Chuck Kane, Reverened Warlord of the Apocalypse

This is a combat deck that's a blast to play in a multi-player campaign.

Attack

The main weapon is the mighty yet temperamental .35 Winchester. It hits for 3 damage when you draw a non-negative token from the chaos bag. Olive McBride is a crack shot with it! tokens boost the odds - for the first scenario, play them right before squeezing the trigger.

Sledgehammer is the backup weapon - it's also great, especially when wielded by Leo De Luca.

Chuck's pack of Guard Dogs give him surprisingly helpful advice on how to aim rifles and swing sledgehammers. They are also weapons themselves. Inspiring Presence can often keep them alive long enough to deal 1 extra damage and give one more boost.

Chuck often forgets Alice Luxley can cause quite a bit of damage by gathering clues.

Human Resources

Reverend Chuck is a pastor of the Egyptian goddess Nephthys. His first four XP are spent bringing her to his aid. She's key for three reasons:

1. are recycled through her. She's a Sacred Covenant with unlimited uses per turn.
2. icons make combat checks a breeze. When she fights shoulder-to-shoulder with Bonnie Walsh: look out!
3. 2 damage. You won't use this most turns, but it's great to be able to surge it.

Olive McBride is tactically agreeable because Chuck often wants to draw a lot of chaos tokens - sometimes looking for , sometimes to sublimate to Nephthys.

Bonnie Walsh, American Goddess of Human Resources is a big deal in every Charlie Kane deck. This one is no different. Getting +3 to any skill check is essential to managing the 1-1-1-1 statline. But new Charlie Kane players need to understand that it goes deeper than that!

is good because it sets up the next test for success by reading an ally. This is strictly better than Bonnie's ability, because it can ready Bonnie herself, and then she can ready someone else too. It's a chain reaction.

Inspiring Presence is a kind of -on-demand. If the signature weakness isn't a threat, it's often best to put a point of damage on Bonnie, because she's going to be the target of Inspiring Presence anyway, she might as well heal too.

So now you know why Bonnie Walsh is bananas.

Bless

Ideally the life cycle of a bless token in this deck goes through three steps.

1. Get sealed on Rite of Sanctification and pay for something upon release to the bag.
2. Succeed at a skill test, preferably on .35 Winchester for +2 damage.
3. Land on Nephthys for more testless damage, or just release into the bag to go back to step 2 just in time for a pivotal check. You'll get another chance to cause damage with them the next time they cycle through.

$ Economy

Gregory Gry unlocks big money with oversuccesses. He's the beating heart of this deck.

Rite of Sanctification is there as a back-up Gregory Gry. Note that it also can pay bills for the rest of the party!

Motivational Speech is a parley and therefore a way to get allies into play while engaged without suffering from attacks of opportunity.

Deck Weaknesses

Plan Chuck's card draws very carefully! According to all the podcasts I've heard, Chuck's signature weakness, Burden of Leadership, is intended to damage exhausted allies. So it's usually a bad idea for Chuck to draw a card if there are 1 or more exhausted allies. This also usually limits plays of Take Heart and Laboratory Assistant to before skill checks, which can be tricky if the Mythos phase has a skill check that Chuck needs to pump for.

Mr. "Rook" is a shadow of his former self, but he's still a good include for this deck because the combos here are a little janky, and one often ends up spending an action to draw. There's a big difference between drawing the best card and drawing a random card. And there's also a big swing on when you draw weaknesses. Once your engine is humming, swap him out via Calling in Favors.

This deck is weak until it gets it's engine going. A single 3/3/3 enemy can really ruin your day on the second turn, if you get a bad chaos token pull on your one big skill test of the turn. Don't wander around the map with no weapon - a Sledgehammer in hand is better than a Winchester in the bush.

Upgrade Path

1. Nephthys replaces Guard Dog, as mentioned above
2. Favor of the Sun replaces at least one Olive McBride
3. Miss Doyle replaces Guard Dog.
4. Brand of Cthugha replaces one Sledgehammer to free up the hand slots for a late Winchester arrival.
5. Ancient Covenant turns drawn blesses into successes.

At this point I think the weakest cards are

• Rise to the Occasion - you've got allies for that
• Take Heart - difficult to use, and only a sure payoff with shroud 5 or an Olive McBride click, but in the latter case you may draw Burden of Leadership and kill Olive. It's fiddly. But there's not very much card draw in this deck, so it hangs on in hopes it can be used on a hard test early - preferably a mythos phase test that you're going to fail anyway.
• Rite of Sanctification.
• Alice Luxley
• Laboratory Assistant

From here, bigger, heftier allies can provide a lot of value, as can Charisma. The dream team could look something like:

• Bonnie Walsh
• Nephthys
• Black Cat
• Miss Doyle
• Michael Leigh

Go Have Fun

This deck has been great in the first couple play-throughs at low XP. The suspense of drawing for the Winchester is fun, the combos with bless tokens, and the roaring economy all are great.