Calvin Wright - Dark Horse hybrid build

This is a fairly standard Calvin deck that focuses on playing lots of soak cards so you can sit at 4-5 damage and horror without risk of being defeated (aside from direct damage or some kind of auto-fail disaster).

With Dark Horse and various stat boosters, Calvin can eventually get to at least 6 in all stats.

This combines the typical Dark Horse / Fire Axe / Madame Labranche build with the Meat Cleaver / Peter Sylvestre build so you can use either option depending on what you draw.

Mulligans

You’ll want to look for the following cards:

• Drawing Thin (economy)
• Fire Axe or Meat Cleaver (either one)
• Madame Labranche or Peter Sylvestre (generally Labranche is better early and Pete is better to find later once you have suffered more horror)
• (optional) Dark Horse

Your set-up will cost at most 9 resources in total (Peter Sylvestre, Meat Cleaver, and Dark Horse in the worst case) which means you should be looking to play Dark Horse on turn 4 or 5 and then stop taking resources in the upkeep phase.

Piloting

Until you get trauma, you are mostly worthless in the first few turns. You’ll want to play out as many assets as possible and build up your tableau during these turns. You won't be helping the team at all, but by setting up in the early game you can be a powerhouse in the late-game.

Prioritize playing a weapon and Drawing Thin on the first turn. Spend any extra actions drawing cards if you don't have a weapon or ally yet.

You can save Leather Coat and Cherished Keepsake for later when you have suffered more damage and horror. There isn't generally a reason to play them early unless you are in a scenario that can discard assets from your play area ( Crypt Chill etc.)

You’ll want to trigger Drawing Thin to draw more cards whenever it makes sense. Track Shoes is in the deck for the sole purpose of triggering free skill tests when you move so you can tap Drawing Thin without caring about failing the test.

Depending on which ally you have in play changes the strategy slightly.

• with Madame Labranche you want to stay at 0 resources and tap her when you need to play something that costs 1 (Ward of Protection or Lucky! or Winging It). Exception may be in the early game where you still have some 3-cost assets to play down.
• with Peter Sylvestre you’ll want to float at 1 resource if you have Ward of Protection or Lucky! in hand, or Winging It available and you plan to investigate. You almost never want to get up to 2 resources because it will be difficult to re-activate Dark Horse unless you have a plan to play Winging It twice or something. This means that Dark Horse will generally be turned off in the Mythos phase.

Ideally you get to 4 damage/horror with Dark Horse which gives you a stat line of 5/5/5/5 and a small health and sanity buffer. Avoid taking 5 damage or horror unless you have Until the End of Time in play since your signature weakness and various other game effects can cause you to suffer direct damage or horror at unknown times.

Don't be afraid to assign damage to Leather Coat and Cherished Keepsake early, since you can recur them with Resourceful

Upgrades

• Charisma (3) so you can have both Pete and Lebranche in play together
• Cherished Keepsake > Five of Pentacles (1) x2. With this in play, you can safely go to 5 damage/horror or risk going to 6 for a stat line (with Dark Horse) of 7/7/7/7. You won’t need Cherished Keepsake in the deck once you get Peter Sylvestre (2) into play, since Pete should be able to soak all the horror you need (plus, Meat Cleaver can recover sanity as well if necessary)
• Peter Sylvestre (2) just because he is an amazing upgrade

That covers the first 9 XP. After this, you can do almost anything you want.

• Lucky! (2) is always good for the extra card draw
• Key of Ys (5) is insane, even with the Taboo list, if you don’t mind saving up the XP for it
• Ward of Protection (2) is great for helping your team cancel annoying encounter cards
• Leather Coat > Bulletproof Vest (3) may be an OK upgrade (although the cost of 2 makes it harder to play)
• Blood Eclipse (3) may be interesting to try

Variants

If you don't own TCU, the following substitutions should be fine:

• Drawing Thin > Take Heart for early-game economy. Take Heart is unfortunately a dead card if you draw into it later in the scenario since it has no icons.
• Track Shoes > Hiding Spot as a pseudo-evade option.
• Depending on which campaign you are doing, it may make sense to squeeze in "I'm outta here!"
• I debated including "I'll see you in hell!" but I found that there was often no need to sacrifice myself - it was almost always possible to just kill or evade the enemies instead. Perhaps this is more useful in 3-4 player games where more enemies spawn.
• Ghastly Revelation looks to be amazing on Calvin to help close out a scenario - I would probably drop Track Shoes from the decklist for this.