Tommy Muldoon - The Rookie Tank [29xp Standalone]

"Who gave the rookie a riot whistle? All he does is follow us around and blow it incessantly!"

This is a 29xp multiplayer Tommy deck which aims to keep any and all enemies off the rest of the party while they go about their business unhindered. (Hopefully their business is gathering clues because this deck is unlikely to contribute much on anything with a shroud higher than one!) Note that this being a multiplayer deck means that I haven't actually had a chance to test it out yet for obvious reasons...

If any enemies are drawn in the mythos phase then Tommy will be looking to go first, engage any enemies - the first one of which is pesudo-actionless thanks to Riot Whistle's extra action and Trench Knife nullifying attacks of opportunity. Once the enemies are engaged, you will usually start chipping away at their health in preparation for the enemy phase.

Movement does still provoke AoOs, so the goal is that as much movement as possible is handled via Safeguard. This also leaves you at the location of at least one fellow investigator in preparation for pulling an enemy off them at the start of the next investigation phase. If you happen to get separated, Righteous Hunt can be played as the extra action from Riot Whistle to catch you back up to whoever needs help.

In the enemy phase Survival Knife can attack and hopefully finish off an enemy engaged with you. If there are two enemies then Aquinnah can redirect the first attack before you fight the second, which should be enough damage to finish off most opponents. Just be careful not to kill the first enemy with Survival Knife if you want to redirect its damage with Aquinnah!

If you happen to get overwhelmed by enemies then you have a few options. You can try and thin the herd using Brute Force. This gets you to combat 7 before committing other cards and can later be recurred using Resourceful. Survival Instinct evades all enemies engaged with you, which should be all of them, and adding Becky or Daring to the test can get Tommy up to agility 5 or 6. Finally, there is Dynamite Blast. This can be played after the last action of the final investigator, giving your friends a chance to escape the blast radius. If you've slipped away yourself using Survival Instinct great, but taking three damage yourself shouldn't be a problem in most circumstances.

Leather Coat and Cherished Keepsake are standard Tommy cards, pulling double duty of soak and economy when they are defeated. "I've had worse…" does the same job as an event while Glory provides some much needed card draw.

Stick to the Plan starts with Ever Vigilant for action compression and economy, Prepared for the Worst to find whichever weapon isn't in your opening hand (if you don't have either I'd prioritise Survival Knife), and Flare to try and bring Aqunniah into play for two resources instead of five.

An alternative deck could replace Aquinnah with Guard Dog and Righteous Hunt with a second Dynamite Blast aand/or Brute Force with one each of Vicious Blow (level 0) and Vicious Blow (level 2). At this point it probably isn't worth including Resourceful, which could be replaced with either Take Heart or Stunning Blow (if it interacts as I hope with the attack from Survival Knife). I expect the more Guardian-heavy version to be more consistent and reliable while the Survivor version presented here is capable of dealing out more damage in favourable circumstances (and, to be completely honest, I really wanted to include Righteous Hunt, Riot Whistle and Trench Knife in the same deck and show level 1 Aquinnah some love).