The best Guardian is actually a Rogue/Seeker

Tony just needs a knife to be the best Guardian in the game, why then choose Guardian? To find your weapons? Just draw your deck,then. To deal extra damage every once in a while? You are a Rogue! Just attack more, and more! For some mythos protection? Either let your allies handle the / tests or pay your way to safety!

This deck excels in parties of 3-4 investigators, where dedicated fighters are stronger because enemies are more abundant and you will always have a bounty to fulfill, but even so, you can support your team when you've downtime! With the Seeker cards like Deep Knowledge and Crack the Case you can give other investigators extra card draw or resources when your job isn't needed. And if you plan on playing a variation of the deck for only two players, you can switch even more cards, which I'll go into more detail at the end of the guide.

• TL;DR: Focus on getting as good as a mulligan as you can, spend your first one or two turns setting your core assets, and then you're ready to murder everything fulfill your bounty contracts. Put only one Switchblade on the Underworld Market, the other on your deck.

• What makes Tony a good fighter? Consistent, ammo-independant damage. Tony's base 5, Lonnie's +1, Switchblade's/Tony's .38 Long Colt +2, and The Black Fan's +1 equals 9. Let's say, for example, you draw a -4 token on every attack, you will always deal 2 damage to enemies with 3 Combat with a Switchblade, or 5 Combat with your Tony's .38 Long Colt. And when you "whiff" and only deal 1 damage with the Switchblade, you still have plenty of actions to try again.

• What does Tony do that Guardians can't? Attack a lot. You have your 3 basic actions, your extra attack/engage for having a bounty, an extra action thanks to The Black Fan, and for when you leave those pesky enemies with odds amount of life at 1HP you have Garrote Wire.

• Let's talk about the Underworld Market: You will note that we have exactly 11 illicit cards (2xLockpicks, 2xSwitchblade, 2xLiquid Courage, 2xTennessee Sour Mash, 1x"I'll take that!", 2xHidden Pocket) and honestly many of them are not that good. The reason behind this is to leave one Switchblade in the deck, and one in the Underworld Market. I cannot stress enough how important is that we leave one in the deck. If both Switchblades are on the bottom of the Underworld Market it will take you 5 turns to get to them, but if you have only in your deck, you can always mulligan into it, or draw it with our other cards. The only other "mandatory" card in here is Hidden Pocket, with it we can hold The Black Fan, a Tony's .38 Long Colt (very important to refresh your bounties), and either another weapon or a Lockpicks if there are zero enemies in play. The alcohol can help you in the mythos tests, or patching you up for when you eventually fail said tests. The truth is that you can honestly pick your favourite illicit asset and you will be good to go.

• While you have many weapons, you only have one of each of your other items. With the item trait Friends in Low Places can fetch any of your missing items, in any window allowing you to play it also at fast speed.

• When to use Bounty Contracts? In the early game, I tend to spend the first 3 bounties rather quickly (never more than one per enemy) because this is the most important stage of the scenario, you want actions to gain resources, draw and play cards, and with the bounty you'll deal with enemies quicker while gaining an extra resource. In the later parts of a scenario (unless you're close to a Black Fan break-point) I'll save the bounties for tougher enemies. Don't forget that you get the bounties as resources!

• Generally it's better to just play 2 Easy Marks if you need the fuel that waiting for that sweet triple-play. One action "draw two, gain 4 resources" it's fantastic. Don't underestimate this card. If you're already set up, and playing only two of them wouldn't make a break-point of your Black Fan just wait until it does, or until you draw the third one.

• If you play Crack the Case in a 3 Shroud location, congratulations, you played a fast version of Emergency Cache. Anything bigger than that, and now we're talking.

• Save your Kicking the Hornet's Nest for high shroud locations to further help your cluevers, or when you're already kinda set up but are missing resources (don't forget to put a bounty on that poor bastard and you'll make lots of money).

• The most important thing you're looking for in your mulligan are weapons. It's your job to be the fighter after all. Do not keep more than one weapon in your opening hand though, you'll find the others soon enough.

• If you've found a weapon, I'd keep the following cards in this order of priority: Easy Mark>Haste>Friends in Low Places>Deep Knowledge>Preposterous Sketches. The idea here being able to draw as many cards as possible, as early as possible, to find all the remaining pieces of the deck while the threat of the game is the lowest. If you draw Haste early enough, and you don't have either much draw or resource gain, don't forget that you can use it to draw 3 cards or gain 3 resources for 2 actions! You can also play 3 assets with 2 actions, which speeds up your setting-up time.

In my level 0 version of the deck, I include "Let God sort them out..." because I'm an addict to experience and making and upgrading decks is my favourite aspect of the game. I didn't include Charon's Obol because that's a spicier card, and I wouldn't recommend it to new players or people who don't want the stress the card brings to the table, even though I play with it too. Anyhow, let's say you have more experience and want to upgrade the deck forward, I'll then ask:

• How many scenarios are remaining? If the answer's one or two (or you know/feel that a boss encounter is coming) I'd buy Sawed-Off Shotgun and put that in the Underworld Market instead of one Switchblade.

• Are you doing good in general? Focus on upgrade your cards, then. Mainly Friends in Low Places. You could easily add Helpful or Expirienced without too much tought. Or you could make your brain hurt and add an extra trait like Trick, Insight, or Tactic and focus your other card purchases accordingly. Other cards to upgrade: Well Connected, Lockpicks, Lucky Cigarette Case, Tennessee Sour Mash, Liquid Courage.

• How do you feel about your resource generation? Do you take too long to set-up or don't want to stress about that in the early game? Buy Another Day, Another Dollar.

• Do you like big numbers? Would you like to make them bigger? You could abuse the fact that this decklist runs no skills and buy a Geas. Make sure to recite the following command "I shall not commit any cards during each of my turns" and please, remember not to. Don't upset the crows. Or you could upgrade Well Connected. With 20 resources (what you want to have anyways because of The Black Fan) you'd get an extra point, and you could always pay the 2 to repeat the effect once per turn. You could also buy Money Talks.

• Are you taking much horror/damage? Does the campaign hate Lonnie Ritter or the Heavy Furs and makes you discard them? You can buy either Precious Memento.

• Do your teammates need help with the clues? You can buy Stirring Up Trouble if your team can tank the curses. You could also buy Streetwise, with it you can investigate at 8 with the Lockpicks... But I'd have a serious conversation with them, it shouldn't be your primary job.

If you're only playing with 2 investigators, I'd run cards like Guidance, Intel Report, Working a Hunch

Link to the 0xp deck

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