The Twenty-Five Pound Two-Tap - a HungryColquhoun deck

The Twenty-Five Pound Two-Tap

Overview

This deck is all about spectacle: two massive +5 God-ending hits that deal 6 damage apiece with the upgraded Sledgehammer, made possible in a single turn with Police Badge plus Leo De Luca (using Versatile). While there has been a few upgraded Sledge decks, given that Police Badge is conveniently recurable with Yorick this is the first one that can frequently hit twice with that . With Relentless and Drawing Thin, Yorick can turn these massive hits into cash-money - which allows for both hoarding of resources for Badge recursion and boosting through Plucky for better clue finding.

In addition to those tasty hammer blows, what I really like about this deck is your easy access to Leo De Luca - as he is often discarded with Short Supply. Given Leo's high resource cost finding an opportunity to play him can be a challenge for most decks, however this deck has the cash to do this and then Yorick's ability means you're not even wasting an action to get him out there. It's really, really good - I'd recommend more Yorick decks take Leo plus Short Supply!

Another highlight is what a great team-support option Police Badge is, as you don't have to use those free actions on yourself (you can activate it in a window on another player's turn if they're at your location). This allows you to either deal massive damage with your hammer or potentially give more actions to your lead clue-finder in a pinch.

I guess there's not too much else to explain here. Breach the Door, Sharp Vision and "Look what I found!" provide even more clue tech beyond Plucky, with Leather Coat protecting Plucky effectively. Salvage with .45 Thompson and Short Supply can provide a lot of cash upfront too. Basically just hit things with the hammer, it will make you feel better!

Advanced Strategies

• The Twenty-Five Pound Two-Tap. The main selling point of this deck: by using Leo De Luca and Police Badge you can get two mighty attacks from your Sledgehammer in one turn! As he can reliably recur the Police Badge, there's very few investigators who pull this off quite so well as Yorick.

• Rats + Sledgehammer = Hot Streak. With Relentless and Drawing Thin, a 6 damage attack on Swarm of Rats will yield 7 (!) resources. If there's a better way to earn money, I haven't heard it!

• Mo' Salvage, Mo' Money. Salvage + .45 Thompson often gives you a load of cash turn 1 with Short Supply, completely covering the cost to get Leo De Luca into play.

What didn't make the cut

• Another copy of Versatile + Leo De Luca. With Short Supply revealing a huge portion of your deck through discarded cards, on average it definitely didn't feel like I was playing with just one copy of Leo. As such for me a second copy is overkill (and introduces more padding with Versatile too).

• On the Hunt. Good as a way to give a stronger guarantee of an enemy, which can then be used for item recursion or on Bury Them Deep. However with the 1 resource cost and chance it can fail it's much less appealing than On the Hunt ••• which Yorick doesn't have access to. Plus, "Let me handle this!" somewhat overlaps with this function too.

• Track Shoes. Track Shoes are a perfect pairing with Drawing Thin, however equally it is another asset to get into play and Yorick can already pass Drawing Thin tests well with his big Sledgehammer swings.

• Daring. Daring is nice for combat and for use in the 0XP deck, but honestly I think where you need boosts more is on tests on story cards. Overpower is therefore the better choice.

• boosters. With those big Sledgehammer swings you hit at an effective 9 for the skill test. While boosts will be useful if you want to take the single fight action on the hammer, there's enough cards in the deck to commit for this already.

Campaign starter and planned progression

In the Thick of It makes this a 29XP deck, which should be achievable for most campaigns (plus the core of this deck up to Police Badge can be bought with just 17XP). As Yorick can recur Leather Coat without too much issue, the trauma from In the Thick of It is pretty inconsequential.

Starter deck is directly below (and link here):

A recommended order of XP purchases/upgrades is as follows:

• Scene of the Crime → Plucky •

• 2 x Clean Them Out → 2 x Salvage

• 2 x Sledgehammer → 2 x Sledgehammer ••••

• 2 x Cherished Keepsake → 2 x Police Badge

• 2 x Daring → 2 x Sharp Vision

• 2 x Plucky • → 2 x Plucky •••

• 2 x Take Heart → 2 x Drawing Thin

Further upgrades and side deck

Potentially Beat Cop with Charisma would work if you want more damage capability and less clue tech (possibly dropping Drawing Thin from the deck), however personally I like the current flexy style. Similarly Field Agent is good if you want to go in the opposite direction and get even more clue tech. The downside of another ally is that it's more assets to get into play on what is already a fairly asset heavy deck - so you've got to question how often you're going to get these additional assets out there.

For further upgrades in an XP-rich campaign, you can't go wrong with improved "Look what I found!" and Vicious Blow to amp up the already decent clue-finding and damage.

Final thoughts

My profound thoughts on this deck are: two massive hammer swings are better than one! Hope you enjoy, let me know what you think!