Asset. Ally

Ally. Creature.

Cost: 3.

Neutral
Health: 2. Sanity: 2.

You may include up to 4 copies of Sled Dog in your deck. Up to 2 Sled Dog cards take up a single ally slot.

Exhaust X Sled Dogs: Move. Move X times.

Exhaust X Sled Dogs: Fight. You get +X for this attack. Instead of its standard damage, this attack deals X damage.

Dleoblack
Edge of the Earth Investigator Expansion #127.
Sled Dog

FAQs

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Reviews

We all had time to be razzled and dazzled by the good boys. You can have a legion of dogs at your command to destroy your foes and zoom about the map.

But these aren't even okay boys, let alone good boys.

As a 4 stacked ally, Sled dogs create what veterans of the TCG community know of as a 'Rube Goldberg Deck.' Your making a ton of effort and investing time and resources into a combo, which can be fine, but the payout isn't proportional at all to what you are getting. And understanding why they are bad is important to understanding what makes a combo deck actually good.

Sled dogs is taking up an ally slot, 12 resources, 4 cards, and 4 actions to come online. If your using the rod of animal magnetism that also comes out to a relic slot, and adds an action and card, but reduces the cost of the dogs by effectively 2, if you get the rod first. Because actions and cards are worth more than resources, this comes out to you 'behind' to play the rod in the best case scenario, and worst case if you need it to play your last two dogs because you found the first two before the rod, your looking at a grand total of 12 resources, 5 actions, and 5 cards to get set up for...

A damage 4 attack that can only be used once per turn, or the ability to move 2-4 spaces for one action, which doesn't even have the pathfinder or shortcut effect of actually saving you time to do things that turn (like fight) unless you 100% had to move all those actions anyway.

And its worse because this is a 5 card combo that really needs to be fully completed to get a payoff better than A worse Mauser. Would you pay your ally slot and 8 resources for an infinite ammo Mauser or a weird pathfinder pseudo-downgrade that only is usable if you move two spaces a turn? Probably not. But your going to be spending most of any given scenario doing exactly that. By the time your dogos are actually starting to resemble something better than a 3-4 cost level 0 weapon you could have just... played... your likely almost done.

Dogos show you what a combo element shouldn't be: Low payoff, high effort, and 'backend heavy' all at the same time. There are plenty of clunky combos in Arkham that are varying degrees of good, but in general for a combo to 'make sense' you want the payoff to be something that actively helps you win the game and thus worth time and deck inconsistency, relatively low effort (its ok that your going to go out of your way a BIT to do the combo, but not 20+ some odd cards, resources, and actions expensive), and should start paying off before it even is 'ready to go.'

It is ok if you don't have all of these qualities, but having all 3 is a bad sign. Sign Magick isn't amazing, it is a clunkier LeoDeLuca at first, but its offering you a bonus action every turn the second you get two relevant spells and it into play, which is probably just a 3 resources tax for ya, a card, and an action, and then it can scale up from there. So while its low payout, its also not a huge sacrifice (your playing spells anyway) and not too high in opportunity cost (Its half the price of leo, and while mystics have decent hand options they aren't going to lose sleep over it). Pendant of the Queen takes a lot time to do anything, but it is very cheap to do (your doing something you should be doing all the time anyway: Getting cards in seeker), and the reward is huge (extra testless actions and the ability to teleport anywhere in an action-less manner to boot). And while some recursive ally stuff in Guardian using things like Agency Backup and Beat Cop are going to take mountains of resources and a lot of your actions, they are going to be doing work from the second you initially play the card (neither of these cards require other combo elements to start to do something, and the payoff for the work is very proportional to it (who doesn't want effectively infinite free testless, action-less damage and cluevering?).

This is ultimately what makes dogos a 'Rube Goldberg' strategy: you are making a huge expensive machine that takes five minutes to set up and operate all to flick your lightswitch. Your paying a ton of money, slots, cards, and actions to... get a relatively janky weapon or movement too. It is a 'nothingburger' combo because what they give you doesn't really help you win the game (payoff), takes a ton of work and resources (effort) doesn't turn on until you get a lot of dogos (back-heavy). So, sadly, these dogos just don't make sense unless you know the scenario is going to demand you move 2+ spaces a turn constantly. At which point they kinda start to make sense, because while they don't help you 'stuff a turn full' like the aforementioned shortcut and pathfinder, if your always taking those actions even outside of reacting to threats you probably will save a lot of time in a scenario if you get two dogs and are using them most turns (and aren't able to slot a better action compression tool like Leo, Running Shoes, or those aforementioned cards) they will do... alright... but I think any campaign where sled dogs is a huge difference maker is going to be a deeply unfun campaign anyway.

And sure, they are neutral, but if you don't have a 'weapon' better than the sled dogs, you probably should be running other tools to defend yourself. Like I am sure Mandy COULD get the dogs out to serve as her 'offensive tool' but that isn't going to be a remotely good use of Mandy's time compared to the aforementioned Pendant, or the plethora of Seeker evasion tools that exist now.

EDIT: It turns out harshing folks mellow of leading a legion of dogos understandably ruffled some feathers. Some common counterpoints to the good dogos and why they don't make sense.

"You can't compare them to an XP card." I absolutely can, unless we are comparing the 2 dogs, which are the only ones who anyone but Leo can run. As a 0 XP card, dogs compare poorly to most weapons, as most weapons already grant you a +2 damage bonus. While dogs don't run out of ammo, they are once a turn, which is really bad for a 2 damage weapon, as anyone who has run a Mauser outside a 'success by X' test can tell you. The reason spammable, high/infinite 2 damage weapons are good is you can freely push up to 6 damage in a turn. Dogs can't do that, so not only is it action intensive to get the dog past a knife but you need to either have innate evade to handle 3+ health, or a secondary weapon, just pushing up the insane cost of dogs more. At 3-4, you can then directly compare them to XP cards (Both weapons, and 'assemble the pieces' cards like Segment of Onyx), and they REALLY don't do well there.

"What about the soak?": We all know highly action inefficient healing isn't good in Arkham, and the dogos are that. 2/2 is a very common ally statline on 'your not supposed to kill them' utility allies for a reason: it pushes the ally to being about as inefficient as something like Emergency Aid. Is emergency aid totally unusable? No, but you absolutely wouldn't rush to play it. Unless an ally is one shot or has unusually good soak values (ex: Peter, who effectively is infinite healing), the soak value is not the 'good' part of an ally. Would you run an ally with 2 health, 2 sanity, 3 resource cost, and no text box?

No one plays 2/2 allies as 'soak first' because the action economy is terrible. 2 Dogs takes 2 actions to play, 2 cards drawn (which are a little less than an action), and 6 resources (Valued at their lowest, which favors the dogs the most, a resource is going to be fractional of an action at around .75 resources to an action). This makes playing 2/2 allies that you need alive (And if you don't need the dogs alive play literally any ally that gives you either a come into play or on death benefit) at 3 cost worse tempo than first aid (Your looking at around .6 healing per-action spent from First Aid viewing resources as expensive as possible, with about .57 for dogs valuing resources as little as possible). First aid is probably the worst healing card in the game.

This means the 'text value' of the dog needs to be good enough not to just pass first aid, but to get past equivalent card effects. A lot of effects boost damage and to hit rates at a level similar to a fully assembled dog team at far less resources, decksearch effort, and action investment: Custom ammo, beat cop, enchant weapon, Delilah O'Rourke, Acidic Ichor, an upgraded shriveling, and the bows all will give the characters who can take them a larger effective boost than the dogs (outside of custom ammo obviously, but guardians have comically little need for the dogs), and only require one card and way less resource investment. You can (generally) evaluate a +1 damage for the rest of the game as about 3 resources and 1 card/action on top of your weapon, and some of these cards (such as the bows, or custom ammo) are doing even better than that. So, in reality, your dogs are just giving you 1 free 'first aid' in addition to the 2 you played first once you get to 3 dogs to match "weapon+enhancement." Would you play 2 first aids if, after clearing the first two out, you got a third one (Completely ignoring that you need to see 21 cards to even find the 3rd dog 50% of the time) finished for free? Almost certainly not.

dezzmont · 212
All of the complaints and concerns about the set-up are valid, but a once per turn 4 damage attack at +4 is an excellent payoff that will help you win the game. Nothing janky about huge damage and a huge boost. — housh · 176
The +4 to hit and damage is easily not worth the investment here. Again, we are talking 'I am building my deck to find these 4 dogs.' If you don't, you simply won't get the +4/4 damage, you won't accidently end up with this super attack. So it isn't even actually 10-12 resources, 5 cards, and 5 actions. If you run 'Calling In Favors' and use it to draw a dog? You spent another resource and action to get the dogs. Base 4 damage is nice, but is not so transformational on base damage 3 (A thing literally every class, even seeker, can reach on some form of weapon) to warrant this. And in the end, 4 damage doesn't help you win scenarios: Fighting enemies helps you avoid losing scenarios, and there is a huge difference, especially for a 'late game' combo. It isn't even good bosskill, because of the once a turn limitation it will turn out to be lower damage per-round than an ornate bow! The only thing going for it is that it is maybe +2 to attack? But your giving up a trinket or ally slot for that, and if you can't figure out how to consistently get +2 to hit on your character in a more efficient way with that pile of resources, cards, and actions, you probably shouldn't be attacking at all. — dezzmont · 212
I could have sworn they were 2r each and I already agreed with you. I wonder if they accepted all along this was going to be a meme card, or if they tested a more useful version and found that it broke Leo. — OrionJA · 1
0 actions for Leo tho! — MrGoldbee · 1449
At least it's not Wither. I think you're undervaluing the dogs, however, because of one important factor — dogs replace soak. You save on actions you would have needed otherwise to play soak, because the dogs give you a massive buffer. — suika · 9393
And well, comparing 0xp cards to high XP cards (or cards like the Pendant) is straight out unfair. Compared to 0xp weapons, they're not terrible, just 2 dogs is a once-per-round unlimited ammo Thompson that also provides 4/4 soak. You're right that they scale poorly with XP, though. — suika · 9393
You need to compare 0 cost cards with XP cards sometimes if they are close comparisons: Just because its 0 Xp doesn't excuse the effect just plain old not being good: Pickpocketing 0 is 2 whole XP less than pickpocketing 2 for example, but it is completely 'fair' to say 'this is so significantly worse than the XP card I don't think I should play it' even in a 0 XP deck. 0 XP weapons are really common after all and you have plenty of similar tools. But lets compare it to a weapon that used to be XP 0 at the very least: Machette. Would you pay 6 for a machette you could only attack with once a turn? Absolutely not, a huge reason infinite ammo weapons are even useful and why machette was good enough to last a significant portion of the campaign was because being able to repeatedly attack at 2 damage was a very powerful function of a weapon because it greatly increased the array of enemies you can kill in one turn. Being able to do two damage once a turn is not a very powerful effect because it doesn't extend your combat capabilities vs any enemy with an odd health value, or more than 2 health. On top of this, getting two dogs is not trivial, and deeply hurts the utility of infinite ammo: You need to draw 13 cards that are able to 'hit' on dogs, meaning your either mulligaining hard for the dogs (in which case you are playing primary combat and thus are making a mistake depending on the dogs for your role), or your seeing it maybe by turn 8 if your sneaking in a lot of draw effects on the sidelines. By turn 8 are you even really going to be able to attack with the dogs more than the 8 times you could with dual .45s, or the 6 times with two derringers? Is the extra +1 to hit worth essentially playing the entire scenario with a knife downgrade? The doggos are just not good at what they do. — dezzmont · 212
I think your review is unfair to the dogs. They are for sure not for every kind of build--but some characters--like Winifred Habbamock--can easily run them like a boss. I mean, come on, Wini + cigarette case regularly cycle through her desk 2 times per scenarios. And she has the rogue economic cards to pay for them. The only reason you don’t want Wini to take the dogs is because rogues have very good xp allies. But then it still make perfect sense to save her xps to spend on endless other expansive rogues upgrades rather than allies, like that good looking gold pocket watch. — liwl0115 · 41
Nah the hounds cost 3xp at least, because of Charisma. Still, getting 2 dogs out is trivial if you play them in an opportunistic manner, as you would a backup weapon. A deck of 4 hounds and 2 weapons has a decent chance of either ending up with two hounds or a weapon, after all. As to why you want to do that...its not the best, but it can enable interesting builds like the m1903, as seen here https://arkhamdb.com/decklist/view/33436. It's not quite the flamethrower, but then again few cards are the Flamethrower. — suika · 9393
Don't forget that some people play for the joy of the story/theme of crazy things. Your argument about efficiency is pretty much 100% correct, but some people play 4 dogs because the thrill of playing all four, then shouting "WHO LET THE DOGS OUT?" (other dog songs are available) is why they play the game. — acotgreave · 842
I agree for sure that wanting to do the goofy thing is absolutely a valid way to play. But a review should give you an appraisal of the card's merits and how it is practically likely to work out. I love janky combo decks (its why I even mentioned Sign Magick at all!) but one shouldn't be confused as to what their goal is when putting dogos into their deck. But if we are going down that route, consider teamwork to 'break the doggo limit' and get 5+ into play.... — dezzmont · 212
Like it's been said here before, your review completely disregards the sheer amount of soak these dogs give you (4-8 health and horror). — Notter · 1
And in regards to other complaints - almost everything is solved.. with Yorik. — Notter · 1
I have added some stuff into the review to address some of these complaints. More specifically for Yorick: Yorick already can freely rotate allies for soak and has soak ‘solved’ meaning there is no reason for him as a character to play anyone for soak specifically (Why run dogs when you could run Tetsuo, for example? Or the actual Good Boy of Arkham, Guard Dog, who gives Yorick completely actionless damage infinitely?), and his current dominant archetype already uses a 3 damage weapon with many significant side benefits that he can infinitely recur, and he doesn’t not need a strength boost. While Short Supply will certainly let him get dogs faster, essentially no guardian actually wants the dogs just because they already have weapons and soak extremely well solved. — dezzmont · 212
Sign Magick doesn't actually cost you an action either, so it's a little better than you mention, only 3 resources and a card. — Malafar · 12
"Nah the hounds cost 3xp at least, because of Charisma." You can buy Rod of Animalism for 1xp. Leo Anderson can also run 4 dogs for free with his signature card. — heyo · 1
I agree that the action and resource cost is not equal to the payout on the doggos. However, there is a key value to them that I don't think many have discussed here. They are a recurring +x/+x Fight action that does not require a hand slot. This, I think, makes them very playable. Any investigator whose hand slots are precious would actually benefit very well from running Sled dogs. It's why Garrote is such a great card too. Green and Yellow have some very juicy hand slot items. If you can't run a bandolier, they're a fantastic alternative Fight. — Jackster · 16
This review made me sad, because I love the idea of running a dog deck, but I have to agree with everything you've said. In fact, I came here to read the card reviews thinking, "There must be some synergy I don't know about that makes them more practical." But no. Perhaps they will add one in later. Or maybe they will buff them in Taboo. Until then, the game has made them as expensive and time consuming as real dogs, but without the extra mental health benefits from cuddles and funny antics that make real dogs worth it. — SleepyLibrarian · 41
Maybe, just maybe this is hard to pull off - but I've been playing it with Yorick in Edge of the Earth, running Short Supply, Charisma and In The Thick of It. From the start that meant that my chances of getting at least 2 dogs up for +2/2 were pretty danged good, and turns out that was right. In Yorick these are great. You draw a dog in upkeep? Commit it for an icon on your next fight test, defeats the enemy and play it from your discard pile. Or maybe there's a dog or two already in there thanks to Short Supply. Honestly to have these dogs as a baseline for moving and attacking, while adding in and out other assets as needed - these babies are perfect for Yorick, and relatively easy to get into play. — Krysmopompas · 358
I think Charlie is the new supreme doggo handler, if you really want to go this route. I can Call in Favors to trade an injured dog for another dog and then motivate (give head scratches) to get that first dog back into play. Mr. Rook can also provide treats. Sure there might be better allies for Charlie, but the dogged campaigner is fun and silly. — arkhamgrad · 1
I’ve had outright good results with these for Leo. Ran a rod of Animalism and committed to the bit with guard dogs (and leveled them.). It’s possible the tutoring story asset made it work early but you lose them late and it still worked fine. Left my Runic Axe to rot most of it. — Lailah · 1

A Principle Guide to Play These “Good” Dogs and Be a Winter Olympic Champion:

Contra to some of the previous negative reviews, I shall argue that this combo is actually a "good" combo in its own right when properly built. Here's how the combo can or should be set up:

1) It requires your “full commitment” from the get go in order to make it shine. The combo will cost you 5-6 desk space, 1-2xp (4 dogs + I recommend 2 Rod of Animalism for consistency. If you commit to this build, you might as well go all in for it), five actions and $10 to set up (almost always play your Rod first before the dogs). Seriously consider In the Thick of It for 2 Rod from the start if you really are going for this build.

2) Choose the characters who can make this combo reliably works: they are those with the (innate) ability to do consistent + fast card draws (+ good economy). You want to get Rod and dogs out reliably so that by mid to mid-late game you are all set for it.

3) For example: Harvey Walters can reliably cycle his desk 2+ times per scenario. He’s get strong economy to put the combo down (with free actionless cash in Cryptic Writings, as well as Dr. Milan Christopher, Crack the Case and Burning the Midnight Oil). The same can be said for Winifred Habbamock, especially once you have got Lucky Cigarette Case + Pickpocketing (and, better, its lv. 2 version) down for draws, and $ isn’t an issue for Rogue. Carolyn Fern is another candidate who will find this combo beneficial, and can make is combo work, although her card draw will still be significantly slower comparing to Harvey and Wini.

4) Now the last obstacle for making this combo work is the total amount of action (5!) that it requires (unless you are using Leo Anderson which I won’t address his case here. Guardians minus Carolyn in general don’t need the dogs to help them fight anyways). This obstacle is real, and my advise is to realistically think of this combo as (usually) a mid-to-late game combo. You can get this combo set up early-mid game if you’re lucky. But it’s perfectly fine to be patient and wait. The key is to not feel that you are “forced” to play Rod and dogs down when you have other more important things to do in early game (i.e., stuffs that help you to get clues!). In early game you usually don’t need to use the dogs’ strongest +4 move and +4 fight/damages abilities anyways. So, if you are Harvey, in early game play Rod and dogs down only if you need their soaks that protect you from being badly damaged by his weakness Thrice-Damned Curiosity. Or, If you are Wini, start playing the combo down when you have nothing better to do after your Lockpicks is exhausted. Remember, having 1 dog down is useless, having 2 down is weak (although it occasionally helps you move 2x for an action), having 3 down is the turning point, and with all the commitment you really want all the dogs to fight for you & teleport you across the map.

5) For low fight characters, you will need to prioritize and pack ?? (or fist) skill cards that can help you to land the dog bites. For example, Harvey fight at +5 with 4 dogs out. So you want to pack some (upgraded better) Essence of the Dream (via Dream Diary translation), Plan of Action, Inquiring Mind and maybe even an Unexpected Courage or two. I would take Plan of Action over Perception, for example, if I know I am using this combo in a Harvey desk. And, of course, another way to help with having your dog bites land on a tough enemy is to ask your teammate to give you one of their Promise of Power or Overpower, etc. Wini can fight with +7 with 4 dogs down, plus you will have her signature Anything You Can Do, Better + multiple ? skill cards (Opportunist, Unexpected Courage , "Watch this!", Momentum, Quick Thinking, etc.), so this should not be an issue for her.

6) In conclusion: Is this the most efficient or powerful combo in the game? Well, it isn’t. But it's still rightfully good when properly built. Sure, it is certainly the one combo that requires both careful planning and commitment. So why do it? Because coming with this level of commitment I would argue that the level of satisfaction that you will be rewarded after all the effort made, is also unparalleled. It’s a satisfactory 10/10 level combo when it works and you see your dog bites landed and finished off a boss, dealing as much damages as your fellow Guardian teammates and stealing the show from them; or when you see your dogs sled you to the finish line to resign or pick up that final clue from afar just before that stupid final doom ruin your scenario and spare you from taking (another) mental trauma. You are a Winter Olympic champion in the story of Arkham when all is said and done.

liwl0115 · 41

I posted this in a reply, but I've been playing it with William Yorick in Edge of the Earth, running Short Supply Charisma and In the Thick of It. From the start that meant that my chances of getting at least 2 dogs up for +2 to hit, 2 damage (or 2 moves) were pretty danged good, and turns out that was right. In Yorick these are great. You draw a dog in upkeep? Commit it for an icon on your next fight test, defeats the enemy and play it from your discard pile. Or maybe there's a dog or two already in there thanks to Short Supply. Honestly to have these dogs as a baseline for moving and attacking, while adding in and out other assets as needed - these babies are perfect for Yorick, and relatively easy to get into play. You do have to watch your resources, but even with an item-heavy build (that Willie likes), 2 copies of Schoffner's Catalogue and 2 copies of good ol' Emergency Cache, you're in pretty good shape!

Krysmopompas · 358

So first of lets get it out of the way...

Who's a good lil pack of puppies, you are! you are!

Okay now that is out of my system we have a card here that does a very very nice pair of things "handless 2+ damage attacks" and "high speed movement for one action" notice that both of these only actually require two dogs to be in play to be good, once you have three dog's in play you start entering sweet territory and at four dogs....well that's about 1 enemy per scenario survives you whistling to your dogs.

Getting 12 resources worth of dog into play while also having the ally slots to hold them is a big ask. it is made a lot easier by calling in favors (which also will probably grant you some amount of restored soak) and any other support cards we might see in the future for allies seems good.

Now I am going to say something shocking here, I don't think Leo Anderson is the best dog handler, that is to say, I don't think he receives the most benefit from having them in play, I foresee these dogs going a long way to supporting more non-guardian fighty decks, those that struggle with their class options weapons being too niche and too situational to be consistent enough to be worth running, you can use your dog's to fill in the gap you might be missing.

The other case I see the dogs being insanely good in are primarily or flex clue decks that have decent enough time with their fight stat, people who will use the dogs primarily to get them across the map and occasionally chomp on an enemy that would be too annoying for a guardian to come deal with. Minh has no issue boosting any stat to any number but she can't capitalize on that without weapons, now she can just run a bunch of happy doggies instead, I never found Minh dependent on any ally before so losing the slot isn't a major deal, she also draws at an obscene rate so getting to the two doggo minimum is pretty simple for her.

Can't wait to play with them and hopefully my theories to their usefulness don't fall flat on their face.

The last thing to highlight here is you CAN (with some great deal of luck) have 14 doggo's in play at the same time under your control, how you achieve this is left as an exercise for the reader, good luck! (bonus star for anyone who figures out how to get more, no matter how hair brained the method)

Zerogrim · 292
Guard Dogs shores up the damage of the Guardian upgrade to the Tommy Gun, a classic Leo card, by letting him utilize it as a 6 damage gun every turn. Leo can also host all the dogs out of the gate without charisma, and can play them faster than anyone else due to the free actions. — dezzmont · 212
Waiting for Leo deck called "Who let the dogs out". — bugiel_marek · 21

Dogs are an expensive weapon that takes up the ally slot. Having just 2 dogs out compares compares quite favorably to the .45 Thompson, albeit one that can only shoot once per round. The movement effect is mostly icing — situationally useful, but not what you get the dogs for.

Being able to fight only once per round is bad for a primary fighter, but being such a heavy investment, they're too expensive to run as an off-class combat tool if you don't expect to use them often. Usually events like Occult Invocation and Backstab are favored for those purposes because Seekers and Rogues usually have better things to do with their ally slots. Playing down 2-3 dogs just to use them twice or thrice a scenario is an extremely poor use of resources and actions. The same is true for Mystics have their combat spells, and Guardians just have better weapons. That includes you, Leo Anderson.

Which leaves us with Survivors, who can actually use the dogs quite decently. Survivors have good draw and econ now, but notably poor action compression which the dogs help with. Calvin for example likes the soak the dogs give and doesn't have to worry about managing horror from the Meat Cleaver. If they miss, they have Live and Learn and Oops! (2) to compensate for the miss the same way they would use an Old Hunting Rifle. Tommy can also borrow those tools if he wants to be creative, but like other guardians he's got better weapons when he gets XP.

The other candidate is Lily Chen, who lacks good low-level weapon options due to her Firearms restriction. Instead of playing several mediocre spells just to power Dragon Pole, why not bring a couple of dogs along?

suika · 9393

EDIT: Due to me failing to notice a key element of one of the cards used in the combo below, this review is effectively irrelevant! Thank you to the commenters who called it out and corrected me. So feel free to ignore, or read on for a brief vignette about the perils of hubris or something.

+++

From Zerogrim's review: "...The last thing to highlight here is you CAN (with some great deal of luck) have 14 doggo's in play at the same time under your control, how you achieve this is left as an exercise for the reader, good luck! (bonus star for anyone who figures out how to get more, no matter how hair brained the method)"

I can getcha 16!

This method works for any 'gator, tho Leo Anderson can skip a step or two via Mitch Brown.

Required: 4P multiplayer.

Each player must have in play:

At least 1 player must have and be able to play Teamwork.

All gators move to the same location.

Play Teamwork.

P1 gives you their Sled Dogs AND their Rod Of Animalism. (Relic Hunter * 2 = 3 Accessory Slots, so you can hold 3 Rod Of Animalism.)

Base Slot + Charisma + 3 Rod Of Animalism = 8 (creature) Ally Slots = 16 Doggo Slots.

P2 & 3 give you their Sled Dogs.

TA-DA! You now have 16 Sled Dogs!

(At this point, if you have an Expensive Sofa in play, you must immediately discard it.)

HanoverFist · 719
I have some very bad news. Route of animalism is unique (has an asterisk next to the title) This means only one copy of the card by title can be in play at any one time. If another copy would be attempting to enter play in the first place it fails to do so. I’m deeply sorry to ruin this beautiful dream — Sycopath · 1
Rod* — Sycopath · 1
I am awarding you A+ for effort anyway, but if rods could be traded 16 would be easy to reach, and the theortical maximum would be 30 sled dogs, if someone ever gets deckbuild "all the sled dogs" — Zerogrim · 292
Wha? Well shucks, nope, didn't see the asterisk. Back to square one then. — HanoverFist · 719
Easy way to get 16: ignore the rule that you can only have 2 copies of Charisma. — Xenas · 7
Devil, Mitch, Rod, Cha x2 gives 14, I don't think there's a way to get more at the moment. — suika · 9393
Miskatonic Archaeology Funding could give you two more ally slots to hold Miskatonic assets. Currently the dogs don't have that, but maybe a future set will give us a Miskatonic Zoology Funding asset that gives all creatures the miskatonic trait. — OrionJA · 1
There's an alternative to Mitch, parallel Roland's directive. — vidinufi · 68
Now that we have Charlie Kane in Scarlet Keys, I think 16 sled dogs is possible now. Charlie comes default with 4 ally slots, you can get 2 more from 2x Charisma and 2 more from the Rod of Animalism. That's 8 slots total for 16 dogs! The only other thing you need is 3 friends willing to pack Charisma & 4 doggos and everyone to somehow manage to get all of their doggos into play. — rockmaninoff · 3
Play Charlie Kane, go Rogue/Survivor, run You Owe me One, A Chance Encounter (2), and Black Market. Commit rest of cards to draw (rabbit's foot, track shoes, drawing thin engine works well with his poor stats). Get Leo out for an extra action. Can consider haste as well since so many of your actions are "play". Eon Chart is also an option for extra action economy. Requires less commitment from your allies (they can freely discard dogs and don't need to put them into play, or you can get them through black market or buying it from their hands.). — siroma · 42