The Bomb Tom (Deck Guide)

.::OVERVIEW::.

Clue: 0 | Enemy Mgmt: 10 | Treachery: 7 | Tempo: 6 | Consistency: 7

Taboo-Friendly

This is just my reactive impulse deck-build for the sort of Swarm nonsense Dream Eaters gave us. The gist of the deck is to fight Swarm cards with Mk 1 Grenades and fight standard with Becky. The biggest hurdle to spamming Grenades has always been the self-inflicted damage as well as that onto your fellow investigators.

Hence why we play a super tanky set of soak-resource mills. Note that the 3 A Glimmer of Hope are placeholders for the upcoming Spiritual Resolve card, making the total Exp cost of this deck to be 39. Honestly, very achievable on Dream-Eaters, and you can really get down your core by 15~ exp.

.::THE GRENADE & SWARM::.

Swarm is a big aspect of Dream Eaters. This deck is meant to be thematically fun but requires specialization from your evader as well as your clue gatherer. Grenade shines compared to Storm of Spirits and Dynamite Blast because it has multiple uses. We play a high-risk build, so we want to succeed at killing the swarm using the big +3 fight icon boosting skill card package. Furthermore, Jessica Hyde gives us a static +1 fist icon.

Maintaining the longevity of the Grenades means we include cards like Venturer, Well-Maintained, and Emergency Cache to give us extra uses and recursion. Tetsuo Mori will grab us discarded weapons such as the Grenade and/or Becky.

.::DEALING WITH FRIENDLY FIRE::.

We play lots of damage soak, as well as damage soak for our teammates.

1. Soaking for Friends - True Grit, Brother Xavier, Tetsuo Mori can typically soak some damage off our teammates. Brother Xavier gives us extra damage upon being killed which can help finish off bigger targets in the presence of a smattering of Swarm enemies. The willpower gives us a little better protection against treacheries. Tetsuo's ability to pull search for key Grenades and Becky early in the game is also important.

2. Soaking for Yourself - Since some of the cards you are playing are meant to soak for your teammates, you need some to give yourself some extra help. Spiritual Resolve will help you constantly top off your tankiness, but there is absolutely no need to keep it around just to be healed by the other myriad copies. You can aggressively soak with it to gain resources back.Leather Coat and "I've had worse…" are cheap commitments that negate the Grenade damage and also give you resources back. More importantly, Jessica Hyde is fantastic because of her constant self-healing. She can really take the heat off your high-risk plays by pulling 1 damage off you every turn essentially. Most of this is just standard Tommy stuff. You can combine Solemn Vow to pull damage off enemies.

3. Generating Advantage - Ideally, the teammates you aim to keep safe have adequate evasion so that they can leave exhausted enemies in a location for you to scoop with your Grenades. More importantly, you can collect the pesky swarms by playing Safeguard and having a teammate drag you through locations to gather them. Since you both enter a location simultaneously using Safeguard, you can engage all of the enemies, and the Pathfinder or Track Shoes teammate can move 1 extra location away from you leaving you encircled by Swarms and Swarms. This saves you a lot of actions and gives you a good chance to fight them properly. If your teammates already have enemies on them and simply don't have the means to evade them, you can always just grenade them down with you. Refer to Soaking for Friends Point 1. Tommy decks also suffer a little bit from card draw so the Taunt and Daring can really help Tommy get to more of his cards faster.

4. The Inevitable Demise - You're going to leave all of your damage and horror soaking allies littered with damage, so Tommy's signature weakness is almost always going to hurt you. I think that's just kinda the Nietzschean reality you have to accept. Another downside of the deck is the awkward situation you are put into when you're already engaged with enemies, and still need to put down a key ally before you start setting your bombs off which can also really kick you in the knees. I think that for this deck to thrive, you absolutely need good evasion tactics from your teammates to give you that small breathing room to set up. I may be hyperbolizing this downside, since, between rounds of swarms, you should be spending your actions to reset your engines/soakers while someone drags you along with Safeguard.

.::PLAY WITH IT::.

If you find yourself amply tanky, then pull some cards out some soak cards out, and put in cards like Dynamite Blast, or Flamethrower.

If you find yourself struggling with consistency, play the 2nd copy of Safeguard.

If you need to bring some clue gathering to the table Flashlight, Scene of the Crime, Old Keyring, Newspaper, Gravedigger's Shovel, Evidence!, "Look what I found!" are all decent options.

Since there is nothing in the Accessory slot at the moment, consider Hallowed Mirror for team heals, or something like Empty Vessel for chaos token mitigation as well as self-heals bc you will inevitably take some damage in order to not kill off allies sub-optimally.

.::CARD CHOICES::.

Take the Initiative are for treachery resistance. Steadfast is as well to some degree, but also has good flexibility as being a combat booster. Daring gives you some bigger icons for fighting and draws you a card regardless of outcome. You can always put in Overpower back instead. Vicious Blow was omitted from the deck and I'm not sure about that decision. Honestly, deck space felt tight in order to have the Swarm situation work. You trade single target damage (aka boss fight damage acceleration) or group damage. I suppose the solution is like Flamethrower or Vicious of course. Just make your own choices and see what works for you.

I don't run Cherished Keepsake because we have more than enough in the allies. Since those turn over fast, I think its more important to build the deck with more streamlined Damage soak. Feel free to add back in those Peter Sylvestre and Cherished Keepsake if you find a reason to.

The STTP targets are Emergency Cache(3), Ever Vigilant, Taunt(2), and Prepared for the Worst. I think Ever Vig and Prepared for the Worst are the two you need to keep on STTP for maximum consistency and tempo. The taunt and e-cache come down to preference and scenario.