Pete Venkman

Thank you for the detailed write-up! Most of the things were confirmations of my own thoughts, seems to be a reliable deck for solo play also. Nice!

@Synisill- Thank you sir. All the feedback makes it worth doing these write ups. This is def not an original idea. It was a post back from January. I basically optimized it to my play style and included all the new cards plus the experience I've had since January. I feel that reading these long write ups helps players grasp just how differently each deck can play and why/how some cards they find as not effective are actually more valuable to what they are trying to do.

Do you find Prepared for the Worst to be reliable enough with only two weapons in the deck? I ran it in my four weapon Zoey deck and it missed once... that was unpleasant. If you get a PftW and no Axe in your opening hand, you're looking at 9 of 28 cards, with only two of them being what you're looking for. Seems like it would miss more often than it works.

Sorry, 9 of 27*, I forgot to subtract one card because Duke starts in play

@TipsyGamer I like where you are coming from but let me put it into perspective. I have a 30 card deck and start the game with 5 cards. If i dont get an Fire Axe in the first turn but have Prepared for the Worst and i choose to play it first thing I will be digging 9 cards off the top of 25 cards to try and hit 2/25 possible cards. This would not be the ideal time to rip Prepared for the Worst. Combat is not something this deck wants to get rolling early game. Hitting axe turn 1 is not required, rather you should be letting your draw/board delvelope and take the precious time with no threats on the board to gather as many clues as possible with duke's investigate/move ability. Remember, Pete is not going to be the primary fighter, but he is pretty much set to take on creatures once he gets the axe/dark horse going. The natural draw from each turn + Rabbit's Foot will help cut down the size of the deck significantly to which point we naturally draw or we dig 9 deep for lets say 19 cards or so. Digging 9 to find 2/19 are decent odd (dont know exact numbers) otherwise I get to shuffle the deck with the axes at the bottom giving us a way to change how the deck is stacked. Typically you want to run 4-5 weapons if thats how you want to spread your combat modifying assets, but the only weapon that works with the strategy is Fire Axe. Prepared for the Worst lets us hedge our bets, because we only play 2 combat modifiers, and it conveniently fills out our awkward 1 card left to splash. Lets say we have an axe already then we can skill check Prepared for the Worst for the best two skill checks in the game. If you have that one card that you want to splash from another class be my guest, it will effect the consistency of the deck, and without Fire Axe Pete (exhausted/dead duke) becomes useless when dealing with threats.

Fair enough. I've played Guardian in my last two campaigns, since the others in my group weren't interested in it (and one set up had two Seekers), so getting a weapon down in the first turn was pretty critical, and my judgement is likely biased as a result of that. At two axes from 19 cards (which would be after 8 draws), your chance of pulling one of two axes on 9 cards of 19 is 73.7%, which is pretty reasonable. That's up from 56.4% going for two axes on 9 cards of 27 on the first turn (don't forget your weaknesses)... I found a calculator to figure it out.

Pete has reasonable and your deck has a good number of icons that can help you evade, and Duke to help fight, so it isn't like being stuck without is as catastrophic as it was in my Zoey deck :). Thanks for the list, it looks fun

I'd like to add that i had good experience with "only" 2 axes in this build - there is Rabbit's Foot and always the chance to evade danger. In a solo player game, i would mulligan hard for 1 of the 3 cards you mentioned.

@TipsyGamer Ah, good catch. If there were any other weapons that he could functionally use it would be in the deck an we wouldn't need Prepared for the Worst. But because his stats are so garbage, we have to be at 0 resources to our strategic benefits, and we have a random one of splash available Prepared for the Worst is I think our best option. Im sure there are other splash cards like any of the fast events that move us around the board ie Elusive. Hopefully you can play out the deck, tweak it, and let me know what worked for you and what changes you made.

@SynisillIm glad to see that you are having fun/success with the deck. Playing solo is about the only time we want to be hyper aggressive about hitting a fire Axe. Otherwise I try to mull for rabbit's foot and magnifying glass.

We're fairly new to the game, and just completed the first Act in a 4 player game using this deck. It proved to be very versatile and fast, but as it turned out our Agnes player was also running Peter Sylvestre, so we ended up replacing him with "Aquinnah: The Forgotten Daughter (3)" and upgrading "Lucky" to "Lucky (1)". What would you recommend as future upgrades?

@nofacej Hey Im glad you guys are finding success with the deck. Something I want to point out real quick is that horror must be placed on Agnes Baker herself to proc her ability, redirecting horror to Peter Sylvestre does not proc her damage ability. I say this because Peter Sylvestre is very much needed in the Ashcan deck and Agnes has better allies to shoulder the horror ie Arcane Initiate.

I typically like to let the playgroup dictate what you upgrade because we don't get anything too ground breaking that changes anything major in the deck. You also have to remember we are running this deck on the fact that we will have no money, which means we can't to support expensive cards. The following list shows what I select in the order of relevance.

Peter Sylvestre - Gives us a bigger sanity butt to work with and it gives us an additional stat. Coupled with dark horse there are very few encounter deck checks that really scare us, once we have one or both online.

Lucky! - Cantrips are amazing in this game, upgrading cards we already want into free cantrips is what we want to be doing.

From this point on most of the upgrade cards left for us are extremely situational or cost us resources to play. I like to take the efficiency route and stick to the strategy of the deck.

Survival Instinct - A straight efficiency upgrade. Adding an extra to this card makes the check easier to pass. Double modifiers are always good.

Stroke of Luck - These cards will replace Unexpected Courage. A lot of people do not like this move as double is crazy utility. However, having the utility to autopass a check is just better utility. I dont tend to use the expensive XP costing cards so I always have extra XP in my group to replace these cards when needed or I just throw Unexpected Courage back in. On expert mode these are almost mandatory.

Scrapper - If you have an abundance of XP and you arn't needing to use Stroke of Luck over and over again then Scrapper is a great last slot. It doesn't take up space in the deck and you get it in play at the start of every game. This basically auto gaurentees Dark Horse and gives us the ability to pump money into checks.

Again, there is no specified path. The only auto upgrades would be Peter Sylvestre and Lucky!. I come from Magic the Gathering so maxing the efficiency of the deck is my typical go to. I hope you enjoy the rest of the play through and my fingers are crossed that you get Peter Sylvestre back in the deck. Ah, just bustin your balls. Play whatever makes the game more fun. :)