Lonesome Ashcan

Card draw simulator

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Derived from
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Theophilus · 92

Played The Gathering (from Night of the Zealot) solo and finished in 8 turns with 8XP.

Needed more evasion, so tried to focus on that in my upgrade choices.

Eager for The Midnight Masks!

4 comments

May 03, 2017 Trilkin · 2998

I hope you don't mind input; Pete's my favorite character, so I like seeing what people do with him. All of my input is completely anecdotal, and some of it is even theorycraft, but I'm mostly speaking from experience. If what you're building works for you, keep rocking it and disregard me!


A lot of your card picks are a bit on the overkill side, and some of them actually have anti-synergy with each other. You went heavy overkill with investigation, I feel, and not enough - or inefficiently - into other things to keep yourself self-sufficient. I'll try to break it down by card.

Rise to the Occasion is a card that I don't think you'll find much use of. Outside of high shroud locations, or high fight monsters without Duke ready, there are very few checks I've seen where slotting this over another, less nuanced skill card is a good idea. While this does give you that additional stat, you really won't see many opportunities for it. I would recommend replacing at least one of these with an additional Lucky! and the other with something like Overpower or a second Guts.

Magnifying Glass + Flashlight are redundant together. Generally speaking, in any other deck, this would be a matter of taste. With Duke, though, you'll want to lean more toward keeping Magnifying Glass. Flashlight requires a separate investigate check that you cannot use Duke on. While this does remove some of your reliance on Duke (and also has use in certain situations that will be more apparently when you get to the third scenario of the base campaign,) you should opt more for consistency and getting the most out of your Duke uses. I would recommend dropping the Flashlight, but keeping your Glass...

... which leads me into Dr. Milan Christopher. As a general rule, you'll want to pick between Magnifying Glass OR Dr. Milan Christopher. Milan will require investment into Charisma to get the most use out of him (you generally prefer Peter Sylvestre out first,) but the additional economy he can provide is extremely nice. This one is definitely a matter of taste, but I would highly recommend either the Glass or Milan, but not both.

So what should you replace the two freed slots with from this? Working a Hunch. They can act as a Perception for when you need the for something other than investigation, you can scoop a quick clue in a high shroud location when you want to save your Duke charge for something else, and it's also Fast, so it's action-free. It's cheap too.

Drawn to the Flame is a suicidal card to have in a deck that doesn't have much in the way of combat focus. There are also not many situations in solo play that you'll have two clues on a location to get the most value out of this. You are far better off replacing this card with some form of action compression or combat-oriented card. Vicious Blow, Dynamite Blast, and Backstab are all good options for combat. Dynamite is especially good if you are intending on keeping Lure; lure the hunters to a location, move, blow them up. Always handy. For action compression, Shortcut is a great way to get somewhere fast. Combined with Duke's move+investigate mobility, you can get around the map and scooping up clues REALLY quickly.

Fire Extinguisher feels like a bit of a waste, even if it is a very potent panic button. The ability to evade (and thus exhaust) all monsters in a location is quite strong, but the price is 1xp per use. Survival Instinct does something similar, but is cheaper, reusable, and allows you to move in the same action after a successful evade. It doesn't exhaust the other monsters like the extinguisher, but it's far better value.

For upgrades, consider turning your Cunning Distractions into Will to Survives. It's an AMAZING card; arguably one of the strongest in the game. The full power turn you can get from it allows you to outright end games even in situations where the odds are fully against you. It makes the flavor perfectly.

May 03, 2017 Theophilus · 92

Thanks for the input! I usually play by myself, so I don't get a lot of opportunities to collaborate on deck builds and whatnot. That's one of the reasons I got on ArkhamDB, so thanks for sharing your insights.

This is my first Pete deck. I usually play Guardian and Rogue, so I'm trying something new.

I went overkill on investigation on purpose. Wanted to see how it played. And it worked great in The Gathering. Cleared the Study on Turn 1 and the Attic on Turn 2. The Icy Ghoul in the basement slowed me down a bit, but Duke and the Fire Axe did their work.

For the upgrades, I wanted to improve my ability to evade. I've already changed these upgrades a bit, swapping the Fire Extinguishers and the #Lure for a Scrapper. I'll definitely keep your thoughts in mind as I upgrade and tweak.

Thanks again!

May 03, 2017 Trilkin · 2998

Scrapper is an awesome card, especially combined with Lone Wolf econ. And yeah, investigation-heavy decks can plow through The Gathering fast, but you'll have some issues with Masks. You should be able to handle Devourer without issues, though.

May 04, 2017 Theophilus · 92

You were right. Lol!

I only took down three cultists, and ran into the conflict between Flashlight and Magnifying Glass. The glass is better.

I added Charisma in the hopes of getting both allies out, and I'm gonna play Rougarou before Devourer, just for grins.