Quiche the Saw - Whacking and Yeeting with a Chainsaw - Hard

The Curtain lifts ...

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to a lonely Gravedigger, standing on a stage, surrounded by dozens of vicious monsters.
But suddenly he throws away his shovel away and pulls out a gigantic Chainsaw from under his coat. He starts the motor and takes a sip from his bottle. No the monsters may come ...

Roles: Main fighter, with decent clueing.
Soak/Healing: Decent with Tetsuo and Keepsake cycle.
Draw/Resource Engine: Mainly Drawing Thin.
Encounter Protection: High.
Complexity: Mediocre, but rewards learning.

The basic premise of this deck is getting the Saw out, through Tetsuo and Drawing Thin, to kill as many enemies as possible. Refilling the Saw (and the Mash) with Emergency Cache(3). Making on purpose that you fail Saw attacks with Drawing Thin, to profit from it through Live and Learn and Oops!(2).

Where it all began ... (Campaign Mode)

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LVL 0.

In the start of the campaign this deck is basically just a Fail-by Yorick, so downgrade:

2x Chainsaw .18 Derringer.
1x Well Prepared 2nd Old Keyring.
2x Drawing Thin Relentless.

(If you're not playing Taboo you can just start with Drawing Thin in the deck)

Downgrade to Emergency Cache; the upgraded Cache is very powerful for adding supplies on Tennessee Sour Mash and of course Chainsaw, the downgrade version is just there for more economy, if you're playing Taboo. It doesn't serve much other purpose.

2x Oops!(2) Stunning Blow; optionally you could also take Oops!(0), but I find Blow generally more useful and stronger. In TDE I'd definitely play Oops!. And later in the campaign you don't need Blow, because you have the upgraded Tennessee Sour Mash(3).

1x "Fool me once..." and Alter Fate(1); I usually take some generally useful cards like Vicious Blow, Unexpected Courage and maybe a 1x On the Hunt, to get put an VP enemy form the encounter deck.

The upgrade order is usually:

(0. Drawing Thin).

1. Chainsaw.
2. Emergency Cache(3).
3. Tennessee Sour Mash(3), or
4. Well Prepared
5. Oops!(2)
6. Gravedigger's Shovel(2), or
7. Evidence!(1) (for Scene of the Crime)
8. Upgrade to Alter Fate(3)

(Slide in Fool me and We make our own fate, to take up all xp you get).

Show's on. It's time for show off! (Fighting)

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The main weapon, like already announced, the Chainsaw.
First to fetch it, you have Tetsuo Mori (which should always search the deck btw) and a constant card draw with Drawing Thin, if you have it, you should then probably commit it to a fight, so that you can play it, without spending an action.

The weapon itself gives you a +2, which is enough to be 3-Up on a 3-Fight enemy. 4-Fight enemies can usually just still be attacked anyway, because you have enough ways to benefit from failing the attack, and he doesn't really care about retaliate, because of constant Tetsuo Moris. You can also forcefully fail a test, through Drawing Thin, if you have such a card in hand. If you need to pass an important 3-Damage hit you can use Well Prepared respectively, to fight on a 9.

The damage output this deck has is literally insane. The Saw itself has an inbuilt +2 Damage bonus, so it's an 1-Action solution for 2/3 health enemies (2-Actions for 5/6 health enemies). 1-Health enemies can just be failed into with Drawing Thin for the kill. 4-Health enemies are also just a 2-Action thing (1 failed and 1 normal). But if you have an Oops!(2) or a Live and Learn they can be just wiped away in 1-Action!

The refill options for the saw in this deck are just insane. Cache(3) can just refill it instantly (netting you a total of 4-12 damage, if you're not filling up your bottle). Act of Desperation can be the last 2 damage on a 3/5-health enemy, thus instantly rebuying and refilling your saw (a smart reader will have noticed, that that is the funny part of throwing the saw). And if you get to a point were you have a saw in the discard and one in play, you just can always pull it back, whenever the other one goes empty.

His weakness is also just a joke, as long as you have a saw in hand, it usually dies in 1-Action. And it grants you another card from your discard pile.

The annoying, but important, part (clueing)

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This deck doesn't hard mulligan for Chainsaw, but generally for cards like Tetsuo Mori, Drawing Thin and Gravedigger's Shovel/Old Keyring, to get some clues early game.

Even though it may not look like it, this deck can definitely pull quite a bit of weight early game, when there aren't that many enemies in the deck yet, and the locations are usually lower-shroud. Gravedigger's Shovel and Scene of the Crime (later Evidence!) can pick of clues from high shroud or annoying locations.

It still should probably be paired with a more clue-focused investigator.

After the Show (encounter handling)

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Most damage and horror given out, Yorick usually soaks on Tetsuo Mori or Cherished Keepsake, but this deck also has some very neat ways to set the encounter deck off.

Tennessee Sour Mash grants you a nice +2, which should be enough to not fully take the hit on fail-by effects. The Tennessee is actually not at all a bad card in Yorick, especially in this deck. Next to the encounter protection it has it's very own discard effect (plus a free evade in the upgraded version), and it can be refilled with Cache(3).

Well Prepared and Take the Initiative are mainly used to boost your defensive stats to a reasonable amount, if you have an important test to pass.

"Fool me once..." and Alter Fate are two of my favourite cards in the game, they could possibly both be an A Test of Will(1), but (especially for TCU, that has an upcoming Ironman and it is the first play test for this deck I had) I just included them here now so I cloud go into them more.

(slight TCU and TDE mechanical spoilers ahead)

• Fool Me; is a heavily underused card that can literally throw an annoying 3-copy card from the encounter deck out of cycle. In 4p it is definitely capable of game changing effects, on cards like Meddlesome Familiar in Secret Name (that son-of-a-goat read-faced rat finally has only 1 copy in the deck, instead of 4) or Ancient Evils (in Dark Side of the Moon), it's more then capable of turning the tide in a game.
• Alter Fate: Super, super powerful card, counting by all the annoying cards that can be stuck in people's threat areas. Especially in TDE, TCU and Blob it can cost only 1 action to remove something that would cost entire turns to do. There's also a neat combo opportunity with Fool me, because it reads: "after you discard an encounter card, after resolving any of it's effects,", so if a card enters a players area, you can just choose to never see it again. This also works on weaknesses, because they become encounter cards, as soon as they enter a players area (bye False Awakening wink)

Additional Cards

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Bury Them Deep; in my opinion one of the greatest signature cards in the game. The +1 VP is always a great thing to get all the cards together, and it's even for the whole team, if you're playing in higher player counts. But not just that, in higher player counts this card can throw an annoying enemy out of cycle.

Old Keyring/Flashlight; in most of my fighter decks I include a few cards that lets them pick up a few clues from low-shroud locations. Old Keyring even recycles itself after it discovers two clues, for recursion by enemy killing.

Resourceful; most cards in this deck can be crucial cards in the main Chainsaw combo. Recuring things like Live and Learn, Alter Fate and Act of Desperation can feel very good.

Alternate Options

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If your playing TCU, you probably want to exchange Old Keyring for Flashlight. I just included Old Keyring here, to highlight the fail-by archetype.

Evidence! for Scene of the Crime, quite a no-brainer.

If you're concerned about your clue-finding, another option is to include Bandolier (the upgraded version can also give you more encounter protection), to have a Shovel/Keyring in play a the same time.

(Additional Options are usually suggested by you in the comment section!)

( Edit on the 6th October 2020: Added the additional cards section.)

Epilogue

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The curtain falls back down. The audience claps and all a weary observer could have noticed is a small drop of blood dropping and spilling through the curtain, onto the floor below ...

The credits start to roll.

Author: Lord Triloth T. Trilogy (@Triloth on discord).
Gravedigger: William Yorick.
Policeman: Tetsuo Mori.
Costume Design: Charles Pawterson.
Sponsor: Herbert West Labs.

All copyrights go to FFG's licensed material.