Cut Man - Skids Combat

You spend a little time in the joint, you meet all kinds of people. People that can teach you things. Breaking and entering, a bit of demolitions, how to win a fight or just survive one. You pick up a few skills.

Oh, and shivs. Lots of shivs.

"Skids" O'Toole did his time, and has the arsenal to match. It's all about the right tool for the right job. Machete is perfect for engaging opponents one on one, but if you're overwhelmed, you can discard Knife to even the odds by landing 2 damage regardless of whether and with how many enemies you're engaged.

For a more subtle solution, Switchblade inflicts bonus damage if you can succeed by 2 or more, good for enemies with low fighting and multiple hit points like Ghoul Minion or Thrall, or if you boost your Fighting by committing cards like Overpower, Opportunist, and Vicious Blow; or with Beat Cop and Physical Training.

Switchblade is also useful against enemies engaged with other investigators. Rather than spending an action to engage for +1 damage with the Machete, or the risk of dealing +1 damage to your fellow investigator with Knife, take a stab at +1 damage with Switchblade, still score 1 damage if you don't make that threshold, and only do 1 point of damage to your fellow investigator on a miss.

Making the most of Switchblade means knowing the odds. How many tokens in the bag produce failure, success, and bonus damage? This goes deeper than percentages, which tell you the frequency of success and failure, but not the margin. We'll revisit this later for those who want to crunch the numbers, but for now, improving the odds of landing Switchblade's damage bonus compounds with improving your chance to hit, and makes Opportunist more worthwhile in the bargain, but is even more valuable if you know the population of the chaos bag rather than just the percentage chance of success.

In addition to a solid selection of fighting icons to commit on your cards, Physical Training helps you tailor your Fighting to the situation. Still, the unpredictable damage of Switchblade can make for awkward turns, either not inflicting enough damage to eliminate an enemy, or revealing an rare chaos token bonus for an unexpected damage bonus when you planned to spend an entire turn stabbing an enemy.

"Skids" O'Toole can buy an extra action to finish off an enemy or evade, but at a cost of 2 resources for 1 action, this isn't a great investment except in emergencies.

A Guard Dog can finish the job after Switchblade comes up short, especially against enemies that do only 1 damage. For more powerful enemies, additional damage and horror is a worthwhile trade off to finish the enemy during the enemy phase, or on an attack of opportunity. With smaller enemies, you can spend your entire turn on other actions and throw the enemy (and the damage) to the dogs, killing the enemy entirely via attacks of opportunity. Beat Cop can be discarded for a similar effect as a free trigger, even during the enemy phase between a hunter's move and attack. In the meantime, he improves your chances of hitting Switchblade's +2 threshold.

If you need a lot of damage in a hurry, Backstab delivers a big hit to a single enemy, and Dynamite Blast can clear a room or take out several smaller enemies to enable Machete's damage bonus. Each enemy engaged with you gets an attack of opportunity as you light the fuse, but a guard dog lets you take out as many as three enemies with 4 health rather than 3 health.

If you have the extra funds and not the health, Elusive takes you out of harm's way before the Dynamite Blast, or simply helps you escape a deadly situation. In scenarios with larger maps, you can leap to the aid of fellow investigators from anywhere, as long as you have an action to move from a connecting location with no enemies.

Skids' low willpower makes him vulnerable to a variety of encounter deck effects, particularly those that inflict horror. Physical Training helps you pass the worst of these, or simply save horror or cards regardless of success on cards like Rotting Remains or Umôrdhoth's Wrath. If Skids still can't keep it together and loses a dangerous amount of sanity, a little First Aid calms him down.

ADJUSTMENTS FOR DIFFICULTY

At higher difficulties, skill checks are more difficult and less predictable. As always, keep a careful eye on the chaos bag when using Switchblade.

You can also swap Backstab for Sneak Attack for direct damage instead of a skill check. You'll need to exhaust the enemy first, but on higher difficulties, the best approach to enemies with retaliate is often to open with evasion anyway.

Emergency Aid is another good choice at higher difficulties. You can patch up your Guard Dog, or your Beat Cop in later scenarios, for more guaranteed damage to enemies. If another player can help heal your horror, you might swap it in for First Aid.

Because the chaos bag is less predictable, graduated effects are more valuable at higher difficulties, putting a premium on Switchblade and Opportunist. Consider replacing Knife with .41 Derringer to take advantage of this, even though the higher cost will stress the economy of an expensive deck. Less reliable Burglary compounds the issue, so consider replacing Burglary with Emergency Cache for a reliable influx of resources.

ADJUSTMENTS FOR PLAYER COUNT

The basic Cut Man build assumes Skids' main responsibility will be fighting. He has reasonable intellect for low shroud locations, but few intellect icons and no intellect bonuses. If playing solo, or partnered with support builds or other combat builds, Backstab for Sneak Attack, First Aid for Emergency Aid, and Manual Dexterity for Unexpected Courage give you icons to commit to investigations in exchange for similar effects. If you're hoping to maximize VPs, you'll want to add Flashlight instead of one these swaps.

At higher player counts, enemies with additional hit points per investigator are a bigger threat. You won't be able to take them down in a single turn if you're the only muscle in the group. Consider replacing Physical Training with Hard Knocks, especially if you can rely on your partner for help healing horror.

SPENDING EXPERIENCE

Beat Cop is a great upgrade, especially if you're already packing Emergency Aid. Hot Streak helps you fund an expensive deck and fuels Physical Training, and is a great replacement for Emergency Cache if you've chosen to include it.

Additional actions help level out unpredictable damage delivery, so Police Badge improves consistency, and helps cover weak Willpower in the bargain.

Adaptable is a fantastic buy for this deck, allowing you to tailor your strategy to the scenario. In Night of the Zealot, your low Willpower and horror is a real concern in The Gathering, but it's not much threat in Midnight Masks. Adaptable swaps Physical Training for Hard Knocks, then swaps it back for The Devourer Below, at no additional cost. In The Dunwich Legacy, you can swap Opportunist for Double or Nothing in The House Always wins, allowing you to dispatch a Conglomeration of Spheres with a thrown Knife and a Vicious Blow or a couple of basic attacks, saving your Machete and Switchblade.

Sure Gamble is a great card in any deck, turning an unexpected failure on any test into a success, and even lets you swing for the fences on extremely high difficulties. This gets even better with higher difficulty chaos bags. Here, it allows you to maximize Switchblade and Opportunist with minimal risk of fluke failure, or aim for simple success and flip failure to a bonus effect.

A WORD ON SKILL BONUSES WITH GRADUATED EFFECTS

Adding skill bonuses to graduate effects like Switchblade and Opportunist changes the return on investment. Ordinarily, increasing from +1 to +2 over the difficulty of a skill test on a standard bag (the point of diminishing returns) flips only the two -2s from failure to success, as well as any -2s on variable tokens. With an effect like Switchblade that benefits for hitting two different marks, increasing from +1 to +2 over the difficulty also improves a simple success to bonus damage on two 0s and any equivalent variable tokens. Investment in a graduated effect is less likely to be wasted by a token where the commitment doesn't make a difference.

For example, in The Gathering, if you use Switchblade to attack a Ghoul Minion so you can use your Machete on his only friend at your location, Ravenous Ghoul, your base fighting of 3 succeeds on a -1 or better: eight tokens, including the skull token and elder sign, and two of those -- +1 and the elder sign -- inflict bonus damage.

Boosting your check by +1 (+2 over the difficulty) flips the two -2 tokens, two skull tokens, and the tablet to successes, but also adds extra damage if you reveal a 0, so you're modifying the result of seven tokens rather than only five. This is the point of diminishing returns for most skill tests, as boosting to +3 or better alters the outcome of fewer and fewer tokens in a standard bag.

With Switchblade, boosting to +3 in this situation improves your chance to succeed only marginally, by making the -3 token a success. Only one of the sixteen tokens in the bag. But it also flips the three -1s and the cultist token, altering the outcome on a total of five tokens, almost a third of the bag. With a third ghoul in your location, skulls become -3s rather than -2s, and you modify the result of more tokens at +3 (seven) than at +2 (six).

This requires keeping track of the contents of the bag and the current modifiers on variable tokens. Opportunist adds another variable to the equation. It's often wasted on simple success or failure, but the improved odds of recovering Opportunist reward the investment in aiming for an improved result on Switchblade, or reduces the chance of wasting Opportunist by overcommitting to make even the worst tokens in the bag successes.