WILLIAM HAS A NEW CAREER:

William strode through the crowd as they chanted his name. At the ring he turned slowly, raising his arms. Everyone went silent. He paused for a long moment. How he had missed this feeling: being one with an audience, the centre of attention, the star of the show. Slowly he lowered his arms, shruging off his black cape. Then, with a single, practiced motion, he thrust his shovel deep into the ground at his feet before climbing under the ropes and into the ring. He saw his opponent pale, and smiled nastily. "Miss O'Bannion is unhappy with you," he mummered, just loud enough to be heard over the crowd.

Tired of digging graves with no company but the dead, William has taken a new job on Naomi O'Bannion's latest venture - a professional boxing circuit. There are some...side duties as well. In Arkham the O'Bannions are the law and it's William's job to ensure no-one forgets it.

It's been a while! This is the second in my occasional series of decks where you ask yourself "are we the baddies"? Whether it's calling down the darkest powers, looting ancient treasures or casually sacrificing your friends, these investigators have gone rotten. Is the cost worth it?

The other characters in the series so far:

Agnes Baker "The Blood Mage"

This deck is all about Brute Force. William will be using it to deliver enormous amounts of damage to anything that gets in his way - human or...not. If you want a deck that is about brutalising everything in your path then this is the deck for you.

• Overview

• Main Strategy

• Playing The Enforcer

• Digging up your cards

• Don't get buried

• Upgrade Path

• Use Brute Force to bludgeon enemies into the ground.

• Boxing Gloves fetches True Survivor and Nothing Left to Lose to let you do it all over again.

• Resourceful and the Elder Sign gets you back True Survivor to let you use even more Brute Force.

  ---

It was after midnight when William arrived at the house. The boy had fought well enough, but that hadn't been enough to save him from a trip to the hospital. Probably thought that beating had been the end of it. Well he was wrong. Very wrong. He might be safely tucked away with the doctors and nurses, but there were still ways to hurt him. William hefted the ice pick and started to smash down the door.

There's not much complicated about this deck. You want to boost your base fight as high as you can through Ace of Swords, Beat Cop and Boxing Gloves. Then you're using Fight events and skill cards to boost your damage and take care of anything you come across.

Brute Force is obviously the star of the show, with a supporting cast of Vicious Blow and One-Two Punch. Ice Pick gives a further +1 damage and if you defeat your enemy you can get it straight back.

Otherwise, your main role is as a tank. Beat Cop provides a lot of soak and your ability allows you to recur it. "Let me handle this!" and A Test of Will can be both fetched with Boxing Gloves and provide a high level of protection against the encounter deck.

Finding clues isn't exactly William's forte, but with his high base fight Breach the Door will often reduce a locations shroud to 0 - meaning you can collect clues on anything but the auto-fail. If you are really short on enemies to fight, Sharp Vision can be recurred with True Survivor, Resourceful and the Elder Sign to give you some low level clue finding ability, backed up with Ice Pick.

Getting set up is the most complex part of this deck. Short Supply acts as an extended hand of sorts. Go after the first enemy that comes up and you can fetch your Boxing Gloves, Bandolier, Beat Cop or Ice Pick as required.

One you've done your intial set up, you want Nothing Left to Lose to refil your hand and resources. Remember it can be fetched with Boxing Gloves or drawn from from short supply with Resourceful if you didn't get it in your opening hand. Resources are harder to come by in this deck than cards, so if you find yourself playing Nothing Left to Lose as a "gain five resources, draw none" card, that is perfectly acceptable.

Once set up you are into recursion territory: Boxing Gloves fetches True Survivor, True Survivor fetches Brute Force, Sharp Vision, Take Heart, Resourceful and Unexpected Courage, then Resourceful fetches True Survivor back and so it continues...

Your main weakness with this deck is resources. The basic set-up isn't expensive - you just need Boxing Gloves and ideally Bandolier. But once you get into recurring Beat Cop and Ice Pick the cost starts getting higher - especially when also paying for events like True Survivor and One-Two Punch.

[Nothing Left to Lose](/card/06 284) is your main card for gaining resources. You can't recur it, so make sure you make the most of it. As above, prioritise resources over card draw. Your rescursion engine gives you the cards you need.

Take Heart is another powerful way to generate resources. Try to pick one up whenever you play True Survivor as it will give you back two-thirds of its cost when played.

If you find you are really struggling, then you might add Emergency Cache or Clean Them Out.

Your weakness is trivial. You have more than enough to overcome Graveyard Ghouls without breaking a sweat. Just remember it exists and try not to leave yourself in a situation where drawing it would strand all your damage cards in the discard pile.

Finally, you can stall early game if you don't get your key cards or an enemy to defeat early on. There's not a lot you can do if this is the case, other than draw up and hope to find what you need.

Link to the 0xp deck

Obviously Brute Force is your priority for XP. You could take In the Thick of It to take them from the start along with Ice Pick Then you want True Survivor followed by Nothing Left to Lose and everything after that is a bit of a luxury.

If you go above 29 XP there are more options - upgraded Vicious Blow and a second Ice Pick being the obvious ones.

In terms of other cards, it's really up to you how much investigation power you want. You can strengten that side of the deck with an extra Sharp Vision and replacing Beat Cop with Grete Wagner. Interrogate is another good option, and thematically appropriate.

Alternatively you can remove all the clue tech for more brute force - Monster Slayer, Mano a Mano or Counterpunch for example.

Enjoy and try not to kill too many people...

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