Join Finn Edwards as he searches for his stash...

Summary

A solo deck for Finn, using only cards from one core, the Forgotten Age and Dream Eaters cycle, and the Winifred Habbamock pack. Evade, investigate, search for cards, succeed!

Deck contents rationale

Finn's precious 5-card deckbuilding allowance from Seeker/Survivor has been used to here to focus on searching his deck for all the cool stuff he's got hidden away for dark times like this.

Lucky Cigarette Case is in here because it provides deck searching (and is an amazing accessory!), to enable finding Astounding Revelation (see below for discussion of the level 0 starting version of this deck). Smuggled Goods also enables Astounding Revelation, as does Practice Makes Perfect and Backpack.

Astounding Revelation is there for resource gain and deck thinning. It, along with Burglary and Emergency Cache, is a crucial fast source of income to get you set up fast, as well as to recover from having low resources and/or for paying for the hitwoman services of Delilah O'Rourke (after you upgrade into her).

Emergency Cache and Smuggled Goods are both supply cards, which can be put on Backpack, as well as any items. Having Backpack in play allows for aggressive deck-searching without needing to worry so much about hand size limits. Upgrading to level 2 Backpack is a good idea at some point, to allow for deeper digs.

Practice Makes Perfect searches for either Hatchet Man (for evasion) or Perception (for investigating). It can also find Daredevil, which can in turn discard to find Nimble or Hatchet Man (so only use Daredevil on agility tests, though be sure you are OK with potentially discarding several cards from your deck when Daredevil hits - check how many rogue skills are still in the deck vs the discard pile before committing it). Upgrading later to level 2 Daredevil - which is a much stronger card since it doesn't purge half your deck! - isn't a bad idea.

Building the level 0 deck

For the level 0 version of this deck, use level 0 Lucky Cigarette Case instead of the level 0 version, and Gregory Gry instead of Delilah O'Rourke. Delilah is amazing for defeating enemies, so is a good pick for a later upgrade, though Gregory is still a solid way of getting money fast, if you choose to keep him on.

Running the deck

Finn's high and (both 4) means he can investigate without much help, but if you give him Lockpicks then he is testing at base 8 skill value, which makes him excellent at grabbing clues even from high-shroud locations. He will also likely succeed by 2 or more often on tests (particularly when using Lockpicks and/or committing lots of icons to tests), which can trigger Lucky Cigarette Case, not to mention Pickpocketing, for card draw.

Use the deck searching cards (Backpack, Smuggled Goods, Practice Makes Perfect, and later the upgraded Lucky Cigarette Case), to get set up in terms of assets. Don't be afraid to dig in and grab what you need to succeed!

Finn largely wants to evade enemies and only kill them when necessary. With an additional action every turn to evade an enemy, this leaves him with effectively a full turn to do other things! But when you have multiple enemies on you, you may need to kill some of them. For that, his signature gun (Finn's Trusty .38) is great, and he can do solid work with other weapons too, given his respectable 3 and decent number of combat icons on cards in the deck. The Knife is most useful for Finn when it's 'thrown' (discarded from play) to put him at base 5 and dealing 2 damage.

The ideal way to deal enemies at your location is to evade them first (with Finn's free action, ideally) and then either investigate the location and move on, or use cards like Coup de Grâce, Hatchet Man, Finn's Trusty .38 or (after you upgrade into her) Delilah O'Rourke to take the enemies down. Backstab is always a great attack backup for you, especially to kill a 3-health enemy in a single hit - remember you can commit icons from Nimble, Hatchet Man, etc. to that test, to ensure that it hits.

Finn's major downside is his terrible 1. You should assume that you'll fail a lot of tests on treacheries in the Mythos phase, so just push on as much as you can, taking sanity hits on the chin. If horror becomes an issue, consider upgrading to e.g. level 1 Liquid Courage to allow yourself to heal horror.