Pete is Horsin' Around

A solo build that focuses on Dark Horse while generating a surprising amount of resources and action efficiency. The build focuses on boosting your skills and generating additional actions while hiding away your resources and only bringing them out when they are needed.

The basic idea is we want to get Lone Wolf and Forbidden Knowledge out ASAP so we have extra resources to boost Fire Axe and (eventually) Scrapper. They also allow us to gain action free resources during the investigator phase; this means we can choose to not gain resources during upkeep via Dark Horse thereby allowing us to benefit from it during the Mythos phase. Emergency Cache is mostly superfluous until we can purchase Will to Survive.

From there all we do is take Duke out for a walk to sniff out clues and mop up enemies. Dark Horse and Fire Axe do the heavy lifting for fighting, while Magnifying Glass and Newspaper backup our investigating.

Mulligan for:

Lone Wolf > Fire Axe > [Flare / Leo De Luca] > Peter Sylvester > Magnifying Glass/Newspaper/Flashlight > Forbidden Knowledge.

Lone Wolf is our top priority as it gives us a reliable, free stream of resources. Getting out Leo De Luca early is also important, as is a Fire Axe. You probably noticed Dark Horse isn't here; that's because in the early game it's likely to just constrain ourselves when we don't have many assets out. Be content with finding it in the mid game and roll from there.

Cards on the chopping block

Scavenging doesn't have that much synergy here but has its uses.

Emergency Cache as stated above is somewhat superfluous until we get will to survive.

Newspaper is awesome in a solo game, pretty meh multiplayer. If you find yourself wishing it were a Flashlight then by all means do so.

Replace with

More neutral skill cards!

Additional copies of Peter Sylvestre, Flashlight, Newspaper, or Leather Coat. Evasion heavy cards like Survival Instinct and Bait and Switch are nice but not necessary. Dig Deep can serve as cheap and easy replacement for Scrapper that also allows us to boost our willpower (handy for Mythos phase treachery cards).

Upgrade Priorities

Charisma is a no brainer so we can have both Leo De Luca and Peter Sylvestre on the table. More copies of Charisma are even better so we can put out all those juicy story allys we get.

Flare allows us to find (and play) Leo De Luca for cheap, or just knock out a target.

Scrapper to burn excess resources to take advantage of Dark Horse. Doesn't hurt that it's quite helpful too!

Will to Survive combined with Leo De Luca is just nuts. With Fire Axe you can do a guaranteed 8 damage in one turn. In a solo game that's enough to wipe out most bosses. It's expensive, however, and is one reason why we have Emergency Cache in this deck.

Peter Sylvestre is not that big of a priority. The willpower (and extra sanity) is nice, but the level 0 card gets the job done for what we need him for.

Lucky! helps shrink our deck but is not overly necessary.

Emergency Cache helps shrink our deck but is not overly necessary.

Out of Faction Cards

Magnifying Glass provides a simple +1 intellect boost that (a) helps Duke out, and (b) allows us to investigate sans Duke. Combined with Dark Memory this is often enough to get the job done on standard.

Leo De Luca provides additional actions to an already high tempo investigator. Beyond their obvious uses, with our trusty Fire Axe he gives us an additional opportunity to take down a big target. Additionally, If we get desperate we can feel less guilty about clicking for a resource. Ideally we can bring out Leo with a Flare on round 1.

Forbidden Knowledge the key to hiding away most of our money to later spend on events, Fire Axe, Scrapper, etc. Peter Sylvestre neutralizes the ill effects of this card.

Lone Wolf gives us a free resource at the start of our turn. Turns out, this is pretty nice for Dark Horse. It allows us to take advantage of Dark Horse during the Mythos phase while having something at the start of our turn to put out assets, events, or boost.

Alternatives

Preposterous Sketches can help shrink our deck.

Delve Too Deep to help pay for all our Flares

Deduction to help burst down a high clue location. I don't think there are enough of these in a solo game to justify including it.

Double or Nothing to combo with our Fire Axe and (ideally) Will to Survive to burst down a target.

Scrying combo's nicely with Dark Horse; we can peek at the encounter deck and see if we need Dark Horse's +1 for the Mythos phase.

Vicious Blow is a popular splash card for Pete however I just can't find the room for it. Leo De Luca gives us an additional attack opportunity (or anything else) which is often better than one use of Viscous Blow.