Rabbit Hole Carson is Sworn To Carry Your Burdens

This is an upgrade-heavy Carson Butler list focused around In The Thick of It/Versatile/Down the Rabbit Hole setup to create a wide variety of upgrade experience. It's kind of a mix of selfless munchkining your butler and selfless donation of all the XP you just munchkined to your friends. All of Carsons XP can be spent towards upgrades, however, certain cards from the side deck such as Bestow Resolve and Girish Kadakia may be worth spending the extra XP on depending on your needs.

In general, this is Carson doing Carson things: Safeguarding with allies to bolster their skill tests while donating away actions. Your allies should be frequently up on icons, cards, resources and health due to stuff like Stand Together, Leadership, First Aid, and If your allies are taking more tests, there's a higher likelihood that they draw more elder signs and fill your hand with even more skills to commit, opening up options like Extensive Research (often just a two book commit) or Existential Riddle.

Skills: This is a Practice Makes perfect deck and aims to hit multiple excellent practiced cards, including Overpower (2), Leadership (2), Vicious Blow (2), and Perception and Deduction (sadly both unupgradeable). Bestow Resolve is the only required buy, as it allows him to donate Vicious Blows and Deductions to will and speed tests, commit cards from distance, and get three icon commits from cards like Soothing Melody. With all this, you can live with Selfless to a Fault out for quite a while, though with the size of your deck, weaknesses will be a little rarer.

The big joke: Carson runs 2 Runic Axe with the intention of handing upgraded weapons to allies in a pinch through Teamwork ("your axe, sir...") Since he's not hard up for hand slots and may occasionally be asked to Guardian, he can also use it himself with his skill kit. The Axe is frankly useable for even a 2 fight investigator and can be kitted out just about any way you'd like. Hunter's Armor is a new addition but may honestly be better than the Axe depending on the amount of players in your game - though you can swap this in for Guidance if you are in Edge of the Earth and expecting to pick up Protective Gear. When fighting enemies, Carson uses Guard Dog and Beat Cop to deal guaranteed damage on top of Toe to Toe, giving him the ability to take out monsters pretty well (though probably not enough to be the dedicated guardian.)

Upgrades: buy no more than 1 new card a round and try to focus on upgrading the deck as it stands. Leadership and Stand Together have some of the highest impact, while the first Bestow Resolve will generally carry a lot of weight for its four charges. After Bestow Resolve, focus on addressing either your allies needs (ex: Custom Ammunition) or the scenario (ex: Protective Gear) and aim only for the highest impact additionals.

Notable excludes: I left Guidance out even with the upgradeable version being available because Carson generally doesn't have that many actions left to donate in a round, often using them for moving, healing, playing allies, fighting monsters, and even occasionally scooping a clue. That and Emergency Cache with its supply donating upgrades are both close, with upgraded Leadership and Stand Togethers strengths being the deciding factor in their cuts.