The Great Escape

This deck is all about evading, drawing cards and getting additional actions and resources. It makes for some really fun combinations and is quite addictive, as you dance around your enemies while getting payed for it.

How to Play

In the beginning you focus on getting out Lucky Cigarette Case or at least Pickpocketing and use them as much as possible. Finn gets one evade action for free, so he is happy to enter locations with a prepared enemy, just to evade it immediately.

Your second priority is playing Leo De Luca, followed up by a Beretta M1918. To afford all of this, try to use Pay Day as the last action of a turn in which you used one free evade or one free Leo action, preferably both. Ace in the Hole and Borrowed Time make this combo even stronger, possibly setting you up for an 11 actions turn and the same amount of gained resources.

Skill Tests & Drawing

Don't be afraid to commit Manual Dexterity or other cards to skill tests early on, even against low thresholds. With Lucky Cigarette Case on the board, exceeding a skill test by a good amount gives you insane draw & search power.

Finn's Trusty .38 is garbage compared to your Beretta, so use it for passing evade tests. Later on you can use High Roller and Streetwise to consistently pump up your skill and pass these tests even higher.

Remember: passing skill tests = drawing

In some scenarios you will likely be able to draw through your whole deck twice. In case your deck runs low on cards (< 9) and you haven't drawn a weakness card yet, use Smuggled Goods to search the top 9 cards of your deck, which lets you reshuffle your discard pile to draw the missing cards and then reshuffle your whole deck again.

Dealing with Enemies

As mentioned in the intro, Finn loves to evade Enemies, so a lot of times you want to have one enemy nearby just to use that sweet free action. That said, too many enemies can make your investigator life hard and some simple need to leave the board. In that case fight them using your Beretta M1918 and Backstab.

Beretta M1918 gives you the most value, when you exceed the skill test by 4, so make sure to buff it as needed.

Special Cards

Getting Fence early on really speeds up your turns, as you have a lot of illicit cards in your deck.

Lola Santiago is just a solid skill buff and can help you discover glues in locked places.

Live and Learn give ease of mind, when you cannot buff a skill test otherwise. Keep in mind, that you can use it after a failed test with High Roller to do that test again. So if you succeed the second time, you still get back the three resources spent on High Roller.

Mulligan

Hard mulligan for Lucky Cigarette Case and Pickpocketing, as they allow you to draw all your other critical pieces. The only exceptions is a Leo De Luca on your first hand. Keep him, as he gives tremendous value when played early on.

In case you get neither Lucky Cigarette Case nor Pickpocketing after your mulligan, use Manual Dexterity, Emergency Cache or Smuggled Goods to draw into them.

Evolving the Deck

Obviously 52 XP is quite expensive. Before reaching that point, use the 0 XP versions of Lucky Cigarette Case, Leo De Luca, Streetwise, Emergency Cache and Manual Dexterity. Use a second Baseball Bat and Sneak Attack instead of the Beretta M1918.

Apart from that another Guts and other skill cards that let you draw can help you early on.

For leveling up, use the following prio list:

1. Lucky Cigarette Case
2. Pay Day
3. High Roller
4. Ace in the Hole
5. Beretta M1918
6. Leo De Luca
7. Manual Dexterity

The rest can be adjusted to your liking.