Finn's .45 - You knew he could take that gun, right? - 28xp

Card draw simulator

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Derived from
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Inspiration for
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Lord Triloth · 1890

Intro

( Note: This deck uses Sharpshooter from the Winifred Starter Deck, instead of Well Connected, which is, due to pushed back releases, not published yet. This is also the reason this deck hasn't received as much play test, as I'd liked it to have.)

( Editors Note: The Author of this article is very fond of a card named Delilah O'Rourke, and he asked me to tell you that he would 'fight everyone with tooth and nail, until everyone is blind and disfigured over the undeniable strength of Miss O'Rourke'.)

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I welcome you to the Finn deck you always wanted, but never got.
I've played this deck in @Mattastrophics and @StartWithTheNames awesome 'Snake(d) on a train'-scenario, since then I've seen quite a few people interested in the full decklist. So turn on Plain White T's Hey there Delilah and enjoy the ride.

General Strategy.
You may ask how this object of my crazed imagination came to life.
It was like this: I threw together the two main Finn builds I'm playing. These deck's being this one, a deck concentrating on Delilah (an undeniably strong card in Finn) and this Illicit-build (I love trait-based decks), then I still needed something flashy, something that catches the eye, not often played (at least by Finn). And while scrolling threw the cards he can take, I saw the good ol' -.45 Thompson. The card fits this category perfectly, sitting on top of the list.
Basically the strategy of this deck is getting down Fence and Delilah O'Rourke as fast as possible, shooting with the .45, piling up resources, hitting important PMP'ed Momentum or Stunning Blow shots on an 8- with Sharpshooter. Evading all enemies that aren't dead yet, thus gaining cards/resources through Pickpocketing(2), and punching them even more with the hatch'ed Delilah ability.
And then, if the monsters survived all of this, you play down a maximum Followed, helping your fellow investigators in finding clues. After all of this everyone at your table will agree that you earned yourself a suited fast Pay Day.

The only flex in this deck is a lonely Followed and Finn's 4, that is fully capable of picking of a few clues, from 1 or 2 shroud location. (I remember this f***ing Spoiler in Snakes on a Train, aargh)

Upgrade and Downgrade.

Down.
.45 Thompson(3) .45 Thompson.

Delilah O'Rourke Leo De Luca; another option is Peter Styles, both are filling in similar-ish roles, though you'll need to cut down on a few / cards, to play Peter.

Fence Lone Wolf; also the only Level 0 card I can think of that fills in a similar slot. It only costs 2xp though, so usually one of the first upgrades I do. Most of the illicit-suit needed is already there in the level 0 build.

Pickpocketing(2) Pickpocketing.

Sharpshooter; I can't really find something to downgrade for this card, and I kinda hope there's going to be a lvl0 in the Wini-Starter-Deck

Pay Day Emergency Cache.

Momentum Opportunist; even though not obvious, these cards are quite similar. The problem here is that Oppotunist doesn't have that practiced-trait, so I quess Overpower/Perception are also an option.

Up.
Contraband(2). 4xp; always an option when your gun is too low on ammo for the doubling to be worth if, also an double -icon for a higher shroud investigate.

Another Day, Another Dollar. 3-6xp; I really like this card, especially when you have Indebted (a free 6xp in Standalone). In general it has the same effect as a Quiche on STTP in .

Streetwise. 8xp; a possible late-campaign buy, with both his gun and a double Another Day, Another Dollar you should have enough resources to power this and Delilah

MVP's, USP's and Wincons

First and foremost there's the girl that quickly conquered all my phone and computer wallpapers, Delilah O'Rourke. Like my Editor (also me) hopefully informed you, I'm ready to start a public fight with anyone about why I like this card.
The first thing that hits the eye is this amazing piece of art. Darazenka Kimpel, I don't know who you are, where you live or if you'll ever read this, but you really did an amazing job there. Her foxy red hair, her stylish jacket, her piercing yellow eyes, her sweet freckles and the fact that she's reloading a gun without looking at it, make her look fragile and self-confident at the same time.
The next USP is her two static boosts, both in active stats for this Finn deck, it's also easy to forget that she gives +2 on a shot with Sharpshooter. In fact the +1 and the +1 give Finn allot to work with, boosting both his evasion and the shooting with his .38 and his .45.
Then there's her ability. The only thing you've got to do here is evade an enemy, for which you get a free action and a +1, to ping an enemy for 2 damage. Without spending any of your 3 action, guys!
With all of this she would even be strong enough with a 1/1 soak, but hard miss. She has a 3/2 soak! This also enables a fun interaction: When the enemies attack in there phase in 3.3, there's a window before they ready in 4.3, where you can ping them for 2 without needing to evade them.

Fence. Both this and the next card are there to make the general gameplay a little smoother. Playing Contraband fast can feel a bit like reloading the Bar with Swift Reload, mid-fight. I really like the Contraband/.45 Thompson(3) combo, because the ammo put on the gun gets you the resources back you spent for Contraband, next to the +2 and +1 damage for every shot.
Pay Day is also great to play that way, getting a default 4 resources with his free evade.
Not talking about playing Pickpocketing(2) for the price of a Magnifying Glass(0), capable of netting you seemingly endless resources and cards.
A card I also like to play with Leo de Luca's associate is his second signature Smuggled Goods, to fetch even more illicit-cards to play. Double Contraband is also a combo a highly suggest.

Practice Makes (it) Perfect. Targets for this are Stunning Blow, Momentum and Hatchet Man. All these skills are there to help you making your gameplay even more efficient.

  • Hatchet Man; commit this card in the evasion before the Delilah activation, pinging for a total of 3 damage.
  • Momentum; if there's a test you are going to smash, to get up to +3 on your next test, it is the Sharpshooter shot, on a 9 with this card.
  • Stunning Blow; for any .45 shot, so you don't have to spend your action or if you already used it.

Optional Cards.

I've found Anatomical Diagrams to be quite fun in Finn (rhymes, lol). I may be a bit hard to keep up 5-sanity, due to his 1, but the reward is truly amazing. Fighting, evading and pinging a miniboss for one turn on a -2 on both it's stats makes more impact then it may seem.

Cheap Shot is also a great card to combo with Delilah, being on a 9 and then auto evading the enemy.

Outro

I hope you enjoyed this 100% less play-tested, but 100% more janky (but good) deck of mine and look forward to playing it. I would really like to hear your first thoughts when you saw this deck, but general feedback is also appreciated.

Here are still some songs to listen to while playing this deck:

  • Hey there Delilah, by Plain White T's
  • This is my world, by Esterly feat. Austin Jenckes
  • Feel Invincible, by Skillet
  • Awake and alive, by Skillet
  • When the Chips are down, by Hadestown
  • Grenade, by Bruno Mars

( Edit on the 11th of August 2020: fixed a wrong card link)

9 comments

Aug 11, 2020 Death by Chocolate · 1359

How does Cheat Death combo with Delilah? First it disengages, so they aren't evaded, and second it moves you to another location, so Delilah can't hit them. I believe you meant Cheap Shot? That's good for an enemy with a high evade rating or you just need to sneak 1 damage in, but otherwise Finn's free evade action is one card and two resources cheaper.

Overall fun looking deck. The .45 Guardian style looks like a cheeky choice and a great combo with Contraband.

Aug 11, 2020 Lord Triloth · 1890

Yeah, yeah I totally meant Cheap Shot, Finn can totally take Cheat Death.

I'm also kinda luke-warm on Cheap Shot. A proved quite useful in a few occasions, but it's only an icon to commit most of the time that's why it's only in the "other options" section. The combo ability, I was talking of, is also quite resource intensive and what Cheap Shot does is more or less what Delilah does to (dealing a damage and evading)

But I'm glad you "overall" liked it :)

Aug 11, 2020 Dai · 1202

Cool deck! I have played a few very similar decks, having also seen the potential of Finn and the Guardian .45 Automatic, (the first iteration of the deck ended up using Crystalliser of Dreams and lots of double-matching-icon events, which ended up being one too many things to concentrate on) and I have some suggestions based off my experiences.

Mainly that your off-class slot choices don't make the best possible use of his kit. First, I'd recommend Act of Desperation for extra attacks and huge resource refunds, important when using Well Connected. Second, I'd recommend Winging It, since you want to be able to make good use of that 4 base Intellect but your hand slots are taken up by your gun. Third, Track Shoes is an excellent option for an agility boost to help evading (especially good with Pickpocketing) and mobility.

I'd also want to add more skills (particularly Overpower) and possibly the ubiquitous Lucky Cigarette Case in order to keep cards flowing. Additionally, Haste is an obvious choice since you'll often be blazing away multiple times in a round - and it works nicely with Pay Day.

I love the music suggestions, very nice touch!

Aug 12, 2020 Lord Triloth · 1890

Thanks allot for the suggestions. When I'm writing a deck, especially the write-up, I'm always very fixated on the actual decklist and I have a hard time seeing other options in the alternate section.
I think there's something not 100% clear in the list, namely that Well Connected shouldn't be in the list, but the leaked Sharpshooter, so the general idea was more to spend your resources then to save them for Well Connected.

Crystallizer of Dreams is definitley something I want to try out, I may want to double down on icons like, said Act of Desperation, when my Contraband runs out or the second .45 Thompson is in hand. And the Enemy shouldn't be much of a problem

Winging It can also be used to great effect in Finn, do I found Followed to be enough, and this also being a quite fighty deck.

Track Shoes is a thing I also played allot in Finn, especially when you play on hard, to be up by a bit more. A one of or two of is easy to inclued.

Lucky Cigarette Case is also an option, but I think Pickpocketing(2) should be enough in that purpose.

For Haste, I'm not really sure if there's enough things in this deck to really make good use of it, so it would change the deck quite a bit. Don't get me wrong the card is great in Finn.

I'm glad you liked the music, just something that was floating around in my head and I wanted to share.

Aug 12, 2020 Zinjanthropus · 223

I have to say that I completely agree about Delilah.

Aug 12, 2020 Lord Triloth · 1890

Bravo @Zinjanthropus that's the comments I like to have under my decklists

Aug 27, 2020 Django · 4854

Can you get Scavenging in this deck to recycle the .45? Maybe use finns gun or Switchblade to discard it?

Aug 28, 2020 Lord Triloth · 1890

@DjangoGood idea. I never really thought about adding Scavenging into this deck, where it could be actually quite powerful.

Combined with the Fence-idea this deck has, which means you can play the scavenged cards without it taking up an action. Even though I would fit in Act of Desperation to have another way to discard those assets.

Aug 30, 2020 Django · 4854

Act of Desperation is also a good idea. I guess it depends on your deck slots, if you need more ressources and action efficiancy. After emptying a .45 Thompson you should have many ressources (more so with Contraband) and Switchblade and Finn's Trusty .38 are probably fast if you have Fence out.