Skids - Ultimate Hatchet Man (Deck Guide)

.::OVERVIEW::.

Clue: 3 | Enemy Mgmt: 9 | Treachery: 6 | Tempo: 7 | Consistency: 8

This is the ultimate Parallel Skids deck for enemy management in non-conventional ways. You will be using evasion as an engine with Pickpocketing straight into unloading the dual-wielded .25 Automatic into the enemy you have just evaded. If you still haven't killed that enemy, your Hatchet Man and Delilah O'Rourke should do the trick. It is optimized to do only fighting and evading. If you want to be more balanced put in 4 copies of "Look what I found!" / "Look what I found!".

The deck will need to be adjusted for campaigns where on-engage effects can be quite damaging. You can tech in Decoy, Breaking and Entering, and Cheap Shot that help you evade enemies without having to engage them ideally. Decoy is particularly interesting in that you can evade 2 enemies in 1 action and the .25 Automatic will be able to trigger for each of the enemies you evaded.

So because a bit of this deck requires you to push into oversucceeding and reliably gambling off your investigator ability, its best played on standard difficulty. The harder campaigns such as Forgotten Age and Innsmouth can also be problematic for Gregory Gry, "Watch this!", and Lucky Cigarette Case.

I really love .25 Automatic so here are a few other decks that use it:

• Tony Morgan - Stunning Blow, Cunning Distraction, Cheap Shot as ways to proc .25 Automatic.

• Dexter Drake - This one was a product of BôL's thought experiment. You use Suggestion to evade an enemy and trigger economy like Pickpocketing, Lucky Cigarette Case off it. Then, you .25 Automatic using Showmanship to buff it to a fight of 7. You have Momentum on the Suggestion evade or Promise of Power if you're still struggling.

• Winifred Habbamock - I think it ends up being a very standard Winifred deck. It should be mentioned that Hatchet Man you will see much more often as a result of how fast you cycle. It doesn't have uniquely interesting combos that Tony or Skids has.

.::PILOTING::.

Typical Turn - Move into position by using Track Shoes to get to the location where the enemies are. Begin enemy management by evasion. Always use Practice Makes Perfect on evasion attempts. The goal is to stretch Hatchet Man into 4 uses with Practice Makes Perfect. Your backup Practiced target is Momentum and then if you have to, Three Aces. After you evade the enemy, trigger both copies of Pickpocketing for card draw and resources. Then trigger the reaction abilities on .25 Automatic and/or Delilah O'Rourke.

Sustaining Firepower - Parallel Skids is one of the rare investigators who has access to Act of Desperation and Sleight of Hand (and uses them well). The most conservative way to play these cards is to play a .25 Automatic without Sleight of Hand, we will name this Auto A. Auto A will be used in emergencies and in situations where the enemy has only 2-3 health. Auto B is the .25 Automatic in your hand. You will be looking to Sleight of Hand that copy repeatedly when there are multiple enemies or enemies with health of 4+. Always try to use the Auto B before using Auto A since you return it to hand at the end of the round. Try to use Act of Desperation on Auto A when its out of ammo. You can recur .25 Automatic, Act of Desperation, and Sleight of Hand all with Eucatastrophe and Shrine of the Moirai.

Feeling Lucky - Four of the Lucky!, Lucky! draw you cards. You want to play these before you play the Lvl 0 Lucky. This is because whenever, you get an effect to go off, its better to have the Lvl 2 Lucky in your discard pile so that you can retrieve it. and tests should be leveraged via Eucatastrophe. Then you can recur Eucatastrophe with Shrine of the Moirai. Just beautiful loops for days. You also cycle pretty quickly so don't be afraid to flip through your deck. As for Shrine, if you managed to hold a copy of 3 Aces with PMP in your hand, you can grab the other 2 copies with Shrine this way. If you can't deal with the treachery for whatever reason, just toss it at your teammates with "You handle this one!".

Resource Engine - "Watch this!" and your ability are probably the easiest ways to generate resources. You also have Pickpocketing and Gregory Gry, but those require a little more effort. Try to use Gregory on your high evades since you can test at 6 with Delilah and Track Shoes (and then Hatchet Man or Manual Dexterity) on top of that.

Card Engine - Dream-Enhancing Serum should be played with a bit of forethought. Keep a Lucky in hand to match and draw off that. Also, think about what are other duplicates in your deck such as Hatchet Man and 3 Aces since both of these can be tutored into your hand with PMP. 4/6 of your Lucky's also draw you cards. Lucky Cigarette Case and Pickpocketing also help draw.

.::THAT ROGUE WILLPOWER SECTION::.

Hah. Actually you're incredibly resilient to tests. Firstly, you have 6 copies of Lucky. Secondly, (3) tests are actually amazing for you since you can proc Eucatastrophe off to grab a card. Lastly, just "You handle this one!" the card to your .

.::MULLIGAN PRIORITY::.

Delilah O'Rourke - Extremely important for the two stats you will be using the most often.

Backpack, Lucky Cigarette Case - Your tutor assets help you assemble your combo. I would prioritize Practice Makes Perfect lower than these two. Backpack is especially important to find your .25 Automatic, Lucky Cigarette Case, Dream-Enhancing Serum, Track Shoes.

Dream-Enhancing Serum, Pickpocketing - Engine cards to generate economy and card draw.

Sleight of Hand, Lucky!, Three Aces - Starting early with a Sleight of Hand can help you get out of tough binds before you have the resources to actually play out your weapons. Keep a copy of 3 Aces and/or Lucky to trigger Dream-Enhancing Serum early. But only do this after you have already found your other engine cards.

.::STARTING DECK::.

I've linked a template for the 0 Exp Campaign Starter deck.

The 0 EXP version of this deck and the upgrade path to this final build is a bit of a shortcoming for this deck. You have to focus on an entirely different strategy until you can get the EXP. You will be relying on using Act of Desperation and Sleight of Hand on .45 Thompson and buffing your and tanking treacheries thru Lonnie Ritter. There will ONLY be 2 Practiced traits (Hatchet Man). You can either play Overpower and Adaptable in the Hatchet Man later. You also play Oops to help you get through multiple enemies at the same location. If nothing else, they are 2 icons.

.::VARIANTS & TECHS::.

Taboo - Just play All In and Double or Nothing with your 3 Aces, Quick Thinking, Manual Dexterity, Hatchet Man, Watch This and profit.

Clue - "Look what I found!", "Look what I found!" are really useful for triggering Dream-Enhancing Serum and grabbing bursts of clues. Probably more suitable as flex clues in a larger player count.

Damage - Oops!, Oops! can help aid harder difficulties where success is much more up in the air. Also, certain campaigns have aloof enemies that will be a hassle to evade because the .25 Automatic cannot trigger the reactionary ability when the aloof enemy moves off you. Your options are to use Delilah, but you can also play 1-2 copies of Lupara.

More Actions - Charisma + Leo De Luca, Haste, Nimble are all great ways to generate extra actions. All good considerations. I didn't play Nimble despite it being a really neat combo where you gamble zero resources and then ensure you can pass the test you have Nimble committed to. But since this deck plays Track Shoes, the need for Nimble gets reduced.

Considerations - Narrow Escape is always useful especially when you need to engage enemies off other investigators while you have enemies already on you. Daring Maneuver and its upgrade can be useful for helping you succeed by 2 where it counts. I'm not sure i can find the space for those cards. Hot Streak/Hot Streak is quite nice in situations where you can't reliably gain money with your ability.

Traps - Don't play Daredevil. That's for a different build. That's for a build where you dump Fortuitous Discovery into your discard pile for Skids to play. But this build does NOT play that because it will almost always disrupt your 3 Aces. I mean you could technically just hold your Daredevils until after you already played out your 3 Aces, but at that point, you burden your deck with too much tricky piloting.