Stay Ahead: A Skids Deck for Solo

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mjlaufgr · 184

"Winnin' looks the same all over. You get ahead.... and stay ahead."

Skids O'Toole

The purpose of this deck is to be a solo deck that leverages Skids's ability to consistently stay ahead of the doom clock intrinsic to the agenda deck and the cumulative harms wrought by the treachery deck. You should find the deck versatile, resilient, and above all fast.

General Piloting Notes:

You are looking to get clues, get objectives, and get out. To this end, your ideal opening hand is packing a Flashlight and a Lone Wolf. Beyond that, the Unexpected Courage or especially Perception can be nice to help with harder locations early on.

You want to trigger your ability every turn it gets you a measurable gain. This can be something as simple as exploring a new area. The point is to keep moving, keep clueing, and keep relentlessly hitting that act deck. If you hit lone wolf on turn one, you will get an extra action nearly every turn, and you must be ruthless about using it.

The Backstabs and Vicious Blows are meant to remove important low HP targets that you need to kill. If you do not need the weak target dead, do not use them- Backstab is the single most expensive card in the deck, and using it can hurt your momentum. They are NOT meant to be used to fight substantial "boss" enemies. You might do the math in your head and think that beating them is possible, and it might be on paper, but attempting this goes beyond this deck's risk threshold and will probably get poor Skids dumpstered.

You are NOT helpless against Will checks. They are what Steadfast and, depending on the circumstance, Take the Initiative and Unexpected Courage are for. The former two can kick you up to a respectable 5 against Will, which is well worth doing against treacheries that can drain 3 Horror or cripple your movement.

Deck Weaknesses:

You need to take Horror treacheries seriously and be willing to pitch your Take the Initiative to them. You have neither allies nor ways to restore your horror. Depending on your tolerance for risk, a Pipe might be worth investing in.

This deck is as resistant as it can be- without being named Finn- against multiple opponents pulling it down, but it is a possibility. If you think it might happen, keep your Elusive ready.

Card by Card explanation:

Flashlight

Well, it's a flashlight. It help clue good. Depending on the chaos bag and the distribution of shroud levels, it might not be worth it to use if the shroud is 2 or less. You've got six of these charges at most: make them count.

Lone Wolf

A core card to the build. Play it immediately. Don't worry, the Poltergeist'll wait. It gives you the money you turn into speed.

Backstab

You are not a warrior. This is for targets that you need dead. Sometimes that's a Wizard of the Order, sometimes it's a The Man in the Pallid Mask. You get the idea. It is worth restating that you are not saving this for fighting the "Big Bad" of the mission. You're running away from that guy.

Elusive

What a card! This card is not meant to be used to get you out of a jam, although it can do that if absolutely necessary. This is meant to teleport you back to a particular place when you need to be there, avoiding all the trouble and obstacles in between. It is an action-booster, letting you hopefully skip the necessity of a bunch of move actions, along with any enemies and treacheries that would pop up along the way.

Before you use Elusive for its skill icons, I want you to post a picture below of the snake that is a millimeter away from biting poor Skids's leg, and your hand demonstrating that it is the only agility icon you've got. Investigate is right out.

Emergency Cache

It's an Emergency Cache alright.

Narrow Escape

Although usually used to let you do something cool before somebody hits you in the face, and it is perfectly good for this, also note that you can use this to dash past beasts with the massive keyword, after which you investigate like a boss at +2. More like Shades O'Toole, am I right?

On the Lam

Usually it's a cool skill boost for investigating or evading, the things this deck cares about. Sometimes you can do it to dramatically dash out the door at the end of the game or something, or get past a massive dude like above. Worst comes to worst, it's a poor man's Guts. Please don't be afraid to use this as a skill: the event is situational as heck and if you wait to use it you're gonna have a bad time.

Think on Your Feet

Costing a mere 1 resource, this lets you avoid a standard enemy or hit the ground running against a Hunter. Note that unlike #Elusive, it can get you into an unrevealed adjacent area, acting as a move. Like Elusive, please don't play this for its skills.

"Watch this!"

Some things you do are easy things. When you do an easy thing, do this to make it a little bit easier, then get 3 resources without losing an action like you do when you use cache.

Manual Dexterity

See Skids Run. Run, Skids, Run! Then draw a card.

Perception

You're worse at investigating than you are at running, so be a little more circumspect about using this, saving it for slightly harder tests.

Quick Thinking

This is similar to "Watch this!" in that it is not meant to be used for its ? to make hard tests easier, but rather to be used on easy tests to grab you that action to keep you moving. More actions, less doom, less treacheries.

Steadfast

Early on, you're gonna hit a will test. Use this.

Take the Initiative

This can be used for anything, of course, but I'd consider either saving it for Will or using it on a clutch Investigate that you really need to pass. Knowledge of the treacheries you're up against helps here.

Unexpected Courage

(wise old movie woman)

"What does your heart tell you?"

Use it for that. You might want to save it for a Will check, but bear in mind that a 4 isn't nearly as good as a 5.

Vicious Blow

This is for the exact same purpose as Backstab. Lightweight targets of necessity.

Upgrade Path:

Do NOT go for Streetwise. You absolutely don't have the money to spend.

First, I'd go for the Charon's Obol. You're going to need to make up the XP points you lose by not defeating boss monsters.

Second, pick up Lockpicks. You probably want to replace the flashlights with these. If you find that you just can't make enough investigate tests as is, you can replace something else instead, but note that this increases your average resource cost while probably decreasing the number of agility skill icons in the deck, hence reducing your extra actions and affecting your ability to evade. You are thereby weakening the core strength of the deck. Buyer Beware. That said, one weakness of the Lockpicks is that they can only be used once per round, and in an ideal turn you'd have two actions to investigate two separate areas. All in all, they are probably worth it though- the simple ability to plow through level 4 locations with nary a care is invaluable.

Third, Hot Streak. Two of 'em. Hit one of these early and your speed is set for a couple rounds. If you have Lone Wolf up you're probably set for the rest of the game.

Alt Choice: Something that eats horror. Bad luck with treacheries can kill you dead, as you only have 6 points of horror to play with. A little insurance can really help.....if you're some kind of chicken.

So, that's my Skids. I hope you all have as much fun playing with him as I have. Until next time: grab your kicks, hit the bricks, and 23 Skidoo once you've got a clue!

2 comments

Mar 27, 2019 mjlaufgr · 184

Thanks!!! I hope folks enjoy it!