Roland Banks, Just a G-Man

There are likely two main ways to build Roland Banks from what we know of the Core set. First, you can go all in fighting baddies, making Roland one dimensional. Second, you can import significant amounts of Seeker cards to keep Roland more well-rounded. Since Roland's obvious strength is "action advantage" through fighting (which when you successfully defeat a baddie allows you to grab a clue too), this build focuses on that first path--albeit still offering opportunities to keep Roland well-rounded.

For that reason, this deck focuses on strong, cost-efficient assets that increase your fighting expertise. You want to be able to expend maximum damage as quickly as possible so that you can perform double duty on investigations. The .45 Automatic and Roland's .38 Special likely need little comment since they both serve as valuable ways to increase damage potential. The use of Knife rather than Machete owes to the fact that (a) it costs 1 rather than Machete's 3 cost; (b) you can ditch it to free a hand for a second pistol; and (c) the conditional +1 damage from Machete slightly concerns me.

My suspicion is that 4 allies (2 each of Beat Cop and Guard Dog) will not be enough. However, both focus on increasing your damage potential. Adding in Dr. Milan Christopher or the Research Librarian may be worth considering just as added sanity protection at the very least.

At present, this deck only imports two different Seeker cards:

• Hyperawareness and

• Barricade.

We import Hyperawareness to help shore up Roland's potential weaknesses in intellect and agility tests. Paying 1 to increase a skill can help avoid potential dangers. Likewise, we take Barricade for its three skill test icons to help with potential evasion, lore, and willpower tests. The card's actual ability is more gravy than anything else.

In the same vein, we choose our skills to shore up potential weaknesses. Guts, Manual Dexterity, and Unexpected Courage allow us to expend fewer resources through Hyperawareness or Physical Training on skill tests. Plus when successful, Guts and Manual Dexterity replace themselves. We add Vicious Blow rather than Overpower since it provides additional damage when successful.

Finally, the last few card slots provide more utility:

• Evidence! further bolsters your action advantage at the cost of a card; alternatively, its a 2-intellect skill card to help with any potentially nasty tests.

• Dodge can help you when too many baddies show up.

• Emergency Cache is just pure resources--though it may, however, be a card worth ditching for Overpower or another higher impact card since the effective 2 resource burst economy may not prove worthwhile.

• And last, but not least, First Aid seems like a must for the sanity protection more than anything else.

As the campaign progresses, upgrading to Shotgun will likely take precedence to increase the damage potential. Adding the leveled up Beat Cop will also be worthwhile for similar reasons. Police Badge is also a fairly juicy target for its skill icons and the chance to in-turn damage potential. The real XP prize, though, looks to be the Elder Sign Amulet because it offers significant sanity protection at a well-costed price point along with 2 skill icons, one of which is wild.