept the amount of assets to an absolute minimum and included a truckload of skills, both to get some extra draw from the skills and so we don’t have to use an ECache for resources instead of arrows. That however means that Prepared for the Worst and Backpack really have very little to find in the deck. They still seem necessary if i want to force the bow, and that does feel a bit iffy. The deck should be reasonably consistent, but there is a threat of not finding the bow in spite of all the tutoring for it. If that happens, then Sweeping Kick and Bull Dog will have to bridge the gap until you find it. There are some nice payoffs for using the bow here, though. The damage potential when set up is truly exceptional and the use of Strong-Armed means we can one-tap four health enemies which is relevant because 4 health is otherwise a bit awkward for the bow build that isn’t built to just punch something for the missing point. The deck is also built to basically completely ignore the fight value and just use agility for everything.
With the serious options out of the way, this brings me to today’s brainteaser.
The Katana is a card that is notable for one thing: The ability to attack without taking an action. This begets the question: Can we build a deck that kills without taking actions? Well… kinda. We have the Katana. We have Beat Cop, Delilah and/or the Guard Dog that can ping enemies as well. Add the Garrote Wire and we can already take care of three health enemies without spending an action. Four health, if we happen to hold Strong-Armed in hand. The final cute trick to attack in an action-neutral way is Blur + Dirty Fighting. How’s that for a deck? Got to be honest with you, this looks almost like it could be a thing. Fill the deck up with some skills, tutors, money and a couple backup weapons and Sweeping Kicks and you got a stew going. Now, you might be thinking that the Katana also has a standard attack action, but you would be mistaken. It’s really, really bad and not worth the action it costs, so we should hopefully never be in a situation to use that, unless it’s off a Dirty Fighting trigger. And hey, maybe you get to hit that +2 damage two or three times across the campaign. As a final note there is so many one-offs in this list, i am almost tempted to make it an Underworld Support deck, but even i recognize how bad of an idea that would be. You get spared this one. Honestly, i think that above deck isn’t even as bad as i am making it sound. It’s internally sound and should be able to do its job. If i were to actually take it into a campaign, i would try to get some of the encounter protection cards in there though.
There’s a couple other ways you can go with a Skids deck of course.
The access to Guardian does give him some really interesting cards like Bestow Resolve. You haven’t really lived before you committed “Watch This!” for three wilds.
Or look at this overlap between Spirit and Trick/Tactic. You know what that means, right…? A Chuck Fergus event based deck with Boxing Gloves, that’s what. Hell yeah.
Maybe you want to introduce Lola Santiago to her new best friend, Alice Luxley?
Double, Double on Marksmanship? Neat. Double, Double on Task Force? Now we are cooking. Double, Double on One in the Chamber? Somebody stop this man, he’s grown too powerful.
And sure, some of these ideas would probably work in Tony or Jenny as well. But i do believe that by now Skids does have a couple things going for him that let him carve out a niche against them.
The Drowned City spoiler season is upon us. And while some are looking at new cards, hoping to find the next big toy for a deck that is already overpowered, i like keeping guys like Skids in mind when looking at the new reveals. After all, a new way for Daisy to find a clue doesn’t really move the needle in any way. But a key niche card that enables someone can make a huge splash.
In that spirit, i can’t really let you all go without at least pointing out how absolutely great Ready for Anything is going to be for Skids. What an amazing card to work hand in hand with your Manual Dexterities and Easy Marks to tie your deck together while also giving you just a bit of reprieve from the threats to his sanity.
