Revenge of the Nerd|RC+Starter|Always Current

Revenge of the Nerd

In this mini-series I'm looking at balanced, somewhat flexy decks which are "always current". These use only the revised core (RC) and standalone starter packs. Here, Roland uses the nerd supuerpower* Mind over Matter •• to boost his Shotgun. This combo gives you higher average damage than legacy big guns like Lightning Gun and Flamethrower...

_{* I don't endorse the creepy Revenge of the Nerds movie. When I had the idea for this image I just found it too funny to pass up. Thank you for reading this PSA...}

Overview

• Surgical with a Shotgun: Mind over Matter •• adds to (or ) for a whole turn in addition to drawing you a card. The perfect partner to this is the Shotgun, which deals more damage when you over-succeed. With both Grete Wagner ••• and Dr. Milan Christopher in play, you're testing at a 13 skill value with each shot. For an example comparing to Flamethrower, see the final section of this guide.

• Clues: To leverage your Intellect boost even more, this deck has a whopping 23 icons to pass tests with - including Deduction and one copy of Perception. This allows you to crack higher shroud locations which would normally be out of Roland's reach.

• More Clues & Encounter Deck: For further clues, there's Grete Wagner ••• and Roland's ability for when you kill an enemy. First Aid ••• is the best option to keep Grete healthy, and can heal horror off Roland incurred by Cover Up. Dr. Milan Christopher also soaks alongside Grete. For treacheries, Unexpected Courage, one Guts and First Aid (if you don't need it for healing) help to hit a 7 test value for things like Frozen in Fear. Glimpse the Unthinkable • with its pseudo-mulligan helps you draft these and keep them ready in hand.

• Economy: This deck is expensive! Burning the Midnight Oil, Cryptic Writings and Stand Together all provide cash while also having useful icons to commit, with Dr. Milan Christopher providing a drip feed (getting him out early is very handy). Card draw is strong, with Glimpse the Unthinkable, Glory, Mind over Matter ••, Overpower ••, one Perception and one Guts all providing support (so much so that the deck can cycle). Glimpse the Unthinkable allows you to either scout for assets like the Shotgun or Grete Wagner ••• and shuffle Cryptic Writings back into your deck (to possibly draw it), or otherwise boost with its icons.

• Ammo & Basic Fight Actions: The Shotgun is kept stocked with Extra Ammunition. There's 16 icons here to help with basic fight actions when you need to conserve ammo, and Vicious Blow can give some damage compression on either these actions or the Shotgun itself. If you have two Mind over Matter •• in hand, you can always use one of these for basic fight actions (so long as the encounter deck lacks discarding treacheries) and save the other for your Big Turn™.

Campaign starter and planned progression

0 XP deck is below (and link here). If you wanted to play this true solo, then Stand Together becomes Clean Them Out for similar economy and a icon. Outside of true solo it's a little too situational for getting resources early scenario, which is when you need cash the most. For side deck you could consider Working a Hunch, however this deck is expensive and your one Perception and Deduction provide card draw or clues for an action you want to take already. Emergency Cache could provide a bigger cash boost than the resource cards here, however it doesn't have any icons to commit and you can't play it actionlessly like Burning the Midnight Oil and often Cryptic Writings.

As a foreword here, if you start getting stacked with mental trauma you can consider moving First Aid ••• up the upgrade track and/or purchasing an Elder Sign Amulet (Overpower •• is definitely more of a luxury upgrade so could be dropped in its place). However, Roland does have a of 3 and there is horror soak present here, so I would only recommend Elder Sign Amulet if you're particularly unlucky with trauma during a campaign. As such a recommended order of purchases/upgrades is:

• Charisma

• Machete → Extra Ammunition

• .45 Automatic → Shotgun

• Working a Hunch → Glimpse the Unthinkable

• 1 x Grete Wagner → 1 x Mind over Matter ••

• 1 x Perception → 1 x Mind over Matter •• (19 XP here for standalones)

• 1 x Grete Wagner → 1 x Grete Wagner •••

• 1 x Guts → 1 x First Aid •••

• Overpower → Overpower ••

Final thoughts

This deck wouldn't have been built without the restrictions that current environment puts in place. Having said that, it's an awesomely powerful and thematic deck - a Fed with a Shotgun is like PB&J! The pairing with Mind over Matter •• produces absurd boosts, helping you get big damage even on Outer Gods.

This is also apparently the first time this combo has been included in a deck on this site, despite the fact I'd wager the FF devs likely were thinking of Roland and the Shotgun when they added Mind over Matter •• to Harvey's starter deck. Who would have thought sets that are over 5 years old would still hold some surprises?

When considering legacy environment cards and assuming the same ally support, Lightning Gun costs more resources and typically does less damage on average than Shotgun with Mind over Matter ••. Even with Flamethrower, taboo XP is the same when factoring in Mind over Matter, but it has the engagement requirement and max damage is still worse. You're obviously relying on a combo for that top tier damage here which you aren't with the legacy guns (and you will need Extra Ammunition), but the key question is whether you can assemble the combo before you fight an end of scenario boss - and the answer with the strong card draw is yes, almost definitely. Overall there's many circumstances where this combo does higher average damage than legacy environment darlings. No, really!

For a worked example if you take Umôrdhoth on standard difficulty, then assuming are -3, you're 82% likely to deal the full 5 damage per action at a 13 test with the Shotgun (and 94% likely to deal 3 or more damage). This gives an average damage of 4.53 per fight action, compared to the average damage of 3.76 with the Flamethrower (only fails you in both cases, but the lower max damage for the Flamethrower caps its average as you'd expect). Even with the limited XP in NotZ, if you take just one each of Shotgun and Mind over Matter ••, and Grete Wagner ••• in place of your second Mind over Matter, then you can feasibly pull off this combo by the last scenario of the campaign.

All in all, this deck is a blast to play... literally!