Cursed misadventures of || Roland Banks

This deck features ||Rolland Banks front with the normal back. It is played primarily as a fighter with the ability to pick up the occasional clue.

The deck was inspired by two things. The first was a desire to benefit or at least coexist with curse tokens and secondly Quiet_Fire's excellent Yankee Samurai deck and it's great use of the Katana.

I have played this deck through most of Innsmouth alongside Trish Scarborough who was solely focused on clue finding with some help from the curse suite.

---- The Directives ----

The entire reason to play ||Rolland is access to the game changing directives and they shape a lot of your turns and deck building.

Directive - The ability to play Insight and Tactic events as a action is game changing and makes mediocre or good events exceptionally useful. The downside to this obviously is the restriction on only playing two cards per turn. Notably does not stop you from committing cards making the value of skills a little higher. It does make things like Crack the Case and Practice Makes Perfect a little harder or at least something that you need to be cognizant of when planning your turn.

Directive - Is the other deck defining Directive limiting you to two fights per turn. The versatile once per turn +2 per enemy engaged with you to evading, investigating or parleying however is pretty amazing. To maximize this Handcuffs and to a lesser extent Bolas are used to always have one+ enemies engaged with you. Making this a reliably triggered boost to whatever the situation dictates the directive even helps you successfully handcuff those enemies. Having an enemy that doesn't ready and is always at my location has also proven a great synergy with Trish Scarborough's investigator ability.

If at any point you feel stuck by one of your directives don't forget that you can flip one single directive over per scenario to ignore both it's benefits and downsides for the remainder of that scenario giving you a little flexibility for boss fights or tricky situations.

---- Fighting ----

The primary weapon used in this deck is the Katana. Inspired by this deck Using Artistic Inspiration and Steady-Handed you can adjust your attacks to hone in on that perfect hit for 3 damage. As you progress you can add Michael Leigh or Vicious Blow for even more damage per hit. This weapon is great fun and I used it to great efficacy for the first half of the campaign even if it wasn't the most consistent weapon.

I did eventually replace it after scenario 5 where I replaced it with Runic Axe. If your campaign features an abundance of humanoid enemies such as the deep ones from Innsmouth the Handcuffs also work as great enemy management that synergize heavily with your directives. Don't forget to engage your enemies after handcuffing them so they follow you around powering your Directive.

---- Investigating? ----

The ability to play all of the events in this deck once per turn and the Directives limiting you to 2 fights / moves per turn will often leave you with a leftover action. While it's fine to occasionally take a resource or card draw action you really want to help move the game forward. To that end you really want to take advantage of your engaged enemies to boost your investigates/parleys for that third action or to evade an enemy that you can't kill in one turn. Stirring Up Trouble also works great to quickly help with Cover Up in a pinch if drawn near the end of a scenario.

---- Upgrade Priorities ----

2x Handcuffs == 4 xp ==> 2x Handcuffs

The cost reduction and the change to fast make this a great priority upgrade for any campaign that features humanoids.

1x Take the Initiative, 1x Burning the Midnight Oil == 4 xp ==> 2x Leadership

Gives you resources for passing tests and helps both you and your allies. Works great with Practice Makes Perfect to double dip.

Empirical Hypothesis == 2 xp ==> Peer Review

Turns this into a great reliable card draw generator for either yourself or your allies if your fully set up.

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Every upgrade after this is really up to your preference when / if you buy them but you really only need the 10 xp to make this deck incredibly consistent due to the high card draw and strong action compression.

== 2xp ==> Blasphemous Covenant

Makes it easier to control Katana's and to provide some protection against curse chains.

Bolas == 1 xp ==> Stirring Up Trouble

Once you have fast handcuffs trading Bola's for free often fast clues helps progress the game.

Burning the Midnight Oil == 2xp ==> Dawn Star

Provides extra protection against aggressive curse chains or even turns them into a good damage turn. Be careful that you don't have to kill your handcuffed "friends" though!

Beat Cop == 5xp ==> Michael Leigh

Boosts two stats and the extra damage potential doesn't require self sacrifice.

Riot Whistle == 6 xp ==> Charisma, Dakota Garofalo

The stat boosts help quite a bit and are pretty reliable if you have a monstrous humanoid handcuffed to you. The free engage is still quite helpful to pick up enemies again for your directive after you handcuff them.

Safeguard == 2 xp ==> Safeguard

While still being limited to two moves per turn being able to decide who goes to a location first is also worth noting as you can pick who gets to engage enemies that may be at a given location by changing the order of arrival.