Bob Jenkins Gears Up For An Expedition

Wow, that's a lot of effort for the headings. I love them! Good job on creating your style!

I am also super happy to see another solid take on Bob Jenkins. It was much needed, especially since the FAQ about decreasing the power of the Eon Chart scavenging.

I also like the more support take on the deck compared to my very "individualist" take in my Bob's guide.

Keep up the good work!

Cheers, @Valentin1331! I feel like the power of the new Flashlight has helped compliment the decreased power of Eon Chart, since we're still able to modify a 'basic' investigate with it. For Bob, especially, it gives him a great incentive to share his bonus action while he can now LARP as Ursula; bonus points if he stumbles into those delicious 2-shroud hot-spots, which will make the real Ursula proud of the salesman.

Nice rig you got there! Question though... how does Bob pass tests that aren't Investigates, though? What does he do when confronted with a difficulty 3 willpower test?

That is an unfortunate shortcoming; while I've built Bob to be extra supportive to his team, his already weak is threatened. I would save your Take Hearts for these in order to assist your Friends in Low Places in card-draw. Fortunately, in the campaigns I've played, my team ended up over-geared since the majority of my bonus-actions were spent insuring that they were getting their key Items out, as well as using Shrewd Dealings to equip them with my duplicate assets. Your mileage will vary from scenario to scenario, but in general, I did not find this general flaw to hinder him too badly in the grand scheme of a campaign run.

That's good to know! The reason I ask is that I've played alongside several Bob Jenkins in the past, and they would get really focused on their Joey the Rat combo, to the point where even after drawing their entire deck, they'd be begging for Guts!

I'm not entirely sure if the Bobs you ran with were spending a lot of time gearing themselves, but I found that, with the stronger starts in my setup, I was able to spend the majority of my bonus actions ensuring that my team-mates were getting bonus play-actions in order to keep them pushing the Act faster. In older iterations I've ran of Bob, I'd end up rarely having the opportunity to even equip anyone else since he had too many things that needed equipping.

One fun fact I will add is: You're not completely reliant on Joey in this setup, since you'll end up saving a ton of resources from the initial draw. My last game ended up not pulling Joey, period, and I still ended up with 10+ resources and everyone in the team equipped, thus making Greed only feel like a scratch when it came out.

So I'm wondering... if you were to cut some cards to push some priority onto passing Willpower and Agility tests, in favour of cards like Savant or Unexpected Courage, what would be the first to go?

I wouldn't take four between those two since the build is pretty tight, as is, but if I started at level 0 with Unexpected Courages and graduated into Savants, I'd likely kiss the pair of "Look what I found!", goodbye. You could cut Embezzled Treasure if you want to keep one courage, but I like the leftover money to maintain high resources between runs, especially if you're unlucky and Greed nails you within two-three rounds.

You could also make the argument that once you have a pair of Flashlights, you don't need Old Keyring, especially since Bob can't upgrade those, but two things to note: Having those four makes for easier Shed a Light setups, and cutting the Keyrings hurts your item fishing on turn one.

By all means, though. Absolutely experiment!

I am actually thinking we could cut the Thieves' Kits, since they only provide +1 to Bob's investigations, the Tool Belts because we're only using the hand slots for clue tools and not weapons, as well as the Looks What I Foundses, and that would make room for some Savants, Courages, and Luckies. There might be a Charisma - Dario el Amin angle too, to boost Willpower and Intellect, as well any Resource actions we might want to take, which'll make up for dropping the Thieves' Kits.

Bob's a great investigator! I do think we can take this concept further and create something that's more robust and isn't a slave to Frozen in Fear.

Oh, and the Hidden Pockets, that should free up two more slots! I like Tennessee Sour Mash here as Willpower protection, since it's Fast and Scavengeable.

If you're concerned this much about the occasional Willpower test, my answer to that is that your fellow investigators are there to support you as much as you are there to support them. It wasn't uncommon for someone to lend me a cancel or will icons when I did end up needing them.

My issue with going for all these replacements you are suggesting is that it clashes with the goal of Bob being there to support the party with extra equips. These also cut heavily into his item loadout, thus weakening Geared Up. When I did run into the occasionally rough will-test, because I was reliably always sharing a space with 1-2 team-mates, they were able to supply me with the I needed.

By all means, you're more than welcome to expand on ideas. I ran the build through two campaigns, and the main take-away I had in both runs was that my party were pushing the Act faster thanks to the supply of bonus equips, as well as Bob's signature opening up new opportunities; protecting him ended up being the easy part, at that point.

The thing is... Bob can do both!

He doesn't actually have to all his deck slots for Items, especially when, as you say, you're giving out his ability to other investigators at the table. It sounds like, from what you're posting, the real "core" of the Item loadout is the Keyrings and Flashlights for Shed A Light and Scavenging... Which means that Bob can probably spare the Tool Belts and Hidden Pockets if he slims down the package by dropping Thieves' Kits and maybe Testimonies, creating room for a more robust decklist that doesn't need his friends to help him with Rotting Remains or Frozen in Fear or evade enemies for him, thus sparing those cards and actions for the team.

The core of the build is to be a team-driven build. You're more than welcome to swap out my loadout with your suggestions, but I am not married to the idea of being truly robust when I have not run into the issues you are hypothetically suggesting. Mileage will vary on the RNG of the encounter deck, of course, but I still feel that over-committing to his dump-stat is going to result in a deviation from the intent. Quite frankly, giving him 1-2 boosts to his 2 won't be enough of a game-changer when he is hit by tests between 3-5. There are a lot of Bob builds out there, and this is just my take; by all means you're more than welcome to take the ideas I've explored and create your own mix.

I mentioned in my Highlights that he has three different flavors of Investigating. While you can cut the Kits & Testimonies, I dislike the idea of relying solely on Shed a Light, as you're only going to fire off 1-3 of those per scenario (depending on the frequency of seeing them + Resourceful. You also need to remember that I am actively sharing Bob's items with other people, and the enjoyment factor of sending an extra copy of his items to someone else who can put them to the same or greater effect (again, listed in my Highlights) leads to different approach to scenarios than I am used to with Bob.

@Ric would you be willing to explain why Toolbelt is so good here - I am newish, and feel like I am missing something. You will have two 1-handed investigation tools (3 with pockets) with remaining uses, so why is it important to have the extras out on the board instead of in your hand of cards?

@crazydragonking Howdy! You will technically have 5 if you manage to get out the both pockets (since there is no limit). I found that with having the extra slots, I could effectively tool my needs, pun-intended. While you are encouraged to use Shrewd Dealings to spread out excess tools to your allies, as needed, you won't always have the opportunity to fish them out.

Here are some considerations:

• Your opening hand has the potential to lead you to acquiring a Backpack + a Tool Belt at once; the backpack will serve its purpose in fetching your gear, and then your toolbelt will immediately replace that backpack; if you managed to get more than 2 tools in your opening hand, you now have three tools out and ready to go.
• If you don't find Joey "The Rat" Vigil, early on, having the excess hands will help as a combination of hold-overs until you can start recycling them with Joey's aid, as well as giving you Anti-Asset encounter protection.
• While Old Keyrings and Flashlights go together beautifully, you won't always want to use them in every circumstance, which is where your Thieves' Kit & Damning Testimony come in. This also means you can be more choosey for which of these you will use in each room. Even early-on in a campaign, the Lantern that my starter version uses can combo great with your Flashlight in shroud 3 locations without spending resources from two assets.

It may seem like excess, but you'll find yourself putting these to use; I don't want to guarantee that every scenario will give you the circumstance of needing the extra slots, but I found that I was usually grateful to have them.

I really love this deck and I'm planning to try it in TSK!
Some more good things about FiLP interacting with Geared Up:

1. Prompt: If I'm not mistaken, Fast means this card can be played even before your first round, acting like another super Backpack! With Schoffner's Catalogue and Embezzled Treasure, resources should not be a big problem. It's definately another card for you to stand up and start cheering at the table!
2. Versatile: I would choose Talent for Scavenging and Shrewd Dealings. Though only 3 cards in the deck can be tutored, they seem important enough...
3. Swift: And there's more! Swift upgrade gives a small but interesting chance to directly play Shrewd Dealings before you begin to Gear Up, which saves considerable money and has your friends armed up too!
   

Honestly that's a lot of XP invested, but it seems fantastic to play. Can't wait to play this deck, cheers!

Glad you like it! And yes, I somehow forgot to mention this in my write-up, but I'm glad you noticed the beauty of Prompt as a crazy-powerful starter line-up in your opening hand. In one of my late-game tests with this setup, I ended up with an outrageous starting hand featuring both the Backpack and upgraded Friends, and it was pretty glorious how kitted and set I was for the rest of the scenario.

As for Talent as a trait, it's definitely a good choice, too; my logic was that with Clever, you could simply place Scavenging + Shrewd on top of your deck and draw them. By all means though, either way works!

Hope you enjoy your campaign play-through.

I know I am incredibly, incredibly late, but I love the idea of the deck - is it still worth playing with the Geared Up Taboo? Shed a Light too, etc.

@Marymatician I don't see why it wouldn't still be worth playing. The taboos definitely weakened the setup, but you're still able to have a relatively boosted start, especially since I consider Bob to be the one who has the most to gain from this trick, given his bonus action specifically still holding value during the starting turn.

I would even go so far as to say that with the Hemlock expansion (which came after I wrote this guide originally), he has more fun options to play with as far as support is concerned: Matchbox, Sparrow Mask (to add to his defensives or boost someone else), Fake Credentials.

As for the stuff that got taboo'd via chaining, it's still workable, it just means you don't get to 'start' powerful, and it's fortunate that Scavenging & Shed A Light aren't critical to his build. They are just part of his loadout.

Enjoy!

@RicWow, definitely wasn't expecting to hear back over a year after the last comments, thank you so much! This list is everything I'd want a Bob deck to be doing, when I next get a chance, I'll definitely give it a go! Thanks for the swift reply :)

@Marymatician Of course! While I haven't been writing guides for a while now, I still actively enjoy playing the game with my groups I run with. Notifications about comments help me keep an eye on stuff, even if they are mostly-outdated, these days. Have fun!