The Desperate Dilettante

This is a build based on a fascinating idea by EinTheDoggie, designed to get set up early and cover all the bases, using the Desperate cards and other skills in conjunction with Jenny's balanced statline to contribute to whatever needs to be done.

How it works

This deck is all about getting to 3 sanity to use the Desperate cards. In the first scenario of a campaign, we want to get to 3 sanity (taking 2 horror and using St. Hubert's Key) as soon as possible to get our Desperate cards online; Ward of Protection can help with this, so feel free to use it aggressively to help you get tempo and the necessary horror, rather than saving for a rainy day. An ideal end to the first scenario is for Searching for Izzie to be in play and not resolved, and for us to be defeated due to horror or via Ghastly Revelation, in order to accrue 2 Mental Trauma. If this is not possible, we shoot for at least 1 mental trauma, and hope to get the second point of trauma in the second scenario.

The general playstyle is deceptively simple - see what we have in hand and work around that, concentrating primarily on investigation with Dario El-Amin and St. Hubert's Key for 5 Intellect. Once we have our assets in play, we can let our double turn-by-turn resources accrue to get Dario online and later let our Well Connected get stronger and stronger, since we have very little use for them due to our range of skills, essentially playing a stripped-down big-money deck without needing to dedicate deck space to resource gain cards. We're not much for monster-hunting unless we get our favourite guns into play, but if we wait until later in the scenario to play them we can easily afford to put a pile of ammo on them. However, this deck can quickly get into hot water - while we will sometimes be able to pass Treachery card tests with ease, evade any enemy and shoot any monster (or help our Guardian or Mystic do the killing, which is often a problem for them in the first scenario before they get their passive boosts), there will be times when we're vulnerable and don't have Well Connected to boost us, and attacking at base 3 or evading at base 3 is rarely good enough if an enemy jumps us. That said, for the first scenario or two, we don't care too much if we're defeated and suffer trauma - as long as it's mental trauma.

Mulligan priority is:

• St. Hubert's Key - mulligan almost anything to get this, and never mulligan it away unless it's your second copy in hand.
• Dario El-Amin - he's excellent for what we want to be doing anyway, and if we have some spare actions he can help our resources recover more quickly from setup
• Ward of Protection - we want this if we have St. Hubert's Key in order to hit 3 sanity as quickly as possible to get the Desperate suite online
• Well Connected - not as important as the rest since it will take a few turns after setup to come online at all, but it's the last piece of our board state
• Jenny's Twin .45s - well, I probably wouldn't mulligan them away if I already had St. Hubert's Key in hand.

Experience points and upgrade priority

Be warned that this deck suffers substantially from a slow start and low card draw to start with - once it gets going it can pull off some amazingly versatile plays, but you may have an unimpressive first couple of turns. However, with a small amount of exp, the deck takes off immediately: First, we want to take Relic Hunter and Adaptable, using it to swap out Overpower and Ghastly Revelation if we already have 2 trauma (keeping Ghastly Revelation and dropping a copy of Cunning or something otherwise) to take two copies of Lucky Cigarette Case - this is likely to trigger most turns with the huge boosts from Desperate cards and Well Connected and immediately helps solve the card flow issue. Then, we want two copies of Another Day, Another Dollar, which will solve our early game resource problem, allowing us to get our four key assets out within a few turns and get working on winning the scenario sooner. If we have enough trauma, we could consider subbing out Ghastly Revelation for a copy of Shrivelling or Spectral Razor for an additional combat tool. Then, we want two copies of All In In, replacing "Watch this!" - if used judiciously in conjunction with a Desperate card or a charged-up Well Connected, this will keep our hand extremely healthy.

At this point, we've spent 20 exp and the deck is essentially firing on all cylinders. Next on the list might be a second Relic Hunter, to play the second copy of Lucky Cigarette Case and draw all the cards we could want. Possible subsequent upgrades include replacing Decoy with Suggestion, adding in Cheat Death to counteract our low sanity, and taking Momentum, Daredevil and potentially Double or Nothing to improve the overall quality of skills at our disposal, replacing the non-Desperate neutral skills. Finally, some tools can be added in depending on the role the team needs us to fill - if the group lacks for combat ability, a Chicago Typewriter could help; if we want to lean into clue-gathering more, Dario El-Amin could be replaced with Lola Santiago; Tennessee Sour Mash might be a good choice for willpower-heavy campaigns and an extra combat option. At all times, however, it's important to keep the focus of the deck on skill cards.

Additionally, since it has few moving pieces, our deck affords us the opportunity to make full use of Adaptable - once we have enough trauma to no longer need the horror from Ward of Protection, we can replace it with whatever off-class cards we might need, from Shortcut to get around a bigger map, to Baseball Bat or Magnifying Glass to lean into a role, to Fearless, Something Worth Fighting For or Perseverance to help with horror. Likewise, we can use Adaptable to tweak our skill loadout for the challenges to come, taking Guts for willpower-heavy scenarios, Manual Dexterity for scenarios where evasion is key, and so on.

Other thoughts

Why not Arcane Research? Simply, Jenny already has a great way to get the mental trauma to use the Desperate cards in the form of Searching for Izzie, and Ghastly Revelation is an excellent way to get the necessary trauma early on while helping secure a last victory point in the first scenario or two. While it can be slightly frustrating to not have the necessary horror right away, the initial deck lacks for card draw anyway, so like many rogue decks it isn't fully formed until the second scenario regardless, and not using Arcane Research lets us counter this early weakness with a big play from Ghastly Revelation and then preserve the off-class slots to use later on. If building for standalone, Arcane Research might be a necessity to get the necessary trauma.

This deck is by no means the strongest deck out there - you'll likely find more consistent success with a big-money Preston build or Finn Edwards evasion clue-gatherer. However, it's certainly a bit different. Try it out and see what you think!