Dragged Across Concrete | Ch2 Combo Cult

Dragged Across Concrete

In this mini-series I'm delving deeper in the Ch2 card pool for interesting combos. Here Daniela drags enemies kicking and screaming into Lie in Wait or Rope Trap, getting attacks with her ability and a Service Revolver for up to 6 attacks in a round rather than the usual 5. For soaking attacks, Bodyguard takes a bullet or a tentacle for you and dishes out auto-damage.

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Series Decks

At a Glance

Stats
Clue-finding:	★★☆☆☆
Consistency:	★★★★☆
Enemy Management:	★★★★★+
Encounter Defense:	★★★★☆
Survivability:	★★★★★
Simplicity:	★★★★☆

Overview

• Combos: With either Rope Trap or Lie in Wait at a neighbouring location to a boss, Daniela can drag non-Massive enemies to these locations - triggering her ability. Paired to a Service Revolver, this gives a further attack (with another Revolver if attacked in the enemy phase, for 6 attacks total with Lie in Wait). Upgraded Bodyguard soaks these attacks of opportunity (AoOs), giving more testless damage and pairing especially well to Rope Trap. You can also take an AoO from playing a new Bodyguard over an existing Bodyguard (e.g. initiate play action for a new Bodyguard, AoO triggers first to kill existing Bodyguard freeing ally slot, your triggers, and then you can kill your second Bodyguard in the enemy phase for more auto-damage). For Massive enemies, as long these are Hunters you can still move away as your last action and have them chase you into a trap.

• Complimentary Cards: You need a weapon, and so Meat Cleaver, Machete and Daniela's Wrench give plenty of options (so many that you don't need Right Tool for the Job). Meat Cleaver and Daniela's Wrench in particular give you more avenues to damage your Bodyguard. Counterattack is here for those instances where you don't want to take AoO damage or you want to cancel an attack aimed at a different investigator. Lesson Learned gives a clue for taking damage, which you'll be doing a lot!

• Staples: Bounty, Emergency Cache and Logan Hastings are all resource economy, with Logan providing a +1 boost as well. Stalk Prey and Overpower provide card draw, with the former also providing a clue. For card draw otherwise, consider drawing cards during downtime (it's not like Daniela will be investigating high shroud locations!). Scrape By is in the deck because it's undeniably awesome for passing all sorts of tests (including basic investigates), while upgraded Vicious Blow pumps max damage per turn.

_{Thank you: 5argon and their thumbnail tool; Valentin1331 for his support over the years; the community creators of Arkham.Build (Felix), Arkham Cards (zzorba) and ArkhamDB (kamalisk) - linking their Patreons!}

Starting deck and planned progression

0 XP starting deck is below (and link here):

A recommended order of purchases/upgrades is:

• Unexpected Courage → Scrape By

• 1 x Charisma

• Bodyguard → Bodyguard ••

• Scene of the Crime → Rope Trap

• Vicious Blow → Vicious Blow ••

• Timely Intervention → Counterattack

Post-19 XP suggestions are:

• Machete → M1911 ••

• Lesson Learned → Guerrilla Tactics ••

• A copy of Endurance ••• if you feel like it (Stalk Prey could be replaced).

Playtesting Notes

I played this deck through two standalones: the Curse of the Rougarou, and Traces to Nowhere.

The Curse of the Rougarou: It's been about 4 years since I played Curse so I thought I'd dust it off, paying 2 player and on standard - though I think hard would have been fine.

Daniela's support cards worked well, in particular she used Stalk Prey twice for two clues - and Scrape By allowed her to pass the test needed for the Bear Trap.

We ended up killing the The Rougarou. I got two damage on it early with Meat Cleaver. I then did it one damage with Cleaver (to avoid triggering it running away), and then dragged it to a location. This triggered Daniela's , so I attacked with Meat Cleaver again and committed upgraded Vicious Blow for 3 damage (I had a lot of horror so didn't couldn't get the Meat Cleaver +1) and then I used the Service Revolver attack and another Vicious Blow for 4 damage.

While you could say it's lucky that I got both Vicious Blow - if it hadn't had been Vicious Blow I would have likely drawn Bodyguard, Rope Trap or Lie in Wait instead. For me this deck feels lethal - there's so many different avenues to damage that you can always find a way to kill something!

Traces to Nowhere: We played two player on standard. It can be a tough scenario so two player on standard is still a difficult experience. I'll aim to keep spoilers minimal! Play time was 2 and a half hours (there's randomness in the scenario, and we got some of the worst possible randomness). However it does mean the deck was more thoroughly playtested!

Traces to Nowhere is a bit of a poor scenario for trappers, so traps didn't see much use. There's no Elusive enemies, and you'll usually want to kill the Hunters. There is a location you return to a lot, so putting a trap on a connecting location might have worked well - but it's only clearer in hindsight (and even then it might be a waste of time). There is a recurring enemy, but it's hard to know when and where they will show up, so again it's hard to put traps down in anticipation.

All that said, Daniela is still great at killing things. At one point an Aloof 4 health enemy showed up at a connecting location. Daniela moved, engaged, attacked with Meat Cleaver for 2 damage, and then attacked in the enemy phase to kill them. There's few investigators that can put such a hard stop to nuisance enemies than Daniela. Later a 5 health enemy showed up (not Aloof), and she did the same thing again (move, attack, attack, finish off in enemy phase).

Meat Cleaver was a mixed blessing. On the one hand it was good to dispatch 2 health enemies to heal horror by taking two fight actions (there's a lot of 2 health enemies in Traces). On the other hand as we were playing for 2.5 hours, eventually the horror does mount up and stop you using the two damage effect. I suspect this is RNG (and could have been eased with Daniela getting a second weapon out, which she didn't manage) but even so it's noticeable. The boss in Traces can also be extremely healthy, which doesn't help matters. Still, likely without it Daniela may well have been defeated due to horror, so I can't complain too much!

Bodyguard did make a showing, and was useful. However in Traces you don't want allies to die in the first half of the scenario, so this also made him a bit of a bad pairing to the scenario itself. Something that did happen is Daniela became absurdly rich (with Logan coming out turn 1 and Bounty making an appearance), and you can spend resources in Traces for travel on some locations so that came in handy. Upgraded Vicious Blow did allow for nice action compression a couple of times, turning 2 action kills on 3 health enemies into 1 action kills.

I think the conclusion here is, even in a scenario that plays against this deck's strengths (hard to anticipate enemy movement/spawning, a need to keep disposable allies alive) Daniela was still a murder machine! This was paired to the more cluever orientated Izzie deck of this series (proxying Scrape By) and, as there's a lot of enemies in Traces, Daniela was definitely needed to enable Izzie to do her thing - which is what a good Guardian should do. I think this deck faired much better in Curse of the Rougarou, where doing a big burst of damage killed the boss fairly early (and where we got Service Revolver out to support that). Traces to Nowhere was much more winning by attrition!

Final thoughts

The sexy premise here is even with the starting deck you can achieve 6 two damage attacks in a round with level 0 assets: Lie in Wait, Service Revolver and Meat Cleaver or Daniela's Wrench. You do this through two fight actions, dragging the enemy to the trapped location (triggering the trap and both the Revolver's and Daniela's abilities), and then triggering the Revolver once more in the enemy phase when you're attacked. If you do have the Wrench out, you can use its ability to squeeze in a 7th attack with Revolver (probably not that advisable though!). Ordinary you only get 5 attacks (3 in your turn, and then Revolver and Daniela attacks in the enemy phase), so this offers a clear and definable advantage. Add on Bodyguard and Vicious Blow, and this gets even better.

Overall this deck plays a little different to other Daniela decks, but in a very cool way. I also think this is one of my most eldritch photoshops to date (I don't understand why its neck is so long. Sometimes I swear I turn away from the screen, and when I look back its neck is a little longer...). Hope you enjoy!