Overview

Finn Edwards is one hell of an investigator, and my favorite of the new additions to the cast. He has great attributes, great unique cards, a unique ability which is extremely powerful in the new campaign, and deck-building requirements that are much better than they look at first glance. Properly built, he is a fantastic wildcard capable of advancing the act deck while embarrassing and defeating enemies with style.

Stats

Let's talk about his imbalanced stat line, since it will drive all our deck-building decisions. We will be attempting to mitigate his obvious weakness in Willpower and to take advantage of his other attributes which are all best-in-class.

: With a measly ONE in , you'll have to give up on the idea of succeeding at tests. Luckily, that isn't as bad as it sounds. It gives you a good excuse to play "You handle this one!" to make your teammate with the highest willpower deal with it. If you have a Mystic on the team with 5 or 6 , or maybe a masochistic Calvin Wright looking for a quick stat boost, they'll usually be happy to take it off your hands. If you have to take a Rotting Remains on the chin, it's not the end of the world since it'll boost your stats in a pinch with Fight or Flight, but watch out for treacheries like Frozen in Fear, which you have almost no chance of getting rid of on your own. Beg your to pack a couple copies of Logical Reasoning, and be very appreciative when they save your butt.

: A score of four in means Finn has the best smarts out of any rogue so far. He can gather clues efficiently with a little help from Flashlight and Magnifying Glass. Try to use Eavesdrop on a location difficult to investigate normally, whether it has high shroud or an annoying effect. The best defense against nasty encounters is a good offense - once you've won a scenario, you're safe from the eldritch horrors until you meet the next scenario's eldritch horrors, so advance the act deck as quickly as you can.

: Finn has a very respectable score of three, putting him on par with Skids and Jenny. You can comfortably kill rats with your bare hands. Any of the good illicit weapons such as Finn's Trusty .38, Lupara, Chicago Typewriter, .41 Derringer, or Switchblade will let you take care of anything harder with a little support from Lucky!, Unexpected Courage, or especially Fight or Flight. If you want to build Finn completely around monster-killing you can be quite good at it, but I don't recommend it because...

: You have four , tied with Skids, Sefina, and Wendy for the best in the game. Combined with your unique ability which gives you an extra action each turn which can only be used to Evade, you can run circles around enemies all day! When you bring Pickpocketing and Eavesdrop, having a cute little eldritch abomination try to defile your various orifices can be fun and profitable until you're Caught Red-Handed, but more on that later. When you need a more permanent solution to your enemies' amorous advances, a quick Backstab or Sneak Attack will send them to the discard pile.

Finishing Touches

Leo De Luca lets you take an additional action every turn. He's the most expensive card in the game, but by golly you sure get what you pay for.

Double or Nothing - now this is a card you either love or hate. Personally, I love doubling down on big event cards, getting four clues with one action using Eavesdrop or dealing six damage with Backstab. Drawing a lot of extra cards with Pickpocketing and with Leo De Luca can let you find lots of Lucky!, Manual Dexterity, Unexpected Courage, Perception, and Fight or Flight to waste all at once when you draw a tentacle! Father Mateo sure is a great friend to have, especially if he brought a Seal of the Elder Sign. Succeeding at a doubled Backstab on a boss or Eavesdrop on a difficult location is completely game changing, but if you don't have Daddy Matt or Seal to guarantee success, be prepared to flip the table and make a quick getaway, especially if you just killed your friend who was begging you to engage the enemy before you Backstab it.

Caught Red-Handed - This card can really ruin your day if you draw it at the wrong time, so if it's still in your deck try to have a plan for if you draw it during your turn. An Elusive or Ace in the Hole provide comfortable peace of mind against drawing Caught Red-Handed in a bad situation. If there's another investigator at your location, try not to leave them suffering the consequences by ditching them with Elusive after you get caught Pickpocketing incomprehensible horrors as your last action.

Smuggled Goods - this card is really fantastic once you spend some xp on high-impact Illicit cards, which we will want to do as soon as possible. You especially want to find your Lockpicks and Pickpocketing as soon as possible to build an advantage every turn. If you already have one of each or you need to deal with enemies, go looking for Finn's Trusty .38 or Lupara.

Fight or Flight - this card lets you have some pretty amazing turns. Great for tough situations and more powerful if you get to take more actions in a turn. Finn takes a lot of actions and loves fighting and evading, so this is perfect. Using this with Ace in the Hole, Leo De Luca, Quick Thinking, and .41 Derringer technically violates the Geneva Convention, but eldritch abominations and evil cultists deserve it so go nuts.

Getting Even Stronger

Finn gets even better? You better believe it! Despite his weird restriction from non-illicit high level rogue cards, Finn has huge growth potential - the more xp the better! That's why I recommend Charon's Obol if you aren't a scared baby. It'll net you 10 xp over the course of a 8 scenario campaign, and as a side benefit your team will be more sympathetic when you Elusive away and resign to save yourself at their expense.

Priority 1

These are the foundations of the deck and have the biggest impact per xp spent, so I recommend buying these first.

Charon's Obol - you obviously want this first, if you're planning to take it at all. It's not necessary. If you're not confident and risk-tolerant, just skip it. It may actually cost your team some xp, if avoiding risks means you skip some victory points. Swap in a Perseverance with Adaptable if you take it.

Lockpicks - Finn is the best lockpicker in the game. Investigating with 8 base skill is almost... criminal. It's also Illicit, so it can be fetched with your Smuggled Goods.

Adaptable - save xp swapping around your level 0 cards. Great to swap out your Magnifying Glass for Fight or Flight and Perseverance after you get Lockpicks. Grab some "Watch this!" after you get Lockpicks too, since you're almost guaranteed success.

Lupara - this is the perfect weapon for Finn. It's Illicit and very high impact at a reasonable cost. I like to use this on bosses with Double or Nothing, or to wait until there are two smaller enemies to blow away in one turn. Consider swapping in Sleight of Hand once you have two of these to save money and actions and to get more uses out of it. Lupara can replace Backstab. Being one handed and temporary makes this a better fit than the Chicago Typewriter, since you want to keep your hands free for Lockpicks.

Pickpocketing - Fantastic value. Upgraded version is , saving an action and letting you play it only after you draw an enemy. With our next upgrades, we'll try to get to the point that we can reliably succeed by 2 or more using our free action every turn.

Priority 2

These cards build on the strong economic foundation laid by our first upgrades by boosting our stats and by giving us extra actions.

Key of Ys - This card does some serious work for Finn. With a couple horror on this bad boy, you're all but unstoppable. As a hybrid butt-kicker and problem-sleuth, you get extreme value from this card since every one of your stats is important. Your and go from good to godlike, and you might even have a small chance passing a test.

Streetwise - With enough cash, no or test is impossible. Pickpocketing makes spending for a boost to your evasion much more affordable. As a permanent, this will always be available, so it can help a lot before your Key of Ys gets charged up.

.41 Derringer - There's a lot of synergy here with Key of Ys and Fight or Flight. They boost your stats to a point where you can reliably oversucceed, and gaining an extra action is inherently more valuable if your stats are higher and your action will have a bigger impact. Try to get 3 extra actions out of it if you can, by shooting once a turn, unless you really need to unload on something and kill it ASAP.

Ace in the Hole - You like big turns? This is the card for you. Very few problems are unsolvable with three extra actions and any boost from Key of Ys.

Priority 3

These are the cherries on your crime-sundae. None of these are strictly necessary, but by golly they're really nice to have. You probably won't have enough xp for all of these, so prioritize carefully.

Bulletproof Vest - It would just be too sad to die after getting this far. Put one of these on and your effective health goes up by more than 50%! Can make the difference between making a clutch play and chickening out because it's too risky. Between this and Perseverance you might even be able to survive some sort of crazy, impossible situation like taking 10 damage at once! Hahaha like that'd ever happen. Buy this before .41 Derringer and Ace in the Hole if you're constantly on the edge of death because your team doesn't care about your life or didn't bring any Emergency Aid.

Leo De Luca - Save a dollar! It isn't sexy, but it is pretty efficient. Helps you get set up faster.

Emergency Cache - Hey, some more card draw! Like Leo De Luca this isn't exciting, but you have a lot of good cards at this point, so drawing them faster is more betterer.

Sure Gamble - It's like a Lucky! that can push you into the over-success necessary to trigger .41 Derringer and Pickpocketing. Still can't save you from drawing a tentacle token, but this card is probably really good on Expert difficulty.

Moment of Respite - If horror is a big problem for some reason then grab this - Key of Ys should be enough horror soak though.

Pipe dreams

These are impractical and expensive but they look cool and I want them anyway.

Charisma - If you're reeeally raking in the xp, you can get Charisma and The Red-Gloved Man instead of Bulletproof Vest. This can be taken earlier if you got a really great story ally. If you don't have a seeker and Dr. Milan Christopher is available, there's probably a completely different and good version of this deck with two Charisma, Dr. Milan Christopher, Leo De Luca, and (once she comes out) Lola Santiago, instead of Key of Ys and illicit weapons.

Relic Hunter - Lets you equip an extra accessory, if you really want some Lucky Dice or Lucky Cigarette Case. I think this makes the deck a little too asset-heavy though.

Fence - Oh man, a card that improves illicit cards! I have a lot of illicit cards so I want this! Yeah, but it's too expensive to play early since it'd prevent you from getting your more profitable cards down, and it's not worth playing later after you've already played your good illicit cards. There's probably cool stuff you can do with it with a Chicago Typewriter and Contraband, but it's probably too expensive without being able to include Hot Streak. Quick Fence decklist for fun: Chicago TypewriterLuparaSwitchbladeLockpicksBackpackPickpocketingLucky Cigarette CaseFenceEmergency CacheSleight of HandShortcutContrabandOverpowerManual Dexterity"Watch this!", each 2x.

Bootlegging for Dummies

Mulligan strategy

Discard and replace any card that isn't Leo De Luca, Pickpocketing, Smuggled Goods, Magnifying Glass, or Emergency Cache. Keep only 1 max of Leo De Luca. If you have two Pickpocketing or a Smuggled Goods and a Pickpocketing, you can keep a skill card that will give you a boost on your first attempt to Evade to get things rolling.

Once you've got them, you would also want to keep Lockpicks and Key of Ys if you draw them in your opening hand. Only keep one Key of Ys max, of course.

You can also keep "Watch this!" if you already have Lockpicks in your hand.

Play strategy

Leo De Luca and Pickpocketing give you an incremental advantage each turn, so get them out as fast as possible. Investigate as much as you can with Flashlight and with Lockpicks or Magnifying Glass, but if you don't have better than a 60% chance to investigate a location, focus your turn on improving your situation by helping deal with threats, playing more assets, or drawing cards.

If you have a Pickpocketing or two and an enemy is easy enough to evade, try to keep it around for a while instead of killing it so you can profit off of your free evade action every turn.

If you can, try to save enough boosts like StreetwisePerception Unexpected Courage and Lucky! to hit a big Double or Nothing Eavesdrop on a difficult location. Four clues in one action is incredible efficiency.

If the team needs help killing a really tough enemy, go ahead and use boosts like StreetwiseFight or FlightUnexpected CourageLucky!Manual Dexterity to hit a Double or Nothing attack like Backstab or Finn's Trusty .38 or Lupara

Other cards worth considering

There are good cards that didn't make it into the deck. Here are some you should consider including.

Fine Clothes - There's a trend of important parley checks early in campaigns. These swanky duds make them much easier to pass, and provide a touch of survivability to boot. They're really cheap though, so you probably got them secondhand with a pee smell that never goes away.

Lucky Cigarette Case What a nice source of card draw! I wish I could fit this into the deck, but think Pickpocketing already provides enough draw and doesn't compete with Key of Ys for an accessory slot.

Burglary It's nice that it's Illicit, but I think it slows Finn down too much to be worth playing, even though he's tied with Rex Murphy for highest out of any investigator with access to the card. Including more expensive assets to make use of the money from Burglary will just distract you from what's important - advancing the act deck and dealing with threats.

Narrow Escape - You can include this instead of Unexpected Courage if you want, but it can't help other investigators or be played during the Mythos phase. Could be a nice combo before you upgrade Pickpocketing, to let you play it only after you draw a monster.

Rabbit's Foot - Good card draw on higher difficulties. This deck tries to take a few high-impact actions with a high chance of success instead of spamming actions likely to fail though. Also takes a valuable out-of-faction slot. If you want it, replace Fight or Flight with one until you get Key of Ys.

Lone Wolf - I always play with a group of 4, so I'm not alone enough for this to pay off quickly. If you have fewer players, this is probably good, but I don't know what I'd cut to make room - probably "Watch this!"

Quick Thinking - I play on Hard, and would rather include Unexpected Courage in my starting deck because I need the extra icons. Pretty good once you have Key of Ys or Lockpicks as it'll be a lot easier to ensure over-success.

"Watch this!" - Same rationale as Quick Thinking

Opportunist - this is pretty tempting if Minh Thi Phan is in your squad. Reusable resource-free boost to hit Pickpocketing oversuccess sounds nice. Probably not worth 2xp though.

Chicago Typewriter - I'd take this over Lupara if Finn wasn't so handy with those Lockpicks. Alas, Chicago Typewriter takes two hand slots, so if you want to play it you'll have to throw away anything else in your hand slots. Could be good if your team blazes through clues but needs you to be a dedicated butt-kicker though. See Fence in upgrades section.

Anatomical Diagrams - Makes evading and landing Double or Nothing on an enemy really easy! Takes an out of faction slot and requires you to have less than 3 horror though. With 1 and no horror-healing we can't really guarantee that. Would be great for one of your teammates who deal with those drawbacks better to take. Underrated card.

Shortcut - Such an efficient and useful card, but I think we need other non-rogue cards more than we need this.

"Look what I found!" - Quite a nice investigation event, but again limited by our 5 survivor/seeker card limit. If you don't take Charon's Obol and get Perseverance, you could swap this in after you cut Magnifying Glass with Adaptable

Peter Sylvestre - He goes really nicely with Key of Ys and Finn makes good use of the boost, but you'd need Charisma to use him and Leo De Luca at the same time. Also an expensive asset competing for early resources.

Scavenging - I feel like you can mostly get the same effect from drawing more cards, which this deck is already good at. It's tempting to include once you get Key of Ys and Bulletproof Vest though, since it'd make you pretty much immortal with infinitely recurring Lupara to boot. Probably an unnecessarily win-more trap card, but give it a shot if you want because it sounds super fun.

Out of faction seeker / survivor skill cards - they're all good, but don't have enough impact to justify inclusion over Magnifying Glass, Fight or Flight, or Lucky!

Sneak Attack - It's really nice that it's guaranteed damage, but I think Finn can do the job better with illicit weaponry. Maybe worth getting anyway on Expert.

TL;DR Use this decklist if you want to rob everything blind, gather clues consistently and quickly, and go on occasional little murderous rampages that get longer and more frequent.