Skills O'Toole

Overview

This build for "Skids" O'Toole takes a few pages out of Silas Marsh's book. The general idea is to run a lot of skill cards to support passing skill checks rather than relying on expensive assets. Focusing on skills should help save resources, and those resources will allow Skids to use his ability more often.

Playing The Deck

For the opening hand, mulligan all skill cards and On the Lam. If you receive any duplicate assets (e.g. 2 Machetes), mulligan one copy of them away, since you don't need 2 of any of them.

The first turn should be playing pretty much whatever cards you can. Economy cards like Emergency Cache and Lone Wolf are both good turn 1 plays because resources will never be wasted on Skids. If no economy cards turn up, you should be able to play most of the assets anyway since their costs are low (with the exception of Machete and Beat Cop).

The cycling skill cards (Guts, Perception, Overpower, and Manual Dexterity) should pretty much be played right away on checks you think you can win - that way you can draw new cards into your hand. The skill cards (Take the Initiative, Unexpected Courage, and to a certain extent On the Lam) should be kept in hand for critical tests.

"Watch this!" and Double or Nothing are very situational cards. Double or Nothing is best used with Flashlight to pick up clues on locations that can be reduced to Shroud 0. "Watch this!" should be used on easy tests to help supplement income.

"Skids" O'Toole has a really hard time fighting the tough monsters since his base is 3. Sometimes it's best to cut and run with his higher stat. Whether or not to fight or run will often depend on the skill cards in your hand, the monster's stats, and the general layout of the board. Beat Cop is expensive, but he is included in the deck to help bring Skids closer to Roland Banks, Zoey Samaras, and Leo Anderson in terms of fighting power.

Investigating is also tough for "Skids" O'Toole with the of 3. His main tools will be the Flashlight cards as well as the Perception. He doesn't have a lot of them so he has to know when to make them count. Sometimes he may need to use Unexpected Courage or Take the Initiative to grab the final clues in a scenario.

Overall, Skids should be able to use these tools to carry himself through a scenario.

Deck Progression

So, deck progression should actually be trying to get you to phase out the skill cards and move you towards generating tons of resources and using those to solve problems instead.

The first experience purchase you should look to make is Streetwise. That will let you use resources to boost a skill that lets you find clues and a skill that lets you escape monsters. These are both very useful skills to have.

Next, Hot Streak (2) to replace Manual Dexterity. These should then be leveled up to Hot Streak (4). These cards will fund your actions and help you pump your stats to pass your tests.

Lastly, you're going to want to upgrade Physical Training into Physical Training (2) Then you'll probably want to replace Perceptions with copies of Well Prepared so that you can use a Well Prepared/Physical Training (2) combination to push though and tests.

Once you get to this point, you should be able to start selectively passing the regular 4 types of tests.

Investigator Comparison

This entire build could be run out of Leo Anderson. However, I think Leo Anderson does better focusing on getting a lot of assets out, making him not a great candidate for a skill based low-asset build like this one.

Finn Edwards has a similar stat distribution and a really good ability. However, I think "Skids" O'Toole's access to Physical Training makes him a better candidate for turning resources into results since he can cover 4 stats with pump skills.

Silas Marsh has good combat stats and a focus on skill cards. However, I think that "Skids" O'Toole has a better leveled-up card pool for using resources.

Conclusion

This build for "Skids" O'Toole starts off a little frail because it depends on drawing the right skill cards for the skill test, and it depends on a good opening hand. However, with higher-level cards I believe that it will become a lot more consistent. I am in the process of testing it now but am definitely open to feedback for improving it.