T Is for Tommy (Standalone Ready)

Eyes up, Tommy

Deckbuilding Restriction: Tommy starts with a T, so aside from Becky and our weaknesses, we will only run cards that start with the letter T, and we will only use this deck for the Train scenario: The Essex County Express.

Spoiler Warning: Since this deck is designed around a specific scenario, there will be spoilers for that section of the campaign.

Now, anyone who has played this scenario knows that there are three main challenges:

1) Constant Damage and Horror: Moving into locations will often require you to either discard cards or take damage or horror. This happens not only when the location is revealed the first time but also each time a player enters that location. As the tank, this is fine for us, but it puts our clue getters in a rough spot. They either have to discard cards and become less efficient, or take some form of damage or horror that will quickly add up.

We will help with this by running cards that can take damage and horror that would be dealt to other investigators. In an ideal turn, you would move into a location first, then let the clue-getter follow you in later and put any damage & horror on either Tetsuo Mori or True Grit. Ideally, our clue-getters will never have to discard cards. Naturally, because we want this soak to be available for them, any damage or horror dealt to you should be placed on your character card whenever possible.

We're also running The Star • XVII and Trusted to help make these team soaks a little sturdier. A well timed Teamwork can also be a good way to move soak over to other investigators.

2) Doom Management: If getting hit just by moving wasn't bad enough, the encounter deck is constantly trying to spawn cultists that add doom in empty locations. This means they either go behind you, causing you to have to weigh killing them against taking damage and horror, or in front of you where you may not be able to go. Truthfully, how bad a cultist is is very RNG dependent, but to make our lives a little easier we can throw Telescopic Sight on Becky to shoot cultists without having to move.

3) Action Loss: Between Ancient Evils, Broken Rails, and Frozen in Fear, there is a lot of room to lose actions when you are already stretched for time. We cannot counter Ancient Evils here, but we can mitigate Broken Rails by making sure clue-getters are putting damage on us instead of themselves, and we can have use Third Time's a Charm to help tilt the scales in our favor on pivotal Frozen in Fear and Rotting Remains tests.

Trench Knife Fits nicely in the offhand when we don't have Becky, and its passive effect allows us another form of damage mitigation. Timeworn Brand starts with a T and is an okay card.